by setting it apart for baptism, by discontinuing all fasts, and by standing up to prayer.

Such is the spiritual garland of this season of the birth of flowers. And compared with it, how poor is the richest wreath of mortal growth and with what little authority does it inculcate its lessons! Even the lilies of the field, ordained by our Lord himself as preachers to us, forego their dignity, just as the very sermon in which they were pointed out has become but secondary to that preaching which admonished us of his sufferings and of his glory. Still, however, as we walk in the fields, and draw so much enjoyment through our senses, we may make the one preacher introduce us to the other, the teacher of elements to the teacher of mysteries.

The death of winter is past-the marks of God's wrath have ceased-nature is in a new birth-flowers have taken the place of snow, and sunshine of gloom. And is it so with thee, O reader? Dost thou feel the death of sin, the new life to righteousness, the removal of the sense of God's wrath, and all the other cheerful tokens of justification within thee? See what a multitude of new stems, and branches, and shoots, each bearing their flower, have sprung forth since last Whitsuntide. And is it so with thee, O reader? What new fruits of sanctification hast thou put forth since that season? Is thy branch in the Vine green and budding, promising flower and fruit? Is it spring with thee?

Let us look at the first rural labour of the season. Let us contemplate the sower. He has chosen his seed with diligent care; and see how regularly he flings it. Thou, too, art a sower. Thy words have been flung abroad daily in the ears and minds of thy family, thy friends, thy acquaintance. And what hast thou sown? Tares or wheat? words of levity, or words of seriousness, of godliness, or of ungodliness? Hast thou carefully selected thy seed? or art thou, through inattention, partly doing the business of the enemy, who sowed by night? Again, as to thine own mind, how hast thou sown? Hast thou chosen good seed from the word of God, from conversation with pious men, and pure and holy meditation ?-or bad seed from books of levity, careless talk, idle imaginations? Hast thou sown to the flesh or to the Spirit, to corruption or to everlasting life? And has the soil been rock, or sand, or deep mould? And when God, in his hour of grace, hath given thee good seed, by putting thoughts and purposes into thy heart profitable to thyself and to thy neighbour, hast thou immediately gone forth to sow, and flung it carefully and regularly? or

hast thou loitered until some other sower, with hurtful seed, has been before thee; or until the precious opportunity has been destroyed by the storm and rain of the manifold chances and changes of this mortal life?

Let us look also at the last rural labour. The mower is in the fields. See how, with each sweep of his scythe, he cuts down the pride of a host of gaudy flowers, which a moment ago were nodding their heads in the wind, above the more humble and useful grass. And hast thou no such vanities to be brought low? Has thy crop of service to the Lord been unmixed with the gay and unprofitable attractions of the world? And hast thou the heart to mow down, with the ruthlessness of yonder mower, all thy worldly eminence and pride, and to offer to the Lord a homely and unmixed crop of service?

What a general burst of life is around us! The air resounds with the songs of birds and the chirp and hum of insects, and new buds are bursting into leaf at every glance. Death seems to have quitted the world in company with winter, and we appear to gain a momentary glimpse of paradise. And is it spring within thee? Is it all busy life within thy heart? Is there the inward song of thanksgiving, the murmur of secret praise, the holy thought hourly bursting forth into good words and good works? Has the death of sin departed thence? does Christ live in thee? art thou alive unto God through him? Dost thou feel thus the earnest of the life-giving Spirit, and look forward with patient but certain hope to his glorious fulfilment? Hast thou such glimpses of the restoration of paradise?

Thus will the reflecting Christian, who has the word of God in his heart, receive, at this most interesting of seasons, continual appeals from the visible works of God; and these will lead him into the contemplation of his invisible operation in the world of spirit. He will indeed discontinue fasting, for he is in the enjoyment of a perpetual spiritual feast. His spirit will discontinue kneeling, for it comes before God not with the crouching fear of the slave, but with the upright frankness of love which befits a son. Reader, art thou such a Christian? Is it not only a natural, but a spiritual spring with thee? Then look joyfully on to thy summer, which will be bright with sun, or black with thunder, according to the tokens of thy spring. As thou sowest now, so shalt thou then reap.

