lives, an answer to the taunts of the atheist.

Religion should influence

our speech, our tempers, our actions. The world should see that Christianity does not countenance anything that is bad, but ever shows a "more excellent way." A spirit of lying, theft, evil speech, is not the spirit of Jesus, and they alone are His followers who put these things away. They are the signs of "the old man," and the Christian is one who, having put off "the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts," has "put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness."

Judged by that solemn hour, when men can be false no longer, when days of anger, theft, corrupt communication, shall have ended, when men can be troubled and vexed no more-how sad it seems that they should act otherwise now! If men were less rash, more impressed with their solemn destiny, the exhortation of the Apostle would not be needed-" Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice; and be ye kind one to another forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you." But, on the contrary, our life would prove that we were gradually attaining unto the perfect manhood, becoming more and more like our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ-God's ideal and type of true life. Mold, Flintshire.

Science and Revelation.

6

D. B. H.

"It is unnecessary to enter into any lengthened argument to prove the existence of a forming Power. Design is apparent everywhere throughout the universe. Truly, the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth His handywork;' but especially is it visible in the human frame. It is a difficult matter to say where design is most apparent. The examination of a hair, of a tooth, or of any of the more simple structures, demonstrates it as clearly as one of the most complex; it is evinced as much in the contraction of the minutest artery as in the pulsation of the heart itself. It has been well remarked, that an examination of the eye ought to be a cure for atheism. It is indeed a wondrous organ, well calculated to excite our admiration and convince us of a Deity. Examine its internal structure, strictly conformed as that is to optical principles, provided with a lens to bring the rays of light to a focus, which lens is more convex in the fish than in a terrestrial animal, in order to be suited to the media through which the light must reach it; with various humours, analagous to the lenses of the telescope, both in position and office; with a layer of pigment at its posterior part to absorb the superabundant rays of light, thus serving the same purpose as the black paint on the inside of telescopes; with a central hole or pupil, endowed with the power of contracting and dilating, in order to admit various degrees of light. Think of the care that has been taken for its

6

safe preservation! It is encased in an osseous socket composed of seven different bones, and is thus protected from the effects of violence. The eyelids, moreover, form an additional means of protection. Socrates well describes their use when he says-Think you not that it looks like the work of prescience, because the sight is delicate, to have guarded it with eyelids, which open when we want to see, but shut when we go to sleep; to have fenced these lids with eyelashes, which, like a sieve, strain the dusty wind, and hinder it from hurting the eyes; and over the eyes to have placed eyebrows, as caves, to carry off the sweat of the brow from disturbing the sight.' It was necessary that the eye should be kept moist and clean;' for this purpose it is constantly bathed by a liquid, the secretion of the lachrymal gland, which, having performed its office, passes down a duct at the inner angle of the eye, and thus is carried away. The manner in which the eye is adapted to the action of light upon it, is well worthy of observation. Light is reflected in all directions, from every object on which it falls; and by the marvellous construction of a mirror-the retina-these reflected rays convey form, colour, etc. in fact, a perfect representation of external objects, into the interior of the head. Thus, by a mysterious connexion between mind and matter, the faculty of sight is produced in living beings. Surely this is a proof of Almighty workmanship and skill! The eye pre-eminently bears the stamp of perfection and completeness; nothing could be added that would not encumber-nothing removed that would not injure it. How different is this from man's workmanship! Every work of his hands admits of improvement;-nothing with him is complete.

"Let us remember not to under-rate those studies by means of which we find out God, and by which His perfections are made known to us in part. To our finite minds, it is a great thing to uncover and inspect the marvellous apparatus of the human frame; to have removed the veil which lay on the face of nature; to have discovered some of those laws, so simple, yet so sublime, by which our lives are sustained.

