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As this number of "The Appeal" will, probably, fall into the hands of many who have not seen the Magazine before, we will briefly state our views. The class we address is

THE WORKING PEOPLE OF ENGLAND. We feel an honest, an unfeigned interest in their advancement, Socially, Politically, and Religiously; but as other periodicals, in which we take deep interest, devote themselves to the two former, we give ourselves to the last and greatest.

Our OBJECT, therefore, is religious. Were it in our power we would persuade every one to be a Christian. Religion we feel to be the grand duty of all, the grand want of all, the only solid comfort, and only final salvation, of our much-suffering and mortal race. Other journals seek their temporal welfare,—we their peace in death, and their happiness in eternity.

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Our CREED is wholly unsectarian. We know nothing any of the numerous sections into which the followers of Christ are divided,-we preach the truths in which they all agree. "The glorious Gospel of the blessed God,"

-the glad tidings which alone can rejoice and purify the heart of the guilty but penitent sinner; not priests, not ceremonies, not Church systems, but CHRIST:-this is our creed.

Our PLAN is one admitting of great freedom of illustration. Besides direct addresses on Religious Topics,Tales and Narratives, brief Extracts, and a free use of the passing topics of the day, are all suitable, we conceive, to gain attention to our main object. We are fettered by no Committee. We have only to maintain our own character, to please and benefit our readers, and, above all, to serve our God. These motives are the only control we acknowledge.

For our circulation, we look chiefly to those who seek to do good by that powerful agent-the CHEAP PRESS. And to all our readers during the past year we may again appeal,—and we do it with confidence,-to procure us fresh readers, in the numbers we could wish, for 1851.

THE APPEAL;

A Magazine for the People.

"I speak as to wise men; judge ye what I say."

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No Popery!-A word to the Working Classes

Two Questions to you...

What think you of Heaven?.... 16
POETRY.

A Mother's Teaching

18

"All my Springs are in Thee".. 18

PAGE.

NARRATIVES, ANECDOTES, &c.
The Enchanted Land.......... 19
The Doubtful Hope....

VARIETIES.

Rousseau's Testimony to the
Divinity of Christ

22

.. 23

Dying Testimony of a Philosopher 24

A NATION WITHOUT A GOD.-Cover, p. 2.

A PAGE FOR THE YOUNG."I AM NEVER ALONE.".
"-Cover, p. 3.

"I CANNOT FEEL."-Cover, p. 4.

PRICE ONE HALFPENNY.

LEEDS:

JOHN HEATON, 7, BRIGGATE;

LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, & CO., ARTHUR HALL & CO.,

BENJAMIN L. GREEN.

May be had by order of any Bookseller.

A NATION WITHOUT A GOD.

I know I sigh when I think of it—that hitherto the French people have been the least religious of all the nations of Europe. What may be the cause of this I do not say; but certain it is that the nation has an immense progress to make in serious thought if she wishes to remain free.

If we look at the characters, compared as regards religious sentiment, of the great nations of Europe, America, and even Asia, the advantage is not for us. The great men of other countries live and die on the scene of history, looking up to Heaven,— our great men appear to live and die, forgetting completely the only idea for which it is worth living and dying-they live and die thinking only of the spectators of their actions, or at most, of posterity.

Open the history of America, the history of England, and the history of France; read and compare the great lives, the great deaths, the great martyrdoms, the great words at the hour when the ruling thought of life reveals itself, as it does in the words of the dying.

Washington and Franklin fought, spoke, suffered, ascended and descended in their political life always in the name of God, for whom they acted. The Liberator of America died, confiding to God the liberty of the people, and his own soul!

Strafford, who died for the constitution of his country, laid his head on the block with the words, "I thank my heavenly Master for enabling me to await this blow without fear, and for not permitting me to be dismayed by an instant of terror. I lay down my head on this block with as much composure as I ever laid it down to sleep." The Republicans of Cromwell only sought the way of God, even in the blood of battles. Their politics were their faith,—their reign a prayer,—their death a psalm. One hears, sees, feels that God was in all the movements of these great people.

But cross the sea, traverse La Mancha, come to our times, open our annals, and listen to the last words of the great political actors of the drama of our liberty. One would think that God was eclipsed from the soul; that his name was unknown in the language. History will have the air of an atheist, when she recounts to posterity these annihilations, rather than deaths, of celebrated men in the greatest year of France! The victims only have a God; the tribunes and lictors have none.

Look at Mirabeau on the bed of death: "Crown me with flowers," said he, “intoxicate me with perfumes. Let me die to the sound of delicious music”—not a word of God, or of his soul. Sensual philosopher, he desired only a supreme sensualism, a last voluptuousness to his agony.

Contemplate Madame Roland, the strong-hearted woman of the Revolution, on the cart that conveyed her to death. She looked contemptuously on the besotted people who killed their prophets and sibyls. Not a glance towards Heaven! Only one word for the earth she was quitting-" O Liberty!"

Approach the dungeon door of the Girondins. Their last night is a banquet. Their only hymn, the Marseillaise!

Follow Camille Desmoulins to his execution. A cool and indecent pleasantry at the trial, and a long imprecation on the road to the guillotine, were the two last thoughts of this dying man on his way to the last tribunal.

Hear Danton on the platform of the scaffold, at the distance of a line from God and eternity. "I have had a good time of it; let me go to sleep." Then to the executioner, "You will show my head to the people; it is worth the trouble!" His faith, annihilation; his last sigh, vanity; behold the Frenchman of this later age!

