the help of the Lord against the mighty? Have we seriously pondered the work God has given us to do? Have we reflected on its importance, its obligations, its results? In what is now transpiring, there is a voice that speaks in tones loud and solemn to every one of us. Shall we heed that voice? Shall we leave disputing, and quarrelling, and indifference, and worldliness, and sin behind, and work for the Lord, or shall we not? God asks us what we will do. It is no presumption to say this. What shall be our answer? Shall we be like the inhabitants of Meroz? or like the apostle who was in "labours more abundant;" and, to take a brighter example still, like Him who came to do his Father's will by seeking and saving the lost? Shall we, as the Zion of God, wake up and put on strength, and live and labour for the salvation of our families, our friends, our neighbours, our country, and the world?

Brethren in the Lord-ministers, leaders, members, Sabbath-school teachers, tract distributors, and all, "suffer," from one of the unworthiest among you, "the word of exhortation." Shall we have the 66 great revival" in England? We have heard of it as it has careered its glorious course and spread its blessings over a considerable portion of the great continent of America, over the north of Ireland, and some parts of Scotland and Wales. Shall we have it in our own favoured land, and in our own beloved community? and that not merely in a place or two, here and there, but everywhere? Can we get it? Blessed be God, this is not problematical. The promise of the Holy Spirit's outpouring for soul-saving purposes is sure and steadfast. The arm of the Lord is not shortened, and his ear is not heavy. It has been given. It is being given now. We have already amongst us the earnest, the beginning, the drops, and we shall, unless we hinder it by our slothfulness and wickedness, have the bursting cloud and teeming shower. Are we concerned

anxious about it? Are we living holily, praying earnestly, believing steadfastly, and "working for the Lord?" If so, we shall have the revival. The windows of heaven shall be opened, and showers of blessing shall descend. Multitudes of souls shall be converted-Satan and his host shall rage-hell utter a deep lament-heaven resound with exultant songs-saints and angels joy and rejoice-the earth send forth jubilant strains-the Lord Jesus triumph, and God's great name be abundantly glorified. Let "working for the Lord" but be our great characteristic, our uniform habit, and, with other things right, a blessed pentecostal baptism shall be realized in all our borders, religion spread with unprecedented rapidity, the world soon be converted, and the "well-done" be ours in the all-decisive day.

Newcastle-on-Tyne.

L. SAXTON.

ILLUSTRATIONS OF SCRIP

TURE.

Founded chiefly on Reminiscences of Central India.

SERPENTS.

"Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path, that biteth the horse's heels, so that his rider shall fall backward."-Genesis xlix. 17.

AMONG the most favourite haunts of serpents in the East, may be reckoned hedges, especially such as are dense and thorny. Thence they descend upon the adjacent roads, either in pursuit of prey, or with the intention of crossing from hedge to hedge. The only period of the year at which there is danger from them, is during the warm, moist evenings of the monsoon. Even then, of course, a lantern will prevent one from stepping on them; but this simple preservative, like the Davylamp in mines, is sure to be forgotten when most required. Such being the places they frequent, it was not without reason that the serpent to which Dan was compared was represented as being "by the way," "in the path." While there pursuing its sinuous track, an incautious

