correspondence, "the gleams of light under this dark cloud, have appeared to me to be, the high standard set up for her government-the spirit of self-depreciation and self-renunciation she uniformly exhibited before it-her jealousy lest the honour of God, by an inconsistency in herself or others, should be tarnished-and the reverence and love with which she always spoke of the Saviour." This testimony, with many others of a similar description, connected with the details I have already given, more than intimate that she was a disciple of Jesus," though "secretly," and give us the blessed and all-consoling hope, that after a few years we shall meet her in glory, and be in company with our Saviour, world without end.

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CHRIST AND THE WOMAN OF
SAMARIA.

(With an Engraving.)

Now Jacob's well was there. Jesus therefore, being wearied with his journey, sat thus on the well and it was about the sixth hour. There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water: Jesus saith unto her, Give me to drink. (For his disciples were gone away unto the city to buy meat.) Then saith the woman of Samaria unto him, How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria ? for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans. Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith unto thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee liv

ing water. The woman saith unto him, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep: from whence then hast thou that living water? Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle? Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: but whosever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. The woman saith unto him, Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw. Jesus saith unto her, Go, call thy husband, and come hither. The woman answered and said, I have no husband. Jesus said unto her, Thou hast well said, I have no husband for thou hast had five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband: in that saidst thou truly. The woman saith unto him, Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet. Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father. Ye worship ye know not what we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. The woman saith unto him, I know that Messias cometh, which is called Christ: when he is come, he will tell us all things. Jesus saith unto her, I that speak unto thee am he.

G

THE GREAT ADVENTURERS.

WE are apt to attach a good deal of importance to the first discoverers of any country, the first leaders in any enterprize, the first adventurers in any new undertaking. There is a charm about the little words, "first and foremost," which we are all ready to acknowledge, even where it implies no merit at all, but appears to belong accidentally, or even of necessity, to certain persons or things. The name of Adam has come down to us associated with a degree of importance second only to that which led our ancestors, in the dark days of mythology and superstition, to raise him to the rank of a hero or demi-god, mainly because he was "the first man God made, and the father of us all." We look upon Abraham with reverence, as the first, or father, of the faithful; and even on Jabal and Jubal as men of some account, as the inventors of those peculiar arts with which their names stand associated in the bible. Every one acknowledges the claims of Newton to our gratitude and respect, as the first to unfold, satisfactorily, the magnificent laws of attraction and gravitation. The name of Bacon, the father of inductive philosophy, and the first practical demonstrator of physical truths, claims, and receives from all, the award of enlightened admiration; and those of Copernicus and Galileo demand our veneration, when we look at them as the first effectually to dispel the errors of earlier astronomy, to bring new worlds within our reach, and to open to our astonished gaze, the precision, order, harmony, and love, which reign throughout our own and other planetary systems. We look upon those early navigators who first ventured beyond

the pillars of Hercules, tempted the perils of the loud Atlantic, and circumnavigated Africa, with the same regard; and even entertain a lofty opinion of the old Phoenicians, who trusted the waters of our own channel in their adventurous traffic for tin with the rude and reckless aborigines of the British isles. It does not indeed seem a necessary ingredient in this admiration, that such discoveries or adventures should have served any useful purpose; it is enough that they stood first and foremost in their several departments, and that their leaders or authors possessed the claim alone of having broken up new ground, or introduced some new thing to the notice of succeeding generations. The first äeronaut, foolish and unprofitable as his exploits may have been, is looked upon, notwithstanding, with something akin to admiration, as an interesting, because a daring, adventurer into regions hitherto unexplored. Our warmest sympathies went with Columbus, when we read the touching narrative which tells us of the new world he was supposed to have discovered; and we were lost in contemplating the great and noble daring that led him, in the very face of mutiny, and distress, and peril, in its countless forms, to buffet with the waves and storms of the Atlantic, determined to give no slumber to his eye-lids till he had planted his foot within the western Indies! But, to us, what was all the wealth he was by this discovery to pour into the treasuries of an implacable and murderous race, who have even here reaped a rich reward for all their atrocities in this territory of crime? And yet Columbus was a great adventurer. And so were those old Northmen, who, centuries before his day, had voyaged to the self-same shores, leaving it for tedious and unremitting research alone, to find that they had

ever been across the mighty waters which separate the old and new worlds from each other. Yet if these were great-and great they were, unquestionably-of how much loftier praise shall those be thought worthy who had in days of remotest history, transplanted to the central regions of America, the arts of Hindostan, and reared amidst the woods and plains of Mexico, towns and temples, palaces and sepulchres, of elaborate and gorgeous workmanship, which, even in the present day, strike into the hearts of the beholder the deepest feelings of awe and veneration. These eastern colonists, Benaiahs and Sampsons, though in different spheres, were men of renown, on whom all ages must look with the same feeling of devotion; for though their enterprise cannot have advantaged us who, until the last few years, possessed no knowledge of it, we gladly yield them homage as the first and foremost to tempt the dangers of the trackless ocean, and to plant the arts of India upon untrodden shores.

But the little word "first," stands associated with adventurers of far more noble and majestic character and daring. As Christians, we may consistently look on those of whom we have already spoken, with admiration, with gratitude, with love, with zeal, or emulation, according to the varied character or circumstances with which they stand connected. The bible allows us to be "zealously affected in a good thing;" and energy, and enterprize, and faith, and hope, are good. We admire the man who first adventured into the regions of air; we reverence the individual who, first proceeding on that fine old scripture ruleprove all things"-submitted to the test of experiment the fallacies and crooked crotchets of his predecessors; we glory in the greatness of that

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