A FEW WORDS FROM A SUPERINTENDENT OF A SUNDAY-SCHOOL.

DEAR READERS,—

ALLOW one who is a stranger to you, but who wishes ardently your spiritual good, to say a few words to you. I hope that you not only have for your own use our very interesting and instructive Juvenile Companion, but that you recommend it to other young persons. I think few of the children of our Sabbath-schools are so situated but they could, if they liked, procure it for themselves. A little of the money which children spend in useless, if not also injurious gratifications, would be far more than sufficient to procure this nice Magazine; which, at the end of the year, may be bound as a pretty little volume.

In the small school of which I am the superintendent, last year, not one copy of the Juvenile Companion was taken by the scholars; but I recommended it to them, and now about forty copies are purchased monthly by them. I hope that this subject will be taken up earnestly by you and your teachers; and then our Editor will be pleased in having to report a further large increase in its sale.

I trust you will excuse my freedom in bringing before you another important matter. I should like to ask, Are you collectors for our Mission Fund? Only think what an honour it is to do anything for Jesus; and if you raise money for sending his Gospel to those who have it not, what a vast amount of good you may do. Or, if you are not a collector, are you a subscriber?-if you are not, I hope you will commence subscribing. Very few of you can say, you cannot give a farthing, or halfpenny, or penny, now and then, to the Missionary fund; and if you do this, it will, in the course of the year, produce a large sum. Also, do all you can to induce others to subscribe, and then I feel quite sure that our Missionary Society will prosper. In the small school to which I belong, we commenced last year collecting for this cause, and I will tell you the result. I brought the matter before the attention of our dear children, in July last, and they, with their teachers, entered heartily into the work; and at our Missionary meeting, held on the 25th of April last,

the following account was read:-Collected by the children of College Place Sabbath-school, Chelsea, 47. 4s. 114d. — The School Missionary Box, 17. 1s. 5d. (about 11s. 5§d. of which was given by the children), and the other 10s., with 17. 4s. 4d., making 17. 148. 4d., was collected by the teachers; making the sum of 67. 10s. 9d., out of which 28. only had to be deducted for expenses; leaving 67. 8s. 9d., which sum was paid to the treasurer. Now our children never thought of collecting till last year, and see how they have succeeded. One little boy obtained money for the Mission fund by selling bones. Let this example stimulate your zeal and perseverance; and my prayer is, that the God of missions may bless you and your school, and all who are thus helping in this great movement with great success, and save you all with his great salvation for his name's sake. Amen. Yours very affectionately,

GEORGE PARRINTON.

REMARKABLE CASE OF A HIGHWAYMAN.

AN American paper states that, in 1747, a man was broken alive on the wheel at Orleans, for highway robbery; and not having friends to bury his body, when the execu tioner concluded he was dead, he gave him to a surgeon, who had him carried to his anatomical theatre, as a subject to lecture on. The thighs, legs, and arms of this unhappy wretch had been broken, yet on the surgeon coming to examine him, he found him surviving, and by the application of proper cordials, he was soon brought to his speech. The surgeon and his pupils, moved by the sufferings and solicitations of the robber, determined on attempting his cure; but he was so mangled that his thighs and one of his arms were amputated. Notwithstanding this mutilation and the loss of blood, he recovered, and, in this situation, the surgeon, by his own desire, had him conveyed in a cart fifty leagues from Orleans, where, he said, he intended to gain his livelihood by begging. His situation was on the road side, close

by a wood, and his deplorable condition excited compassion from all who saw him. In his youth he had served in the army, and he now passed for a soldier who had lost his limbs by a cannon-shot. A drover, returning from market was solicited by the robber for charity, and the drover being moved to compassion, threw a piece of silver. The beggar said, "I cannot reach it; you see I have neither arms nor legs," (for he had concealed his arm which had been preserved, behind his back,) "so, for the sake of heaven, put your charitable donation into my pouch, and the Lord bless you." The drover approached him, and as he stooped to reach up the money, the sun shining, he saw a shadow on the ground, which caused him to look up, when he perceived the arm of the beggar elevated over his head, grasping a short iron bar. He arrested the blow in its descent, and seizing the robber, carried him to his cart, into which having thrown him, he drove off to the next town, which was very near, and brought his prisoner before a magistrate. On searching him a whistle was found in his pocket, which naturally induced the suspicion that he had accomplices in the wood; the magistrate, therefore, instantly ordered a guard to the place where the robber had been, and they arrived within half an hour after the murder of the drover had been attempted. The guard having concealed themselves behind different trees, the whistle was blown, the sound of which was remarkably shrill and loud, and another whistle was heard under ground, three men at the same instant rising over the midst of a bushy clump of brambles and other dwarf shrubs. The soldiers fired on them and they fell. The bushes were searched, and a descent discovered to a cave. Here were three young girls and a boy. The girls were kept for servants; the boy, scarce twelve years of age, was a son to one of the robbers. The girls, in giving evidence, deposed that they had lived nearly three years in the cave; had been kept there by force from the time of their captivity; that dead bodies were frequently carried into the cave, stripped, and buried; and that the old soldier was carried out every dry day, and sat by the road side for two or three hours. On this evidence the murdering mendicant was condemned to suffer a second execution on the wheel. As but

