'He said, Let the wide heavens be spread,

And heaven was stretched abroad;
Abra'am, I'll be thy God, he said,

And he was Abra'am's God.'

"It is much to be regretted, that, in so many of the American editions of Watts, the corruption 'very,' instead of 'every,' should have crept into the first line of the above quotation. The stanza, as Watts wrote it, is one of the finest in the English language; but when 'very' is suffered to usurp the place of 'every,' a sad eclipse is thrown over the whole stanza.

"Dr. Nelson's poetical powers, which were of a high order, and his exquisite and carefully-cultivated taste for compositions of that kind, prepared him to place a proper estimate on that wretched mania for mutilating standard hymns, which has been the vexation and scourge of the church for a number of the past years. He regarded the cutting to pieces, or, as he sometimes expressed it, the scalping and tomahawking' of a beautiful hymn, which the judgment and good taste of the church has sanctioned for, perhaps, a hundred years, as a grievous outrage, which the perpetrator has no right to expect the Christian public to endure. His views are, in substance, the following:

"1. It is flagrant injustice to the author whose name is used. Hymns are now circulated over the name of Watts,' that Watts never saw. 6 Not only entire lines, but whole stanzas, of miserable doggerel, that had no existence till long since Watts left the world, are now published over the name of that 'sweet singer of Israel;' and the public are told that the author is 'Watts.' This is falsehood and injustice. You would

not allow a worthy man to be slandered, merely because he had crossed the ocean, and is now in Europe. He is in existence still, and still has his rights. And will you allow that the worthy man who has crossed the 'narrow sea' that divides earth from heaven, has no claim to be treated with truth and justice? Is it not as wrong to misrepresent the dead as the absent? And because the name of Watts, attached to a hymn, will induce the public to buy the book containing that hymn, is that a reason why the great poet should be made to father wretched doggerel, scribbled by some mutilator, whose brain never was capable of producing even the abortion of a poetical idea? How indignantly did John Wesley protest against the conduct of those who attempted to introduce lean, povertystricken hymns into public notice, by attaching to them his name, and the name of his brother Charles! Shall the dead be slandered, and the church sanction · it ? Jesus Christ maintained that Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob are yet living, (Matt. xxii. 32,) and yet retain their relation to the God of the living. Shall Abraham be represented as saying what he never said? as teaching what he never taught? And why should this injurious violation of truth be allowed in the case of a modern saint, Watts, or Cowper, or Steele?

"2. The mutilation of standard hymns is a great annoyance to the church. Many of those who delight in the praises of God have committed to memory quite a number of the choice hymns which the church has been using for a long series of years. These have become very dear to them, not only because of their intrinsic value, but by reason of many interesting and precious associations in Christian history and experience.

But, lo! suddenly up starts an inflated, fidgety mutilator, and protests that the hymn which the church has sanctioned and enjoyed for a hundred years is 'wrong end up, wrong side out, and wrong foot foremost,' and that there is a clear call in providence for him to revise and improve it. So at it he goes; and, by the time he is done, lackaday! you may apply to it the description given by the Scotch poet of one of his heroes:

'Poor wretch! the mother that him bare,
If she had been in presence there,
In his wan cheek, and sunburnt hair,
She had not known her son.

The fact is notorious, that, since the irruption of the hordes of hymn-mutilators into the church, congregations have, to a mournful extent, given up the singing of God's praises in his sanctuary. How can it be otherwise, when reckless pretenders are suffered to tamper with and mar the songs of Zion, until they retain scarcely the ghost of resemblance to their former beauty and perfection?

"3. Dr. Nelson regarded the conduct of the mutilator as insufferably presumptuous. Who is this that, without the shadow of claim to poetical talent, rashly presumes to tear to tatters the sublime productions of exalted genius? Shall the friends and admirers of Watts, Cowper, and Henry Kirke White look on this wanton havoc, and be silent?

“4. He maintained, further, that it was a plain violation of the ninth commandment. He who writes a string of wretched doggerel himself, and then proclaims to the public that Watts wrote it, bears false witness against his neighbor.

"5. And, moreover, it is altogether a question whether the mutilator is not guilty in the eye of the sixth commandment. There is certainly 'hymn-slaughter' in the case; for the crippled hymn, or, as Nelson expressed it, the hymn that has been scalped and tomahawked,' invariably dies. Its lot is more melancholy than that of the poor man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho,' and was stripped of his raiment, and wounded, and left half dead;' for the wounded hymn dies out and out. It dies in the esteem and affection of the church. It is not sung in its mutilated form in the prayer meeting, or in the social circle. It is dead, and, if remembered at all, with interest, it is as you remember a murdered friend: the interest is in the memory of what it once was, and not in the mangled remains now before you.

state.

"Dr. Nelson would sometimes talk familiarly of scenes that he believed would take place in the next world. He believed, with Milton, that there may be more likeness between things in heaven and things on earth than is often imagined. He would sometimes entertain his friends with an account of Watts, Cowper, and Steele meeting the hymn mutilator in a future The scales that prevented him from seeing the beauty of their productions will then have fallen from his eyes, and he will be heartily ashamed of what he has done; and should he, when walking along the streets of the New Jerusalem, discover Dr. Watts coming towards him, how eagerly will he look round for a by-lane or alley, that he may speedily turn a corner, and escape from the eye of one on whose works he had perpetrated such outrageous mischief!"

ARMINIANISM vs. THE MILLENNIUM.

No impartial man can examine the subject carefully, without being fully convinced, that if the peculiar doctrines of Arminianism be true, there never will be a millennium; and, on the other hand, that if it be true that a millennial day is approaching, then the peculiar doctrines of Arminianism are unquestionably groundless; and when that bright day of Zion's glory arrives, all nations of the earth will look upon those peculiar sentiments for which our Arminian friends now contend so zealously, as nothing better than "wind and confusion.".

No Arminian can avoid seeing, that if he admits that God designs to convert the whole world at a “set time," (Ps. cii. 13,) he admits, broadly and fully, what Calvinists have always meant by the "purpose of God according to election;" for the most remarkable instance of God's electing love, is his determination to convert and save all nations in the millennial day.

No Arminian can avoid seeing, that if he admits that the Lord will "make bare his arm" in the latter day, and turn all families of the earth from Satan to God, then he admits the very doctrine of effectual calling, against which Arminians have so long and so violently contended.

No Arminian can avoid seeing, that if he admits