or

rider passed. Quick as thought it has fixed its fangs in one of the heels of his steed; the venom is in a moment through its entire frame; and the horseman falls backwards to the ground. Some poisons are slow of absorption; for instance, that of a rabid dog does not pass upwards into the system till the fourth day after the bite, and remedies adopted during that time are almost uniformly effective. It is the very reverse with the poison of one of the more venomous snakes. A medical gentleman once told me he had been present when a gardener in India was bitten by a cobra. There was a sudden scream, and the next moment the man had fallen on the ground. His pulse already beat too rapidly for its vibrations to be counted; then the over-excitement was succeeded by a corresponding depression, which gradually increased till it took the form of death. How forcibly does all this recall a wellknown incident in the history of the Danites! The people of that tribe, cramped for room in their original inheritance, despatched men to search for a new settlement. There is at all times not a little of the serpentine element in the character of a spy, and there was unusually much on the present occasion, if we may judge from what the men, selected for the office, subsequently stooped to do in the affair of Micah and his images. Yet their tortuous policy in the latter case met the approval of the entire Danite army. As we behold those men of deceit, without declaration of war, stealthily approaching the territory of the tribe they purpose attacking, we seem to see some slimy snake pursuing its noiseless course along the highway, to the peril of the unwary traveller. A little circumspection might even then have saved the men of Laish; but, like one who has forgotten his lantern, they had neglected all precautions; or, as the spies themselves worded it, the people "dwelt carelessly, after the manner of the Zidonians, quiet and secure ;" and in consequence, like the heedless steed that sets foot where the serpent

lies, and is suddenly roused to the corsciousness that its life is in jeopardy, the inhabitants of the defenceless town awoke up to encounter men with hands accustomed to the use of weapons, and hearts pitiless as what the Scriptures term "the cruel venom of asps," who "smote them with the edge of the sword, and burnt the city with fire."

"As if a man.... went into the house, and leaned his hand on the wall, and a serpent bit him."-Amos v. 19.

The instances are not unfrequent in which serpents have their holes in Eastern houses. In these cases the peril to the inmates is necessarily great. A native Christian and his wife left Nagpore to take service with a gentleman of decidedly Christian character, and, in consequence, attentive to the welfare of those providentially placed under his charge. Shortly afterwards,

news came back of the sudden death

of the woman. She had gone into her house one day and leaned against the wall, when she felt herself bitten by what must have been a serpent. Though her master, who was a medical man, did all he could to avert the fatal result, his exertions were in vain. It was literally the catastrophe to which the passage in Amos makes allusion.

FROGS.

"And the river shall bring forth frogs abundantly, which shall go up and come into thine house, and into thy bed-chamber, and upon thy bed."-Exodus viii. 3.

If one's experience be limited to European frogs, he will be apt to fall into the error of supposing that, however numerous they might be in a locality, they would eschew such places as bedrooms and beds, even though he may be aware that these last are in all cases in the East, low, and most frequently, indeed, on the actual floor. In India, however, frogs constantly attempt to take up their abode in the bath-rooms of European bungalows, whence they make their way into bedrooms, and occasionally, when you retire to your chamber for the night, you are electrified by the sight of a frog perched at ease on the back of a chair.

SPARROWS AND SWALLOWS.

"I watch, and am as a sparrow alone upon the house-top."-Ps. cii. 7.

Yea, the sparrow hath found an house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, even thine altars, O Lord of hosts, my King, and my God." -Ps. Ixxxiv. 3.

Our translators, who had to perform their difficult task before natural history was a science, or the great era of modern travel had begun, had no resource but to introduce into their version of the Bible the names of the animals with which they were themselves familiar, leaving it to be afterwards ascertained whether or not these occurred in the East. Hence some of their renderings will not now stand inquiry. In these circumstances it affords one positive pleasure to find the two familiar birds named above correctly indicated.

Sparrows, almost undistinguishable in colour from the wellknown one of the British Isles, extend over a great part of the world. A European arriving in India, and missing from the flora the daisy, with most of his other early favourites, is gratified to observe that sparrows are not wanting from the fauna. He is quite as much pleased as surprised to find them on such an easy footing with the British residents, as to come into the dining-room at meal-times and pick up the crumbs from the floor. It is singular, too, what a tendency they show there, as elsewhere, to nestle in places of worship. In the mission chapel at Kamptee they used to build their nests just above the cloth ceiling, and keep up such an incessant chirping as they went in and out of the door, that a remonstrance was at length made on the subject by a member of the congregation, who felt himself unable to follow the discourse owing to the interruption they caused. The ordinary swallows and swifts of Britain being migratory, are found at some seasons in lands very remote from our own, associated often with species which never venture as far north as this country, even in the summer months. At Nagpore a kind of swallow might

