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The business of the day having been opened by the Chairman, the Report was read, stating many facts of a satisfactory kind, both as to the past proceedings and the future prospects of the Society. communicated the gratifying information, that means had been afforded to liberate the Society from the whole pressure of its debt, and that there is every prospect of increased patronage and support in future. It gave a pleasing account of the Jews that had been baptized, of the Jewish children which had been admitted to the schools during the last year, together with the progress making in the publication of the Hebrew Testament, with many other interesting particulars, for which we refer to the Report itself.

Word to all the world; and we must remember, that the Jews were the first Missionaries, and it was more than probable they were intended to be the last, since their dispersion into every nation of the earth seemed peculiarly to fit them for that service when they should be converted to the faith of the Gospel. He could not, therefore, but look on this Society, as the crown of that Corinthian pillar which was now raising to support the temple of God.

The Rev. Dr. Collyer said he was happy to have an opportunity of expressing the affectionate regard which he had always felt, and still did feel towards this noble Institution. He had been much gratified by the excellent Report which had been read. Whatever prejudices had existed, satisfied there would at last be but one or might exist against this cause, he was opinion. He hailed the dawn of the day, when the oppressions of the Jewish nation would cease. We should all feel and pray for a people, who had, as it were, drank the very dregs of the cup of bitterness; and in whose place we ourselves were now standing. Their final restoration was as certainly disclosed in God's word as ever their degradation had been, and it should come to pass. He said he had never stood in that place, without considering himself as surrounded by his brethren; and that he did not feel less so now, though, in consequence of the late change, he saw himself encircled by ministers and members of the Established Church. When the good of the object required it, he had with readiness resigned his office of Secretary; but his heart would never cease to breathe a

fervent prayer for the success of the cause itself.

The Hon. and very Rev. the Dean of Wells moved the thanks of the meeting to his Royal Highness the Duke of Kent, for his continued patronage and support. He said he felt happy in the thought that we had a patron so distinguished for his zeal in promoting every benevolent cause. -As to the objections which had been urged against the object of this institution, there was not one which would stand the test of examination. It was said by some, This is not the time! But in what time, he would ask, are we forbidden to attempt to bring men to the knowledge of the true God and of Jesus Christ whom he bath sent. Let an impartial man look at the signs of the present day, and he would be inclined to think it was the time. All

the wisest writers opon the subject have Considered the conversion of the Jews as ultimately connected with the propagation of the Gospel throughout the World. Others have said, The heart of the Jews is so hard, it is in vain to attempt it. There was not one, however, who knew his own heart that would urge this. What was the conduct of St. Paul? He knew that the Jews had crucified Jesus Christ, and yet he could say his heart's desire and prayer was that Israel might be saved. This should be the feeling of all Christians; but as Members of the Church of England, we were especially bound to cherish it, since we had a prayer in our devotional services for the conversion of all unbelievers, among whom the Jews were placed first.

Mr. Wilberforce said, he rejoiced to see the zeal displayed in behalf of this Institution. It would be strange indeed if we could allow the objection of the hard-heartedness of the Jew to check our attempts. Was there any heart that Almighty Power could not molify? Besides, let us ask our selves, have they only been hard-hearted. No, surely: Christians had to reproach

themselves with their want of tenderness towards the Jews. They had not shewn

towards them that decisive mark of true Christianity, brotherly love. We might fairly anticipate a blessing on our present labours. The very desire to do good was an omen of success. Besides, we served a gracious Master who would say it was well that it was even in our hearts to perform this work of mercy. We witnessed a growing sense of the importance of the cause, and much had been already done. Was it not a great thing to give to the Jews the Gospel of Christ in pure Hebrew? Was it not a disgrace to the Christian Church that nearly 2000 years should have elapsed without this having been accomplished. The events connected with the change in the institution, though apparent. ly not pleasing, yet might afford matter of joy The testimony of Dr. Collyer had given him high satisfaction. It was de. lightful to behold the true principle of union displayed in the moment of separation. It was the peculiar honour of this country that it had so many excellent institutions for promoting religious know. ledge among the nations; and it was the peculiar glory of this institution, that it was as it were the key-stone of the arch which he trusted was erecting to the glory ́of God.

himself highly pleased with what he had heard. He was abundantly gratified when he considered the spirit in which the late change had been effected. He hoped that it would have a tendency to improve all of them in that Christian love which was the crown of Christianity. The circumstances of the Society had made the change indispensable. When that was known, he trust. ed all would be satisfied.

