tence, but that he describes the evil conse- | quences of that broken spirit which ariseth from affliction or from religious despondency. We have pointed out how that this broken spirit has a bad effect upon the animal constitution, upon the human body; and that spiritual despondency makes lean the inner man, makes us weak for the service of God, to entertain wrong thoughts and feelings, and indisposes us for those exercises of the soul which are to our comfort and advantage and the glory and praise of God. dren were present in the church. He gave out his text, pointed to the objects of charity, said "There they are," closed his book, and dismissed the congregation. The collection was large and liberal. We point you to the Norwich hospital: there it is: what it does you know all. It is needful, however, to say that it is cramped for want of funds. Will you not assist gladly, according to your ability, in the extension of its blessings? How many have been revived by its healing medicines, how many bodies restored to health and broken Let us, boloved, exhort you all to culti-spirits and bones made to rejoice, it is not vate the former state, and to strive against for me to calculate. the latter. God forbid that we should exhort you to be merry over sin, to be like fools who make a mock at sin, to seek such happiness as comes from disobedience, and which, if it produces mirth, is like the crackling of thorns, and is soon all over. May God the Spirit help you to rejoice in the works of God in nature and providence, and especially in grace! And let us exhort you to avoid the broken spirit. God forbid that we should undervalue that mourning which is blessed, in that that mourning is a forerunner of comfort, the abasement which precedes exaltation; but let us exhort you to avoid excessive sorrow over any temporal affliction, and sinking into heartlessness and despondency in relation to your spiritual and eternal interests. May God grant that, with respect to things seen and temporal, you may rejoice as those that rejoice not, and weep as those that weep not. With regard to the more important matters of the soul, may you have good ground for a happy persuasion that you and your God are reconciled: : may you with joy draw water out of the wells of salvation: in tribulation also may you rejoice; and in the sweet fields beyond the whelming flood may the Lamb lead you beside living fountains of water, and may God wipe away all tears from your eyes! In the mean time we must remember that there is work for us to do, that there are fatherless and widows in their affliction to be visited, that there are sufferers in body who need the healing medicine, and broken spirits, broken under the burden of heavy trial, whom we are bound to relieve. Your minister has requested me to commend to you the Norfolk and Norwich hospital, to lay before your liberal consideration that institution, so noble and benevolent. What can I say on such a subject? Who, in this congregation, knows not as much about it as I could tell? We remember hearing once of an Irish dean who was called to preach for a school of orphans. The chil Help, all of you, as God has prospered you. Let us remember that "hilarity"* is never more pleasing in God's sight than in the distribution of bounty. "God loveth the cheerful giver." All of you do something, according to your several ability; and the God of love and mercy, of pity and compassion, be with you all. May the Saviour, who will say to some hereafter, "I was sick and ye visited me," welcome you to his presence, and into the kingdom prepared for them that love him! SCRIPTURE SCENERY. No. VI. THE DESERTS OF SCRIPTURE. BY THE REV. J. S. BROAD, M.A., speaking of the seas of scripture, that so largo In scriptural language a desert or wilderness does not always mean an absolutely-barren and * ̔Ο ἐλεῶν, ἐν ἱλαρότητι (Rom. xii. 8). dreary place, but rather one that is wild and uninhabited-a wide solitude, uncultivated, and in a state of nature. Sometimes, indeed, it is to be taken in its strict sense, as barren and unfruitful; and at other times we may understand it as expressing a locality far from human habitation, and occupied only by the lower animals of various kinds. In all cases there is the main idea of dreariness, somewhat of that gloom and fearfulness which we are wont to connect with the loneliness of solitude; somewhat of privation and danger, such as are usually experienced in passing over a trackless plain. As Moses said: "We went through all that great and terrible wilderness which ye saw by the way of the mountain of the Amorite" (Deut. i. 19). With these remarks in our minds, we will direct our attention to the deserts of scripture, noticing the principal desert scenes and manifestations of God, and the practical illustrations to be derived from this feature of natural scenery. Pleasant as it may be to linger in the garden of Eden, and even to accompany in spirit our Lord and Master to his agony in Gethsemane and his garden-tomb, we must not forget that there are some interesting scenes connected with the desert, and some remarkable manifestations of God which have