Thy mighty working, mighty God,
Wakes all my powers; I look abroad
And can no longer rest;

I too must sing when all things sing,
And from my heart the praises ring,
The Highest loveth best.

I think, Art Thou so good to us,
And scatterest joy and beauty thus
O'er this poor earth of ours-
What nobler glories shall be given
Hereafter in Thy shining heaven,

Set round with golden towers!

What thrilling joy, when on our sight
Christ's garden beams in cloudless light,
Where all the air is sweet,
Still laden with the unweary'd hymn,
From all the thousand seraphim,
Who God's high praise repeat!

Oh, were I there! Oh, that I now,
Dear God, before Thy throne could bow,
And bear my heavenly palm!
Then, like the angels, would I raise
My voice, and sing Thy endless praise
In many a sweet-toned psalm.

Nor can I now, O God, forbear,
Though still this mortal yoke I wear,
To utter oft Thy name;
But still my heart is bent to speak
Thy praises; still, though poor and weak,
Would I Thy love proclaim.

But help me; let Thy heavenly showers
Revive and bless my fainting powers,

And let me thrive and grow

Beneath the summer of Thy grace,
And fruits of faith bud forth apace
While yet I dwell below.

And set me, Lord, in Paradise,

When I have bloom'd beneath these skies,
Till my last leaf is flown;

Thus let me serve Thee here in time,
And after in that happier clime,

And Thee, my God, alone!

DEATH'S VISIT TO THE VILLAGE.

THEY say that the people live longer in the country than in town, and, perhaps, they may a few short years; but be not deceived by the saying, my country friends, for the word of the Eternal is gone forth: "The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away." (Ps. xc. 10.) Neither town nor country can prevent the

visits of Death.

Death came up the village. It was in the spring; the fresh leaves were budding forth,

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and the snow-drops were peeping out of the ground. He went into the thatched cottage by the ash-tree, where sat old Roger Gough in his arm-chair, with his brow wrinkled and his hair white as flax. Roger was taken with the cramp in the stomach, and soon ceased to breathe. "What man is he that liveth, and shall not see death? shall he deliver his soul from the hand of the grave?" (Ps. lxxxix. 48.)

The wheelwright's wife sat, with her baby, her first-born, in her lap. It smiled as if it lay asleep, and breathed softly. The mother went on mending stockings, every now and then casting a fond look at her little treasure. That day week its gentle spirit departed, leaving the fond parents half heart-broken. How uncertain is human life! "It is even a vapour that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away." (James iv. 14.)

Death went down the village in summer. The heavens were bright with sunbeams, and the earth seemed to smile; the gardens were in their glory, and the merry haymakers were busy in the fields. The sexton's son had long been ailing, and all agreed that he could never struggle through the winter. The red tinge on his cheek was not a healthy hue; consumption had marked him for the grave. He had taken to his bed for a fortnight, when his head fell gently back on his pillow, and he went off like an infant going to sleep. "As for man, his days are as grass; as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone: and the place thereof shall know it no more." (Ps. cii. 15, 16.)

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Butcher Hancocks was the strongest man in the parish; but he was no match for Death. His chest was broad, his arms were sinewy and strong, and his frame bulky and well knit together. As hearty as Hancocks," was a common adage. No matter; sickness soon robs the stoutest of his strength, and pulls down the tallest man to the ground. The fever fastened upon him, so that one hour he raged with heat and thirst, and the next his teeth chattered with the cold. His neighbours carried him to the grave. Lord, make me know mine end, and the measure of my days, what it is; that I may know how frail I am. Behold, thou hast made my days as an hand-breadth, and mine age is as nothing before thee; verily, man at his best state is altogether vanity." (Ps. xxxix. 4, 5.)

Death crossed the village in autumn. The orchard-trees were bending beneath their load, the sickle was at work among the wheat, and the scythe was sweeping down the barley. Never was known a more abundant year. The loaded teams were seen in all directions, and the gleaners were picking up the scattered ears from the stubble. Farmer Blunt was a wealthy man. He was in the field with the reapers, when he suddenly fell to the ground. Some said he was suddenly struck by the sun, and others that it was a fit of apoplexy; but whatever it was, Farmer Blunt never spoke

after. You may, perhaps, have seen his tomb by the stone-wall of the churchyard, with the iron palisades round it. Truly may each of us say, "There is but a step between me and death." (1 Sam. xxi. 3.)