The Rev. Mr Cowan, of Bristol, rejoiced in the happy consequences which were likely to result from the late change that had been effected in the constitution of the Society.

The Rev. Mr. Dealtry said this was the first annual meeting of the Institution which he had attended. He had always wished well to the cause; but had conscientious scruples respecting the constitution of the Society until the late change had taken place.

The Hon, and Rev. G. Noel said he the Jews was drawing to a close; and we trusted that the last and worst captivity of might soon ask them, without offence, to take their harps from the willows, where they had so long been suspended, and sing us one of the songs of Zion.

Lewis Way, Esq. congratulated the So. ciety on their possession of so excellent a President as Sir Thomas Baring With such a pilot at the helm, we might hope for a prosperous voyage. He moved a vote of thanks for the appropriate sermons which had been preached. It was impos. sible to have a more convincing view of the subject presented to them than these sermons afforded. He proceeded to state the reasons why he believed the conversion of the Jews would precede that of the Gentile World. And he observed that it was very pleasing, in the absence of direct episcopal sanction, to think that the Society had so strong a testimony to the importance and propriety of its institution from an eminent Prelate now no more, Bishop Horsley.

His translation of the Psalms had been just published: the whole of which bears a striking testimony to the cause of the Institution.

The Rev. Daniel Wilson also declared himself much impressed with the importance of the cause, and expressed his willingness to support it, under a conviction that the Society would proceed in its course with zeal and unostentatious energy. The spectacle of the Jewish children then present was a sufficient proof of the good that had been done and was doing.

Mr. Frey said, he would tell all objec. tors, that 142 Jewish children had received or were receiving Christian instruction in the schools of the Society. Besides this, 51 adult Jews had been admitted into the Church of Christ by the rite of Baptism; and if asked, Were they true converts? he could refer to that sign which God himself gave of the conversion of St. Paul Be. hold, he prayeth." There were some of these Jews preparing themselves for the ministry.

The Rev. Mr. Grimshaw said, he hailed the appearance of the children and the adults whom the Society had already been the means of influencing; and he trusted they would be followed by a long train.

The Hon. Mr. Vernon, and the Rev. Messrs. Beachcroft, Woodd, and Hawtrey also addressed the Meeting.

Thanks were then voted to the Chairman, for his able conduct in regulating the business of the day.

PRAYER-BOOK AND HOMILY SOCIETY.

On Thursday last, the 4th of May, the Third Annual General Meeting of this So. ciety was held (after a very appropriate Sermon, preached at Christ Church, Newgate-street, by the Rev. John Sargent, M. A. Rector of Graffham,) at the Albion Tavern, in Aldersgate-street. The Right Hon. Lord Gambier, one of the Vice-Presi dents of the Society, took the Chair, sup. ported by the Right Hon. Lord Calthorpe, William Wilberforce, Esq. M. P. Thomas Babington, Esq. M. P., and a numerous body of Clergy and Gentry. The Report of the Committee stated, that 9,331 Prayerbooks, 975 Psalters, and 55,500 copies of the Homilies of the Church of England, printed as tracts, had been issued from the Society's Depository, which has lately been removed to No. 134, Salisbury-square, dur ing the last year. The statement of this Society's efforts to supply the inhabitants of New South Wales, and the prisoners on board the hulks, and in Newgate, with the excellent Formularies of our National

Church, very highly gratified the Meeting. fulness of such a Society should be mateIt is much to be regretted, that the use rially impeded by the want of funds. Its sole object is to distribute the Formularies of the Church of England.

CONTINENTAL INTELLIGENCE.

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ANOTHER month has passed, without any hostile blow having actually been struck between the Allies and France, and without any formal declaration of war. The dreadful note of military preparation has, nevertheless, continued to sound on all sides. The allies are mustering their armies along the French frontier, from Ostend to St. Sebastian's. The Duke of Wellington commands the right wing of this immense force, consisting of English, Hanoverians, and Dutch, and extending from the sea to the Meuse Marshal Blucher commands along the line which extends from the Meuse to the Moselle: the Russians, under Barclay de Tolly; and the Austrians, under Prince Swartzenburgh, are to occupy the space from the Moselle to the Swiss frontier. The contingents of Bavaria, Wurtemberg, Baden, Hesse, and Denmark, will unite themselves to such parts of this combined mass, amounting in all to more than a million of men, as may most require their support. Besides this, the Swiss Cantons have declared their adherence to the cause of Europe, and their troops will doubtless form a part of the general army. Christ. Observ. No. 161.