taken place therein. It was in the wilderness of Shur that the angel of the Lord found Hagar, when she fled from the face of her mistress, Sarah; and in that spot of divine interposition she testified her sense of the divine presence, teaching us, wherever we are, to look for the presence of our God. "And she called the name of the Lord that spake unto her, Thou God seest me" (Gen. xvi. 13). Again, in the wilderness near Beersheba, the same Hagar was favoured with another token of the divine protection, when, she and her son faint from want of water and the sorrowful mother dreading the death of her boy, "God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water, and she went and filled the bottle with water, and gave the lad drink" (xxi.). And it was in the wilderness of Paran that the same lad dwelt, having grown to man's estate, and given proof of the characteristics set forth of him and his descendants, yet manifest in "the wild Arabs of the desert." "And he will be a wild man : his hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him" (Gen. xvi. 12). In after years, Moses, the favoured servant of God, was keeping the flock of his father-in-law; and he "led the flock to the back side of the desert, and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb," and there was favoured with that striking vision of the burning bush, ao full of prophetic teaching to the church and people of God (Exod. iii. 1). The desert of Arabia was 66 that great and terrible wilderness" of which I have already spoken, where so many marvels of heavenly power and love were displayed-God feeding his people with bread from heaven; shadowing forth "the bread of life" under the gospel; calling forth the living stream from the flinty rock that followed his people in their wanderings, and testified of the stream of life and salvation flowing from the smitten Saviour; appearing in the cloud and pillar of fire as their Guide, Protector, and Support; interposing ever and anon in some peculiar manner for the well-being, and sometimes for the chastisement of his people, as when the fiery serpents bit the murmurers, and the uplifted serpent of brass became, by divine appointment, the remedy for the poisonous bites, of which our Lord himself gives us the spiritual application: "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternål life" (John iii. 14, 15). And who can forget the solemn and overpowering scene that took place at the wilderness of Sinai, when the Almighty and Eternal One, amid clouds and darkness, fire and smoke, delivered to Moses the law of the ten commandments-that law which has been called "a transcript of the divine mind," and which is "holy, just, and good"a law which is still set before the believing people of God (not as a ground of acceptance and justification, but) as the standard of loving duty to him and to man, and which, being writ ten on their hearts by the Holy Spirit, will enable them to render an evangelical obedience to all the divine will? Many, indeed, were the events of stirring interest that occurred to the people of God of old during their forty years' sojourn in the desert of Sinai, teaching them, and teaching us also; for the apostle says: "All these things happened unto them for ensamples; and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come" (1 Cor. x. 11). It was in the solitude of Cherith the devoted Elijah experienced a daily miracle in the food that was brought to him by the ravens at the command of their Maker. And afterwards, when "he went for his life" "a day's journey into the wilderness," he was no less wondrously supported during the forty days and forty nights of his sojourn at Horeb, the mount of God, proving how God can provide support and protection for his faithful ones in the time of difficulty and danger (1 Kings xvi., xix). Let us pass onwards, and come down to "the fulness of time." Who was that antitype of Elijah that, as a youth, "was in the deserts till the day of his showing unto Israel (Luke i. 80), feeding upon locusts and wild honey, and arrayed in the rough garb of camel's hair, preaching in the wilderness of Judæa? Even the same who was foretold by the evangelic prophet, as "the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight" (Matt. iii. 1-4; Isai. xi. 3). And what of the mysterious God-man himself, of whom the Baptist was the harbinger? Was he not "led up into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil?" showing us how, amid the priva tion and solitude of the desert, he could foil the tempter who seduced and ruined man amid the fulness and delight of paradise. I might speak of the unfoldings of prophecy in the closing book of the sacred canon with reference to the fortunes of the church of Christ, and tell of the "woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars," who "fled into the wilderness," where "a place was prepared of God for her" from the persecution of the great dragon; but this is symbol, rather than natural scenery. Nevertheless it has its teaching, and it may lead us to notice some of the practical illustrations which this feature of natural scenery-the desert-affords. It