would not have suited the peculiar capacity of Peter. They may have reached minds which he could not touch; they may have performed duties, subordinate indeed, but still necessary, such as he was not gifted to perform. Each apostle takes his own place, and stands easily and naturally in it; neither stretching after what was above, nor contemning what was below him. Within their common fraternity there were no less than three distinct bands of natural brethren. Peter and Andrew were brothers; John and James the Greater were brothers; and so also were James the Less, Jude or Thaddeus, and Simon Zelotes. With the ties of a common faith, of a common toil, and a common danger, were thus beautifully blended the ties of blood and domestic affection; and a texture of harmonious colouring was completed in this companionship, such as is seldom woven on earth. The three brethren last named were also near relations of Jesus himself. The reflections which are readily suggested by this circumstance are, that our Saviour was beloved at home as well as abroad; and that the familiarity of relationship did not impair the respect in which he was held as a Master and Teacher. We see also in this fact another cause of his love for his disciples, and of their love for him; a cause which is far from diminishing our reverence for him, or our interest in them. They were not strangers to each other; they were not brought together merely by the attractions of sympathy, or the demands of a great work. They were not countrymen only; they were neighbours, partners, early acquaintances;—they were more, for they were kinsmen, with the mutual attachments of kindred; and they go about on their labours before us, a more social, united, confidential and interesting group, than if there had been no family bonds to strengthen and adorn their union. There is one other circumstance in the lives of the apostles, which we should notice for the sake of its singularity and importance. The national prejudices of these men, and the difficulty which they had to comprehend the entire spirituality of their Master's system and kingdom, and to admit into their associations with the Jewish Messiah and Saviour the ideas of poverty, lowliness, suffering and death, are very remarkable throughout the gospel history. Attached as they were to him by all the ties which we have enumerated, we see that when he was actually appre hended by his enemies, they all forsook him and fled; that they did not return to him; and that on the Mount where he was crucified, there was but one of them who appeared to witness the death of their Master and kinsman, and the extinction of all their hopes. The event was one for which they were wholly unprepared; it confounded them. Their preconceived opinions were so strong, that when Jesus had before spoken to them of his death, they shut up their ears and their eyes; they would not understand him. We do not find a single hint in the Gospels that they ever did understand him. The event itself was a blow which at once enlightened and convinced them, and scattered them abroad also, like sheep without a shepherd. This is one scene. And now let us behold another, which immediately succeeds it. Not a great many days elapse, when we find these very men, disheartened, disappointed, terrified, and dispersed as they had been, all gathered together again with one accord, fully recovered from all their depression, and with a settled resolution stamped on all their demeanour, which never marked them before, even while their Master was with them, to lead, combine and encourage them. The catalogue of their names is full, with one vacancy only, which they immediately supply. They begin to preach the doctrines of a crucified Saviour, and we hear no more of their earthly notions of his kingdom. Their crude ideas and temporal hopes have, in a few days, vanished away. They preach Christianity, simply and purely. They gather to themselves thousands of converts. They are persecuted, imprisoned, threatened; they behold one of their number soon cut off with the sword; they are surrounded by enemies and temptations; and yet they never hesitate nor falter-no, not the weakest of them; there is not a single defection from their re-united brotherhood. They go through country after country, and toil after toil, laying down their lives, one after another, for the holy truth, and they leave disciples behind them every where, to teach, and dare, and suffer, and do, and die, as they did. Now what is the cause of all this, and how is it to be accounted for? It is that their crucified Master rose from the dead, as they have told us he did; that he instructed them, as they have told us he did; and that the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, was sent from the Father, according to his promise, to enlighten and sustain them. In short, the con duct of the apostles, at and after the death of Jesus, is perhaps the strongest proof of the reality of his glorious resurrection. Simple, honest, excellent men! raised up by Providence for wonderful ends by wonderful means! We should be thankless if we did not acknowledge the benefits of their influence, and bless God that we live to know and feel it. And we humbly pray to God, the universal Father, the Source of all excellence and truth, that our fidelity to our common Master may be like theirs; that like theirs may be our courage and constancy, if we should ever be called on to sacrifice comfort, worldly consideration, or life itself, to duty, conscience and