"And now, standing, as I do, on the ridge which separates the two worlds, feeling what intense happiness or misery the soul is capable of sustaining, judging of your capacities by my own, and believing that those capacities will be filled to the very brim with joy or wretchedness for ever; can it be wondered at that my heart yearns over you, my children, that you may choose life, and not death? Is it to be wondered at that I long to present every one of you with a full cup of happiness, and see you drink it; that I long to have you make the same choice which I made, and from which springs all my happiness? "A young man, just about to leave this world, exclaimed: The battle's fought! the battle's fought! the battle's fought! but the victory is lost for ever!' But I can say, The battle's fought, and the victory is won! the victory is won, for ever! I am going to bathe in an ocean of purity, and benevolence, and happiness, to all eternity. And now, my children, let me bless you; not with the blessing of a poor, feeble, dying man, but with the blessing of the infinite God. The grace of God, and the love of Christ, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with all, and each one of you, for ever and ever. Amen." PRAYER-AN OBJECTION ANSWERED. "CAN God be moved by our arguments, or affected with our troubles? He is the unchangeable God, and dwells in the inaccessible light. There is no variableness, neither shadow of turning" (James i. 17)-a metaphor from the fixed stars, which admit no parallax, and therefore astronomers cannot demonstrate their magnitude; for our eyes or instruments can yet give no intelligence of any increase or diminution of their diameter or light." Ans. Those holy motions upon the hearts of saints in prayer are the fruits of the unchangeable decrees of his love to them, and the appointed ushers of mercy. God graciously determines to give a praying, arguing,warm, affectionate frame, as the "forerunner" of a decreed mercy. That is the reason that carnal men can enjoy no such mercies, because they pour out no such prayers. The spirit of prayer prognosticates mercy ensuing. Wherefore, when the Lord by Jeremiah foretold the end of the captivity, he also pre-signifies the prayers that should open the gates of Babylon. (Jer. xxix. 10, 12.) Cyrus was prophesied of, to do his work for Jacob his servant's sake, and Israel his elect; but yet they must ask him concerning those things to come, and they should not seek him in vain. (Isa. xlv. 1, 2, 4, 11, 19.) The glory of the latter days in the return of Israel is foretold by Ezekiel; but yet then the Lord "will be inquired of by the house of Israel, to do it for them." (Ezek. xxxvi. 24, 37.) The coming of Christ is promised by himself; but yet "the Spirit and the bride say, Come;" and he "that heareth" must " say, Come." And when Christ says he will ". quickly," ," "Even so come, Lord Jesus." (Rev. xxii. 12, 17, 20.) Divine grace kindles these ardent affections, when the mercies promised are upon the wing. Prayer is that intelligible chain, as Dionysius calls it, that draws the soul up to God, and the mercy down to us; or like the cable that draws the ship to land, though the shore itself remains immovable. Prayer has its kindlings from heaven, like the ancient sacrifices that were inflamed with celestial fire. (2 Chron. vii. 1.)— Lee. come "THIS DO, AND THOU SHALT LIVE.” IF men will look to the law for life, then Christ will let them look to it. But these are its terms-"This do, and thou shalt live." The way is plain. This do:-if they do this, viz., "love the Lord their God with all their heart," &c., they shall live. Having claim life as their just right. But then it must be performed the required conditions, they may boldly done, not partly done, not wished to be done, nor intended to be done, nor sorry that it is not done, but done. There is not wanting boldness in many legalists. They do not err in being over afraid of God, and of judgment to come; they have all the confidence that one who stands on his own merits may They take the fruits of this doing, forgetting to ask have; but they forget these words, "This do." whether they have done it or not. They are proudly building upon their own righteousness, without seeing whether they have any upon which to build. This do." O! what an eternal barrier this is to life by our own works. May it shut me up to the faith of Jesus. Amen. CONTENTMENT-ITS ADVANTAGES. It fills with comfort.-He never wants comfort that lives contented. A contented spirit is ever a cheerful spirit. It is a heaven upon earth, as the opposite to it is a hell upon earth. It is the mind at rest in every condition. A contented man hath not only the comfort of what he hath, but also of what he hath not. What he wants in outward possession is made up to him in inward submission. It fits for duty.-Lord! when the heart is repining and mutiny ing against God, how unfit is a man for duty! but when the spirit is still and quiet, all is done well. Passion unfits us for converse with men, much more for converse with God in holy duties. It is sad praying, when discontent prevails. It always procures that very mercy which we desire, or some other that is better for us.