(For the Church of England Magazine.)

THE words were few, were briefly spoken,
Yet fell with blessing on my ear;
Breathing a sympathetic token,
Of faith triumphant over fear.

O, when the soul is faint and weary,
And scarce can keep her stedfast hold,
When earthly views are dark and dreary,
How sweet of mercy to be told!
Of mercy and of wisdom blending
In each appointment of our lot!
Of love directing, and defending,

And watching o'er, and sleeping not!

The words were few, were briefly spoken,
A pilgrim greeting by the way;
Yet would I fain preserve unbroken

The comfort which those words convey.

In each afflictive visitation,

Let me on that assurance rest, That, whatsoe'er the dispensation,

"Tis God's decree, and "God knows best." H. B. KING,

Fulham.

These were the parting words of an esteemed friend, after sympathetic inquiries in a season of sorrow. They sounded as a benediction, whose very simplicity made its truth the more impressive.

Miscellaneous.

ROME. According to official returns for the year 1846, the city of Rome is divided into 54 parishes, inhabited by $5,988 families. There are 41 bishops, 1,533 priests, 2,845 monks, and 1,472 nuns. The Jews, who are about from 8,000 to 10,000, are not comprised in this census. The whole population in 1837 was 156,552; in 1840, 154,632; in 1845, 167,160; and in 1846, 170,199.

GATHERING THE HARVEST.-In queen Elizabeth's reign a proclamation was issued, whereby all parsons, vicars, and curates were enjoined to "teach and declare unto the people that they might with safe and quiet consciences (after the common prayer), in time of harvest, labour upon the festival days, and save the things which God hads ent them; for, if by any groundless scruples of conscience they should abstain from working on those days, that they should grievously offend and displease God if the grain were thereby lost or damaged."

publishes the following statistics relative to the Austrian monarchy: It covers an extent of 12,104 square miles, containing 35,295,957 souls, inhabiting 713 towns, 2,468 burghs, 64,208 villages, and 5,036,548 houses. The clergy is composed of 65,565 individuals; and the church revenue, without including Hungary, Transylvania, and the military frontier, exceeds all other states in the number of primary schools, in which more than 4,000,000 of pupils are educated at an expense of 4,000,000 of florins.

COMPARISON OF SPEED.-A French scientific journal states that the ordinary rate per second, of a man walking, is 4 feet; of a good horse in harness, 12; of a reindeer, in a sledge on the ice, 16; of an English race-horse, 43; of a hare, 88; of a good sailing ship, 14; of the wind, 82; of sound, 1,038; of a twentyfour pounder cannon-ball, 1,300; and of the air which, so divided, returns into space, 1,300 feet.

EFFECT OF CIVILIZATION ON THE VOICE.-It is, I believe, a fact—and, if so, it is a curious one-that the dog in a wild state only howls; but, when he becomes the friend and companion of man, he has then wants and wishes, hopes and fears, joys and sorrows, to which in his wilder state he appears to have been a stranger. His vocabulary, if it may be so called, then increases, in order to express his enlarged and varied emotions.-Jesse.

FORGIVENESS.-The favourite of a sultan threw a stone at a poor dervise who had requested alms. The insulted dervise dared not to complain, but carefully searched for, and preserved the pebble, promising himself he should find an opportunity, sooner or later, to throw it in his turn at this imperious and pitiless wretch. Some time after, he was told the favourite was disgraced, and, by order of the sultan, led through the streets on a camel, exposed to the insults of the populace. On hearing this, the dervise ran to fetch his pebble; but, after a moment's reflection, cast it into a well. "I now perceive," said he, "that we ought never to seek revenge when our enemy is powerful, for then it is imprudent; nor when he is involved in calamity, for then it is mean and cruel."

