give repentance, as well as remission of sin; hear His gracious invitation, "Come unto me;" receive His gracious promise, "If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him." "Ask, and ye shall receive."

Varieties.

E. F.

Go to Italy-decay, degradation,
Commerce droops, agriculture
There is a heaviness in the air;

EFFECTS OF THE BIBLE UPON NATIONS.-Tell me where the Bible is, and where it is not, and I will write a moral geography of the world. I will shew what, in all particulars, is the physical condition of that people. One glance of your eye will inform you where the Bible is, and where it is not. suffering, meet you on every side. sickens, the useful arts languish. you feel cramped by some invisible power; the people dare not speak aloud; they walk slowly; an armed soldiery is round their dwellings; the armed police take from the stranger his Bible, before he enters the territory. Ask for the Bible in the book-stores; it is not there, or in a form so large and expensive as to be beyond the reach of the common people. The preacher takes no text from the Bible. Enter the Vatican and enquire for a Bible, and you will be pointed to some case where it reposes among prohibited works, side by side with the works of Diderot, Rousseau, and Voltaire. But pass over the Alps into Switzerland, and down the Rhine into Holland, and over the Channel to England and Scotland, and what an amazing contrast meets the eye! Men look with an air of independence; there are industry, neatness, instruction for children. Why this difference? There is no brighter sky-there are no fairer scenes of nature-but they have the Bible; and happy are the people who are in such a case, for it is righteousness that exalteth a nation.-W. Adams, D.D. THE NEW BIRTH.-I am sensible that regeneration, or the new birth, is a subject at present very unfashionable, or, at least, a style of language which hath gone very much into disrectitude. It is, however, a subject of unspeakable moment, or, rather, it is the one subject in which all others meet as in a centre-the grand enquiry, in comparison of which everything else, how excellent soever, is but specious trifling. What doth it signify though you have food to eat in plenty, and variety of raiment to put on, if you are not born again? if, after a few mornings and evenings spent in unthinking mirth, sensuality, and riot, you die in your sins, and lie down in sorrow? What doth it signify though you are well accomplished, in every other respect, to act your part in life, if you meet at last with this repulse from the Supreme Judge, "Depart from me, I know you not, ye workers of iniquity." Dr. Witherspoon.

Jamie H

A Page for the Young.

LITTLE JAMIE.

was a little boy, blessed with a pious mother, who strove to impress his mind with serious subjects, and to instil into it divine truth. But Jamie was a careless, thoughtless boy, fonder of playing with wicked companions than of sitting beside his good mother and listening to her counsels. "Evil communications corrupt good manners," and so it was with Jamie. He began to be disobedient, and, step by step, was drawn away by his sinful companions into all kind of vice and wickedness. Nor did he grow wiser as he grew older. When young people neglect and disregard their parents, their course, in after years, is generally only from bad to worse. Frequently Jamie was brought before the magistrates with scars of violence on his face, received from the worst of characters. Seldom had he two nights' sleep in a week,-all was spent in dissipation. What a hard master he served,-scars and want of sleep for all his gains! Sometimes Jamie did not arrive at home before six in the morning. Could Jamie be happy think you? No, no! "The way of transgressors is hard," says the bible, and Jamie felt this to be true, if he would only have confessed it. But soon it would not hide. Every passer by read it in his pale face, and thin form. Disease of many different kinds attacked him, the fruit of his sinful courses, and human skill was all in vain. If Jamie had died just then, where would his soul have gone? Gone to be for ever with the bad spirits he had chosen for his masters and companions; far away from God, from Christ, from his pious, weeping mother, who, in spite of all his unkindness, loved and prayed for him still.

One day a good missionary was walking down street, and chanced to be side by side with an individual who seemed to be very ill indeed. He said to the stranger, "You appear to be unwell, Sir.” "I am not very well," replied the latter. "I trust you think of your immortal soul ?" the missionary added. “I am not of the same way of thinking as you are," was the reply. "I hope," rejoined the missionary, "you love God for his great love in sending his only begotten Son into the world to die for sinners ?" "I do not believe he was the Son of God," the stranger said. The missionary walked with him some distance, endeavouring to prove this great truth, and not altogether without effect; for on parting he was invited to call and see the stranger at his dwelling. You all can guess, I dare say, who the sickly stranger was. And you may fancy the delight of the sorrowing mother, when she saw her son once more open the long neglected bible. Till then he would not allow her to speak to him on religious subjects; but now he invited such conversation. The visits of the missionary were blessed. Jamie passed through many mental conflicts, but the scales of ignorance fell from his eyes. It was very interesting to see such a blessed change. No swearing now; no violent temper shewn. He became quite resigned to the will of God regarding the termination of his disease; which probably, ere this, has ended in death.

Jamie H was a brand snatched from the burning; but how many are there who, having once left in youth the right course, never return to it, but go down to the grave unpardoned and unsaved! Beware then, young readers, and "when sinners entice thee consent thou not."

SERIOUS AFFAIRS TO-MORROW.

Archias, the Theban ruler, was regaling himself with a party of his friends, when a courier arrived from Athens and presented him with dispatches, accompanying the presentation with these words:-"My Lord, the person who writes you these letters, conjures you to read them immediately, being on serious affairs." Archias replied laughingly, "Serious affairs to-morrow." And, indeed, affairs were serious on the morrow of that night throughout Thebes. But Archias did not live to witness it. He, together with his guests, was assassinated before his night-revel was over.