be seen hawking almost silently in small parties over tranquil water; whilst a species of noisy swift thrust the fact of its existence on even the most careless observers. These latter birds seemed no admirers of the style of architecture prevalent in Hindoo temples, while the eaves of the thatched roof of the mission chapel at Seetabuldee were at once appropriated as a suitable spot for their nests. Around that building they might be seen, day after day, on tireless pinion, chasing the dragon flies, which, however, generally eluded them by incessant twists and turnings, during which their great gauzy wings glistened prettily as they struck the sunlight at every imaginable angle. Sparrows built their nests under the eaves of the same chapel, and of course nothing was more common than to see one on the house-top alone." Trifling as observations like these might in themselves be, they constantly awoke emotion in the Christian soul, hallowed as they were by the illustration they afforded of more than one passage characterized by all the simple yet unapproachable pathos of sacred song.

66

PEACOCKS, ELEPHANTS, AND APES, OR RATHER MONKEYS.

"For the king had at sea a navy of Tarshish with the navy of Hiram: once in three years came the navy of Tarshish, bringing gold, and silver, ivory, and apes, and peacocks."-1 Kings x. 22; 2 Chron. ix. 21.

If, a century ago, when deadness overspread the Church, and unbelief in many places unblushingly raised its head, some adversary had declared this voyage of Solomon's and Hiram's sailors a mere fable, it would have been necessary to fall back on the general arguments that establish the authority of Scripture: little weight could have been rested on the internal evidence educed from the passage itself. The case is different now. It has been discovered that the three words translated ivory, apes, and peacocks, are all foreign to the Hebrew tongue, but may be traced back to that great parent of so many languages, the old Sanscrit

of India. So completely is this fact considered to be established, that you will find it adverted to in Gesenius' Lexicon, which most of our readers know to be the one commonly used in this country. That the three animals to which the words refer still exist in India, the writer can himself bear witness. When on mission tours he has been passing through bamboo, or other jungles, he has at times come upon a covey of wild peacocks, which, without taking to wing, have made way with surprising rapidity through the low brushwood to a place of greater security. Monkeys are domnesticated about many so-called sacred places, and it is at the peril of your life if you molest them. They are also wild in the hills. We remember once coming on one which, untroubled with nervous fear, had taken its station in a low scraggy tree that hung over a frightful precipice, and swayed heavily to and fro with the superincumbent weight. As, standing beneath, we listened to the angry tones in which it reproached us for intruding on its solitary haunts, we congratulated ourselves that it had no missile conveniently near with which to follow up the abuse it heaped upon us in measure so overflowing. Elephants, as is well known, swell the pomp of every Indian court, and they are found at large in some of the forest jungles. Speaking of Malabar, the part of India in which it is probable Solomon's sailors obtained freight for their vessels, Thornton, the highest authority on the subject, says in his Gazetteer:-"Wild elephants, inferior in size to none in India, harbour in the forests and jungly valleys, and associate in herds of 200 or 300." "There are apes and monkeys innumerable." We probably have in the text, with scarcely any alteration, the very words which Solomon's sailors learned from the old inhabitants of Malabar with whom they trafficked. There thus comes a voice from the depths of antiquity, not so loud, indeed, as that given forth by the longburied Nineveh, yet perfectly audi

ble, and that is enough, telling us that the old narratives of the Bible are not fictions of the imagination, but precious historic truth.