"By enlarging our views of nature, we enlarge our conceptions of nature's God, and new light is thrown on the power, wisdom, and infinity of the Deity. This is good, but it is not enough. Without a higher knowledge than this, our wisdom is folly, our light is darkness. Another teacher is needed besides nature, another instructor other than creation. From the book of nature, then, let us turn to that of God's revealed truth, which has broken the silence of nature, and conveyed a message from the unseen world, intimating pardon to the sinful race of Adam. Revelation has but little to say of a scientific character, and even that little has appeared to be opposed to science; but in the end, when our knowledge becomes perfect, they will assuredly be found to support one another. It is not strange that the Bible does not exhibit the philosophical, for its object is not to reveal scientific phenomena, but to instruct men in the truths of religion; the former is a human work, but the latter, without Revelation, must have remained unknown, as they did for ages before God taught them. Believing that God proclaims Himself alike in Revelation and in Nature, we must feel assured that a glorious harmony exists between these two manifestations of one Author, and that, while He has revealed religion by His written word, He is not deceiving those who are investigating nature by means of the intellectual powers He has given us.”

THE

MOUNTAINS OF
OF THE

BIBLE.*

ARARAT AND NOAH:-OR, THE INTEGRITY OF HOLY CHARACTER.

ONE of the sublimest spectacles in this world of ours is, a man standing in the integrity of holy principle and character, in the midst of universal corruption and evil. There is all the difference which can be conceived between profession and reality. Life is a real thing, and to get well through life, we must be real men-men of rare stuff and soul. There is much to withstand and even to oppose in the every-day maxims and doings of the world. Truth, justice, honesty, mercy, and all the higher qualities, are sacrificed to the gains of time and the increase of wealth. Self is put in the room of God, and the claims of religion are lost sight of in the pursuits of business. A prosperous commerce leads to luxurious modes of living; with the increase of luxury comes the growth of corruption and of vice; and as society becomes corrupt, are its very foundations loosened and endangered. Yet these are the very conditions in which the integrity of holy principle and character should be most conspicuous. Look at Noah. In the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, he stood erect and true. His meekness and his constancy, his fidelity and his fortitude, his heroism and his piety, challenge imitation. If we cannot reach our example, let us at least faithfully follow him. His footprints are yet visible in the great roadway of life; and by pursuing the same holy and self-denying path, we may make our lives sublime. Our principles must have their root in the deeper depths of the soul. Our religion must be something more than a form or a name. It must come out as a self-revealing power in the whole of our life and conversation, whose existence cannot be denied, and the memory of whose impressions may survive the rudest shocks and revolutions of time. Then shall we stand in our integrity. Among the faithless, we shall be found faithful -true to God, true to ourselves, and true to the world.

But we must not lose sight of the fact, that the inner life of the soul can be maintained only by deep and daily communion with God. As of Enoch, so of Noah, it is said, that "he walked with God." His piety was nurtured in secret. He had his hours of separation and retirement -his seasons of deeper communion with the unseen and the eternal. As a fountain leaps to light," so his soul was ever rising into the Infinite Life, and being filled unto the fulness of God. The secret of his might lay in the depth of his devotion. He was a man of prayer, and therefore a man of power. His interior spiritual life was a thing of ever-increasing growth and development, and in the degree of this inward vitality was his qualification for the most arduous and the most self-denying duty.

* The introductory chapter to this series will be found in the Magazine, for October last, page 261.-T. E. T.

He burtiebed his armour in the ligin of bearen and feared not to face

his most desty foe He gathered up his gun into himself, and was in constant readiness for the w of God; so that when the death-wave came rolling its dark waters over the wohl it seemed but to lift him nearer to the stars, that he might walk among those brighter, purer lights of heaven. He was a child of humanity, but he was also a man of God. His piety was made up not of feeling and of sentiment, but of stern and unchangeable principles. These principles enforced and heightened his whole character.

All life has its source in God; and as it comes from Him, so it ever tends to Him. In Him alone does the soul live, and move, and have its being. As the flower not only sips the dew of the morning, but expands and bursts in the light of day, and makes its bosom the bed of the sun, so the heart of the good man dilates under holy and spiritual influence, until it becomes filled with God, and finds the exuberance of its joy in the fulness of His life. This might be the common happiness of all, whereas it is the rare privilege of the few. To be so replenished from the higher world, we must get away from the business, and strife, and din of earth. We must have our moments of solitude and seclusion, and be prepared to yield our whole nature to the power of the ever-living and transforming Spirit. The way into the holiest of all is now made manifest, and we may draw near in the full assurance of faith. There is a Mediator between God and man, and through Him we may enter into immediate fellowship with the Father of our spirits, who will supply our waiting and worshipping souls according to the riches of His own glory. If our hearts be but susceptible and receptive, he will communicate out of his own fulness exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think. But as the source of our life is in God, its development must be from within ourselves. Just as "the sun smiles on the earth, and the exuberant earth returns the smile in flowers," so, in proportion as we are replenished and blessed from on high, must be the consecration and the devotedness of our whole being to Him who hath redeemed us, and through whose resurrection we have been begotten to the hope of eternal glory.