-Discontent makes us to lose what we have; contentment gets us what we want. Fretting never removed a cross, nor profather continues to correct the froward child; but cured a comfort: quiet submission doth both. The when once it yields and is quiet, he gives it any. thing. It sweetens every bitter cup.-This ingredient takes off the bitterness of every state, as the wood cast by Moses did the bitterness of the waters. Nothing can come amiss to him that hath learned to be content. Jacombe. DELIGHTS OF THE CHRISTIAN'S TRIALS. FEARS that raise confidence, humility that exalts, tremblings that embolden, bright clouds that shine upon our Israelites in the night, and darkness that enlightens, solitudes full of heavenly company, and tears brimful of joy, and holy sighs like a cooling wind in harvest, sweats of love, and sick fits that are symptoms of health, and holy faintings that are the soul's cordials, a weariness to the flesh-that is the healthful exercise of, and vigour to, the spirit, and a continual motion that never tires it. As Austin said of divine love, "It is the weight of my soul; it carries me up and down in all that I speak, and all that I act."Lee. THE CHRISTIAN TREASURY. 37 HOPE. BY NICHOLAS LOCKYER, 1650. HOPE is a glad expectation of good; something | now; every bone that is broken shall rejoice. at a distance pleasing; now and then smiling "I will wait upon the Lord that hideth himself upon the soul, and the soul upon it. Man, since from the house of Jacob, and I will look for his fall, hath but little in possession-not enough him." This is hope. Hope has the command to quiet his heart a moment. When I say of herself, but will not have the command of man hath but little, I do not mean of the things God. She has everything that would rebel at of this life (though all this world be nothing)- her foot, but Christ in the highest esteem, of he hath but little of God. Many have nothing of any of his daughters. Can he give bread ? God; they that have most, have but drops, and Will he give a crumb to me? No; I shall eat a thirst for flagons; in suit for much-enough this morsel and die, groan this groan, and my to stay and quiet. "Stay me with flagons" heart-strings will break. You never heard —this is the panting of perfection here; and when the soul can conclude its suit takes above, and can sweetly lie down and look for a return, then it hopes. Joy comes not in by vision here as it doth above, but by expectation; fallen things, as they lie, can glad no understanding man to look upon. All the things in this world will not make up matter sufficient for a smile, if rightly understood; one may gather it from the composed countenance of Christ, all the time he was upon earth. This world is a big vast room, full of broken cisterns, and man the prime vessel, most broken; such a forlorn sight, can it be matter of joy! And yet there are no other prospects here below. Take what house, what place, what advantage you will, to look abroad upon things here below, you cannot look besides ruin and desolation; that this shall be repaired, and all these broken cisterns mended and filled, | and all made to run eternally into my soul-this may do something upon the soul, when it can rise and reach so high; and this is hope. "My desh shall rest in hope." Hope is a soul at rest concerning all things within and without, concerning spirit and flesh, that they shall be all perfectly well. hope speak such a word; she is a child that speaks just like her father. Our God is not come indeed yet, but he will come, and he will not tarry; though he pulls down quickly, yet he takes time to build up, and this time hastens. Despair looks upon mercy at a stand; hope sees it coming, and coming a great pace. “My beloved comes skipping upon the mountains ". certainly coming and swiftly coming. Hope hath but bad external feeling, but all other senses most acute. She can see a great way, hear a great way, and the like. In a dark day, when fogs are never so thick, she can look through them, and behold the land that is far off. When she is in the belly of hell, she can look towards God's temple. When burdens press, that sense hath nothing but torture, nothing but devils to shake hands with, yet then she can see a God amongst a thicket of devis though she cannot come to him as she would. Though I cannot come to him, he will come to me wherever I am; though thousands encompass me, yet I will not fear—that is, I will not despair of one to come to relieve me. Hope will carry more burdens than any grace without sinking. In perils by sea, in perils by land, &c. In poverty, in nakedness, distressed in all kinds The soul of man naturally sits up much now. with a witness, but not cast down. Hope is Distracted creatures can take little rest; this never cast down; she will cast down anything is not well, that's not well, all will be worse; -men, devils-but is never cast down herself. the world will sink, and I shall be undermost. Hope is a hardy, long-lived grace; it will live You may guess by despair what hope is. De- in famine, when it hath not a bit of bread; it spair is a soul racking itself with what is, and will live in sickness, in war, in death. "The with what will be. 