It breeds in the northern and western isles of Scotland and on the coast of Cornwall. It incubates on a single egg (perhaps two), purely white, in the holes of rocks, in the burrows of rats or rabbits, and under large stones. The female utters a purring noise, while brooding over her egg or young. The latter remains in its retreat for some weeks, till feathered and capable of flight, and meanwhile is fed by the parents with oily matter ejected from their stomachs. Though seen out at sea, particularly in gloomy weather, it is to a degree nocturnal in its habits, especially during the time of incubation and rearing its young. It remains quiet in its retreat till evening sets, and then sallies forth, making a shrill whistling, as well as purring noise. The length of this species is about 5 inches. The general colour is blackish, tail and quills pure black; a patch behind the thighs, and a bar across the upper tail coverts, white; a few of the wing coverts and scapularies slightly edged with white. "The flowing weeds and birds, that meet And tell that, fresh and new and sweet, Are like the hints of that high clime Towards which we steer o'er waves of time." "It is indeed an interesting sight," says Wilson, to observe these little birds, in a gale, coursing over the waves, down the declivities and up the ascents of the foaming surf that threatens to burst over their heads, sweeping along the hollow troughs of the sea as in a sheltered valley, and again mounting with the rising billow, and just above its surface occasionally dropping their feet, which, striking the water, throw them up again with additional force, sometimes leaping, with both legs parallel, on the surface of the roughest waves, for several yards at a time. Meanwhile they continue coursing from side to side of the ship's wake, making excursions far and wide to the right and to the left, now a great way ahead, and now shooting astern for several hundred yards, returning again to the ship as if she were all the while stationary, though perhaps running at the rate of ten knots an hour. But the most singular peculiarity of this bird is its faculty of standing, and even running, on the surface of the water, which it performs with apparent facility. When any greasy matter is thrown overboard, these birds instantly collect around it, facing to windward, with their long wings expanded, and their webbed feet patting the water. The lightness of their bodies, and the action of the wind on their wings, enable them with ease to assume this position. In calm weather they perform the same manoeuvre by keeping their wings just so much in action as to prevent their feet from sinking below the surface." "There are," says the same writer in another place, "few persons, who have crossed the Atlantic, that have not observed these solitary wanderers of the deep skimming along the surface of the wild and wasteful ocean, flitting past the vessel like swallows, or following in her wake, gleaning their scanty pittance of food from the rough and whirling surges. Habited in mourning, and making their appearance generally in greater numbers previous to or during a storm, they have long been fearfully regarded by the ignorant and superstitious not only as the foreboding messengers of tempests and danger to the hapless mariner, but as wicked agents, connected somehow or other in creating them. "Nobody,' say they, 'can tell any thing of where they come from or how they breed, though (as sailors sometimes say) it is supposed that they hatch their eggs under their wings as they sit on the water. This mysterious uncertainty of their origin, and the circumstances above recited, have doubtless given rise to the opinion, so prevalent among this class of men, that they are in some way or other connected with the prince of the power of the air. In every country where they are known, their names have borne some affinity to this belief. They have been called witches, stormy petrels, the devil's birds, and mother Cary's chickens, probably from some celebrated ideal hag of that name; and their unexpected and numerous appearance has frequently thrown a momentary damp over the mind of the hardiest seaman. It is the business of the naturalist, and the glory of philosophy, to examine into the reality of these things, to dissipate the clouds of error and superstition wherever they darken and bewilder the human understanding, and to illustrate nature with the radiance of truth." "As well," says Wilson, "might they curse the midnight lighthouse, that, star-like, guides them on their watery way, or the buoy that warns them of the sunken rocks below, as this harmless wanderer, whose manner informs them of the approach of the storm, and thereby enables them to prepare for it." The petrels are nocturnal birds, When, therefore, they are seen flying about and feeding by day, the fact appears to indicate thatthey have been driven from their usual quarters by a storm; and hence, perhaps, arose the association of the bird with the tempest. Though the petrels venture to wing their way over the wide ocean as fearlessly as our swallows do over a millpond, they are not therefore the less sensible to danger; and, as if feelingly aware of their own weakness, they make all haste to the