Widow Edwards lived in the shed at the back of the pond. It was a wretched habitation; but the poor cannot choose their dwelling-places. The aged widow had wrestled hard with poverty. Her bits and crops were few and far between. Her son, who ought to have been a staff for her old age to rest on, was at sea. He was roving and thoughtless; but there is a heartache in store for him on account of his aged mother. Death found the widow alone lying on her straw. No one was at hand to comfort her, or to close her eyes. "Watch, therefore; for you know not what hour your Lord doth come." (Matt. xxiv. 42.)

upon

Death went round the village in the winter. The icicles were a foot long, hanging from the pent-house in the carpenter's yard; and the snow lay here and there in heaps, for it had been shovelled away from in front of the cottages. Not a stone's throw from the fingerpost at the end of the village, dwelt Abel Froome, the clerk's father. For years he had been afflicted, but his mind was stayed Christ, the Rock of ages, and he loved to think of eternal things. He had lived to a goodly old age; and as a shock of corn fully ripe for the harvest, he was ready to be gathered into the garner of God. While his days were numbering, his heart had applied unto wisdom; and he knew Him whom to know is eternal life. Death found him sitting up in his bed, with the Bible in his aged hands, and the last words that fell from his lips were, "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word: for mine eyes have seen thy salvation." (Luke ii. 29, 30.) Thus died Abel Froome. "Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright, for the end of that man is peace." (Ps. xxxvii. 37.)

The habitation of Harry Tonks was in a wretched plight when Death crossed the threshold. Harry was an infidel, and scoffed at holy things. His days were mostly spent in idleness, and his nights in poaching, and in tippling at the "Fighting Cocks."

Often had Harry defied Death at a distance as a bugbear; but when he came in reality, he trembled like a child. Pain racked him, and poverty distressed him; but that was not all, for his conscience was at work within him, and his mind was disturbed. "The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity; but a wounded spirit who can bear?" (Prov. xviii. 11.) It was a horrid sight to see Harry clenching his hands, tearing his clothes, and gnashing his teeth in anguish, and quite as bad to hear the curses he uttered in his despair. He died as the wicked die-without joy, without hope," Driven from the light into darkness, and chased out of the world." (Job xviii. 18.) "Rend your heart and not your garments, and turn unto

the Lord your God: for he is merciful and slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil." (Joel ii. 13.)

If Death thus goes up and down, and across and around the village, at all seasons of the year; and if he takes away the old and the young, the feeble and the strong, the rich and the poor, the righteous and the wicked, how long will he pass by THEE? Is it thy prayer "Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his?" (Numb. xviii. 10.) Is Christ thy hope, thy trust, thy salvation? If so, thou mayest indeed rejoice, and say with exultation, "Yea, though I walk through the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me." (Ps. xxiii. 4.)—Thoughts for the Thoughtful.

THE GREAT REVIVAL OF LAST CENTURY AND ITS EVANGELISTS.

NEVER has century risen on Christian England so void of soul and faith as that which opened with Queen Anne, and which reached its misty noon beneath the second Georgea dewless night succeeded by a sunless dawn. There was no freshness in the past and no promise in the future. It was a listless, joyless morning, when the slip-shod citizens were cross, and even the merryandrew joined the incurious public, and, forbearing his ineffectual pranks, sat down to wonder at the vacancy. The reign of buffoonery was past, but the reign of faith and earnestness had not commenced. During the first forty years of that century, the eye that seeks for spiritual life can hardly find it; least of all that hopeful and diffusive life which is the harbinger of more. Doubtless there were divines, like Beveridge, and Watts, and Doddridge, men of profound devotion, and desirous of doing good; but the little which they accomplished only shews how adverse was the time. And their appearance was no presage. They were not the Ararats of an emerging economy. The which startles power or melts a people is zeal surcharged with faith in the great realities, and baptized with the fire of heaven-that fervour which, incandescent with hope and confidence, bursts in flame at the sight of a glorious future, and which, heaping "coals of fire" on the heads of opponents, at once consumes the obstacle, and augments its own transforming conflagra

tion.

GEORGE WHITEFIELD.

Of this power the splendid example was WHITEFIELD.* The son of a Gloucester innkeeper, and sent to Pembroke College, his mind became so burdened with a sense of sin, that he had little heart for study. God and eternity, a holy law and his own personal shortcoming, were thoughts which haunted

*Born 1714. Died 1770.