'Tis one taking his flesh in righteous hath hope in his death." Hope his teeth (Job xiii. 14), torturing and tearing was never known to have her heart-strings all. God is gone-he will never return; if he broken-it is semper vivens. Death is the king of do, 'twill but be to send me to my place. Hope fears, and yet it pales not the countenance of is the correction of these distempers. God is hope. Hope walks in the valley of the shadow hid, he is not gone; I shall see him, though not of death, and fears none ill-expects no hurt. Hope can see no ill, no hurt in anything-not in death, not in the grave; that house is something dark indeed; but I shall not always lie there, saith hope. Thou wilt not leave my soul in the grave; though thou kill me, I will hope in thee; though thou bury me, I will hope in thee. I shall rise as Christ did; this vile body shall be changed, and made like Christ's glorious body, and then set for ever where his is. "The flesh doth rest in hope." Hope is conversant about no ill, but about all good, and most about that which is noblest; therefore is hope so often put for heaven, it doth so often go to heaven, and is so much taken up there. Looking for that blessed hope, and for the glorious appearing of that great God, and our Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ" (Tit. ii. 13); and so by the author to the Hebrews urged "To lay hold on the hope that is set before us." You see hope is put for heaven; and the reason is, because so much conversant there. Hope feeds delicately-she hath a table below; and this is nothing but the word of Christ. "My soul hopeth in thy word." She hath a table above, and this is nothing but Christ himself, and the state he wears above; this she looks upon oft, and smiles to herself, when no soul alive is aware: "Rejoice in the hope of the glory of God." The two terms of hope are, hell and heaven; she goes from the one to the other, and in this way turns the one into the other and this is all her work. She goes into every house of mourning where Christ is, and takes exact notice of every distress, corporal and spiritual, and then bids the mourner be cheerful. All tears shall be wiped from thine eyes; there is a house eternal in the heavens, though this crack and moulder, and there thou shalt sigh no more. Hope is that good angel that carries Lazarus and lays him in Abraham's bosom; it is that grace which makes heavy afflictions light, long afflictions short, by showing the souls what they work about-a far more exceeding, and an eternal weight of glory. Hope can speak nothing but heaven and glory to a distressed heart. I conclude as I began, hope is a glad expectation of good-of all good -but especially the highest and the noblest good. Drooping hearts, think of this point; how useful is this grace for you! You have taken a house by the borders of hell, continually affrighted with evil spirits, that walk up and down in your souls, and yet you love to dwell here. Terrors take hold sometimes; it is a heavy stroke-then the soul refuseth comfort. Sense of sin is good, but it is a wound of itself that must be carefully dressed oft with the leaves of the tree of life—it will rankle and kill else. Sinner, dost thou know thy state? Yes. Dost thou know it exactly? Yes. Why, whither shalt thou go when thou diest? To hell. Hast thou no hope of any other thing? No. Why wouldest thou stand all this while, and let thy soul bleed to death? Was there no balm ini Gilead? no word in all the book of God that might speak matter of hope to thee? Despair! in strength is very peremptory in conclusions, but never deliberate in examinations of grounds It is a soul so tossed and tumbled between Sata: and conscience, day and night, that it hath no power to ponder anything. Thou shalt go to hell, O my soul, when thou diest. Why? ] have sinned. So did all the saints that are in heaven when they were in earth, as now thou art. Did not David sin much in life, and yet what a brave hope had he in death? Sin enough in life, to make him a type of Satan, for blood and unmercifulness; and yet hope enough in death, to make him a type of Christ: “Thou wilt not leave my soul in grave." Yea, but some persons' sins have a very sad consideration over others. This is truth, but no sin or misery must have any such consideration as to sink the soul. THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE-TWO FACTS. (From Gaussen on Inspiration.) FIRST FACT.