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and is answered by the dead man appearing in his cerements,appearing from the end of the passage, or in the shadow of the

recess.

The monks, when taken as guides, show in the village the house of Martha and Mary, as they pretend, and that of Simon the Leper; but we did not inquire for these, having no wish to mix up anything fabulous with our observations of a place so interesting as Bethany.

Our road led us to the bottom of the valley, where there were patches of cultivation on the stony soil. We rode for three or four miles, sometimes on the one hill and sometimes on the other; and then we began to ascend the hot and rough and dreary road where began the danger of the way "from Jerusalem to Jericho," where the traveller enters among the fastnesses of the thieves who have infested the road from time immemorial. There is a hollow way which is considered the most dangerous of all. Here Sir Frederick Henniker was stripped and left for dead by robbers, in 1820. His servants fled and hid themselves on the first alarm. When they returned he was lying, naked and bleeding, on the sultry road. They put him on a horse and carried him to Jericho, where he found succour. Perhaps he was thinking of the parable of the Samaritan, when this accident befel him. I was thinking of it almost every step of the way. Another beautiful story was presently after full in my mind; a Catholic legend, which was told me by a German friend in America, when I little dreamed of ever being on the spot. Our road now gradually ascended the high ridge from which we were soon to overlook the plain of Jericho. The track was so stony and difficult, as to make our progress very slow; and the white rocks under the midday sun gave out such heat and glare, as made me enter more thoroughly into the story of Peter and the cherries, than my readers can perhaps do. And yet, the many to whom I have told the legend in conversation, have all felt its beauty. It is thus:

Jesus, and two or three of his disciples, went down one summer's day from Jerusalem to Jericho. Peter-the ardent and eager Peter-was, as usual, by the Teacher's side. On the road to Olivet lay a horse-shoe, which the Teacher desired Peter to pick up, but which Peter let lie, as he did not think it worth the trouble of stooping for. The Teacher stooped for it, and exchanged it in the village for a measure of cherries These cherries he carried (as eastern men now carry such things) in the bosomfolds of his dress. When they had to ascend the ridge, and the road lay between heated rocks, and over rugged stones, and among glaring white dust, Peter became tormented with heat and thirst,

and fell behind. Then the Teacher dropped a ripe cherry at every few steps; and Peter eagerly stooped for them. When they were all done, Jesus turned to him, and said with a smile, "He who is above stooping to a small thing, will have to bend his back to many lesser things."-H. MARTINEAU'S 'Eastern Life.

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WHEN you see how much more grown people know than you, you ought to be anxious to learn all you can from those who teach you; and as there are so many wise and good things written in books, you ought to try to read early and carefully, that you may learn something of what God has made you able to know. There are libraries containing very many thousands of volumes; and all that is written in these is,-accounts of some part or other of the world which God has made, or of the thoughts which He has enabled men to have in their minds. Some books are descriptions of the earth itself, with its rocks and ground and waters, and of the air and clouds, and the stars and moon and sun, which shine so beautifully in the sky. Some tell you about the things that grow upon the ground; the many millions of plants, from little mosses and threads of grass up to great trees and forests. Some also contain accounts of living things; flies, worms, fishes, birds, and four-legged beasts. And some, which are the most, are about men, and their thoughts and doings. These are the most important of all; for men are the best and most wonderful creatures of God in the world, being the only ones able to know Him and love him, and to try of their own accord to do His will.

These books about men are also the most important to us, because we ourselves are human beings, and may learn from such books what we ought to think and to do and to try to be. Some of them describe what sort of people have lived in old times, and in other countries. By reading them, we know what is the difference between ourselves in England now, and the famous nations which lived in former days. Such were the Egyptians who built the Pyramids, which are the greatest heaps of stone upon the face of the earth; and the Babylonians, who had a city with huge walls built of bricks, having writing on them that no one in our time has been able to make out. There were also the Jews, who were the only ancient people that knew how wonderful and how good God is; and the Greeks, who were the wisest of all in think

about men's lives and hearts, and who knew best how to

make fine statues and buildings, and to write wise books. By books also we may learn what sort of people the old Romans were, whose chief city was Rome; and how brave and skilful they were in war, and how well they could govern and teach many nations which they had conquered. It is from books, too, that you must learn what kind of men were our ancestors in the northern part of Europe, who belonged to the tribes that did the most towards pulling down the power of the Romans; and you will see, in the same way, how Christianity was sent among them by God, to make them wiser and more peaceful, and more noble in their minds; and how all the nations that now are in Europe, and especially the Italians and the Germans and the French and the English, came to be what they now are. It is well worth knowing (and it can be only by reading) how the Germans found out the printing of books, and what great changes this has made in the world. And everybody in England ought to try to understand how the English came to have their parliaments and laws, and to have fleets that sail over all the seas of the world.

