ENDURING INTEREST OF EGYPT. Some water canal which flows through the town. The part which I saw looked muddy, and one could guess why: for there were savages standing in it, and cattle brought to drink were allowed to go into it too. Through nasty sheds, very nasty animals, and particularly nasty people, I had to pass about a hundred yards along the banks, encountering terrible odours before I reached a bridge which allowed me to cross to the more respectable part of the town. Here was a fair broad street, with a hard road (the other ways were all loose sand), and along this I passed, observing the houses on either side, some of which were very good. Most of them were detached and stood among trees, shrubs, or flowers, so that this town in the desert has rather a pleasing appearance. way on towards the palace there was a square, with hotels and baths in it, and on one side thereof were donkeys for hire-the only public conveyance. It was broiling hot, and I did not fancy walking on the sand. On the other hand I was somewhat squeamish about exhibiting myself on the outside of a donkey, and there was a conflict of emotions. Exhausted nature prevailed over pride, and I approached a donkey-proprietor, making signs that I wished to know the price per hour. He understood me perfectly, and said, "Ten shilling-hour." I was convinced that he must use the word shilling for some other coin, and, having compassion upon his ignorance, took some pains to satisfy him of his error. But he was quite intelligent and wide awake. "Halfsuvvern," he said; "muss pay; all donkey wanted." He was fixed as kismet, utterly immovable, but a rogue who had overshot his mark. A reasonable advance of price must have been, of necessity, submitted to on the occasion; but this rascal's assurance defeated its object, and I was glad, later in the day, to see his animals standing apparently fresh and unnoticed. I made a push now for the palace, in viewing which I expected at any rate a solid footing instead of the sand, and shelter from the sun; but when I got there I was informed that visitors were not admitted, as preparations for the ball at night were in progress. Foiled here, I and some friends whom I had joined, looked at the outside of the building, which is plain, but lofty and extensive. (The inside I saw at a later hour.) It has a plantation of palm-trees round it, and is separated by a low wall from the road. Afterwards, attracted by a green grove just beyond, we entered an enclosure and were most politely received by M. Pierre, the manager of the fresh-water works, whose domain this was. He was good enough CHRIST AS A REFORMER. to take us over his garden, where by sluices, jets, and artificial rain drawn from the Nile, he has contrived to raise vegetables innumerable, and to surround his house with elegant plants and flowers. Splendid creepers, convolvuluses, the magnificent poinsettia, oleanders, and I know not what other gay blossoms, mingling with rich green leaves, shaded walks, and pavilions overrun with climbing plants, and with the moisture dripping all round them, hardly suffered the mind to realise what this spot was some six years since the very heart of an African wilderness. We were also gratified by the sight of a pond absolutely full of the celebrated lotus plant, whose large leaves nearly hid all the water. The fruit, dark in colour, is shaped like a saucer with a cover on it (I do not know how better to describe it), and it is pierced with numerous holes, or rather tubes, visible in the upper surface, and descending through the fruit to the lower. The diameter is three inches, or thereabouts. In a word, it much resembles the rose of a watering-pot. Having shown us his pretty fresh grounds, and presented us with fruits and flowers, M. Pierre added to his favours by showing us the engines and wheels by which the water is sent over Ismaïlia, and to Port Saïd and the stations on the northern half of the Canal. The engines are of fifty horse-power, and they send 400,000 gallons per diem to Port Saïd. The price of the water, both at Ismailia and Port Saïd, is one franc for one hundred gallons, the cost of one hundred gallons to the company being twenty centimes. The works cost £280,000 sterling. -Blackwood's Magazine. CHRIST AS A REFORMER. ONE striking characteristic of Jesus as a reformer was that He had no favourites. We do not mean human favourites; He could not have been man without social and individual preferences. Nor do we refer to theories, since the God-man had no theories whatever. He taught as one having authority, because He knew all men. But He never exalted one virtue at the expense of another. He did not denounce one sin and let others go unrebuked. preached no "favourite doctrine;" He excluded from His discourses no "unimportant truth." He did no special pleading, rode no hobbies, gave to no form of sin a monopoly of His dislike. He CHRIST AS A REFORMER. This impartial attitude distinguishes Him from all human reformers. Men are not only finite, but also spiritually deformed. We have one-sided temperaments; graces not too much developed, but out of proportion. The man who sat up all night to hate his wicked neighbour, and forgot meanwhile to pray for his friends, was no more a moral monstrosity than the average philanthropist. We dwarf ourselves by our narrowness of sympathy, by disbursing principles, as we do patent rights, only to be