loose, and the men being unable to face the storm, or to | reeds, and willows. These, in former times, afforded remain still in the freezing deluge, surpasses description. a retreat for the lion and the ravenous beast. ConIt is not in the power of language to convey an adequate idea of such a tempest." Similar storms were familiar to the minds of the Hebrews; for the Psalmist could say of God, that "He casteth forth his ice like morsels who can stand before his cold?" Scripture abounds with references to the heavy rains and swelling floods in the Holy Land, and the concurring statements of modern travellers bear testimony to the same truth. When Delamartine was on his journey between Nazareth and Kaipha, he declared that "the rain fell not in drops, but was poured down in torrents; while the wind blew in such mighty gusts, that we were compelled to dismount, and take shelter behind a fragment of rock in a ravine. There was one continued and deafening roar of thunder, and the lightning rushed in torrents of fire along the dark sides of Mount Carmel." These heavy falls of water increase the rivers to a great degree. The brook, which is either dried up during the heat of summer, or reduced to a little trickling rill, swells to a prodigious current in the rainy season, becomes unfordable by man or beast, and carries desolation in its course. The rivulets rapidly increase their streams, and pursue, with violent impetuosity, their precipitous tract. Lebanon sends forth its torrents, and the ear is filled with the noise of many waters.

The mountains of Judea feed the brook Kanah. Kedron pours its swollen turbid streams through the valley of Jehosaphat. Eshcol, with its banks, still loaded with the fertile vine, pursues its meandering course with an overflowing flood. Carmel multiplies the resources of "that ancient river, the river Kishon," and causes it to give proofs of its power as in the days of Sisera. But the most remarkable of these rivers is the Jordan. This majestic stream anciently overflowed its banks periodically to a great extent; and although travellers of recent date are divided in their opinions as to the degree it rises at present, yet if we compare the dates and observations of the various visitors, their united testimony will warrant us to conclude, that from the first of February to the end of March it generally receives an increase of about nine or ten feet of water. The following poetical description of its banks near the place where it discharges its volumes of waters into the Dead Sea, by Chateaubriand, who visited it in October, may be read with interest: "A beach covered with salt, dry mud, and moving sands, furrowed as it were by waves. Here and there stunted shrubs with difficulty vegetate upon this inanimate tract; their leaves are covered with salt, which has nourished them; and their bark has a smoky smell and taste. Instead of villages, you see the ruins of a few towers. Through the middle of this valley flows a discoloured river, which reluctantly creeps towards the pestilential lake, by which it is engulphed. Its course amid the sands can be distinguished only by the willows and the reeds that border it; and the Arab lies in ambush among these reeds, to attack the traveller, and to plunder the pilgrim." Pococke visited this place about the last week of March, when the river was high and swollen. He describes Jordan as 66 being deep and very rapid, wider than the Tiber at Rome, and perhaps about as wide as the Thames at Windsor." All travellers agree, that the banks of the Jordan are covered with bushes,

cealed in the recesses of the thicket, they seized upoa the unwary passenger, and the lower animals which came to the river to quench their thirst. When the banks became inundated by the rising flood, the beasts of prey were hastily driven from their retreat, which filled them with rage and fury. They darted forth with great violence, seizing the helpless sheep of the field, and threatening destruction to every creature that came in their way. The ferocity of the lion on these occasions has been employed by the prophet Jeremiah as an instance of the fierce and unsubdued spirit of Nebuchadnezzar, when he was sent to chastise the Edomites: " Behold, he shall come up like a lion from the swellings of Jordan against the habitation of the strong. Jer. xlix. 19. There is another allusion made by the same prophet to the rising of this river, too touching and too sublime to be passed over in silence. This reference seems to have been made by God to check Jeremiah's impatience in his zealous struggle with the factious men of Anathoth. That if he found the opposition of his fellows so formidable and intolerable, how would he be able to endure the contest with the licentious nobles and profane princes of Judah? That if this little conflict crushed his feelings and filled him with despondency, how would he be able to bear up under the accumulated desolations which were soon to overspread the land? That if he were faint hearted and depressed when contending with his rivals in the day of tranquillity, how would he feel when the Babylonians rushed in like a flood, when his countrymen were to cast him into the dungeon, and make his feet fast in the stocks? If thou hast run with footmen, and they have wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with horses? And if in the land of peace, wherein thou trustedst, they wearied thee, then how wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan?" Jer. xii. 5.