is not unfrequently employed in scripture to convey important practical truth in connexion with our spiritual well-being. It is used, as we might expect, as an emblem of desolation. In the prophecies concerning Nineveh, Babylon, and other places, we find their desolation spoken of as that of the desert. "He will make Nineveh a desolation, and dry like a wilderness." "She is empty, and void, and waste" (Zeph. ii. 13; Nah. iii. 10). So of Babylon (Isai. xiii. 19, 22). "He turneth," says the psalmist, "rivers into a wilderness, and the water-springs into dry ground, a fruitful land into barrenness, for the wickedness of them that dwell therein" (Psal. cvi. 33, 34. Compare also Rev. xvii. 3). We see, then, that when the Holy Spirit would set forth the entire overthrow of a place it is described as brought to the condition of a desert. And how literally and minutely these representations have been fulfilled is evident from the reports of travellers who have visited the supposed site of Babylon, and the discoveries of Mr. Botta and Mr. Layard in reference to Nineveh-" the buried city," as it has been called, now laid open after its long con. cealment in the dust of the earth. in him. He will guide us by his word and providence: he will supply our wants, and uphold us in our passage through the roughness and danger of our course. The world is a desert too, inasmuch as the people of God are far from their home in it. It is a place of mere sojourn, and not the "Father's house," in which they wish to be. Oftentimes the believer, harassed and tried, longs to be at home, and he is tempted to exclaim: "O that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away, and be at rest" (Psal. v. 6). And, so long as he remains here, he tions, especially at a distance from God, and feels that he is exposed to dangers and privathis, notwithstanding the comforts of the way, But he would be "absent from the body, and the pleasant oases, which cheer him as he goes. present with the Lord.” As the people of God of old were now left to themselves in their desert life, so the Israel of God now have the same encouragements and blessings, but in fuller and richer measure. Let us, then, look well to our way: a Guide is before us. Let us follow the pillar of light; and all will be well. Let us not be "like the heath in the desert," through trusting in man, in an arm of flesh, rather than in the Lord (Jer. xvi. 5, 6). Let us not despair, as if we were alone; for the Lord of hosts is with his own in the desert, as well as in the city. The way will be made plain, the difficulties removed, the enemy put to flight, the goodly land of rest and promise will be open to receive us. Let us never forget the power which shall A wilderness is emblematical of the world- transform the desert into a fruitful field-this of the world in a moral and religious point of sinful world into the abode of righteousness and view, not as a place of actual solitude, but of peace. We find beauteous and glowing predic spiritual desolation. A large portion of the na- tions of the transformation of our world, morally tural world is composed of desert land; still and even physically, into "the garden of the there is so much of fertility and beauty in it Lord." "Then judgment shall dwell in the that we cannot call it a desert. But in a moral wilderness, and righteousness remain in the point of view, how much of what is desert be- fruitful field. And the work of righteousness longs to it! The journey of the Israelites shall be peace, and the effect of righteousness through the wilderness, and their sojourn in it, quietness and assurance for ever." "I will may be regarded as typical of the course of the open rivers," says the Lord, "in high places, spiritual Israel in the world: this is "the waste and fountains in the midst of the valleys: I howling wilderness" in which God finds his will make the wilderness a pool of water, and people; and he leads them onwards, and about the dry land springs of water." We cannot in it, as he sees will be best for them. It is "a doubt that these words of cheering promise will waste," because it bears no fruit that is really be fulfilled at the "set time," that God will achealthy and satisfying (Isai. Iv. 2); and "howl-complish all his purpose; and then "the wilder ing," because it is peopled by many who are as the wild beasts of the forest in unruly passions and mutual injury. Its "dark places" are said to be "full of the habitations of cruelty." It has its pleasures indeed; but they are too much like the bitter waters found in the desert. It has its trials and difficulties, and these are many, which only the grace of God can enable us to surmount. It has its dangers, which can only be overcome by our faithfully following the great Captain of our salvation. It is a beautiful representation of the dependence of the humble soul npon Christ in the book of the Song: "Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness, leaning upon her beloved ?" (Song of Sol. viii. 5). This is our only stay-to lean upon him who has assured us that he is our friend, a helper to all who look to him and trust ness and the solitary place shall be glad for them, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose" (Isai. xxxii. 