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God never suffered the light of truth completely to be banished from the earth. When the old

world was covered with wickedness, still in one family the fear of God was preserved. When all Israel appeared to have gone after idols, still many hundreds were left "who had not bowed the knee to Baal." And now, when the same people had sunk into matchless carelessness and contempt of God, even then, a chosen few were left, "who feared the Lord, and spake often one to another." And since that period the case has been the same. When the great mass of the Jews rejected the Saviour, there were a few who "looked for redemption in Israel." When the apostles were persecuted from city to city, still some everywhere believed. Even in Sardis of old, wicked as it was, a few names" were found of men "who had not defiled their garments." During all the ages which have succeeded, a race has always existed, running parallel to great masses of the ungodly, declaring God's works, shewing forth his mighty deeds." And at length, out of Babylon itself, borne down as it is with the guilt of centuries, God will call a chosen few who have shunned her awful wickedness. Like wheat amidst the multitude of tares, like a few faithful soldiers amidst the ranks and in the country of the enemy, have they always been found, one in a city, two in a family, whom God takes and brings to Zion.

"He now became almost breathless, partly from fear, | presented. Even in the most degenerate ages, but principally from the intolerable pressure of his terrific load. In order to get breath he endeavoured to move himself a little, upon which the lion instantly laid hold of his left arm, just below the elbow, and bit in several different places down to the hand; in the thick part of which its teeth seemed to have completely met. All this time, however, it does not appear to have been at all furious, but merely caught at its prey, as the cat would sport with a mouse that is not quite dead. In this dreadful situation he remained for a considerable length of time writhing in pain, gasping for breath, and momentarily expecting to be torn limb from limb! On raising his head a little, the creature opened his mouth to receive it, but providentially lost his hold, in consequence of the hat (which was shown to me) slipping off; the points of the teeth, therefore, only just scarified the pericranium. Thus narrowly was he prevented from crushing the head to pieces. He then placed his paw upon the arm from which the blood was copiously flowing, and the purple stream soon covered it. This he again and again licked clean; and then fixing his flaming eye intently upon that of the man, now smelt on one side of his face, and then on the other, and appeared to be only awaiting the inducement of voracity, wholly to devour his helpless prey! "At this critical moment,' said the poor fellow, I recollected having somewhere heard that there was a God on high, who was able to deliver, at the very last extremnity; I therefore began to pray that he would prevent the lion from eating my flesh and drinking my blood.' While engaged in this act of devotion, the beast turned completely round, placing its head towards his feet, and its tail over his face. This induced hope in the mind of the sufferer, that he might now possibly rid himself of his load; and under this impression he made an effort, which was no sooner discovered, than checked by a terrible bite in the right thigh. He again lifted up his voice to the Almighty for help; nor did he pray in vain. The lion, without being disturbed in any way whatever, soon afterwards relinquished his hold. Calmly rising from his seat, he deliberately walked off to the distance of thirty or forty paces, and there lay down in the grass, whence, after watching the movements of the Hottentots for some minutes, he finally took his departure, and was seen no more. man now arose, and, crawling off in the best manner he was able, at length obtained the aid of his cowardly companions, who set him upon one of the horses, and brought him to the place where I found him. Dr G. (son of the Rev. John Gaulter), a military surgeon, at one of the neighbouring stations, hearing of the case, hastened to his relief, and very humanely rendered him all needful assistance. On first seeing him, amputation of the armn was thought to be absolutely necessary, but to this the patient would not subinit; for,' said he, as the Almighty had delivered me from a death so dreadful, I thought he was surely able to save my aria also!' At the time of my visit some of his wounds were already healed, and there was every prospect of a complete restoration. O that men would praise the Lord for his goodness, and for his wonderful

works to the children of men!'"

DISCOURSE.

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The

BY THE REV. JAMES BEGG, A.M., Minister of Liberton. "Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another; and the Lord hearkened, and heard it: They shall be mine, in that day when I make up my jewels," &c.-MAL. iii. 16.