Whirlwinds or tornadoes are common in Palestine and the neighbouring states. They are frequent during the cold season, and often precede rain. They are terrible in the desert, and sometimes prove fatal to the weary traveller. "When your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind.” When the celebrated Bruce was exploring the Nile, Le was seized by a whirlwind, which carried a camel to a distance, dashed the animal upon the earth with such violence as to break several of its ribs, swept himself and his servants off their feet, and threw them against the ground, "demolished one half of a small hut, as if it had been cut through with a knife, and dispersed the materials all over the plain, leaving the other half standing." It seems to have been one of these furious gusts, called "a great wind from the wilderness," which destroyed the habitation of Job's family, and buried them in its ruins. The following account, given by Bruce, of the whirlwinds in the Great Desert of Africa, is impressive, and well calculated to rivet the attention. That enterprising traveller says :-" In the vast expanse of desert from west to north-west of us, we saw a number of prodigious pillars of sand at different distances, at times moving with great velocity, at others stalking on with majestic slowness. At intervals we thought they were coming in a very few minutes to overwhelm us, and small quantities of sand

more than once reached us; again they would retreat, so as to be almost out of sight, their tops reaching to the very clouds; then the tops often separated from the bodies, and these once disjoined, dispersed in the air, and did not meet more; sometimes they were broken in the middle, as if they were struck with a large cannon shot. At noon they advanced with considerable swiftness upon us, the wind being very strong north. Eleven ranged alongside of us, at about the distance of three miles; the greatest diameter of the larger appeared to me, at the distance, as if it would measure ten feet; they retired from us with a wind at south-east, leaving an impression on my mind to which I can give no name, though surely one ingredient was fear, with a considerable degree of wonder and astonishment." Morier describes the tornadoes in Persia as terrific, carrying in their vortex sand, branches of trees, sweeping the stubble from the fields, and form. ing a communication between earth and heaven. Frequent reference is made to tornadoes in the Word of God. When Isaiah describes the overthrow and ruin of Sennacherib's host, or, as some think, the destruction of the profane assailants of Christ's kingdom in the latter days, he compares them to the chaff or thistledown before the whirlwind: "The nations shall rush like the rushing of many waters: but God shall rebuke them, and they shall flee far off, and shall be chased as the chaff of the mountains before the wind, and like a rolling thing before the whirlwind."

season.

as the grass upon the house-tops, which withereth afore it groweth up." The habitations of the poor were frequently damaged and overturned during the winter Our Saviour makes an instructive allusion to these devastations in his sermon on the mount. In describing the security of the man who places his confidence on the Eternal rock, evinces the presence of his faith by the regeneration of his soul, and proves the vitality of his union with Christ by the ardour of his attachment to purity of conduct; in delineating the fearful delusion of the formalist, who professes to be a disciple of the Lord, and claims the privileges of friendship, while he wantonly tramples on the holiness of God's covenant, and dislikes that saving change of soul which constitutes the germ of spiritual existence,in describing the relative positions of these two opposite characters, Jesus compares the one to a prudent man, who reared his structure on a sure foundation, capable of resisting the flood and the impetuous torrent, and the other, to a foolish person, who, in sluggish insensibility, erected his fabric on the sand, which was overturned by the rain and the tempest. Therefore, whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock. And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand; and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell and great was the fall of it." Matt. vii. 24-27.