We share the opinions of the Rabbins, that his followers were the disciples which in his own land he had gained over to his religion. That passage of Holy Writ which says, 'Abraham took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all the substance they had gathered, and the souls they had gotten in Harem, and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan,' seems to indicate that such was the case. The Hebrew renders it the souls they HAD MADE;' and Rabbi Eleazer, the son of Zimra, saith, 'If all those who have ever existed in this world were collected to create even a fly, they could not bestow life upon it, and Holy Writ here speaks of making souls.' But these are the converts whom they reclaimed; and the word [translated] 'made,' is used to teach us, that whosoever reclaims a soul from idolatry to the worship of God, is as if he had created him anew. Bethel, which according to literal translation, is THE HOUSE OF GOD, seems to have been the central point of the patriarch's wanderings, where his pious hearers assembled to listen to his instructions. This is proved by the (Hebrew rendering of the) words in Genesis xiii. 4. Abraham there proclaimed the name of the Lord.' But as his purpose to spread his doctrines carried him from one place to another, he perpetuated his presence and instruction by erecting a monument. This was, doubtless, the motive of the patriarchs in building the many altars of which we find mention made in Holy Writ.

"Eastern traditions relate, that Abraham had, in his early youth, been brought to reflect on, and to acknowledge, the unity and eternity of the Creator, from observing the revolutions of the heavenly bodies, the regular alternations of day and night, the constant succession and predominance of the sun, and other astral luminaries, and the variety of seasons which thence results, which convinced him that One Great and Incomprehensible Being governed the universe which he had called into existence. This tradition is probable, and in accordance with reason; as Abraham's mind must have discarded the erroneous opinions of his contemporaries even before the Divine revelation was vouchsafed unto him."

The above are the remarks of a Jewish writer, in an

"Essay on the Ancient Schools of the Israelites." According to the legends of the Rabbins, the first schools are of a date anterior to the Deluge. In these, both religion and the sciences were taught. At the head of these schools were Adam, Enoch, and Noah. Subsequently Melchizedec became the founder of a school in Kirieth-Sepher, "the city of books." Abraham is said to have been the disciple of Eber, and promulgated the learning of his tutor among the Chaldeans and Egyptians, who are said to have been indebted to him for their knowledge of arithmetic and astronomy,-sciences in which the latter were subsequently more fully instructed by his grandson Jacob. Eber was the son of Salah, and the grandson of Shem, and is said to have been the assistant of his grandfather. Josephus, and many others derive the name "Hebrews," from "Eber." If this derivation is correct, it is probable that the word Hebrew at first denoted "a pupil of Eber," as it is far more likely that the young and active grandson, Eber, should have been the zealous instructor of Abraham, than the old and feeble grandsire Shem. And, as Abraham was the great promulgator of the religious instructions bestowed upon him by Eber, he is the first who, in Holy Writ, is emphatically called "the Hebrew," or disciple of Eber.

We will now subjoin the Talmudic Allegory concerning this venerable patriarch, whose faith and obedience have been so universally held up for admiration, and the principles of which are necessary in the formation of that character, and the attainment of that "righteousness" which is only acceptable to God.

"Abraham was reared in a cavern, for the tyrant Nimrod, forewarned by his astrologers that the infant son of Terah would teach mankind to renounce the service of the imaginary divinities which Nimrod worshipped, sought to take his life. But in the darksome cavern, the light of God illumined his youthful mind. He reflected, and asked himself, Where am I? Who has created me?' He had reached the age of sixteen years, when he left his dreary abode, and, for the first time, beheld the heavens and their resplendent orbs, the earth and its fulness. How astonished was he, and how rejoiced! He interrogated all