THE DIVERSE GIFTS OF THE SPIRIT
IN THE CHURCH.*

OUR blessed Saviour having newly changed his crown of thorns for a crown of glory, and ascending up on

• From the Christian Pentecost: a Sermon, preached at Westminster Abbey, by Dr. Robert South, 1692.

the most distant lines may meet and clasp in the same

centre.

This great diversity of the gifts of the Spirit may read a lecture of humility to some, and of contentment to others. God, indeed, in this great scheme of the creation has drawn some capital letters, set forth some masterpieces, and furnished them with higher abilities than ordinary, and given them gifts, as it were, with both hands: but for all that, none can brag of a monopoly of them-none has so absolutely engrossed them all, as to be that of which we may say, There we see what and how much God can do. No, God has wrote upon no created being the utmost extent of his power, but only the free issues and products of his pleasure; and as this may give some check to the presumption of the most raised understandings, so it should prevent the despondency of the meanest; for the apostle makes this very use of it (in the 21st and 22d verses of the 12th chapter of his first Epistle to the Corinthians), where he would not have even the lowest and poorest member of the Church to be dejected upon the consideration of what it wants, but rather to be comforted in the sense of what it has. Let not the foot trample upon itself, because it does not rule the body, but consider that it has the honour to support it-nay, the greatest abilities are sometimes beholden to the very meanest; for mutual wants and mutual perfections together are the very bond and cement of society. The ten talents went into heaven as easily as the five; and God in his wisdom has put a peculiar usefulness even into the smallest members of the body, answerable to some need or defect in the greatest, thereby to level them to a mutual compliance and benefaction.

JERUSALEM.*

[Continued from No. XLVII.]

VENTURING at length to enter the city, we found ourselves in a broad way composed of little miserable houses, and of some uncultivated gardens, whose walls of enclosure had fallen to decay. We followed for a moment the broadest road of this crossway, which led us to one or two little streets, sufficiently dark, close, and dirty. We saw nothing moving in these streets, except funeral companies, passing with hurried steps; but who drew up under the walls on our approach, at the command and under the raised staff of the governor's janissaries. Here and there some venders of bread and of fruits sat, covered with rags, on the thresholds of little stalls, with their baskets upon their knees, and crying their goods as in the markets of our great cities; and, occasionally, a veiled female would appear at the wooden-grated windows of the house; or a child open the low and gloomy door, to purchase the family provisions for the day. Besides these parties, we met only a few equestrian Bedouins: not bearing the noble and chivalrous air of the scheiks of Syria and Lebanon, but with ferocious countenances, the eye of the vulture, and the dress of a bandit. They were mounted on Arabian mares, whose feet continually sank into the holes with which the roads of the city abound. These streets are obstructed with rubbish, accumulated filth, and particularly heaps of woollen rags, of a blue dye, wheeling before the wind like fallen leaves; a contact we could by no means avoid. It is from these stuff and woollen rags, which are

• From De Lamartine's Pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

every where to be seen in the streets, that the plague in this and other eastern cities is communicated. We spent some time in making the circuit of Jerusalem, but saw nothing which could announce it as the dwelling of a people: not one sign of riches, or even of life and motion. The exterior aspect had deceived us, as it had often done before in other cities of Syria and Greece. The most miserable hamlet of the Alps or the Pyrenees, the most neglected alleys of such of our faubourgs as are given up to the lowest class of the labouring population, exhibit more cleanliness, luxury, and even elegance, than the desolate streets of this queen of cities.