What must one think of the religious sentiment of a free people whose great figures seem thus to march in procession to annihilation, and to whom that terrible minister, Death itself, recalls neither the threatenings nor the promises of God!

The Republic of these men without a God has quickly been stranded. The liberty won by so much heroism and so much genius has not found in France a conscience to shelter it, a God to avenge it, a people to defend it against that atheism which has been called glory! An atheistic republicanism cannot be heroic. When you terrify it, it bends; when you would buy it, it sells itself. It would be very foolish to immolate itself. Who would take any heed? the people ungrateful and God nonexistent! So finish atheist revolutions !—Lamartine.

NO POPERY!

A WORD TO THE WORKING CLASSES.

We have heard from working men the complaint that they have been overlooked in the grand Anti-papal movement; that the meetings have frequently been called at times and places impracticable for them; and that they, as Englishmen, ought to have had a voice in the matter. We think they ought; and we think, too, that their views would have generally been what we should deem sound; that they would have equally denounced both Popery itself, and any return to persecuting enactments to oppose it. We also think they would have strongly denounced the Popery which, under other names, does far more mischief than those antiquated, pompous, and offensive forms of it just imported from Italy. We have, indeed, heard these things from the lips of some of them, and their remarks have suggested to us an observation or two on a question which we think of great importance.

"No Popery." Shall we join in this cry? Yes and no! No, assuredly not, if it means banishment, imprisonment, fines, civil disabilities, or social maltreatment for Roman Catholics. If it means treating them worse than Protestants, because they are Catholics. If, in a word, it means, extinguish Popery by force or unkindness, instead of opposing it by truth and love.

But yes, we say, and most heartily too, if it means, expel Popery by purely christian means, and expel every kind of Popery. But what is Popery? We all hear of its Cardinals, Archbishops, Bishops, and Priests; of its Jesuits, Monks, Nuns, and Father Confessors; of its Baptismal Regeneration, its Transubstantiation, its Auricular Confession, the worship of the Virgin Mary and Saints; of the Infallibility of the Pope and of Church Councils;—and all these things are parts of the Papal system; and looking at them as now enumerated, though we wish to be charitable to the deceived, we cannot refuse to think these superstitions amongst the grossest and most degrading ever palmed upon man by a cunning priesthood. And the extent to which they have been submitted to and believed, is amongst the strongest evidences of human imbecility and depravity. It is, however, more instructive to notice the peculiar and essential evil which distinguishes all these corruptions, and that is, the substitution of man for God. All the impostures of Popery are distinguished by this, that they direct us to our fellow-man, and not to God, to Christ, or to the Bible. A man is the infallible judge of truth. A man has power on earth to forgive sins. A man can regenerate a babe by water consecrated by a man. A man can make common bread, by his consecration of it, the body and blood of Christ. A man can mediate with God for us. A man, as depraved, as fallible, as weak, as mortal as our

selves, can, by some magic power, do the work of our salvation for us! We have only implicitly to give ourselves up to the agent of Rome, to a pretended successor of the apostles,—to a priest, and we are safe for eternity! Now, if the Scriptures be true, these men are liars. Every claim of any man to settle our creed for us, or, by virtue of his office, to perform soul-saving ceremonies for us, is sheer imposture, if not something worse. The word of God exhorts us to teach one another, to count, indeed, the gift of teaching as the best of gifts. But beyond the power of teaching-a power which every man can exercise on any subject he has studied-the Bible knows of no human power to save. "One God, and one Mediator between God and man," is its cardinal doctrine. To that Mediator we look to know what is true, to know what we must believe to be saved, and what we must do to be saved. He invites all to come to him, not to a priest. "He is the way, the truth, and the life." And so far from being at an unapproachable distance from us,-from needing the Virgin Mary, or some saint or priest, to propitiate him towards us,—so far from this, He says, "Come unto me, for I am meek and lowly of heart, and ye shall find rest for your souls." He "took our flesh and blood, that being in all points tempted like as we are, He might be a faithful (trustworthy) high-priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of his people."

If there be one thing which more than another raises our indignation against Popery, it is just this. Call itself by what name or denomination it may,-come, if it will, with the most solemn and sanctimonious pretensions, yet if the direction is, look to the Church, that is, to me, its officer, it is Popery and Antichrist. It is a vile fraud on the soul of man. "I am nothing, Christ is all," is the language of every real christian. We can conceive of nothing more affectingly grand than Christ himself approached by the meanest of sinners. Suppose the guilty man or woman, ignorant, wicked hitherto, suffering the due reward, it may be, of the worst, of unmentionable crimes, -death, perhaps, is drawing near,—his conscience is racked and crushed by the horrible past of his life,-and eternity-awful word! but oh, how indescribably more awful when we stand on the threshold of the reality eternity is close at hand. Yet amidst all this fear, terror, and degradation, the man has a Friend, an Almighty Friend, a pitying Friend. Jesus, the Son of God, says, "Look on me whom thou hast pierced;" "Son, be of good cheer, thy sins be forgiven thee." Believest thou this? Yes, the vilest sinner has immediate access to the presence of the glorified Son of God. He needs no man's introduction to his favour. Indeed, the priest with his pretended special powers, is regarded by Christ as one of a "generation of vipers, ," "the offspring of hell;" while to the penitent, though hitherto the vilest of sinners, the blessed Saviour says, "Son, be of good cheer, thy sins are forgiven thee." One text in the Bible is worth more to

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