nearest shelter. When they cannot then find an island or SHORT READINGS FOR FAMILY PRAYERS. a rock to shield them from the blast, they fly towards the first ship they can descry, crowd into her wake, and even close under the stern, heedless, it would appear, of the rushing surge, so that they can keep the vessel between them and the unbroken sweep of the wind. It is not to be wondered at, in such cases, that their low wailing note of "weet, weet," should add something supernatural to the roar of the waves and whistling of the wind, and infuse an ominous dread into minds prone to superstition. The popular opinion among sailors, that the petrels carry their eggs under their wings in order to hatch them, is no less unfounded than the fancy of their causing storms: it is, indeed, physically impossible. On the contrary, the petrels have been ascertained to breed on rocky shores, in numerous communities, like the bank-swallow, making their nests in the holes and cavities of the rocks above the sea, returning to feed their young only during the night with the superabundant oily food from their stomachs. The quantity of this oily matter is so considerable, that in the Ferroe isles they use petrels for candles, with no other preparation than drawing a wick through the body of the birds from the mouth to the rump. While nestling, they make a clattering or croaking noise similar to frogs, which may be heard during the whole night on the shores of the Bahama and Bermuda islands, and the coasts of Cuba and Florida, where they abound. Forster says they bury themselves by thousands in holes under ground, where they rear their young, and lodge at night; and at New Zealand the shores resound with the noise, similar to the clucking of hens or the croaking of frogs (Pontoppidan, speaking of those of Norway, says like the neighing of a horse), which they send forth from their conceal ment. "Bird of the ocean, whose fluttering wing Seems ever to touch the brink of the grave, How can it be that so feeble a thing Successfully combats the wind and the wave? He who hath formed thee, he only can give Strength 'mid the war of the waters to live. "As the petrel braves the hurricane's gloom, No. XXVIII. BY THE REV. HENRY WOODWARD, Rector of Fethard, Tipperary. THE CONNEXION OF THE OLD AND NEW TESTA MENTS A PROOF OF THE TRUTH OF REVELATION. IT has been observed that the most startling objections to the truth of revelation turn over, on the fullest examination, to the side of its strongest evidences. Thus the harsher traits of the divine administration, the sweeping desolations and wholesale massacres of which God's people are his appointed instruments-what does all this mysterious dispensation prove? That the scriptures give a false representation of the divine nature, and therefore cannot be true? No: it shows, on the contrary, that the characters which the Old Testament attributes to Jehovah are not fictitious ones, but precisely those which have been in all ages displayed by that invisible Providence which rules the world. It is "at his word the stormy wind ariseth." It is by his command that earthquakes, famines, plagues, and pestilences spare neither age nor sex, neither tender mothers nor their helpless infants. Well, then, what is all this but the very same harshness of administration, carried on by unseen agency, in which, according to the sacred history, a visible and human machinery is employed? Nor let it be said, "O, but there is a difference between these two. Angels, or whatever ministering spirits God may be pleased to send as executioners of his wrath, may be so constituted that to bear such stern commissions and to inflict such woes may not re-act upon themselves, and impart a character of ferocity to their minds; whereas, man is so formed that he assimilates to the work in which he is habitually engaged, whether it be to save or to destroy." But, even if this principle did apply to the exterminating Jew, and that the sense that he acted by divine command, and was not a voluntary but necessitated agent; if this, and other correctives of a system so replete with mercy, did not altogether counteract this tendency, yet, does not the acknowledged Sovereign, who sends plague and pestilence, employ, not by a word of command from heaven, but by his all-directing pro this, that the apostles, though lovers of truth, found it so essential to the new religion to engraft it on the predictions of the old, that, in this one particular, they yielded to expediency at the expense of right, and thus fabricated a scheme which seemed to correspond to and fulfil the Jewish prophecies? Absurd as such a notion altogether is, yet, if even for a moment we could entertain it, we might expect to find that there would be some pains taken to disentangle the prophecies from the context in which they are found. I mean so far as to show that Christianity, though founded on the former, had no concord nor agreement with the latter. Such would naturally be the wish and the endeavour of men circumstanced as this hypothesis contemplates, of persons who were the fabricators of a system of purity, holiness, and charity, grounded by a pious fraud (if such a case were possible) on the prophecies of the Old Testament. Such men