66

Though the four months which we have been describing were known to the Hebrews by the terms winter and cold, we should not suppose, on this account, that the weather throughout these periods was severe and ungenial. As the season advanced, the climate was often delightful, and the Jew found profit

While the Jews were exposed to violent hurricanes, sweeping deluges of rain, searching winds, piercing colds, and thunder-storms, they also enjoyed long intervals of agreeable weather, and had strong reasons to bless the Lord for the bounties of the year. The works of nature amongst them were much more prolific and effective than the works of art. The temporal comforts and pleasures of the poor depended almost exclusively on the productions of nature. Their humble dwellings were of the meanest construction, and ill prepared for resisting the furious attacks of the whirl-able and pleasant employment in casting into the ground wind and tempest. Their houses seem to have been his later grain, and in watching over his rising crops. built of the most fragile material, formed of mud, with In Syria the narcissus flowers the greater part of the flat roofs covered with earth, and without chimneys. winter; the hyacinths and violets adorn the ground in In the Indies the habitations of the humble are erected January. The almond-tree puts forth its blossoms in of the same material, and nothing is more common the middle of February, and the apricot and peach unthan for thieves to dig through the wall and plunder fold their buds soon afterwards. In March the ground the unsuspecting inhabitants while asleep. This prac-is loaded with luxuriant verdure, the valleys are decotice seems to have been prevalent during the days of Christ's humiliation, for he commaded his disciples not to lay up for themselves "treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal." The houses of the rich, in the time of our Lord, seem to have been capacious and splendid, erected and adorned according to the rules of Grecian architecture. The modern habitations in Palestine retain much of the ancient construction. "The houses of Jerusalem are heavy, square masses, very low, without chimneys or windows; they have flat terraces or domes on the top, and look like prisons or sepulchres." The dwellings of the humble by the mountain side form terraces, having their roofs covered with earth, with a stone roller lying on the top to flatten the soil, and prevent the rain from entering. This description will lead us to understand the Psalmist, when he pleads that the haters of Zion may "be

rated with a profusion of flowers, whose golden tints and brilliant hues excel David's son in all his splendour. When Pococke passed through the plain of Lydda, he

saw

many tulips growing wild in the fields (in March); and any one who considers how beautiful those flowers are to the eye, would be apt to conjecture that these are the lilies to which Solomon, in all his glory, was not to be compared." In Barbary the beans are full podded toward the end of February, and when stewed with oil and garlic, form the principal food for the people at that period. The latter rain sometimes began to fall in Canaan towards the close of the cold season; this stimulated the swelling crops, and regulated the approach of harvest. The Hebrews calculated upon the intervention of four months between seed-time and reaping. "Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest?"

The period of the year which we have been detail

felt in their own circle, their exertions can reach but a little way."

As to their religious character, more particularly their soundness or unsoundness in the faith, it cannot be denied, and it should not be concealed, that the far larger portion of them, to say the least, are still very defective in their knowledge of the Gospel,-many grievously ignorant and hostile, Arminian, Socinian, Neological, in different stages and degrees. Till very recently, all their colleges or theological seminaries, both in France and Switzerland, might at least, in point of decided influence, be pronounced Socinian. Faithful ministers are, in various quarters, reproached and persecuted by their own brethren. Within these few years, the Rev. M. Monod of Lyons, one of the most distinguished ministers of the Protestant Church, was deposed from his charge through the influence of his colleagues, for no other crime but the faithful preaching of the Cross. In 1833, the same party in the Church published a book, entitled "Letters on Methodism," which, we are informed, consist of a collection of disgraceful calumnies, aimed not only against pious men, but against the most sacred doctrines of the Gospel. The spirit of the party may be gathered from the facts, that they are anxious to be released from the signing of the Confession of Faith, and contend that the Bible Society should confine its labours to the Protestant population, and not meddle with the Roman Catholics. Of course, they support the circulation of the Apocrypha.