YAKUTSK.-The earth has no spot upon its surface, either habitable or otherwise, which is so cold as Yakutsk-a paltry, yet principal town of Eastern Siberia, where a few wooden houses are entermixed with numerous huts plastered over with cow-dung, and windowed with ice. In this dreary and remote region the earth is always frozen; the summer's thaw never reaching below three feet from the surface; the subterranean ice having a computed depth of two hundred yards. In January the thermometer has been known to sink eighteen degrees below the bitterest cold experienced by Ross during his late expedition, and yet the inhabitants, favoured by a warm, though short summer, reap both wheat and barley, and cultivate successfully potatoes, and various other hardy vegetables.—Gardeners' Gazette.

London: Published for the Proprietors, by EDWARDS and HUGHES, 12, Ave-Maria Lane, St. Paul's; and to be procured, by order, of all Booksellers in Town and Country.

PRINTED BY

JORDAN*.

"And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jor. dan, that it was well watered everywhere, before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, even as the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt, as thou comest unto Zoar."--GEN. xiii. 10.

THIS river, being the principal stream of Palestine, has acquired a distinction much greater than its

From "The Pictorial Bible," Part I. (London, Knight);

which we have pleasure in strongly recommending. It is the commencement of a new edition of this valuable work, with very

considerable improvements, and much additional matter. Our

readers will thank us for drawing their attention to it. We are indebted to the courtesy of the publishers for the illustration which heads this paper.-ED.

VOL. XXI.

geographical importance could have given. It is Sometimes called "the river," by way of eminence, being in fact almost the only stream of the country which continues to flow in summer. It was formerly usual to refer the source of the river to the stream which issues from the cave at Banias (the ancient Paneas, the Cæsarea Philippi of the New Testament), over which rises a perpendicular rock, whose face has been sculptured in niches for statues. But this is by no means the most distant of the fountains whose waters go to form the Jordan; and it is perhaps better to regard the river as taking its course about an hour and a quarter's

BB

journey (say three or three miles and a quarter) north-east from Banias, in a plain near a hill called Tel-el-Kadi. Here there are two springs near each other, one smaller than the other, whose waters very soon unite, forming a rapid river, from twelve to fifteen yards across, which rushes over a stony bed into the lower plain, where it is joined by the river from Banias. A few miles below their junction, the now considerable river enters the small lake of Huleh, or Samochonitis (called "the waters of Merom," in the Old Testament). This lake receives several other mountain-streams, some of which seem to have as good claim to be regarded as forming the Jordan as that to which it is given in the previous statement; and it would perhaps be safest to consider the lake formed by their union as the real source of the Jordan. About two miles below this lake the river passes under Jacob's Bridge, in a rapid stream, through a narrow bed, and in about ten miles further reaches the larger lake, known by several names, but most commonly as the lake of Tiberias, through which its course is distinctly marked by the smoothness of the water in that part. The Jordan rushes from the southern extremity of the lake with considerable force, in a stream which is about fourteen yards across at the end of April. On quitting the lake, the river enters a broad valley, or "ghor," by which name the natives designate a depressed tract, or plain, between mountains. This name is applied to the plain of the Jordan, not only between the lake of Tiberias and the Dead Sea, but quite across the Dead Sea and to some distance beyond. This valley varies in breadth from five to ten miles between the mountains on each side. The river does not make its way straight through the midst of the ghor. It flows first near the western hills, then near the eastern, but advances to the Dead Sea through the middle of the valley. Within this valley is a lower one, and within that, in some parts, another still lower, through which the river flows. The inner valley is about half a mile wide, and is generally green and beautiful, covered with trees and bushes, while the upper or large valley is for the most part sandy or barren. The distance between the two lakes, in a direct line, is about sixty miles. In the first part of its course between them the stream is clear; but it becomes turbid as it approaches the Dead Sea, probably from passing over beds of sandy clay. The water is very wholesome, always cold, and nearly tasteless. The breadth and depth of the river vary much in different places and at different times of the year. The average breadth has been calculated by Dr. Shaw at nine yards, and the depth at nine feet. In the season of flood, in April and the early part of May, the river is full, and sometimes overflows its lower banks, to which fact there are several allusions in scripture (Josh. iii. 15; 1 Chron. xii. 15; Jer. xii. 5, xlix. 19, 1. 44. The whole course of the river is about one hundred miles in a straight line from north to south; but, with its windings, it probably does not describe a course of less than one hundred and fifty miles. Burckhardt says that it now bears different names in the various divisions of its course: Dhan, near its source; Ordan, lower down, near the sea of Galilee; and Sherya, between that lake and the Dead Sea.