-There is no physical error in th Word of God. If there were, the Bible could not be from God. of man, that he should bemistaken. "God is not man, that he should lie;" nor a sol He must. undoubtedly, stoop even to our weakness, to be understood by us; but without, however, in any degree participating in it. His language always testifies of his condescension, but never of his ignorance. This remark is more important than it appears to be before it has been reflected on. It becomes very forcible on a close examination. Examine all the false theologies of both ancients and moderns; read in Homer or Hesiod the religious! Brahmans, or Mohammedans, and you will there find code of the Greeks; examine that of Budhists, not only revolting systems, as respects the Divinity, but the grossest errors relative to the natural world. Their theology would, doubtless, shock; but their natural philosophy and astronomy, also, always asso ciated with their religion, involve notions the most absurd. Chinese, their fantastic theories about the five eleRead in the Chou-king and the Y-king of the ments (wood, fire, earth, metal, and water), and of their powerful influences upon affairs both human and divine. Read in the Shaster, the Pouran, the four books of Vedham (the Hindu laws), their offensive system of the foundation of the world. The THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE. Our noon is 50,000 leagues higher than the sun; her ight is inherent; she animates our bodies. The aight is caused by the descent of the sun behind the Someyra Mountain, situated in the midst of the earth, of several thousand leagues in height! globe is flat and triangular, composed of seven storeys, ach of which has its degree of beauty, its inhabitants, and its sea; the first of honey, another f sugar, another of butter, another of wine, and anally, the whole mass is sustained upon the heads of innumerable elephants, who, when they shake themselves, cause the earthquakes! In a word, they have given the history of their gods alike in the most fantastic and fatal connection with the physical world and with all the phenomena of the uniso that the missionaries in India have often declared, that a telescope introduced by stealth into the sacred Benares, or the ancient Ava, would be a battery, powerful as a thunder-bolt, to overturn the systems of both Brahman and Budhist. verse; Read, further, the philosophy of Grecian and Roman antiquity. What sentences do you not find there, one of which would alone suffice to compronise all our doctrines of inspiration, if it were met with in any book of the Sacred Scripture. Read Mohammed's Koran, creating the mountains "to prevent the earth from moving, and to hold it as by anchors and cables!" What do I say?-read even the descriptions of Buffon, or some of the sarcasms of Voltaire, on the subject of a deluge, or on the fossil animals of the primitive world. We will come still nearer: read, moreover, we will not say the absurd reasonings of heathens- of Lucretia, Pliny, and Plutarch, against the theory of the antipodes-but of the Fathers themselves of the Christian Church. Hear the theological indignation of St. Augustine, who declares that the rotundity of the earth is opposed to the Scriptures; and the scientific eloquence of Lactantius, who believes it to be contrary to sound sense: "Nùm aliquid loquuntur!" he exclaims; "is there any one so ignorant as to believe that there are men having legs above their heads; trees having fruit hanging upwards; and hail, rain, and snow, falling from below upwards?" They answer (he adds) by affirming that the earth is a globe. Quid dicam de is nescio, qui, cum semel aberaverrint, constanter in stultitia perseverant, et vanis vana defendunt !— One knows not what to say of such men, who, once astray, plunge headlong in their folly, and defend one absurdity by another!" Hear, yet the legate Boniface, on this account, accusing Virgilius as a heretic, to the pope; hear Pope Zacharius treating this unfortunate bishop as homo malignus. "If it be proved (he writes) that Virgilius maintains that there are other men under this earth, assemble a council, condemn him, depose him from the priesthood, and expel him from the Church!" Hear, at a later period, all the higher order of the clergy in Spain, and especially the grave and authoritative Council of Salamanca, in its indignation against the geographical system by which Columbus sought a new world. Hear, at the period of the birth of Newton, the renowned Galileo "who (says Kepler) scaled the highest walls of the universe," and who justified, by his genius as well as by his telescope, the forgotten and condemned system of Copernicus; behold him groaning at the age of eighty in the dungeons of Rome, for having discovered the earth's motion, after having been compelled, ten years previously (the 28th of June, 1633) to pronounce the following words before their Eminences, at the palace of the Holy Office :-"I, Galileo, in the seventieth year of my life, on my knees before your eminences, having before my eyes, and touching with my own hands, the Holy Scriptures, 39 I abjure, curse, and abhor, the error of the earth's motion!" What might not have been justly said against the Scriptures, if they had spoken of the phenomena of nature, as all the ancient sages have spoken of them? if they had resolved everything to four elements, as was done for so long a period; if they, like Philolaus of Crotona, had made the stars crystal bodies; and if, like Empedocles, they had lighted with two suns the two hemispheres of our globe; if they had said, with Leucippus, that the fixed stars, kindled by the velocity of their diurnal rotation about the earth, illumined the sun with their fires; if they had formed the heavens and earth, like Diodorus of Sicily, and all the sages of Egypt, by the motion of air and the upward course of flame; or if they had said, like Philolaüs, that the sun has only a borrowed light, and that it is merely a mirror which reflects the splendour of the celestial spheres?