would, doubtless, have been anxious to vindicate themselves from the charge of adopting, in the lump, that scheme of which the prophecies formed a part. They would have disclaimed all connexion with its bloody sacrifices, its gorgeous ritual, its ministrations of death. There would be elaborate explanations, at least, on these topics. There would be something to indicate that they were felt to be weak points, and that the case stood in need of some apology. But nothing of the kind appears; and it is on this fact that I rest my argument. I repeat it, that nothing can satisfactorily account for the manner in which the originators and writers of the New Testament appeal to the Old, but a certain knowledge and unhesitating conviction. upon their part that the latter was a divine economy, "whose builder and maker was God." vidence-does he not, I say, employ man as the instrument of man's destruction? Who that believe there is a God can doubt that it was his hand which let loose the northern deluge upon the Roman empire, and that bared the bosom of America to the Spaniard's sword? These are the present mysteries of an inscrutable Providence: these are the clouds which now intercept our view, but which will, at the appointed season, clear away, when all is lost in one bright and universal blaze of evidence that "God is love." But still these darker lines of the divine administration answer, amongst others, this valuable purpose they identify the character of God, as set forth in the scripture, with the character of God as witnessed by the phenomena which we see around us. They enable us to take up the language of the apostle, and to say to the objector, Is he the God of the Jews only? Is he not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also." If we wanted arguments to prove, what is as clear as proof can make it, that the Old and New Testaments are a true revelation, there is one which comes with peculiar force to my own mind. It is this: What could induce the authors of the latter to identify their system with the former, but a firm conviction that it was of God? What could induce them to refer to it as inspired, and to make themselves responsible for it; to implicate themselves, and make common cause, with an institution in many respects so wholly at variance with their own? What but an assurance that, though clouds and darkness might rest upon it, it was nevertheless divine? Compare the simple and spiritual worship of the gospel with the gorgeous and pompous ceremonial of the Jewish ritual. Compare the lives of the Old Testament saints, their multiplication of wives and concubines, with the spotless purity which the New Testament enjoins. Compare the bloody wars and vaunting triumphs of Israel over its prostrate foes, with the non-resistance, the longsuffering, the love of enemies, which the gospel breathes in every page; and then account for it, if you can, why the Author of the Christian religion, his apostles and evangelists, should have encumbered themselves with a vast machinery apparently so little to their purpose, so practically opposed to the main points they had to carry, so repugnant to the philosophy of the world and to the prejudices of those Gentiles to whom it was their object to preach the gospel? What, I say, but madness could have induced them (if, as some allege, they were benevolent forgers of a pious fraud) to have allied themselves to, and entangled themselves with, a system which could only clog the wheels of their undertaking, and retard its motion; nay, to all human appearance, forbid the possibility of its advance? Will it be said that the object was merely to conciliate the Nothing, my brethren, can better mark our Jews? This might indeed be urged, if the ori- own primitive simplicity, than the union of ginators of the new dispensation had not shown this divine book with the early practice of set that they were ready to encounter death rather public prayers, and reading and preaching the than make one single compromise with the pre-word of God. In reading verse by verse these judices of that people. How is it possible, then, that men so holy, so heavenly, so strictly veracious, should build the very foundation of their system upon falsehood, and this in order to conciliate those whose favour they would in no other instance sacrifice one jot or tittle of principle to secure? But will it still be argued, in spite of all THE CHURCH'S WARNING. A Sermon, BY THE VEN. CHARLES JAMES HOARE, M.A., Archdeacon and Canon of Winchester, and Rector of Godstone, Surrey. PSALM XCV. 7, 8. "To-day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your heart." THE book of psalms has been from the earliest language of the ancient church; and Chrisages the book of the church. It was the tians found it ready to their hand in the first assemblies for Christian worship: "Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs; singing and making melody in your heart unto the Lord." songs of Zion, we pledge each other, as of old, want nor a pang, not a sorrow nor a joy of the to their blessed and holy contents. Not a human heart can exist, which is not here described; praise and prayer, promise and threatening, every force of warning, every lesson of instruction, is here blended with