THE prophet proceeds to make a cheering statement after the dark picture which he had just

This is the first remark which strikes us on reading these words.

The second is, that where and when sinners have been most determined in their opposition to God, the servants of God have ever been most bold and resolute. Even as the fierce energy of fire purges out the dross and makes the gold come forth pure and radiant, even as the fierce wind carries off the chaff and makes the wheat pure, so if we look for the brightest names in the Christian calendar, we shall not find them during times of peace, when all the world was at rest, and men professed their Christianity unheeded, but during times of stormy persecution. Then the Christian stood out in boid relief before the eyes of men. graces were ripened into a determined energy, and Then heaven has been filled with "those who had come out of great tribulation, and washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb," even as in the case before us, when all Israel was sunk in wickedness, then, at that time, "they that feared the Lord spake often one to another, and God said, they shall be mine in that day when I make up my jewels."

Having made these remarks, let us proceed to the more particular consideration of these words, and,

I. We learn from them, that it is the duty of Christians, at all times, to stand by and support each other, especially in times of abounding iniquity. This was the conduct of these Jewish servants of God, and was highly approved of by the Almighty. There are many injunctions to the same conduct in the New Testament: "Ex

II. God not merely remembers, but will reward those who thus promote the salvation of his people, and retain their holiness amidst abounding iniquity, and in illustrating this point, the great advantage of holiness will appear.

The figures here employed are strikingly fitted to convey an idea, that decided Christians are exceedingly precious in the sight of God. With what care do men store up their jewels! All their other goods are reckoned less valuable than these. They store them up in secret and strong

the countenance of his friend. When the Sabbath comes round, we can take sweet counsel together as we walk to the house of God in company. When we go with trembling steps to a communion table, remembering how unworthy we are, the words of a friend are often "like ointment poured forth," or "like the dew on the Hill of Hermon, where God commandeth the blessing, even life that shall never end." When disease, with its dark clouds, settles upon our dwellings, when wearisome days and nights, with many tossings to and fro till the dawning of the day are ap-repositories, and when danger seizes upon their pointed to us, or any of our dear Christian relations, then it is grateful to the heart to hear accents of tenderness proceeding from human lips, and to be borne up by others who have known like afflictions, and are not strangers to sympathy. When death cuts "off the desire of our eyes with a stroke," and when a crowd of mourners come to carry from our sight the remains of all that was dear to us, when we see the last sight of the sad procession, and return and find the place unoccu pied where our friend once was, what so soothing in such hours as these as the conversation of those who can remind us of the time when the earth and the sea must give back their dead, and all the triumphs of death must be swallowed up in an eternal victory. In all circumstances, it is the duty of Christians to speak one to another; for a word fitly spoken how good it is; and this is one of the means appointed by God for saving souls from death, and promoting the sanctification of his people.

Oh! if God should offer us a golden wedge of Ophir, or a kingly crown for every soul that we comforted, for every delusion detected and exposed, every soul taught to surmount its difficulties, and enter the land of rest, how diligent would we be. See the physician, for a temporary subsistence, passing through a laborious course of study, from many parts of which human nature recoils, exposing himself to the contagion of deadly disease,-content to have his rest disturbed, and to sit up the weary night that he may gaze on human nature in agony,-passing from one sad chamber of sickness to another, till a sedate and melancholy air becomes habitual, and sits fixedly on his countenance. He does all this for his fellow men, only to obtain a small and temporary reward. See the lawyer putting forth his whole store of learning and subtlety in defence of another, burning the midnight oil that he may discover arguments in his defence, and throwing his whole soul so completely into the case, that as he speaks so earnestly, a stander-by will imagine that it must be his own. Will they do all this, and more, for their brethren, only for a reward in time, and will you, professing to be Christians, do nothing to promote the comfort and salvation of your Christian brethren, although God looks on with deep interest, and though he has declared that an immortal prize will reward your efforts, not of thousands of gold, or earthly crowns, but of endless joy, a long long immortality of blessedness?