"The plain of Jordan.... was well watered every where, before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah." The very valuable discoveries of Dr. Robinson require us to modify very considerably all our previous notions respecting the appearance of the plain of the Dead Sea, before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and also respecting the extent and character of that visitation itself.

It has usually been assumed that the Dead Sea has only existed since the devastation of "the cities of the plain;" and the favourite hypothesis of late years has been, that before that time the Jordan flowed through the whole length of the Wady-el-'Arabah to the gulf of Akabah, leaving the present bed of the Dead Sea a fertile plain. But this, as we now learn, could not have been the case, at least within the times to which history reaches back. Instead of the Jordan pursuing its course southward to the gulf, Dr. Robinson found the waters of the 'Arabah, and also those of the high western desert, far south of Akabah, all flowing northward into the Dead Sea. "Every circumstance goes to show that a lake must have existed in this place, into which the Jordan poured its waters, long before the catastrophe of Sodom. The great depression of the whole broad Jordan-valley, and of the northern part of the 'Arabah, the direction of its lateral valleys, as well as the slope of the high western desert towards the north, all go to show that the configuration of this region, in its main features, is coeval with the present condition of the surface of the earth in general, and not the effect of any local catastrophe at a subsequent period.”

Where, then, it may be asked, were "the cities of the plain," and the country in which they stood? It seems a necessary conclusion, that, although the lake existed previous to their destruction, it then covered a much less extent of (surface than at present. The cities which were destroyed must have been situated on the south of the lake as it then existed; for Lot fled to Zoar, which was near Sodom; and Zoar lay almost at the southern end of the present sea. The fertile plain, therefore, which Lot chose for himself, where Sodom was situated, and which was well watered, like the land of Egypt, lay also south of the lake, "as thou comest unto Zoar." Even at the present day, more living streams flow into the ghor at the south end of the sea, from wadys of the eastern mountains, than are to be found so near together in all Palestine; and the tract, although now mostly desert, is still better watered, through these streams and by the many fountains, than any other district throughout the whole country.

In the same plain were "slime-pits," that is to say, wells of bitumen or asphaltum, which appear to have been of considerable extent. The valley in which they were situated is, indeed, called Siddim; but it is said to have been adjacent to "the salt sea" (v. 3), and it contained Sodom and Gomorrah. The streams that anciently watered the plain remain to attest the accuracy of the sacred historian, but the pits of asphaltum are no longer to be seen. Did they disappear in consequence of the catastrophe of the plain?

"Like the land of Egypt, as thou comest unto Zoar." This is unintelligible as it stands. The meaning is that the plain of the Jordan was so

far as Zoar well watered every where, like the land of Egypt, or the garden of Eden. As Zoar was at the southern extremity of the ghor, we wonder that Dr. Robinson did not discover the support which this text would afford to his argument, that the river did not formerly flow on to the Red Sea, or beyond this point. If it had done so, the limit of abundant irrigation would not have been drawn at Zoar as it is in this text, but might have been extended southward, even to the Red Sea.

WHERE ART THOU ?*

GEN. iii. 9.

"When the trumpet soundeth long, they shall come up to the mount," was the injunction given to Moses. "And when the voice of the trumpet sounded long, and waxed louder and louder, Moses spake ; and God answered him by a voice." And so terrible was the sound, that the people said unto Moses, "Speak thou with us, and we will hear; but let not God speak with us, lest we die." It was the voice of the Lord that made their hearts sink within them, as it did the heart of Adam on the day when he first sinned, because it was the voice of a holy and a jealous God calling to sinful man, and saying to him, "Where art thou ?"

self.

a;