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forces of the king of Sardinia, united with an Austro-Italian army, will operate a diversion on the side of Piedmont; and should the Neapolitan war end, as there is now a prospect of its speedily ending, with the expulsion of Murat and the consequent liberation of the large Austrian force employed against him, a serious impression may be made on France from that weakest part of its frontier. It is further said, that a considerable Spanish army has been organized and placed under the command of Castanos, in order to penetrate through Roussillon while Marshal Beresford, with a Portuguese force, will again advance in the direction of Bayonne. And with respect to those parts of France which are washed by the ocean, the British Navy will probably be employed in subjecting them to a rigorous. blockade.

The delay which has occurred in the declaration of hostilities has doubtless arisen from the desire of the allies to complete, if possible, this mighty investment before offensive measures are commenced. They have probably also been influenced by a hope that the power of Bonaparte might be weakened, rather than increased, 2. Y

by the delay; and this hope appears to have been justified by the event. The French have at least had time to reflect on the prudence of putting to hazard all that is dear to them, for the sake of the Napoleon Dynasty. In consequence of this, the acclamations of joy with which Bonaparte was received by the great mass of the population, as well as by the soldiery, of France, appear in many cases, and especially among persons of property, to have given way to alarm, and dissatisfaction. Whatever preference may have existed for the more peaceful and legitimate sway of the Bourbons, has also had time to develop itself; and, encouraged by the prompt advance and imposing attitude of the allies, considerable risings in their favour are said to have taken place in several parts of France, and particularly in its western and northern provinces, where it has proved less difficult to supply the necessary arms and ammunition from England.

of Bonaparte,) respecting the security of the property they had purchased at the na'tional sales. They were disgusted with the revival of the mummeries of Popery, and fearful lest the priesthood should regain its ancient ascendency and its ancient revenues. They were galled by the recol lection of their national losses, and particu. larly the loss of Belgium; and they were impatient of what they conceived to be the influence of England in the councils of the king. They had a certain undefined ex pectation, that the return of Bonaparte would obviate all these evils, and they did not calculate its remoter consequences, They felt a kind of exultation in undoing all that the allies had done; the disgrace of the capture of Paris seemed already effaced by the expulsion of the Bourbons and they stretched their limits in imagina. tion once more to the banks of the Rhine and the Po. But in the minds of those who have any stake, however small, in the coun try, these feelings have been borne down by the actual circumstances of danger in which they are placed. They cannot con. ceal from themselves the probability that France will be overrun by strangers, that their fields will be laid waste, their cities pillaged, and Paris itself, the pride of Frenchmen, levelled with the dust. The ́álarm, especially in the capital, and in the provinces to the east and north of it, is very great. Money, even for the ordinary transactions of life, can with difficulty be obtain. ed: it is sought, in order to be concealed. The value of landed property bas suddenly fallen to less than a half of what it was a few months ago—and shipping cannot be sold at any price. These effects they probably had not thought of, until they were compelled to experience them; and the reaction produced by them appears to be considerable. And when to these grounds of dissatisfaction and alarm, are added the fresh burdens of a pecuniary kind, which they must sustain; the immense drains which must be made on the population, with a view to military service; and all the accumulated evils of such a conflict as that of which their country is about to become the theatre, we shall have no difficulty in accounting for a considerable change in the public sentiment. In short, the French love themselves and their own interests better than they love Bonaparte. They know full well, that it is against him personally that the hostility of the allies is directed, and that they have only to separate their cause from his, in order to secure their im munity from the threatened and impending dangers. It is scarcely possible, that in the present circumstances of France, these con siderations should not operate powerfully in generating a lukewarmness in the cause of Bonaparte, even among those attached

To meet the formidable dangers which surround him, Bonaparte appears disposed to combine with the stupendous military means which are at his command, all the enginery of the reign of terror. The old jacobinical spirit is called forth and encouraged, in the expectation, doubtless, that with the full control of the army, he can make it subservient to his own purposes. Decrees of the utmost severity are issued against the adherents of the Bourbons, even against all who shall wear the white cockade or hoist the white flag, or displace the tricoloured flag; and commissioners are sent forth, as in the time of the National Convention, with very large discretionary powers, into the provinces, in utter contempt of his new constitutional act, in order to effect such changes in their administration as circumstances may require, and to adopt measures of coercion against persons unfriendly to the existing Government, The very steps, however, which Bonaparte has taken with a view to his own security, and particularly that of inviting deliberative confederations of the lowest of the Parisian populace, the inhabitants and labourers of the Fauxbourg St. Antoine and St. Marceau, seem to have struck terror into the breasts of those who recollect the scenes which France witnessed in the early years of the Revolution. And fettered as is the press in that country, several of the news-papers have not failed to sound the alarm on this occasion.