Another point still remains for illustration-the time the voyage to India took. It is stated that the fleets were absent three years. It must be remembered that from June to October the Indian Ocean is kept in continual agitation by the southwest monsoon. The steamboat in which the writer returned from India-a powerful one belonging to the Peninsular and Oriental Company-was then, it was understood, on a trial trip, intended to decide whether or not it was possible to run across the Indian Ocean almost directly in the face of the monsoon, in place of making a great sweep southward, as former vessels had done. The effort was perfectly successful; but for 1,000 miles and more the deck was continually wet as far back as the wheel, while not even the lee-portholes could be opened for a few minutes without water being shipped. Seeing the huge steamboat labouring heavily on its way, it was impossible not to feel that such fragile barks as those which constituted the old Hebrew and Tyrian navies would have failed to run either with or against the monsoon. They must have remained in some port till it passed, thus losing four months of the twelve, or one year out of the three. The remaining two years would be by no means too long a time to consume in coasting along from the head of the Gulf of Akaba to Malabar and back, for it must be remembered the Red Sea is itself 1,400 miles long, and from the Straits of Babel-mandeb, even directly across to Malabar, upwards of 2,000. We think that these facts should find their way from Hebrew lexicons and learned dictionaries of the Bible into popular treatises, adding, as they do, one proof more to the many previously collected of the genuineness and authenticity of the inspired word.

SHEEP AND GOATS. "When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with

him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory and before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: and he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left."-Matt. xxv. 31-33.

One of the Nagpore markets was devoted exclusively to sheep and goats; and as it was situated directly in the way to a vernacular Christian school, the missionaries as they passed to their work had constant opportunities of observing the appearance and habits of the two kinds of animals. In one part of the market goats were the more numerous; in another, sheep. One noticeable point was, that there was no sharply - defined boundary-line between the small flocks of the one and the other, but sheep and goats might be seen harmoniously intermingled, and a person might pass through the market a hundred times without witnessing a quarrel between the two. This fact throws a gleam of light on one part of the Saviour's description of the last judgment. "All nations" were to be gathered before him, and on his left hand were to be placed the wicked—the openly reprobate as well as hypocritical professors. It, however, makes his words more searching, when we reflect that the figure he employs shows it was rather the latter than the former he had especially in view. As the foolish virgins were still nominally prepared to do their appointed work, and the servant who hid his talent in the earth did so professedly in the interest of his master, so it was chiefly against unfaithful members of the Church that this comparison of the sheep and the goats was directed. And it teaches us that though real and pretended Christians show little tendency spontaneously to forsake each other's company, yet the great Head of the Church will at last himself separate them forever. Another point worthy of observation was, that the goats in the market were beyond question handsomer than the sheep. The former are so much akin to antelopes, the beauty of whose form none will dispute, that Linnæus

classed them together, and his arrangement has been disturbed more in name than in reality by succeeding naturalists. The goats of the market-place were sleek in body, and had a graceful tenuity of limb; their hair was long and glossy, and their colours were distributed in great irregular patches of black and white, pleasing by their mutual contrast. Once more, the goats were not less gentle than the sheep. And may it not be that in some cases not a few of the fair and the gentle in a congregation may be placed with the wicked on the left hand of the Judge, and afterwards driven away into everlasting wretchedness? For, as the Scriptures teach us, attractions of person or of manner are but of small account with Him before whom we must appear; nay, they may prove the reverse of a blessing if their effect be to mask from the world and even their possessor a heart not right with God.

R. H.

THE TWO GREAT ENEMIES RECONCILED.

In a small country town there lived two wealthy farmers, whose lands adjoin each other. From some common causes such as trespassing of cattle, poor fences, &c.-they became very inimical to each other, and finally got into law, and spent a great deal of money, for supposed trifling offences. They would often injure themselves for the sake of injuring each other. They went even so far as to make two fences on the division line of their farms, and in one place, where a lane was left open for the accommodation of one to go to his field, the other went and pulled down a good straight fence and made a crooked one, on purpose that the stakes and corners of the fence might make the lane too narrow for his neighbour to go through. They seldom spoke to each other, unless it were with curses, or when called before a court of justice, which they often were; and in this way they lived ten or twelve years, acting out the depravity of their hearts, and trying by every