But the Lord God did not allow him to accomplish his guilty purpose: he was the first to break silence. "The Lord God called unto Adam;" and his call was intended to draw him forth from his hiding-place: he "called unto him, and said unto him, Where are thou?" And this first call of God to man intimates to us that he is determined not to leave him alone in his sin. He plies him with calls, with expostulations, with entreaties, with warnings, with threatenings, with judgments, all his life long; and, if these fail, the voice of the archangel and the trump of God will one day summon him to judgment, and, calling with a voice that must be heard, "Where art thou?" will bring him forth from the hiding-place of the grave to meet face to face with his God. Take a striking illustration of this in the account given us in Exod. xix. of the delivery of the law at Mount Sinai. There the will of God was made known to man as a sinner; and all the accompanying circumstances of its delivery were intended to show God's jealousy and hatred towards sin, and to strike terror into the heart of the conscience-stricken sinner. There was the thick cloud with its blackness and darkness, to show that God veils himself in impenetrable mystery from the proud unbeliever: there was the burning fire, to show that he is a holy and a jealous God: there was a mighty tempest stirred up round about him," to signify the trouble and unrest that his wrath occasions to the guilty soul: there were "the bounds set round the mount," to show that man as a sinner is shut out from the presence of God; and, last of all, there was the sound of the trumpet, to signify that, sinner as he is, God will not let man alone in his sin, but will assuredly summon him to judgment.

* From "A Series of Tracts on Important Questions." By the Rev. G. Cole, B.A., late Curate of Upper Chelsea. London: Nisbet.

will be a day of hiding. For "the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every freemen shall hide themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains, and say to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb. For the great day of his wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand?" (Rev. vi. 15).

But will they be more successful in their attempts to hide themselves from the all-seeing and almighty God than Adam was? No; for the voice of the trumpet will again be heard, that summons man to meet his God; and there will be The voice that cries, no avoiding that call. "Where art thou?" will be heard through the caverns of earth, and the vaults of hell; and no being that has ever sinned will any longer be able to hide his shame.

forth. The silver trump of jubilee, that publishes And here the value of the gospel of peace shines grace and peace, forestalls "the voice of the archangel and the trump of God." The Lord God now calls in mercy, that he may not have hereafter to call in wrath. He invites man forth from the various hiding-places he has contrived for himself, to commune with him as a friend, that he may not one day be compelled to confront him as an enemy. The preaching of the everlasting gospel, whether it convinces of sin, or assures of pardon, or exhorts to repentance, is the voice of the Lord God sounding through the thickets of human ignorance and prejudice-and, sometimes with severity, sometimes with tenderness, but always in love-calling upon his lost child, and saying unto him, "Where art thou?"

May that voice be heard in thy conscience, O sinner, whosoever thou art that readest these words, and howsoever thick be the covert that hides thee from God! And, if it surprise thee in the midst of vanity and sin, do not turn round or the gracious Being who calls thee, with the exclamation of the wicked Ahab, "Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?" but with the submission of the child Samuel-"Speak, Lord; for thy servant heareth."

Various are the coverts in which men hide themselves from the presence of God, more effectually

I. There are some who hide themselves in sin, I mean in some peculiar form of "sin which most easily besets" them; for, whatever may be the nature of the thicket in which the man buries himself, sin is the tangled forest which overshadows all, and shuts out the light of heaven. But, when any peculiar habit of sin is indulged in, it encourages the growth of briars and thorns, and shuts up more closely the avenues that lead to the heart.

One of the earliest habits of sin that is formed is that of lying. "As soon as they are born, they go astray and speak lies," is the testimony of scripture against the children of men. And there is no evil habit that more effectually shuts out God from the heart; for it tends to blind the judgment which the conscience forms of itself. He, who accustoms himself to represent other things as they are not, increases the natural disposition of the heart to take wrong views of itself and of its state before God. To such a pitch does this evil habit extend in some cases, that its unhappy victim is scarcely aware when he speaks truth and when he speaks falsehood; so that, as I have heard it expressed, "it is more easy for him to tell a lie than to tell the truth." But, in all such cases, the power of seeing things in their true light is lost. The man "puts darkness for light, and light for darkness; bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter." He knows not where he is. He fancies himself near to God when he is at an immeasurable distance from him. He cries," Peace, peace, when there is no peace." A deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, "Is there not a lie in my right hand?"