As far as we have the means of judging of the state of the public mind in France, we should conceive, that it has recently undergone a very material change. The great body of the French people, we be lieve, were desirous of the return of Bonaparte: they were alarmed with apprehensions (purposely excited by the partisans

to him, especially in the provinces which are likely first to become the seat of war. If the ultimate success of the allies appear to them probable, then they must feel, that in proportion to the pertinacity of their resistance, is likely to be the extent of their suffering. There is at the same time nothing of the enthusiastic feeling of the revolutionary period, to inspirit their ef forts and to counteract these seasonable alarms and sober calculations. They must be sensible, that they are fighting not for personal freedom, or national independence; not for their own interest, or those of their children, but for the firm establishment of a military despotism in their own country, for the perpetuation of war with the rest of Europe, and for the personal aggrandizement of Bonaparte.

That these considerations will be sufficiently operative to induce the French Nation generally to separate their fortunes from those of Bonaparte, and thus to avert the impending conflict, we do not believe. The army in fact governs France; and the army burns for an opportunity of avenging past disgrace, as well as of acquiring fresh glory and fresh pillage, and will doubtless drag the nation along with it. War, there. fore, seems inevitable. Indeed, we may regard ourselves as already at war; and if no blow has yet been struck, it is only because neither party is fully prepared to strike. Reasoning according to human probabilities, the success of the allies seem scarcely to be doubted. At the same time the uncertainties of war are proverbial; and so many striking instances of providential interference have recently occurred, baffling all the calculations of the wise, and bringing to nought the wisdom of the prudent, that when we consider the prospect before us, we are far from being confident in our expectations of a speedy termination of the conflict. We are now fully convinced, that the allies have abundant and just cause of war against Bonaparte; and that a short and feverish truce ending in a war, attended with incalculably greater disadvantages, was all that could fairly be hoped for from listening to the pacific overtures of Bonaparte. We are also clearly bound by our engagements to our allies, as well as by a view to our own safe ty, to prevent the re-establishment of Bonaparte on the throne of France. Still, however just may be our ground of war; however expedient and even necessary it may be, in the present instance, to prefer its hazards to those of peace; we cannot disconnect from our calculations of probable success, the consideration that we appear, among other objects indeed of the highest interest to the world at large, to be fighting for the restoration of the papal

power, and the maintenance of papal dark. ness-for the revival of the order of Jesuits for the establishment of the Inquisition for the renewal of the French Slave Trade. Is it necessary, we again ask, that we should go forward to the fight, loaded with these impediments to success? Can nothing be done by Great Britain to deliver at least herself from the guilt of upholding institu tions which we can have no doubt are of fensive to the Almighty, and which will probably ere long be swept away, involving those who support them in the ruin? Surely we may, as respects France, secure some prospective stipulations in favour of Africa, and in favour also of the Protestant Churches, in case the Bourbons should be restored. In short, let our Government do all that can be done to provide for the grand interests of humanity, morality, and religion, at this awful crisis; and they will have this farther security for success, that they will unite in their favour the wishes, the hopes, and the fervent unwearied prayers of all good men throughout the world. It cannot be supposed, for example, that those who have felt deeply for the miseries of Africa, and have laboured strenuously for her rescue, if they should believe that the restoration of Louis would be the means of restoring the slave trade, should as anxiously desire that event as they would if all their apprehensions on this head were obviated by an express stipulation.

By way of increasing his means of defence, Bonaparte has made a selection from the national guard, to serve for garrisons to the fortified towns. He has also formed the crews of the ships of war into corps of cannoniers, and landed their guns for bat tering trains. The offers of voluntary service of horses, or of money, made to the king during the month of March he has ordered to be carried into effect without delay; the men and horses to be marched to the dépôts, the money to be paid into the treasury.

Bonaparte has published a Decree, in- ' tended, doubtless, in common with his De cree abolishing the Slave Trade, to have its effect on public opinion in this country, for establishing schools throughout France, on the system of Bell and Lancaster. We shall rejoice in the effect, in whatever mo. tive the Decree may have originated.

As for the vaunted liberty which is given to the press in France, it consists, as far as we can perceive, only in this, that nine censors have been substituted for thirty; and that the mixture of Jacobin Councils in the Cabinet of Bonaparte, encouraged, for a few days, some political discussions; which, however, have evidently been re