faith. Text-MATTHEW X. 1—4. BIRDS' NESTS. THE structure of birds' nests discovers to us many curious objects, which cannot be uninteresting to the thinking mind. And who does not admire those little regular edifices, composed of so many different materials, collected and arranged with so much pains and skill, and constructed with so much industry, elegance and neatness, with no other tools than a bill and two feet? That men can erect great buildings according to certain rules of art, is not surprising, when we consider that they enjoy reason, and that they possess tools and instruments of various kinds to facilitate their work; but that a delicate little bird, in want of almost everything necessary for such an undertaking, with only its bill and claws, should know how to combine so much skill, regularity of form, and solidity of structure, in constructing its nest, is truly wonderful, and never enough to be admired; we shall therefore consider it more minutely. Nothing is more curious than the nest of a goldfinch or of a chaffinch. The inside of it is lined with cotton, wool, and fine silky threads, while the outside is interwoven with thick moss; and that the nest may be less remarkable and less exposed to the eye of observers, the colour of the moss resembles that of the bark of the tree or of the hedge where the nest is built. In some nests the hair, the down and the straws are very curiously laid across each other and interwoven together. There are others, all the parts of which are neatly joined and fastened together by a thread which the bird makes with flax and horse or cow hair, and often of spiders' webs. Other birds, as the blackbird and the lapwing, after having constructed their nest, plaster the outside with a thin coating of mortar, which cements and binds together all the lower parts, and which, with the help of some cow-hair or moss stuck to it while the plaster is wet, keeps it compact and warm. The nests of swallows are differently constructed from the rest. They use neither stick, straws nor strings; but they compose a sort of cement, with which they make themselves nests perfectly neat, secure and convenient. To moisten the dust of which they form their nest, they frequently skim over the surface of some lake or river, and, dipping their breasts into the water, shake their wet feathers upon the dust till it is sufficiently moist, and then knead it up into a kind of clay with their bills. But the nests most worthy of our admiration are those of certain Indian birds, which suspend them with great art from the branches of trees, that they may be secure from the pursuit of several animals and insects. In general each species of bird has a peculiar mode of fixing its nest; some build them on houses, others in trees, some in the grass, others in the ground; and always in that way which is most adapted for their safety, the rearing their young, and the preservation of their species. And is it not apparent that in all their works they propose to themselves certain ends? They construct their nests hollow, forming the half of a sphere, that the heat may be more concentric. The nest is covered without by substances more or less coarse, not only to serve as a foundation, but to prevent the wind and insects from entering. Within it is lined with the most delicate materials, such as wool and feathers, that the nestlings may be soft and warm. Such is the wonderful instinct of birds in the construction and disposition of their nests. Text-PSALM lxxxiv. 3. A BIRD'S NEST. Ir wins my admiration To view the structure of that little work— No tool had he that wrought; no knife to cut; No glue to join; his little beak was all; And yet how nicely finished! What nice hand, MOUNTAINS OF THE HOLY LAND. EXCEPT the Mount of Olives, there are no mountains in the Holy Land to which so much interest attaches as to Mounts Ebal and Gerizim, Tabor, Carmel, and the magnificent range of Lebanon. Ebal and Gerizim form the two opposite sides of the valley which contained the ancient town of Shechem,—the former rising on the right and the latter on the left hand of the traveller as he approaches from Jerusalem. "They rise," says a celebrated writer, "in steep rocky precipices, immediately from the valley; " and no more fitting scene could have been found for the performance of the sublime ceremony to which they owe all their interest, when Joshua "built an altar to the Lord God of Israel on Mount Ebal, as Moses had commanded; . . . and all Israel and their elders, their officers and judges, stood on this side the ark, and that side, half of them over against Mount Gerizim, and half of them against Mount Ebal," to hear the curses pronounced by the Levites on all who should break the sacred law, and the blessings which should follow all who observed it. Joshua viii. 30-35. Tabor, the supposed scene of our Lord's transfiguration, stands on the north-east border of the plain of Jezreel, on the confines of Naphthali and Zebulon, and nearly three hours' journey from Nazareth. Standing out alone and boldly above the plain, its appearance is very striking. A winding path leads to the summit, which is covered with ruins, and commands a very beautiful and extensive view. Its sides are thickly covered with trees and bushes, which afford a fine shade to the weary traveller. Carmel is a range of hills in the form of a crescent, extending about six miles north-west of the plain of Jezreel. The northern extremity forms the only great promontory on the coast of Palestine. Its summit is covered with pine |