Are our hearts right with God? Have we come out from the world, and are we living in a state of holy and happy separation from its principles and its pursuits? Are we humbly walking with Him in deeper and diviner communion? Are we His witnesses in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, and in their midst do we shine as lights in the world? Having found salvation in the ark of redeeming love, are we absorbed in the happiness of others? Never-never let us cease to tell a perishing wow that for them there is no ark of safety but in the mediation of Christ; that for them there is no Saviour but in the person of Incarnate Love; and that for them there is no heaven but in the presence of Unchangeable Nolinos - 'a me extitini, “Chooseerated Heights" by the

Youths' Department.

THE OSPREY, OR FISHING EAGLE.

"The Osprey is essentially a fish-feeder, and therefore constantly frequents the sea-shore and the larger lakes. The appetite of the Osprey is enormous, and the quantity of fish he consumes almost incredible his ordinary flight is heavy, but he will sometimes sail on out-spread and unmoving pinions, and then there is something inexpressibly graceful in his appearance ;-sometimes he will descend head foremost, as though about to plunge fathoms deep into the water, and then suddenly stop in mid career, and hang suspended on gently winnowing pinions. In this position he seems to fascinate the fishes, for they come to the surface, when, fixing his eye on the form of some large fish looming through the wave, he falls like a thunder-bolt upon his prey, often disappearing entirely beneath the water; after a few seconds they rise together to the surface, and then comes the struggle for life; the muscular pinions of the bird, and the powerful tail of the fish combine together in lashing the water into spray, so that both the strugglers are for a time hidden from our view. In some instances, the fish, too powerful for the bird, has dragged him down and consigned him to a watery grave, and the skeletons of both, washed on shore by the storm-stirred waves, have been found bleaching side by side in a sheltered bay of the restless Atlantic.

"The legs and toes are quite without feathers, and are covered with large coarse bluish scales. The outer toe, which usually points forwards, moves in a ball and socket-joint with the greatest possible ease, so that the bird can turn it backwards or forwards, or sideways, just as he pleases when he clutches a fish, all the four toes, which are of equal length, and whose under-surface is thickly studded with short, sharp points, so that they are rough as a file, point different ways;

while the claws, which are black, are long, very much hooked, and very sharppointed, so that the fish is held by a grappling instrument of the most perfect and formidable kind; and not even the slippery eel has the slightest chance of escaping his formidable grasp.

"The Osprey builds an enormous nest on ledges of rock, the towers of deserted and ruined castles, which is composed of huge sticks, and is a most unshapely and unsightly mass :-the female lays two or three eggs of a dirty white or very pale red-brown colour, blotched with darker markings at the end.

"In the United States this bird is migratory, arriving in the spring with the shoals of fishes which afford such abundance of food, and is a great favourite with the Americans, and the theme of many a song.

"A little family party set out one day on a pleasure excursion. As they drove along and emerged from the woods which lay between the house and Lake Clear, one of the boys cried out with unusual animation

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Oh, father, father! what are those birds doing?' at the same time pointing up to the sky.

"He looked up, and saw two large birds high in the air. One was pursued by the other, and seemed to be making great efforts to escape.

He checked the horse,

so as to give all the family an opportunity of seeing their movements. It was really a curious sight. The one which was pursued, appeared to be fleeing for its life. At one time it would suddenly change the direction of its flight, and ascend for a few moments almost perpendicularly, but when nearly reached by its enemy, it would as suddenly pitch down, as if hastening to the earth-at one time it would dart off to the right, then quickly flee to the left-sometimes it would fly in a straight direction at its greatest speed,