This incident happily illustrates the disposition to procrastinate serious things, prevalent in the world. God sends a courier from heaven to earth with most important dispatches. The Bearer puts them into the hands of men, saying, "Search the Scriptures," for they treat on serious affairs. But, intoxicated with the gratification of the ruling passions of their race, men lay them by, saying, if not laughingly, coldly, "Serious things to-morrow." Sinai and Calvary, heaven and hell, are serious things indeed. But the men of pleasure and pride, avarice and ambition, brush their consideration away with all the indifference of drunken Archias, and answer all their fears with, "Serious things to-morrow." To-day, "buy, sell, and get gain." To-day, "eat, drink, and be merry." To-day, "pull down barns and build greater," and compliment the soul with, "Thou hast much goods laid up for many years." To-day, "clothe in purple and fine linen." To-day, "on with the dance." "Serious things to-morrow!"

So said the heathen ruler, and suffered the award of his procrastination in assassination that very night. So said the man in the parable, whom God had blessed with "much goods," and that very night his soul was required of him. So have thousands said, and to-morrow has found them in the world of serious things-the world of eternities of good and evil, joy and grief. Is my reader saying,-"Serious affairs to-morrow"? Then to-morrow thou mayst be reading lessons of seriousness from the page of thy soul's eternal woe!

THE APPEAL;

A Magazine for the People.

“Hear counsel, and receive instruction, that thou mayst be wise in thy latter end."

A PAGE FOR THE YOUNG.“ LITTLE CHILDREN, LOVE ONE ANOTHER.

Cover, p. 3.

A RUINED MAN. --- Cover, p. 4.

PRICE ONE HALFPENNY.

LEEDS:

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May be had by order of any Bookseller.

WHERE DO YOU SPEND YOUR EVENINGS?

BY AN AMERICAN MINISTER.

This is a question that might well be sounded in the ears of every young man, during every week in the year. I address it particularly to them. Where you spend your days I need not enquire. Some of you pass them in one mode of honourable labour, and some in another-one in the counting-room, another in the office, another behind the plough, another on the bench, or another over the anvil. But where do you spend your evenings? This is a vital question, as it relates to a young man's whole future destiny.

If you spend them in certain places that I could mention, you are not made much better by it, and must have a care lest, by so doing, you are preparing to spend your long eternity in remorse and despair. If you spend your evenings in a drinking saloon, whether above ground or below ground, whether it be crimsoned, gilded, and chandeliered, or only a subterranean den, I will tell you what you will gain by that. You will gain a loss in several ways. You will be the poorer by several shillings every week; for this business of "treating" your fellow-loungers whom you meet there, is not exactly the best thing for a man's purse. You will gain a good many head-aches, and some heart-aches too. You will gain a prodigious amount of self-contempt, and perhaps the contempt of some others likewise. You will gain some habits which it is not very easy to get rid of, and pick up some acquaintances who would rather get their grog rations out of your pockets than out of their own, which were emptied long ago. You will gain, if you are not careful, the tremendously fearful habits of the drunkard; and, at the end of a wretched life of vice, pauperism, and self-loathing, you may gain that most appalling of all resting-places-the drunkard's grave. If you do not wish your evenings in this life to be the prelude to an eternal night of horror in the world to come, then avoid the place where men dole out poison by the glass, and chuckle over the self-immolation of their unhappy victims !

This warning will apply also to many other kindred places of resort; to the gaming saloon, the ball-room, the theatre, and the house of shame. You may not be able to spend every evening at home, and some of you have no homes. You may often find it profitable to spend your evenings in the house of prayer. You may often leave your own doors, and with a clear conscience too, to visit the public meeting, or the lectureroom, where popular addresses are delivered. One night, the debating-club may invite you; on another evening, the music-class may afford you at once a healthful recreation, and a new source of perennial delights. But even these should not occupy all your evenings.

If you have a quiet, well-ordered home, or anything that deserves the name of home, then there is the place for the majority of your leisure hours. It is not good to be in public, or "in society” (as the phrase is), too much. A good home is the place for a noble soul to expand in-to cultivate domestic feelings, to enlarge the kindly sympathies, to avoid temptations, and to prepare for the duties and the perils of after life. If you have a home, stick to it. Do not give it up for the club of smokers and swearers, for the drinking circle or the card-table, for every trifling entertainment got up by traveling mountebanks. Never hear the clock strike twelve away from that home. Many a youth is decoyed away to destruction, while his parents or employers are asleep. Many a guilty conscience is borne every midnight through the silent streets from some place of unhallowed mirth, or wickedness, to a prayerless bed. He who is often out of his bed at midnight, is usually busy in driving some bargains with the devil for his immortal soul. The heavy footfall that we hear beneath our windows on the pavements, is ofttimes the tread of a ruined youth, hurrying onward to destruction.

Dear young Reader, your evenings are your most valuable possessions. Upon the way in which you spend them depends very much your character in two worlds. Oh, employ them so as to contribute to your preparedness for the life which is before you in this world, and to your fitness, especially, for that state to which you are so fast hastening.