I passed the evening in making a tour of the slopes stretching south of Jerusalem, between the tomb of David and the Valley of Jehoshaphat, the only side of the city presenting the smallest appearance of vegetation. The aspect of the valley corresponds with the destination which Christian opinion has assigned to it. It resembles one vast sepulchre, though still too narrow for the tide of death which accumulates there. Overlooked on all sides by funereal monuments; enclosed at the southern extremity by the rock of Silhoa, that is excavated with sepulchral caves, like a hive of death; possessing here and there, as tumular landmarks, the tomb of Jehoshaphat and that of Absalom, hewn like pyramids in the solid rocks, and shaded on one side by the dark hills of the Mount of Offences, and on the other by the crumbling ramparts of the Temple. Such a place is naturally impregnated with holy horror, early destined to become the Gemonia of a great city, and to present itself to the imagination of the prophets as the scene of death, resurrection, and judgment.. The valley is nothing more than a natural trench hollowed between two mounds; on one of which stands Jerusalem, while the other is crowned by the Mount of Olives. The ramparts of Jerusalem, rolling into ruins, would nearly suffice to fill it. Not a pass is to be found leading into it. Cedron, which springs from the ground a few paces above the valley, is nothing more than a brook formed by the accumulation of waters from the winter-rains, descending from the olive-plantations below the tombs of the kings; it is crossed by a bridge of a few paces in length, facing one of the gates of Jerusalem, and stands in the middle of the valley, which at that point does not exceed the breadth of the stream. The river itself, almost destitute of water, may be better described as a dry bed of white pebbles, forming the bottom of the ravine. The valley of Jehoshaphat, in short, exactly resembles the entrenchments of some large fortified city, into which the overflowings of the sewers discharge their filth; or where some of the poorer inhabitants of the suburbs dispute with the ramparts a corner of land for cultivating a few vegetables; or where loose goats and asses browse, upon the steep banks, the spare herbage stained with mud and dust. View such a spot, with sepulchral stones appertaining to every carthly form of worship,-and you will have before your eyes the valley of judgment.

Not far from the cave of Gethsemane there is a little spot of earth, still shaded by seven olive-trees, which popular tradition designates as the same trees under which Jesus lay down and wept. These olivetrees really bear on their trunks and enormous roots the date of the eighteen hundred years which have passed since that memorable night. Their trunks are immense; and are formed, like those of all other very old olive-trees, of a great number of stems, that seem bound together and incorporated under the same bark: thus forming an assemblage of united pillars. Their branches are almost withered, but they still bear some olives.

The general aspect of the environs of Jerusalem may be painted in a few words: mountains without shade, valleys without water, earth without verdure,

rocks without terror or grandeur; some blocks of grey stone piercing the friable and cracked earth; from time to time, an olive-tree; a gazelle or a jackal creeping occasionally between the broken pieces of rock; some plants of the vine making their way along the grey or reddish ashes of the soil; and, now and then, a bouquet of pale olive-shrubs, throwing a little spot of shadow on the steep side of a hill. On the horizon, a mastic or a black carob tree, relieving itself sorrowfully and singly against the blue of the sky. The grey walls and towers of the fortifications of the city appear from a distance on the brow of Sion. Such is the earth: the sky, pure, deep, unspotted, where never floats the smallest cloud, nor is tinged with the purple of morning or of evening. On the Arabian side, an enormous gulf descends between the dark mountains, and conducts the eye even to the dazzling waves of the Dead Sea, and to the violetcoloured horizon of the ridges of the hill of Moab. Not a breath of wind murmurs amongst the battlements, or through the dry leaves of the olive-trees; not a bird sings; no cricket chirps in the furrow without herbage: a complete eternal silence reigns in the town, on the highways, in the country.

THOUGHTS ON HISTORICAL PASSAGES OF
THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT.
No. I.-Abraham at Gerar.

