he says, Why did they not help him when he really required it, instead of finding fault now? But he need not have gone to war about it, and killed forty-two thousand men, and his own countrymen too!

MAMA.

A lamentable instance of what has often been remarked, viz. that conflicts between brethren exceed all others in mutual ferocity. This was, like too many, a contest about words, (for the Ephraimites had spoken disparagingly of the Gileadites as fugitives); and by a word was it cruelly visited, and upon fugitives also, when the Ephraimites had, in their turn, become such. What test did the vindictive Gileadites fall on to discover their flying brethren?

"Shibboleth"

MARY. To see if they could say properly. Why was that word chosen?

MAMA. Because (as signifying "floods of water") it would naturally be used by such as requested a passage across the rigidly guarded "swellings of Jordan.”

MARY. And why, I wonder, could the poor Ephraimites not say it like the others?

MAMA. No one, Mary, who has heard (like yourself) the various dialects prevailing in England, Scotland, and Ireland, nay, even in separate counties of each, need be astonished that tribes living on opposite sides of a river boundary should

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use a different pronunciation.

Have you forgotten how Peter was recognised for a "Galilean" by the High Priest's servant?

MARY. Oh! no-" his speech bewrayed him."

MAMA. Well! "the Galilee beyond Jordan," whose language he spoke, was separated from Jerusalem by precisely the same distance and natural boundaries, which severed a few centuries earlier the position and dialect of Gilead and Ephraim. So immutable and permanent are natural distinctions and dissimilarities among men !

How long did Jephthah survive this unwarrantable act of severity towards his brethren?

MARY. Not long, I suppose, for he only judged Israel six years; while most of the former judges reigned twenty or thirty. And those that came after, had short reigns too; but they had prodigious families—one thirty and another forty sons! I suppose they must all have been judges or great men, as well as their father.

MAMA. What leads you to infer this?

MARY. Because they "rode on forty asscolts," and I know now that this was a mark of honour reserved for kings and great people.

MAMA. Had many known, or chosen to know it-the profane scoffing, of which a similar inciIdent in the New Testament has been made the subject, would not have redounded (as all such

light jests do) to the shame of their ignorant and senseless authors. And while thus finding, even in the veriest trifles recorded in Holy Writ, as well as in the narratives of modern travellers, hourly confirmation of its more important features we may defy the whole host of cavillers and sceptics to quote from either one circumstance, calculated to throw the slightest portion of doubt or discredit on the word of "Him who cannot lie," or the dictates of" Him who cannot err."

MORNING THIRTEENTH.

LESSON-Judges, Chapters xiii. and xiv.

MAMA.

The life of the famous individual, of whose birth and early history we have this day been reading, calls, in a peculiar manner, for that distinction between the inspired and uninspired actions of God's chosen instruments, to which we alluded in the cases of Gideon and Jephthah; and for want of attention to which this whole book of Judges has been perverted to suit the purposes of scoffers and infidels. From the occasional weakness, nay, even criminality, of those, whom their selection to be the champions of Israel never professed to raise above the failings of humanityfools have not hesitated either to make "God the author of sin," by attributing directly to Him the imperfections of his fallible agents; or, if their impiety could not carry them thus far, to get out of the difficulty by denying the inspiration or authenticity of Scripture. There is no subject which it is more important to put on its only true or

Scriptural foundation; so as to shew to its simplest readers the futility and inconsistency of expecting, from the incomplete measure of divine revelation vouchsafed to the most favoured individuals under the Old Testament, an exemption from sins and passions, which the whole ample discoveries of the New, aided by the bright example of perfection afforded by the human character of our Lord, have never sufficed to produce. Those who only draw from the transgressions of Gideon, of Samson, or of David, matter for arraigning either the wisdom or truth of the Most High, would do well to try, by even that avowedly imperfect standard, their own far scantier measure of piety, of obedience, of faith, of devotion to, and confidence in God.

This being premised and kept in view, the Christian is at full liberty to deduce, from the failings recorded professedly for his instruction, the warnings which similar faults in persons less highly distinguished could never have so solemnly enforced.

At what period of deep distress and oppression among his countrymen was the birth of Samson promised ?

MARY. When they had been delivered, for "doing evil again in the sight of the Lord," forty years into the hands of the Philistines. Who were they?