-if like Anaxagoras, they had made of this luminary a mass of iron larger than the Peloponnesus, and of the earth a mountain, whose foundations extended to infinity?-if they had imagined the heaven a solid sphere, studded with fixed stars, as did Aristotle, and almost all the ancients?-if they had termed the celestial vault a firmamentum, or aripipa, as have done its interpreters both Greek and Latin?-and finally, if they had spoken, as has been done so recently, and even amongst Christian nations, of the influence of the movements of the heavens upon the elements of this lower world, upon the characters of men, and upon the course of human things? Such is the natural inclination of all nations towards this superstition, that in despite of their religion, the ancient Jews, and even Christians themselves, equally sank into it. dern Greeks," says D'Alembert, "have carried it to excess; there is scarcely found one of their authors who, on every occasion, does not speak of predictions by the stars, of casting nativities, and talismanic influences; so that there was scarcely an edifice at Constantinople, and in all Greece, which was not erected according to the rules of a planet-directed divination." French historians observe that astrology was so much in vogue in the time of Catherine de Medicis, that nothing important was undertaken without having consulted the stars; and even under Henry III. and Henry IV. the only topic at the court of France was the predictions of the astrologers. "The end of the last century," says Ph. Giulani, "witnessed an Italian sending to Pope Innocent XI. an astrological prediction respecting Vienna, then besieged by the Turks, which was very favourably received." In our own time, the Count de Boulainvilliers has written very gravely on the subject. "The mo But now, open the Bible, examine the fifty sacred authors therein, from the admirable Moses-who wrote in the wilderness four hundred years before the siege of Troy-to the fisherman son of Zebedee, who wrote fifteen hundred years later in Ephesus and Patmos, under the reign of Domitian;-open the Bible, and see if you can find anything similar there. You cannot. None of those mistakes which the science of every century detects in the books of preceding generations-none of those absurdities which modern astronomy, especially, so numerously brings to light in the writings of the ancients, in their sacred codes, in their philosophy, and even in the most attractive pages of the Fathers of the Church-not one of these errors can be found in our sacred books; nothing there will contradict anything that the investigations of the learned world, during so many centuries, have been able to disclose, both as to the nature of our globe and of ethereal ele ments. Carefully go through our Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, in search of such faults, and as you carry on the investigation, remember that it is a book which treats of everything, which describes nature, which recounts its wonders, which records its creation, which tells us of the formation of the heavens, of the light, of the waters, of the air, of mountains, of animals, and of plants;-that it is a book which acquaints us with the first revolutions of the world, and which foretells also its last;-that it is a book which describes them with circumstantial details, invests them with sublime poetry, and chants them in fervent melodies;-that it is a book replete with Eastern imagery, full of majesty, variety, and boldness; that it is a book which treats of the earth and things visible, and, at the same time, of the celestial world and things invisible;-that it is a book in which nearly fifty writers, of every degree of cultivation, of every order, of every condition, and separated from one another by fifteen hundred years, have been engaged;-that it is a book written variously in the centre of Asia; in the sands of Arabia; in the deserts of Judea; in the porches of the Jewish temple, or in the rustic schools of the prophets of Bethel and Jericho; in the magnificent palaces of Babylon, and on the idolatrous banks of the Chebar, and afterwards in the centre of western civilization; in the midst of the Jews and their ignorant conceits; among polytheism and its idols, and, as it were, in the bosom of pantheism and its foolish philosophy; -that it is a book whose first writer was, during forty years, brought up among the magicians of Egypt, who regarded the sun, planets, and elements, as endowed with intelligence, reacting upon and governing our world by their continual evaporation; that it is a book whose first pages preceded by more than NINE HUNDRED YEARS the most ancient philosophers of Greece and Asia; Thales, Pythagoras, Zaleucus, Xenophon, and