there are many distinguished mirristers in the French | them Roman Catholics,-and formed them into a Church, but they stand in need of help; they are in Christian church, increasing at the rate of forty to fifty general encumbered with a weight of occupation; and although the influence of their character is powerfully a-year; established a week-day school, attended by one hundred Roman Catholics of all ages; held public discussions with accomplished priests of the Church of Rome, till the archbishop of the district vainly prohibited his flock from listening to the discussions. Moreover, M. Monod put an agency of young men as tract distributors, &c., &c., into operation, which was felt so powerfully, that the priests of Lyons stuck up large placards, warning their people against the "pernicious little books, which would deprive the holy virgin of the honour which is her due." While faithful professors are thus finding their way into seats of influence, a new and strictly evangelical college has been lately erected at Geneva, presided over by five eminent Christians, and preparing an increasing number of young men for the holy ministry-above thirty. Then it is to be considered that the religious press of France is very much in the hands of the faithful part of the Reformed Church. It is remarked that the Neological party publish almost nothing, and that the religious journals, books, and sermons proceed from the pens of orthodox pastors. The Sower, The Journal of Missions, The Friend of Youth, The Archives of Christianity, are all organs of Christian truta. The chief branch of Christian literature, during the last twenty years, has been sermon writing; and the most popular and wide-spread discourses have been those of evangelical authors, such as Cellerier, Vinet, Grand Pierre, Scholl, and Bonnet,-a mighty contrast, indeed, to the prevailing sermons of the beginning of the century. These are powerful instruments to be wielded by a small party, and indicate the presence, while they provide for the extension, of a salutary influence. To turn to other evidences, we find from the table of M. Soulier that, in 1829, the Reformed Church could point to four hundred and fifty-one Bible associations, one hundred and twenty-four missionary societies, seventy-nine Sabbath schools, and fifty-nine depots for religious tracts. Many of these may be so small and inefficient as to be only nominal, but taken as a whole, they proclaim the existence of spiritual life. And it is worthy of notice, that the evangelical, though a much smaller party, receive three or four times as much in gifts and subscriptions for religious objects as the Neological. If some Bible associations be asleep, others are awake. To that of Paris, not less than from forty to fifty pastors of the French Protestant Church, some of them from a distance of one hundred and fifty to three hundred leagues, assembled on a recent anniversary. Never was there a wider circulation of the Word of God in France than during the last year.

But even among them there is progress. An intelligent writer, one of the ministers of the French Protestant Church, and a correspondent of a religious paper in the United States, to whom I shall have occasion repeatedly to refer, says, (New York Observer, May 1834,) "It may be added, and I say it with joy, that some of the latitudinarian or universalist pastors are inclining more and more to the true and pure evangelical doctrines, and that several among them give the hope of a speedy and thorough conversion." While even the erroneous and hostile are improving, the decidedly evangelical clergy were lately estimated at nearly one hundred, without reckoning the Lutherans. Twenty years ago, we have seen they could scarcely be rated higher than twenty, and what is very cheering, they are yearly increasing in number. In Switzerland there are now more than two hundred faithful ministers of the truth; twenty-five years ago, they were reckoned by so small a number as five. In Paris, the Rev. Mr Baird stated, a few years ago, the Gospel is faithfully preached in six places of worship in French, and in nearly as many places in English. And what is a great matter, M. Monod of Lyons, who was deposed for his faithfulness by his brethren, was, two years ago, installed Professor of Morals and Eloquence at Montauban. The event is a very important one, gratifying, we are informed, to all the Christians of France, who regard the appointment as the beginning of a new era of blessing to the Protestant Church. Some idea of its importance may be formed when it is remembered that, after his deposition, M. Monod was successful in collecting a congregation of four hundred,-one half of

With regard, again, to missionary labour, not only is the spirit of it greatly on the increase, but of late years several men have actually gone forth from the shores of France to the heathen world. Nine have already been settled as missionaries in the north-east of the Cape at four stations, and not long ago six or eight were in a course of study at Paris for the same work. When there is so loud a call for their exertions at home, their self-denied devotement to the foreign field is the more remarkable, and argues the presence of no common zeal. I might appeal to various other proofs of

the renovating spirit of true religion, but it is unnecessary. Perhaps the most striking evidence is to be found in the Popish persecution which, in many quarters, is kindling anew with the revival of the faithful preaching of the Cross. In some quarters the revival, through the labours of the Protestant Church, and the different religious societies which are directed to the spiritual good of the continent, is very marked. We have noticed the case of M. Monod at Lyons. At Strasbourg, the capital of Alsace, a pious evangelist, a few years ago, collected a congregation of more than four hundred persons, and his place of worship proving too small, the extraordinary sum, in France, of from thirty thousand to forty thousand francs was raised by his people to build a larger; and all this in a city lately notorious for the deplorable errors of Neology. The correspondent of the New York Observer, to whom I have already referred, states that, last year, there was a remarkable revival of religion at Lionville, near Cherburg. The majority of the inhabitants of this populous village, with the mayor at their head, avowed their abandonment of Popery, and invited the Protestant pastor of Cherburg to preach to them the Word of God. This he has accepted, and statedly performs the duty. The Roman Catholic journals denounced with extreme violence the defection of three quarters of a large commune, and in their anger said that it was in consequence of the marriage of the Prince Royal to a Protestant woman. The writer adds: "The latest information I have received respecting the evangelization of the department of Saone and Loire is very satisfactory. Chapels have been built at Chalons, at Branges, at Sorney, &c.; and it is worthy of remark, that the government of the Canton of Berne in Switzerland has voted a donation of six hundred francs for this object. The religious movement has assumed a more serious and settled character in the department of Saone and Loire." The last report of the European Missionary Society states that, at one town in the south of France, in the course of last winter, no less than three hundred persons presented themselves as converts from Popery, anxious to be admitted into communion with their Protestant brethren.