Besides learning all these things, and a great many more about different times and countries, you may learn from books what is the truth of God's will, and what are the best and wisest thoughts, and the most beautiful words; and how men are able to lead very right lives, and to do a great deal to better the world. I have spent a great part of my life in reading; and I hope you will come to like it as much as I do, and to learn in this way all that I know.

But it is a still more serious matter that you should try to be obedient and gentle, and to command your temper; and to think of other people's pleasure rather than your own, and of what you ought to do, rather than what you like. If you try to be better for all you read as well as wiser, you will find books a great help towards goodness as well as knowledge, and above all other books, the Bible, which tells us of the will of God, and the love of Jesus Christ towards God and men.-JOHN STERLING.

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THE cure for the greatest part of human miseries is not radical, but palliative. Infelicity is involved in corporeal nature, and interwoven with our being; all attempts, therefore, to decline it wholly are useless and vain. The armies of pain send their

would imprint in our minds such a constant and uninterrupted awe and veneration as that which I am here recommending, and which is in reality a kind of incessant prayer, and reasonable humiliation of the soul before him who made it.

This would effectually kill in us all the little seeds of pride, vanity, and self-conceit, which are apt to shoot up in the minds of such whose thoughts turn more on those comparative advantages which they enjoy over some of their fellow-creatures, than on that infinite distance which is placed between them and the supreme model of all perfection. It would likewise quicken our desires and endeavours of uniting ourselves to him by all the acts of religion and virtue.

Such an habitual homage to the Supreme Being would, in a particular manner, banish from among us that prevailing impiety of using his name on the most trivial occasions.

I find the following passage in an excellent sermon, preached at the funeral of a gentleman, who was an honour to his country, and a more diligent as well as successful inquirer into the works of nature than any other nation has ever produced. "He had the profoundest veneration for the great God of heaven and earth that I have ever observed in any person. The very name of God was never mentioned by him without a pause and a visible stop in his discourse, in which one that knew him most particularly above twenty years, has told me that he was so exact, that he does not remember to have observed him once to fail in it."

Every one knows the veneration which was paid by the Jews to a name so great, wonderful, and holy. They would not let it enter even into their religious discourses. What can we then think of those who make use of so tremendous a name in the ordinary expressions of their anger, mirth, and most impertinent passions of those who admit it into the most familiar questions and assertions, ludicrous phrases, and works of humour? not to mention those who violate it by solemn perjuries? It would be an affront to reason to endeavour to set forth the horror and profaneness of such a practice. The very mention of it exposes it sufficiently to those in whom the light of nature, not to say religion, is not utterly extinguished.—ADDISON.

1. It was not by Dionysius but by Hiero that this famous question was put to Simonides.

2. Addison refers to Bishop Burnet's Sermon, preached at the funeral of the Hon. Robert Boyle.

3. JEHOVAH is the name by which the Deity is represented in the Hebrew Scrip

tures; in which language it signifies the Self-existent, the I am. The word itself was held in peculiar veneration by the Jews, who never allowed themselves to pronounce it in the reading of their sacred books, but substituted for it the term Adonai, Lord, wherever it occurred.

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THERE is nothing more awful than to attempt to cast a glance among the clouds and mists which hide the broken extremity of the celebrated bridge of Mirza. Yet when every day brings us nigher that termination, one would almost think our views should become clearer. Alas! it is not so: there is a curtain to be withdrawn, a veil to be rent, before we shall see things as they really are. There are few, I trust, who disbelieve the existence of a God; nay, I doubt if at all times, and in all moods, any single individual ever adopted that hideous creed, though some have professed it. With the belief of a Deity, that of the immortality of the soul and of the state of future rewards and punishments is indissolubly linked. More we are not to know; but neither are we prohibited from all attempts, however vain, to pierce the solemn, sacred gloom. The expressions used in Scripture are doubtless metaphorical, for penal fires and heavenly melody are only applicable to beings endowed with corporeal senses; and, at least, till the period of the resurrection, the spirits of men, whether entering into the perfection of the just, or committed to the regions of punishment, are not connected with bodies. Neither is it to be supposed that the glorified bodies which shall arise in the last day will be capable of the same gross indulgences with which ours are now solaced. That the idea of Mahomet's Paradise is inconsistent with the purity of our heavenly religion, will be readily granted; and see Mark xii. 25. Harmony is obviously chosen as the least corporeal of all gratifications of the sense; and as the type of love, unity, and a state of peace and perfect happiness. But they have a poor idea of the Deity and the rewards which are destined for" the just made perfect," who can only adopt the literal sense of an eternal concert-a never-ending birthday ode. I rather suppose this should be understood as some commission from the Highest, some duty to discharge, with the applause of a satisfied conscience. That the Deity, who himself must be supposed to feel love and affection for the beings he has called into existence, should delegate a portion of those powers, I, for one, cannot conceive altogether so wrong a conjecture. We would then find reality in Milton's sublime machinery of the guardian saints or genii of kingdoms. Nay, we would approach to the Catholic idea of the employment of saints, though without approaching the absurdity of saint

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