the most engaging declarations of the character, the purposes, and the acts of God: and in none more do all these several qualities appear than in that chosen hymn of each morning's service, from which the text is taken. In this psalm we find the most animating invitations to praise God, founded on a sublime summary of the divine power, together with the personal interest of each creature that breathes in the divine blessing. "We are the people of his pasture, the sheep of his hand." And then, in order to draw the all-important distinction between the people of God and the mere children of this world, the warning of the text is added. The tribes of Israel are reminded of the "provocation" of their forefathers in "the day of temptation in the wilderness." God himself is introduced as charging them with their deep and incurable errors; and the fearful word of his oath is again recited, "To whom I sware in my wrath, that they should not enter into my May God enable us at this time profitably to gather from the words of this psalm, first, the motives to praise God; and, next, the fearful consequences of neglect or delay; concluding with some general reflections. I. We have first, then, a most interesting mutual invitation to praise God: "O come, let us sing unto the Lord: let us heartily rejoice in the strength of our salvation. Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving: and show ourselves glad in him with psalms." And this at once from a sense of his greatness, and a confidence in his fatherly and personal regards. : His greatness. "The Lord is a great God and a great King above all gods;" and, as a proof of his great power, "In his hands are all the corners of the earth, and the strength of the hills is his also: The sea is his; and he made it, and his hands prepared the dry land." The majesty of power, the extent of dominion, are those attributes of a king which at once demand and attract the reverence of his subjects. If we could imagine the sovereign rule of the whole earth vested in one great monarch; and, more still, if we could suppose him to have brought together all the varying elements of his vast empire by the strength of his own arm, or the wisdom of his own superior intelligence; we should doubtless regard him, and speak of him accordingly, as one of a superior order of beings, and should address him in terms of the most unqualified respect. And yet what is such a one to compare with him who created the very materials of his empire, who made the sea and the dry land; who in the sense of a divine omnipresence holds in his hands all the corners of the earth; and who hath imparted to the hills their strength, and to the very universe its being? Ŏther qualities, no doubt, are necessary to command our full veneration and heartfelt worship. To greatness we are taught in this place to add goodness, and that in its fullest and widest sense; a goodness exercised towards the creatures whom he had formed, and who nevertheless had become sinners in rebellion against his just authority and laws. To such beings we have then to mark further the extent of his condescension, and the personal interest he is pleased to take in their restoration, and their highest welfare: "For he is the Lord our God; and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand." "Let us then worship and fall down, and kneel before our Maker." Yes, my brethren, he, who "holds the sea in the hollow of his hand, and weigheth the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance," hath also his people, whom he looks upon with a mindful and affectionate regard: he has his flock, every member of which, as a sheep in his fold, he considers as if none but that flock, none but each individual in that fold, were the object of his care and tenderness and love. A sense of our own personal and individual interest in the love of our supreme and heavenly King is that which must lie at the root of all our filial regards towards him, of all holy worship, and all acceptable praise. There is in these words, "We are the people of his pasture, the sheep of his hand," an irregularity of expression which is in itself highly instructive. If we are his "people,” it is still a relation under the kindly figure of a flock gently tended and pastured; and, if we are his "sheep," it is still as a people under the guidance and governance of an infinite and uncontrollable dominion. And, further still, while such a figure justly represents the character of God as looking with care on every individual being in his creation; so does it also, through the gracious operation of a true faith, lead us to him, who in the new dispensation takes to himself the title of "Shepherd," "the good shepherd," who, having "fed his flock like a shepherd," at length "lays down his life for the sheep." A consideration, indeed, of this new and covenanted relation to God, through Jesus Christ, will bring us before him in the disposition and affection of soul which best befits his praise. When to the assurance of faith we add the confidence of hope, and the sense of God's returning favour to us, through the intercession of his atoning Son, we then learn the highest motive to an adoring worship. Feel, in the first instance, your unworthiness to