is wrung out, lost! lost! King Hezekiah? O, no!

Was it thus with

Scarcely had the

first tremor of human weakness ceased to rack his frame, ere he sought his accustomed refuge, prayer to God. With streaming eyes and averted face, he prayed:

"Remember now Oh Lord, I beseech thee, how I have walked before thee in truth and with a perfect heart, and have done that which was good in thy sight!" and he may have added: And now, Oh Lord, with my work all unfinished, I am called hence! Oh grant me yet a few more years, that I may bring thee a few more harvest sheaves, in recompense of all thy mercies!

Was that prayer answered? Why, before the prophet had reached the inner court of the palace, on his way from the sick chamber, the Lord commanded him, by the spirit; "Go tell Hezekiah, thus saith the Lord-the God of David, thy father: I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears; behold I will add unto thy days fifteen years. And this shall be the sign unto thee that the Lord will do this thing that he hath spoken :—

“Behold, I will bring again the shadow of the degrees which is gone down in the sun-dial of Ahaz, ten degrees backward!"

Was this to be simply an optical illusion? A turning back of the shadow only, independent and irrespective of the true position of the sun? Evidently not- we paused in our Bible quoting, at the middle of the 8th verse of the 38th chapter of Isaiah;—the remainder of the verse reads thus: "So the SUN, returned ten degrees, by which degrees it was gone down."

Believer of the Sacred Scriptures! how do you reconcile these two events with the teachings of Copernicus? I confess I have tried, honestly, and without prejudice—and have failed!

GOD'S ESTIMATE OF OUR WORLD.

Let us turn aside here for a few moments to consider what estimate our Heavenly Father places on this world of ours, and why he regards mankind with so much of favor:

We read in Genesis, that after creating the heavens and the earth, God created the

living creatures which inhabit earth, air, and sea. And while among this vast multitude were found the strength and massiveness of the leviathan, the noble usefulness of the horse and ox, the swiftness of the eagle, the cunning of the serpent, yet among them all, there was found no responsible, reasoning head. All were guided by a Godgiven instinct, which though wonderful, of itself, is as far removed from a God-given intelligence, as the east is from the west.

Then, as the crowning and finishing work of creation, God said, "Let us make man. in our image, after our likeness." Thus we read that he created man in his own image; "In the image of God created he him; male and female, created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them: 'Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth on the earth.''

Oh! the fearful weight of responsibility resting on him, who in the light of this

revelation, presumes to reverse the real order of events, by teaching us that man was developed on an ascending scale, or evolved from the beast; rather than admit the truth of the Bible- that he originally came forth from the hand of his Creator, reflecting the beauty and grace and symmetry of the Divine Model: and that by his own wickedness and folly he has evolved the other way, till some copies have descended to the level of the beast.

But we are grateful that enough of the divine likeness still exists among men, to remind us of the great honor God conferred on this world and its people, in bestowing it. And as we meet the graceful form, the finely chiseled features, the expressive eye; or better still, the bright intellect and the noble heart, we cannot but feel that they reflect, in some degree, their Great Original.

Important indeed, must this world be in the sight of Him who honored it thus highly; and who has made it the object of his fatherly care-favoring it often, in its early history, with his divine presence, counseling

and guiding mankind;- as we read in the 33d chapter of Exodus, "And God spake to Moses face to face, as a man speaketh to his friend."

MAN'S ESTIMATE OF OUR WORLD.

As affording a most decided contrast, let us now briefly examine man's estimate of the world we live in.-In the first place, he calls the earth, sun, moon, and all the stars we behold in the heavens, taken collectively, "Our Universe;" though he says--perhaps correctly that there are other universes besides ours.

This cluster called Our Universe, besides the earth and other planets, consists of millions of stars; our sun, he says, being one of those stars; and though appearing much larger than the others, yet this is only on account of its comparative nearness to us; we being taught that of the few stars men have taken the time to measure, several are many times greater than the sun; yet they give the sun a diameter of 866,000 miles, or 109 times that of the earth's; which would