exercised within a prescribed limit. Our pet dislike eclipses for the time being all our loves. But Christ's soul was symmetrical. He loved every thing holy and hated every thing wicked with His whole heart. His advocacy of a particular reform did not awaken suspicion of insincerity, for He was in earnest about all reforms. His denunciation of a special abuse was the more powerful because there lay behind it a manifest hatred of every possible kind of sin. See Him in the temple. He wields-what? A sword? a spear? any weapon which unarmed men need fear? A scourge of small cords, or of the rushes with which the sheep and oxen were littered. With this wisp of braided straw was it, that He compelled the merchants to take their merchandise from the temple? Or was it by His moral power? What would Christ's moral power have been had the stock-speculators of that day been able to say, "A religious monomanic!" His enemies brought against Him every charge which had the least colouring of truth or of plausibility. They compared His miracles to incantations. They interpreted His assertion of Sonship as blasphemy; they criticised His social habits, and sneered at His democratic affiliations. But they never dared to say that He was partial in the presentation of truth. He was as loyal to Cæsar as to God, within the sphere of His accountability to him. Had it been otherwise, those hardened traders who drove their gains at the very threshold of the holy temple would have stood their ground against the fanatic. "Very well to be zealous about the purity of worship, while one countenances the cant of these scribes and lawyers. Well enough to break up honest traffic, in this outer court, while self-righteous Pharisees go unrebuked into the holy place and thank God that they are not as other men are! Preachers always make fools of themselves when they talk of men of business!" They might have used such language of any human philanthropist, and there would have been some salt of truth in POETRY. it. But of Christ they could not say that He was a purblind moralizer. No part of the light which was in Him was darkness. He saw the entire truth and never blenched before it. This proved His divine power. The eagle only can face the sun. Those merchants were not cowards to run from a weaponless Nazarene, for nothing can withstand the indignation of absolute integrity. We cannot, like Him, comprehend the whole round of truth. We cannot even look with unbeclouded eyes upon the small segment which lies within our vision. But we can learn to take broader views, not supposing that we are necessarily reforming the world because we succeed in making particular sinners uncomfortable. When we have barely scotched one small snake, we shall not cry that we have slain leviathan, that crooked serpent. And if, while we are praying for light, some ray from heaven should fall upon our ecclesiastical Axminster or upon our handsomely bound political or social creeds, we shall not forthwith close the shutter lest our pet furniture become faded and shopworn. We shall remember that true reform has its seat in the heart, which only the Spirit of God can renew, and be willing to be led by that Spirit into all truth. Poetry. THERE IS NO DEATH. THERE is no death! The stars go down There is no death! The dust we tread Shall change beneath the summer showers To golden grain or mellow fruit, Or rainbow-tinted bowers. The granite rocks disorganize To feed the hungry moss they bear; The forest leaves drink daily life From out the viewless air. There is no death! The leaves may fall; ANECDOTES AND SELECTIONS. There is no death! An angel form He leaves our heart all desolate; He plucks our fairest, sweetest flowers; The bird-like voice whose joyous tones Amid the tree of life. Born into that undying life, They leave us but to come again; And ever near us, though unseen, The dear immortal spirits tread; For all the boundless universe Anecdotes and Selections. FREQUENT PRAYER.-Bishop Taylor beautifully remarks:-") "Prayer is the key to open the day, and the bolt to shut in the night. But as the clouds drop the early dew, and the evening dew upon the grass, yet it would not spring and grow green by that constant and double falling of the dew, unless some great shower, at certain seasons, did supply the rest; so the customary devotion of prayer, twice a day, is the falling of the early and latter dew; but if you will increase and flourish in works of grace, empty the great clouds sometimes, and let them fall in a full shower of prayer; close out the seasons when prayer shall overflow, like Jordan in time of harvest." QUAINT TITLES OF BOOKS.-In 1668 a pamphlet was published in London, entitled, "A most Delectable Sweet Nosegay for God's Saints to smell at." About the year 1640 there was published a work entitled, "A Pair of Bellows to Blow off the Dust cast upon John Fry;" and another called, "The Snuffers of Divine Love." The author of a work on charity entitles his book, "Hooks and Eyes for Believers' Breeches;" another, who professed a wish to exalt poor human nature, called his labours, "High-heeled Shoes for Dwarfs in Holiness;" and another, "Crumbs of Comfort for the Chickens of the Covenant." A Quaker, whose outward man the authorities thought proper to imprison, published A Sigh of Sorrow for the Sinners of Zion, Breathed out of a Hole in an Earthly Vessel, known by the name of Emanuel Fish." 66 |