approach, to address, to praise your God; be sensible that sin has set you at a distance from him; and that it is not only his greatness which is above us, but his justice which is against us, and armed for our punishment, and only to be intreated and appeased through the Son of his love, the incarnate Saviour. What do we indeed owe to that extent of the divine mercy revealed to us in the gospel, which surmounts even our highest sins, and which reaches to the depths of our vilest lusts to snatch a soul from the lowest hell? How truly does our church address the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, as "declaring his almighty power most chiefly in shewing mercy and pity." "His mercy reacheth unto the heavens, and his truth unto the clouds." He hath "magnified his word" of mercy above all his attribute of "power." He "willeth not the death of a sinner; but that he should turn, and live." He has linked himself to us by the double title of Creator and Redeemer. Nothing, in truth, but our own wilful perseverance in evil can obstruct his purposes of grace; nothing but our own obstinate silence and obdurate hearts can refuse to sing forth all his praise. II. This, then, leads to the second portion of the psalm before us, and the solemn warning more especially embraced in the words of the text; a warning, doubtless, generally applicable, as the offer is universally inviting: "To-day, if ye will hear his voice"-his voice of invitation, of mercy, of command, of sovereignty-"harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness." The further and stronger application of the threat which follows may be best taken from the word of inspiration itself, as written in the third and fourth chapters of the epistle to the Hebrews, to which I would now direct your attention. The apostle St. Paul there addresses the Hebrew Christians avowed, baptized, and enlightened professors of Christ's religion, even as ourselves in the very words of warning now before us: "Wherefore (as the Holy Ghost saith, To-day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness; when your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years. Wherefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do always err in their heart; and they have not known my ways. So I sware in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest). Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God. But exhort one another daily, while it is called To-day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin" (Heb. iii. 7-13). How fearfully near are the mercies of the gospel, and the threatened judgments of God, for neglecting those mercies! If it were otherwise-if we might crowd, or encumber rather, the courts of the Lord with the mere offerings of the lips, and then carry away our hearts to the works of our covetousness or the lusts of our flesh; we should, perhaps, count more worshippers, and hear louder and more willing praises. But these would be directed, in that case, to one whom we thought wickedly to be such as ourselves. Our praises would be an affront to the majesty of heaven, because offered at the expense of its purity; as if the deceitfulness of sin had blinded not only our own frail and erring hearts, but had even eluded, had even baffled and circumvented the eye of the Most High. "Be not deceived: God is not mocked: for, whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." The Israelites in the wilderness offered but a true picture of many a boastful partaker in greater mercies and higher deliverances than Israel knew. They came forth from Egypt, and then perished in the wilderness through unbelief. Two only, of that generation, entered into the rest of the promised land.-We are come forth from the ignorance and bondage of heathenism, and have passed through the waters of baptism. But what may still be our portion?" There remaineth, truly, a rest to the people of God." But what should be our "fear, lest a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it?" "To-day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts." First, I say in conclusion, beware of a hardened heart: "hardened," as the apostle has said, "through the deceitfulness of sin." The heart is deceitful, and sin is deceitful. We have a double enemy; our hearts ever liable to be led astray, to "err," and "not to know God's ways;" and sin ever ready to mislead, so specious, so plausible, so full of excuses, so insinuating in its addresses, so ready alike in the world or in the chamber, in duty even, and much more in leisure, in business and in pleasure. Every thing which does not lead immediately to God has, in a certain way, a tendency to harden the heart against him. Every neglect leads to more neglect. The heart is ever ready to fall back, like a vessel afloat that is forced against the stream. Prayer insensibly becomes a burden, the word of God (God's word) unacceptable; church, sabbath, sacrament, all matters of indifference; till we live as easy without them as with them. Conscience grows into an annoyance, and we fly from it as from a torment, rather than listen to it as a friend. O! "if ye will hear his voice within you, harden not your hearts." What a tormentor will that conscience prove to be hereafter, which |