Another of the habits of sin, in the indulgence of which the soul becomes lost to God, is impurity: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." And there is nothing which so blinds the heart to the true nature of God as the sin of impurity. It is one of those words of darkness of which it is a shame even to speak. And that which must be "done in secret" can only be carried on by doing constant violence to the moral principle; "searing the conscience as with a hot iron." The young person who indulges in this habit must follow a course of practical lying, as long as any sense of shame is left; and, when that is lost, the heart is become "so hardened through the deceitfulness of sin," that God's claims on its affections are altogether lost sight of. He runs headlong into sin "as the horse rusheth to the battle:" the opinions of his associates in guilt become his standard of right and wrong: the bible loses its hold upon his conscience: he sins with a high hand: he is lost to God; and the ruin of his soul is completed.

A kindred vice to this is the habit of intemperance. And similar are its effects. How can that man be expected to know where he is, and whither he is going, who habitually puts himself into a state of wilful madness? who adds to the deceitfulness of his own heart the delusive drugs of the cup of intoxication? It is not too much to say of the lover of strong drink, that he is never in his right mind. There is no evil habit which so universally leads to a neglect of the means of

aright. What wonder, then, that the intemperate man is far from God without knowing it, or, if he knows it, without caring for it?

These are a few instances of the evil effects of falling into a habit of sin. I have selected them as some of the most glaring; but be it remembered that every sinful habit is followed by the same awful consequences, more or less, according to the violence done to conscience by persisting in it. A habit of ill temper, a habit of taking God's holy name in vain, a habit of disobedience to parents and others set over us by the Lord, a habit of "covetousness, which is idolatry," " and many others which might be named, have in like manner the effect of rendering us insensible to the presence of God, and deaf to his calls. And yet God does not cease to call. Every sermon we hear, every fit of sickness, every throb of pain, every conviction of conscience, every passing-bell, is a fresh call to consider our mortality and to prepare for our immortality. This little tract is a fresh call to every one who reads it, to consider where he is and whither he is going. Come, then, reader; "let us reason together." Let me ask thee, in the name of the Lord, "Where art thou?”

Thou art " very far gone from original righteousness," very far departed from thy God. Thou art not, like Adam, when the question was addressed to him, just fresh from the commission of the first sin; but thou hast sinned again and again, and the frequent repetition of the act has blinded thy understanding and hardened thy heart, so that thou knowest not thy misery and danger in being at a distance from God. Unlike him, too, thou hast never known the bliss of communion with God, thou hast no knowledge of any thing better than the husks of sinful pleasure and worldly good; thou hast never tasted, it may be, the bitterness of forbidden fruit, and hast no fear of future consequences. Thou art saying in thy heart, "I shall have peace, though I walk in the imagination of my heart, to add drunkenness to thirst." Thou art walking in the ways of thine heart, and after the sight of thine eyes,' without any misgiving that God will hereafter bring thee into judgment. Or, if thou art "sometimes afraid," instead of coming to God, and beseeching him to "work in thee that which is well-pleasing in his sight," thou plungest deeper into the thicket, until thou hast recovered that awful state of mind in which thou canst sin on undisturbed by the mutterings of conscience or the voice of God. O, what a blessing, that God has not yet left thee altogether to thyself! that he has not passed upon thee that fearful sentence, "Ephraim is joined to idols, let him alone"! Yet once again he calls unto thee. Do not again turn a deaf ear to his voice. Do not fly from his presence. Do not plunge into the thicket; but be persuaded to hear and listen, till thou art convinced that it is indeed the voice of a Father and a Friend desirous of winning thee back to himself, and, as the first step, calling thee to consider, and saying unto thee, "Where art thou?"

II. But there are many who are free from the dominion of any gross habit of sin, of which they can be at once convinced; and time does not allow me to follow the sinner further into his hidingplace. I therefore turn to another class, those