dwelling, they fly to these, their jewels are first secured. When a day of mirth and feasting is appointed, is it possible for the sons and daughters of Adam then to forget their ornaments ? And if we speak of kings, their crown, and the jewels with which it is adorned, their sceptre of gold, all the rubies and diamonds which their ancestors have collected, all the precious things which go to make up the regalia of majesty, constitute the emblems of the glory and greatness of their kingdom. And when foreign princes come, as the Queen of Sheba did, from the uttermost parts of the earth, to see the glory and hear the wisdom of Solomon; when a great and striking display must be made, the crown royal is placed on the monarch's head, and all the jewels of the kingdom are brought forth to dazzle the foreign eyes and make the assembled thousands shout for joy. And so God gives us to believe, that when at last he comes down to exhibit to the world his glorious majesty, and when all the princes of many gener ations must meet together, and all the potentates of hell must come to see the glorious spectaclenothing fairer will there be, nothing more precious and beautiful, nothing which illustrates more the dignity and glory of his power, his love, and all his attributes, than the members of the Christian Church, fair and glorious, without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing. "They shall be mine, saith the Lord, in that day when I make up my jewels.”

Or take the other figure. We all know how tender is the affection of parents towards their children. It reigns amongst all the creatures of God. The very eagle, cruel to all the other fowls of heaven," fluttereth over her nest, carrieth her young upon her wings." The "bear robbed of her whelps," makes the forest ring with the wailings of her grief. And man, guided by reason, betrays feelings stronger and deeper than these. Hear them expressed by Jacob: "Me have ye bereaved of my children; Joseph is not, and Simeon is not, and will ye take Benjamin also? all these things are against me." Even the utmost cruelty, the most base ingratitude, is unable to quench a father's love. David "was much moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept; and, as he went, thus he said, O my son Absalom! my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee." And the eternal Jehovah gives us to believe, that as parents write the names of their children in their sacred books, so he writes the names of his on the palms of bis

rors of immortal death, he was sweetly and powerfully tual faculties. And had we, therefore, been left to the constrained to imitate his bright example, the charac-investigations of unassisted reason, we must have been teristics of which are strikingly depicted in the simple totally and eternally excluded from all the hopes and declaration: who went about doing good.' the consolations which it sets before us, amid the separations and the bereavements of our mortal condition.

"Such was Howard, the most virtuous, and yet the most humble of our race. How justly he might have

taken for his motto what he wrote a few months before his death: In God's hand no instrument is weak, and in whose presence no flesh must glory.' He was enabled to effect great things, yet he utterly renounced dependance upon himself. My immortal spirit I cast on the sovereign mercy of God, through Jesus Christ, who is the Lord my strength, and my song; and, I trust, has become my salvation. My desire is to be washed, cleansed, and justified in the blood of Christ, and to dedicate myself to that Saviour who has bought us with a price.' Firmly resting upon this foundation, he was well prepared to address his last earthly friend and attendant, Admiral Priestman, in these words: Priestman, you style this a dull conversation, and endeavour to divert my mind from dwelling upon death; but I entertain very different sentiments. Death has no terrors for me; it is an event I always look to with cheerfulness, if not with pleasure; and be assured, the subject is more grateful to me than any other.'