16, 17, xli. 18, xxxv. 1). It is ours to wait in patience and preparation, in expectation and hope. This world of ours is now too plainly blasted by sin; it is scant in the plants of grace and righteousness: its flowers and fruits of love and truth and peace are comparatively "few and far between." Let us be thankful for what we have: let us aim, by the help from on high, to increase and diffuse them, being "diligent that we may be found in peace, without spot and blameless," of him who says, "Behold, I make all things new," and according to whose sure promise "we look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness" (Rev. xxi. 5; 2 Pet. iii. 13). "Pilgrims through this barren waste, Weak, and but of little faith, 'Look not on this barren land, WORDS OF EXHORTATION TO THE MEMBERS strange dresses, processions, banners, incense, candles on the communion-table, turnings to the east, crosses at the east, and extravagant church decorations: resist them manfully. They seem trifles; but they frequently lead to a great deal of mischief, and they often end in downright popery. Resist it in great things. Oppose, with might and main, the attempt to reintroduce the popish mass and auricular confession in our parishes. Send your boy to no school where auricular confession is ever tolerated. Allow no clergyman to draw your wife and daughter to private confession. Oppose, sternly but firmly, the attempt to change the Lord's-supper at your parish churches into the Romish sacrifice of the altar. Draw back from the communion in such churches, and go elsewhere. The laity have a great deal of power in this matter, even without going to law. The clergy cannot do without the laity, any more than officers in a regiment can do without privates. If the English laity, all over England, would rise in their might, and say, 66 We will not have the mass and auricular confession," ritualism would wither away in a very short time. Resist it for Christ's sake. His priestly and mediatorial offices are injured and dishonoured by ritualism: they are offices he has never deputed to any order of ordained men. Resist it for the church of England's sake. If ritualism_triumphs, the days of the church are numbered. The laity will leave her; and she will die for want of churchmen. Resist it for the clergy's sake. The worst and cruelest thing that can be done to us is to lift us out of our proper places, and make us lords over your consciences, and mediators between yourselves and God. Resist it for the laity's sake. The most degrading position in which laymen can be put is that of being cringing slaves at the foot of a brother-sinner. Resist it, not least, for your children's sake. Do what in you lies to provide that, when you are dead and gone, they shall not be left to the tender mercies of popery. As ever you would meet your boys and girls in heaven, take care that the church of England in your day is maintained a protestant church, and preserve her articles and the principles of the Reformation wholly uninjured and undefiled. I CHARGE you to resist manfully the efforts now being made to unprotestantize England, and to bring her once more into subjection to popery. Let us not go back to ignorance, superstition, priestcraft, and immorality. Our forefathers tried popery long ago, and threw it off with disgust and indignation. Let us not put the clock back, and return to Egypt. Let us have no peace with Rome till Rome abjures her errors, and is at peace with Christ. Read your bible, and be armed with scriptural arguments. A bible-reading laity is a nation's surest defence against error. I have no fear for English protestantism if the laity will only do their duty. Read history, and see what Rome did in days gone by. Read how she trampled on your country's liberties, plundered your forefathers' pockets, and kept the whole nation ignorant and immoral. Read Fox and Strype and Burnet and Soames and Blunt; and do not forget that Rome never changes. It is her boast and glory that she is always the same. Only give her power in England, and she will soon put out the eyes of our country, and make her like Samson, a degraded slave. Read facts standing out on the face of the globe. What has made Italy what she is? Popery. What has made Mexico and the South American states what they are? Popery. What has made Spain and Portugal what they are? Popery. What has made Ireland what she is Popery. What makes Scotland, the United States, and our own beloved England the powerful prosperous countries that they are at present, and I pray God they may long continue? I answer in one word: Protestantism"A GIRL in our Sunday-school," says a corresa free bible and a protestant ministry, and the principles of the Reformation. Think twice before you give ear to the specious arguments of liberalism falsely so called. Think twice beyou help to bring back the reign of popery. For another thing I charge you to beware of ritualism, and to do all you can to resist it. Ritualism is the high road to Rome; and the triumph of ritualism will be the restoration of popery. Resist it in little things. Resist *From "Bishops and Clergy of other Days;" by the rev. J.C. Ryle. 1868. fore Juvenile Reading. pondent, was going into Deptford with her · on. Shortly afterwards, on taking her father's dinner to the factory where he was employed, a man said to her, 'You don't know me, miss P' 'No,' said the girl. He then reminded her of the circumstance of the tract. You didn't thank me for it,' said the child. 