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as a pulpit orator. Many have outshone him in the clearness of their logic, the grandeur of their conceptions, and the sparkling beauty of single sentences; but in the power of darting the gospel direct into the conscience he eclipsed them all. They were not only enthusiastic amateurs, like Garrick, who ran to weep and tremble at his bursts of passion, but even the colder critics of the Walpole school were surprised into momentary sympathy and reluctant wonder. Lord Chesterfield was listening in Lady Huntingdon's pew when Whitefield was comparing the benighted sinner to a blind beggar on a dangerous road. His little dog gets away from him when skirting the edge of a precipice, and he is left to explore the path with his iron-shod staff. On the very verge of the cliff this blind guide slips through his fingers, and skims away down the abyss. All unconscious, its owner stoops down to regain it, and, stumbling forward" Good God! he is gone!" shouted Chesterfield, who had been watching with breathless alarm the blind man's movements, and who jumped from his seat to save the catastrophe. But the glory of Whitefield's preaching was its heart-kindled, heart-melting gospel. Having no church to found, no family to enrich, and no memory to immortalise, he was the mere ambassador of God; and, inspired with its genial, piteous spirit-so full of Heaven Reconciled and Humanity Restored-he soon himself became a living gospel. Radiant with its benignity, and trembling with its tenderness, by a sort of spiritual induction a vast audience would speedily be brought into a frame of mindthe transfusion of his own; and the white furrows on their sooty faces told that Kingswood colliers were weeping, or the quivering of an ostrich plume bespoke the deep emotion in which its fashionable wearer bowed her head. And coming to his work direct from communion with his Master, and in all the strength of believing prayer, there was an elevation in his mien which often paralysed hostility, a self-possession which only made him, amid uproar and fury, the more sublime. With an electric bolt he would bring the jester in his fool's-cap from his perch on the tree, or galvanise the brickbat from the skulking miscreant's grasp, or sweep down in crouching submission and shamefaced silence the whole of Bartholomew Fair; whilst a revealing flash of sententious doctrine or vivified Scripture would disclose to awe-struck hundreds the forgotten verities of another world, or the unsuspected arcana of their inner man. "I came to break your head, but, through you, God has broken my heart," was a confession with which he was familiar; and to see the deaf old gentlewoman, who used to mutter imprecations at him as he passed along the street, clambering up the pulpit stairs to catch his angelic words, was a sort of spectacle which the triumphant gospel often witnessed in his day. And when it is known that his voice could be heard by

every moment, and compelled him to live for the salvation of his soul; but, except his tutor Wesley and a few gownsmen, he met with none who shared his earnestness. And though earnest, they were all more or less in error. Among the influential minds of the University there was no one to lead them into the knowledge of the gospel, and they had no religious guides except the genius of the place and books of their own choosing. The genius of the place was an ascetic quietism. With an awakened conscience and a resolute will, young Whitefield went through the sanitory specifics of A-Kempis, Kastanza, and William Law; and, in his anxiety to exceed all that is required by the rubric, he would fast during Lent on black bread and sugarless tea, and stand in the cold till his nose was red and his fingers blue, whilst, in the hope of temptation and wild beasts, he would wander through Christ-Church meadows over dark. It was whilst pursuing this course of self-righteous fanaticism that he was seized with alarming illness. It sent him to his Bible, and, whilst praying and yearning over his Greek Testament, the "open secret" flashed upon his view. The discovery of a completed and gratuitous salvation filled with ecstasy a spirit prepared to appreciate it; and from their great deep breaking, his affections thenceforward flowed, impetuous and uninterrupted, in the one channel of love to that Saviour who, on his behalf, had performed all things so excellently. The Bishop of Gloucester ordained him, and on the day of his ordination he wrote to a friend, "Whether I myself shall ever have the honour of styling myself a prisoner of the Lord' I know not; but, indeed, my dear friend, I can call heaven and earth to witness that, when the Bishop laid his hand upon me, I gave myself up to be a martyr for Him who hung upon the cross for me. Known unto Him are all future events and contingencies. I have thrown myself blindfold, and, I trust, without reserve, into His Almighty hands; only I would have you observe, that, till you hear of my dying for or in my work, you will not be apprised of all the preferment that is expected by GEORGE WHITEFIELD." In this rapture of self-devotion he traversed England, Scotland, and Ireland, for four and thirty years, and crossed the Atlantic thirteen times, proclaiming the love of God and His unspeakable gift to man. A bright and exulting view of the atonement's sufficiency was his theology; delight in God and rejoicing in Christ Jesus were his piety; and a compassionate solicitude for the souls of men, often rising to a fearful agony, was his ruling passion; and strong in the oneness of his aim and the intensity of his feelings, he soon burst the regular bounds, and began to preach on commons and village greens, and even to the rabble at London fairs. He was the prince of English preachers. Many have surpassed him as sermon-makers, but none have approached him

twenty thousand, and that, ranging all the empire, as well as America, he would often preach thrice on a working-day, and that he has received in one week as many as a thousand letters from persons awakened by his sermons; if no estimate can be formed of the results of his ministry, some idea may be suggested of its vast extent and singular effectiveness.