Confucius;-that it is a book which carries its records into the scenes of the invisible world, the hierarchy of angels, the latest periods of futurity, and the glorious consummation of all things! Well; search in its 50 authors, search in its 66 books, search in its 1,189 chapters, and its 31,173 verses; search for a single one of the thousand errors with which every ancient and modern author abounds, when they speak of heaven or of the earth, of their revolutions or their elements, and you will fail to find it. Its language is unconstrained, and without reserve; it speaks of everything, and in every form of words; it is the prototype, it is the inimitable model; it has inspired all that poetry has produced in its most elevated character. Ask Milton, the two Racines, or Young, and Klopstock; they will tell you that its divine strains are by far the most harmonious, commanding, and sublime; it rides upon a cherub, and walks upon the wings of the wind! And yet his book never does violence to facts, nor to the principles of sound natural philosophy. Never, in ne single sentence, will you find it in opposition to the just ideas which science has given us regarding the form of our globe, its magnitude, and its geology; or respecting the void and vast expanse; or the inert and obedient materiality of all the stars; or the planets, their masses, courses, dimensions, and influences; or the suns which people the depths of space, their number, nature, and immensity. In like manner, in speaking of the invisible world, and on the new, unknown, and difficult subject of angels, his book will not exhibit even one of its authors who, in the course of the 1,560 years which have been occupied in producing it, has varied in the character of love, humility, fervour, and purity, which belongs to these mysterious beings. În like manner, also, in speaking of the relations of the celestial world with God, never has one of these fifty writers, either in the Old or New Testament, ad vanced a single word favourable to the continued pantheism which has characterized the philosophy of the Gentiles. So, also, you will not find one of the authors of the Bible who, in speaking of the visible world, has suffered the escape of a single sentence like those which, in other books, so often contradict the reality of facts;-not one which makes the heavens a firmament, as does the Seventy, St. Jerome, and all the fathers of the Church;-not one, who, like Plato, makes the world an intelligent being;-not one which reduces all earthly things to the four physical elements of the ancients;-not one agreeing with the Jews, with the Latins, with the Greeks, with the noblest minds of antiquity, with|| the great Tacitus among the ancients, and the celebrated De Thou among the moderns, and with the sceptic Michael Montaigne, who writes, "The stars have dominion and power, not only upon our lives and the state of our fortunes, but even upon our inclinations, speech, and will; and they rule, impel, and excite them at the pleasure of their influences:| and even as our reason informs us and discovers all this lower world is affected by the least jarring in the celestial movements. Facta etenim et vitas hominum suspendit ab astris;"-not one who has spoken of the mountains like Mohammed; of the system of creation, like Buffon; of the antipodes, like Lucretius, Plutarch, Pliny, Lactantius, St. Augus tine, and Pope Zacharius. Truly, if there could be l found in the Bible even one of the errors which | abound in both ancient and modern philosophy, our faith in the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures mast be more than abandoned-it must then be acknowledged that there are mistakes in the Word of God, and that such false sentences belong to a fallible writer, and not to the Holy Ghost; for God is not a man, that he should lie; there is in him no variableness, neither shadow of error; and He to whom lying lips are an abomination, cannot have contradicted himself, nor uttered what is untrue. There is, therefore, no physical error whatever in the Scriptures; and this transcendent fact, which be- || comes more admirable in proportion as it is made the subject of closer investigation, is a striking proof of the inspiration which dictated them, even to their least expressions. To be continued. THE CHAMBER OF TORTURE. In the midst of a spacious rotunda, in a deep cave, lighted by two dim torches, four men in masks surrounded another man, sad and feeble,¦ who sustained himself with difficulty, and whose enfeebled vision the gloomy light of sepulchral place pained and wearied. A humid and thick atmosphere extended like a pestilential fog throughout these subterraneous regions, from which a fetid, sepulchral odour was exhaled. In this sort of grotto, all around the uneven walls, which glistened with the water oozing through the soft stone, instruments of torture were seen suspended; the in fernal invention of the ascetic and savage imagination of the monks, the very sight of which caused a shudder. There were racks, iron bolts, nails of enormous size, ropes of every thickness, and in a |