'No,' said he ; 'but I do now.' "Last Sunday evening the man was dying. A messenger came to beg that the little girl would go and see him. This was the Lord's call to service. Not long since she had been called by divine grace to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Her father, who came for her, went with her, but the dying man wished to see his little visitor alone. The father therefore remained outside; and the dying man, seeing the child's hesitancy, said, 'Don't be afraid of a man who is just going to heaven.' He then drew from under his pillow the tract she had given him, also another tract which he said was given him at a chapel into which he once entered, and, pointing to passages of scripture and hymns in the tracts, expressed, in the broken language of a man in such circumstances, his faith in Christ, and his thankfulness for these tracts, which had pointed his troubled soul to the way of peace. He insisted that she should sing, Rock of ages, cleft for me;' and the little girl says she did try to sing one verse, but she could scarcely get through it. He clearly stated to her, though in broken sentences, that he was trusting in the merits of Christ alone for the forgiveness of his sins and his acceptance with God. He died the next day. "This incident shows how much good a tract may do, and how soon a man who is careless about religion may find his need of it." Poetry. THE TOUCH OF FAITH. BY THE REV. J. S. BROAD, M.A. (For the Church of England Magazine). "She said within herself, If I may but touch his garment I shall be whole."-MATT. ix. 21. SHE came all trembling and afraid, She came; yet scarcely could she dare The drops that from his mercy fall. "O, may I but his garment touch, The very hem, I shall be whole: A thrill of health, and soundness gave. The tender loving Saviour knew What deed of healing had been done, RUSSIAN AMERICA.-Mr. Whimper, an artist long connected with the late Russo-American Telegraph expedition, has recently returned to London, and is, we believe, shortly to lay before the Geographical Society some notes of travel in Russian-America. That territory, so recently acquired by the United States government, and re-christened by them "Alaska" (sometimes" Aliaska," and occasionally "Walrus-sia"!) is virtually an unknown country, and any contribution to our better knowledge of it should be welcome. In 1866-7, Mr. Whimper made a sledge journey, mainly by a land route, from Norton banks at Nulato, the most interior Russian post. In the Sound, Bering Sea, to the Youkon river, wintering on its spring he proceeded in a "baidarre," or skin-boat, up the Youkon, 600 miles, to a Hudson's Bay Company's fort, at the confluence of the Porcupine or Rat river, and then descended its course to the sea, a distance of 1,200 miles. The Youkon (known by the Russians as the "Kwichpak") was found to be an immense stream, often opening out into shallow lagoons, and almost anywhere on its lower portion a mile to a mile and a half wide. From explorations made by other members of the same expedition, we learn that it is navigable for 1,800 miles, and passes mainly through a wooded country. It is frozen up for seven and a half to eight months of the year, and has in summer a very rapid current. Its most northern point is in about latitude 66 deg. N., and it need hardly be said that an arctic climate exists. A temperature of 58 deg. Fah., or ninety degrees below freezing, was the lowest cold experienced. The summer, as in Greenland, was intensely warm. Dwelling on its banks, were found some eight or nine native tribes, vary. ing from a people near the coast, resembling Esquimaux, to representatives of the buckskin-clothed, much-bedaubed, and highly ornamented Indians of the interior. On the Youkon, few of the natives have ever tasted "fire-water," and they only see traders once a year, They are in con sequence a decidedly original and unsophisticated people. THE NOISY PALM.-In some species of palms, the flower-sheath, or spathe, surrounding the spadix and the flowers, opens suddenly with an audible sound. Richard Scomberg has, like myself, observed this phenomenon in the flowering of the Oriodoxa oleracea. This first opening of the flowers of the palms accompanied by sound, recals the vernal dithyrambus of Pindar, and the moment when, in Argive Nemea, "the first opening shoot of the date-palm proclaims the arrival of balmy spring" ("Phy siology of Plants," Humboldt). London: Published for the Proprietors, by S. D. EWINS and SON, 9, Ave Maria Lane, St. Paul's; ROGERSON and TUXFORD, 265, Strand; and to be procured, by order, of all Booksellers in Town and Country. PRINTED BY ROGERSON AND TUXFORD, |