ILLUSTRATIONS OF SCRIPTURE.

BY REV. W. M. THOMSON.

AN EASTERN WEDDING.

THERE seems to be an unusual amount of noise and confusion in the street. To what is this owing?

Salim says it is a procession in honour of the marriage of the governor's eldest son. Let us take our stand on the roof of the khan, from which we can have a full view of this Oriental cavalcade. Playing the jereed is the most animating spectacle of the whole, but this, I perceive, has already taken place out on the plain, for their panting steeds are still covered with froth and foam. There are a thousand pictures of this sport, but none that does justice to it, and, indeed, it must be seen to be understood and appreciated. The sheikhs and emeers of Lebanon and Hermon are the best jereed-players. Gaily dressed, and superbly mounted, they take their stations at opposite ends of the hippodrome. At length one plunges his sharp shovel stirrups into the quivering side of his horse, and away he bounds like a thunderbolt until within a short distance of his opponent, when he wheels sharp round as if on a pivot, flings his "reed" with all his might, and then darts back again, hotly pursued by his antagonist. Others now join în, until the whole hippodrome resounds with the general melee. Many are the accidents which occur in this rough play, and what begins in sport often ends in downright earnest; but, notwithstanding this, the young emeers are extravagantly fond of it, for nowhere else can they exhibit either their horses or themselves to so great advantage; and from every latticed window that looks out upon the hippodrome they well know they are keenly watched by the invisible houris of their midnight dreams. Some of the players perform almost incredible feats of daring and agility. Not only will they catch the "reed" of their antagonist in their hand while on the run, but I have seen them hang to the saddle by the upper part of the leg, throw themselves down so low as to catch up from the ground their own reed, and regain their seat again, and all this while their horse was at the top of his speed. There is always more or less of this jereed-playing at the weddings of the great, and upon all important state occasions.

Here comes a new farce: musicians in harlequin attire, with fox-tails dangling from conical caps, blowing, beating, and braying any amount of discordant music. Following them is a company of dancers at sword-play. They are fierce-looking fellows, and their crooked Damascus blades flash around their heads in most perilous vehemence and vicinity. This, I suppose, is the first time you have seen a real shield, or heard its ring beneath the thick-falling blows of the sword. The next in this procession are genuine Bedawin Arabs, with their tremendous spears. This is because Gaza is on the borders of the desert, and the governor finds it to his interest to court the sheikhs of these powerful robbers. And now comes the governor and suite, with the bridegroom and his friends-a gay cavalcade, in long silk robes; some of them are olive-green, and heavily loaded with silver and gold lace. Such is high life in Gaza.

The whole night will be spent in feasting, singing, dancing, and rude buffoonery, in the open court by the men, and in the harem, in equally boisterous games and dances, by the women. These are great occasions for the dancinggirls; and many, not of the "profession," take part in the sport. We see little to admire in their performances. They move forward, and backward, and sidewise, now slowly, then rapidly, throwing their arms and heads about at random, and rolling the eye, and wriggling the body into various preposterous attitudes, languishing, lascivious, and sometimes indecent; and this is repeated over and over, singly, or in pairs or groups. One thing is to be said in their favour: the different sexes do not intermingle in those indecorous sports; and I hope you will not be greatly scandalised if I venture the opinion that the dances spoken of in ancient Biblical times were in most points just such as we have been describing.

COCK-CROWING A DIVISION OF TIME.

Is it not remarkable that there is no allusion to the common barn-door fowl in the Old Testament, and that in the New they are only mentioned in connexion with Jerusalem? In Matthew, Christ thus addresses this wicked city: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!" Matthew, Mark, and Luke refer to the crowing of the cock when Peter denied his Lord, and Mark mentions cockcrowing as one of the watches of the night in connexion with Christ's prophecy concerning the destruction of Jerusalem.

I have often thought of this remarkable silence in regard to one of man's most common associates and greatest comforts, especially in this country. The peasants, not to say citizens in general, would scarcely know how to live without fowls. Their eggs, and