that article of the constitutional charter, by which it is declared that all Frenchmen may profess their reli gion with equal freedom, opened a chapel at Metz, in Lorraine. For this he was prosecuted by the mayor; and after an appeal to the highest court, that of Cassation,-it was found that the previous leave of the municipal authorities is indispensable to the opening of a place of worship. And what was the ground of objection in this case? It does not seem that the mayor had any himself he may even have been friendly to the chapel-but the preacher had offended the rich Jews by some publications on the subject of Judaism, and it was they who were the persecutors,-men who but lately had been themselves the victims of oppression! Had they not succeeded in this legal objection, it is easy to see that a thousand other modes of annoyance and oppression were within their reach. The preacher was fined. Various other and more serious cases have occurred since, so much so, that the writer in the New York Observer remarks: "The French Cabinet shows hostile feelings against religious sects, and seems disposed to tread in the steps of the Ministers of Charles X." "Facts evince that the French Government have adopted a systematic plan of judicial prosecutions against the liberty of worship." Any one who is living in such personal danger as the present monarch, would need a more enlightened faith than it is to be feared Louis Philippe possesses to preserve him from the temptation of leaning to the priests who surround him. But these incipient persecutions all show that divine truth is making progress. It would not be worth while to attempt forcibly to restrain what was not worth fighting with, or what threatened no danger.

MAN'S CHIEF HAPPINESS FOUND IN THE SERVICE OF
CHRIST:

A DISCOURSE.

BY THE LATE REV. ANDREW BULLOCK, A.M.,

Minister of Tulliallan, Kincardineshire. "Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city."-REV. xxii. 14. Such a state of things as this-and what has been recorded is only a specimen could not be allowed to go WHERE is happiness to be found? is an inquiry on without opposition. There would be a strong prewhich all men make, because all men are capable sumption that the work was not sound if Infidelity and of happiness, and desirous to obtain it. And every Popery could look tamely on at its progress. Accordingly, man, by his conduct and by his actions, shows persecution, so far as the laws will allow, is beginning to what he considers as the proper and the practical appear anew. Many men imagined that the Revolution answer to the question. Riches, rank, learning, of 1830 was to seal for ever the triumph of religious the praise of men, and the grovelling enjoyments freedom, and that after the article in the charter de- of sensuality and excess, have each their reclaring the Roman Catholic religion to be the religion spective votaries, who, in spite of repeated and of the State had been abolished, there could be no painful disappointments, still continue to pursue possible pretext for oppressing evangelical commu- them as objects of ultimate attainment, and able nions; but the truth is, that persecution has a far to confer felicity on their possessors. But it is deeper foundation than the accidental circumstance of not merely the restlessness arising from deferred whether a particular Church is or is not recognized by hope, and disappointed expectation, which excites the State. It is founded in the depravity of human men to persist in the pursuit of objects. Extremes nature,—in the hatred of Popery and Infidelity to the may here be said to meet, as success produces holy truth of God. And this persecution will show the same effect with failure. Our desires enlarge itself whether Churches are established or not. Wit-in proportion as they are gratified: when wealth ness the persecutions of the truth by the unestablished Popish Church of Ireland at this moment;-so in France. Two years ago a faithful minister, relying on

is increased, the heart is not content, but is still set on the acquisition of riches, and the eminence on the steep of ambition, which appeared so airy