Men there have been, it is true, of acute and discerning minds, who, without the aid of Revelation, have been able to form some kind of conception in regard to the immortality of the soul. And though their views on that subject have not been altogether free from doubt, or vagueness, or uncertainty, and have seldon: been productive of any powerful or permanent impres sion on the mind, yet they seem occasionally to have caught some vivid glimpses of the truth, and in mements of solemn deliberation have almost persuaded themselves that the soul could never die. And when they dwelt, as they often did, on its high superiority both over the irrational and inanimate creation; on the vast measure of its capacities; on the boundlessness of its ambition; on its plans extending far onwards into futurity; on its hopes, even in the hour of decay, breaking from their confinement, and groping their way into the immensities of an unknown eternity, then nothing could be more natural or more rational than the conjecture that the soul, which was capable of sul mighty things, was not to be doomed to annihilation, ere its faculties were half unfolded, or its plans accomplished; and that the very perishing of its mortal tenement might not only be the means of its emancipabut of its admission into some higher clime, where its tion from the bondage of this gross and material state, powers were to be fully expanded, and its perfection to be complete.

"His genuine humility prompted him to choose this sequestered spot for the reception of his mortal remains; and it was his anxious desire, that neither monument nor inscription, but simply a sun-dial should be placed over his grave. His wishes were at first so far complied with, that no splendid monument was erected to his memory; but the august monarch, in whose territory so many of his benevolent acts were performed, and who nobly patronized the attempts made to follow out the plans of Howard for the improvement of the state of prisons, has borne a public testimony to the respect he entertained for his virtues, by ordering a conspicuous monument to be built in the vicinity of Kherson, the town in which he died. This cenotaph, which attract- But though such have been the views of stronged our notice as we approached the gate of the town, minded men in regard to the immortality of the soul, is erected at a short distance from the Russian cemetery, we find not, apart from divine Revelation, the most disand close to the public road. It is built of a compact tant or obscure intimation in regard to the resurrection white free-stone, found at some distance, and is about thirty feet in height, surrounded by a wall of the same of the body. Their own consciousness might nurture stone, seven feet high by two hundred in circumference. the idea that the soul, peradventure, might live for ever. Within this wall, in which is a beautiful cast iron gate, But with regard to the body, when they saw it divesta fine row of Lombardy poplars has been planted, which, ed of all motion, of all feeling, of all life; deaf to when fully grown, will greatly adorn the monument. their most affectionate addresses, incapable of the On the pedestal is a Russian inscription of the follow-slightest exertion, mouldering away into dust and coring import :- Howard: died January 20th, 1790, aged 65 the simplicity of which is in strict accordance with the orders the great Philanthropist more than once gave, and which, with the rectification of the dates, only requires the all-emphatic addition, Christ is my Hope, to render it perfectly conformable to the inscription dictated by his own pen, and placed under that to the memory of his wife in Cardington Church, near Bedford. Agreeably to his request, a sun-dial is represented near the summit of the pillar, but with this remarkable circumstance, that the only divisions of time it exhibits, are the hours from ten to two, as if to intimate that a considerable portion of the morning of life is past ere we enter on the discharge of its active duties: and that, with many, the performance of them is over at an early hour after the meridian of our days.

THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY.
BY THE REV. J. A. WALLACE,
Minister of Hawick.

ruption,-with regard to it, they had no hope. They gave it up as a thing which was completely lost. In fact, they could behold the change which was taking place upon it; they could trace the humiliating process through which it was passing; they could see it returning into dust, and apparently into nothingness ; they could draw the conclusion, from the outward appearances, that when the earthly house of this tabernacle was dissolved, it was dissolved finally and for And, therefore, they were left to mourn over their departed friends, even as those who have no hope, and to go down to the grave themselves, with a feeling of hopelessness, and desolation, and despair.

ever.

Hence, we are indebted to the Bible for the information which we possess in regard to the resurrection of the body. There, it is not only revealed to us in terms which are so plain and explicit, that he who THE resurrection of the body is one, certainly, of the runs may read, but we have distinct and specific exmost comfortable doctrines on which it is possible for amples of it, as if for the purpose of putting down all us to fix our thoughts. But it is a doctrine which the objections which it is possible for the subtlety or could never be discovered, either by the perceptions of the infidelity of the human mind to bring against it, our bodily senses, or by the researches of our intellec- | and shewing to us, by well-authenticated facts, what a