BY THE REV. JOHN MENZIES, B.D. Fellow of C.C. Coll. Oxford, and Curate of Farnham, Surrey. IN the chapter which narrates the conduct of Abraham at Gerar, we have a very remarkable, and, if rightly viewed, a very instructive portion of the history of the patriarch. It is one of those passages which shew the faithfulness of God's word, and give good proof that those holy men, by whom the Scriptures were penned, "spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost," emphatically styled "The Spirit of Truth." In the Bible the whole truth is told; and herein the histories it records differ so widely from the narratives of profane historians. In the latter we have either exaggerated or partial statements. The excellencies and virtues of good men are for the most part alone dwelt on, their faults and failings are lightly passed over. In the former a different course is pursued; no false colouring is given, no highly wrought statements, which would lead us to think of men more highly than we ought to think. Their faults, indeed, are often spoken of at greater length than their virtues, that we may see what they really were, and, while we strive on the one hand to walk according to their steps, so far as they walked in the fear of God, we may on the other hand be warned by their failings, "lest we also fall, after the same example of unbelief." This is strikingly illustrated in the chapter under consideration, by referring to which it will be found, that in the course of those wanderings to which, in the providence of God, he was called, Abraham had occasion to sojourn in Gerar, a city of the Philistines, where he feared that mischief would befal him on account of the beauty of Sarah his wife. "He thought within himself, Surely the fear of God is not in this place, and they will slay me for my wife's sake:" and therefore he said of Sarah, "she is my sister," and Sarah, she also herself said of Abraham," he is my brother." Now in one sense this was true, for there was a relationship between Abraham and Sarah inde

pendently of their connexion by marriage. She was (as Abraham would himself plead in his excuse) the daughter, or, as it probably means, the granddaughter of his father Terah; and thus, according to the customs of the time and country in which they lived, and the forms of expression in use, she might have been called his sister; just as Lot is sometimes called Abraham's brother, though in fact his nephew-his brother's son. But when Abraham said of Sarah, "she is my sister," he was not merely speaking according to a usual mode of expression; his intention was to deceive, to conceal the fact that Sarah was his wife. The consequence was, that Abimelech, the king of Gerar, "in the integrity of his heart," not in the least intending to do what was wrong, sent and took Sarah, and would have married her, had not God interfered to rescue her. Abimelech was informed by God, in a dream, of the true state of the case; and calling for Abraham, reproached him for the deceit which he had practised, and by which he had endangered the happiness and even the life itself of Abimelech, his family, and his people. "What," he said, "hast thou done unto us, and wherein have I offended thee, that thou hast brought on me and on my kingdom a great sin? Thou hast done deeds unto me that ought not to be done." Abraham, the servant of the most high God—he who should have glorified God by letting his light shine before men-stood convicted before a king and all his people, of whom we know not that they were even the worshippers of the true God. Abimelech at once restored Sarah unto Abraham, and, in the kindest manner, even loaded him with presents, and gave him leave to dwell where he pleased in the land; and Abraham, desirous (as well he might be) to make what reparation he could for the injury which he had done, besought the Lord that the affliction with which the house of Abimelech had been visited might be removed.

1. The lesson, then, which this history seems especially calculated to teach is, the weakness and sinfulness of even the best of men. Abraham was preeminently a servant of God: he was "the father of the faithful;" and was even called "the friend of God." He was one who especially honoured God in his day and generation; whose history it is impossible to read without the highest admiration; and yet what a poor, weak, sinful creature was he! In the instance under consideration he is found acting in a way of which even many worldly men would be utterly ashamed: and there are some circumstances connected with his sin on this occasion which make it more especially remarkable. It was a premeditated sin, not one into which he had been suddenly and unexpectedly ensnared. Had his life been actually threatened, and in the moment of danger he had endeavoured to secure himself by this want of candour, we should have less wondered at his conduct; but before he was in danger he deliberately decided upon this sinful course. Again; he had on a former occasion been guilty of the same sin, and had then not only experienced its folly, but been convicted and openly reproved for it. Soon after he had come into the land of Canaan, he was driven thence by famine into Egypt; and there also, fearful for his life, he had attempted to pass Sarah for his sister. (Gen. xii.) But what especially