his hopes that heavenly seat, where, seeing even as he is seen, there will be no more exercise for his faith, and where his hopes will be superseded by enjoyment. His ears are closing to every voice, in which, through each endearing interchange of affection, his youth and his age took delight; but still he hears the voice of him who poured out his soul unto death, that he through him might live, assuring him of that glorious termination to all his sufferings, to which he himself led the way I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth in me, though he die, yet shall he live. The trust he had ever reposed in this his Saviour and his God strengthens, as he feels the moment approaching when he is to stand before him; and the words of the holy Job, anticipating that blissful moment, are the last that tremble on his livid and convulsive lips-I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God, whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another. Change this for the language of infidelity, you who have brutified your soul into a persuasion that the dying words of man are but the last sounds of a piece of mechanism falling to pieces; but leave us to die the death of the righteous, and to have our latter end like unto theirs. BISHOP O'BEIRNE.

THE

DEATHBED COMFORT OF A CHRISTIAN. WHO ever left the precincts of mortality without casting a wistful look on what he left behind, and a trembling eye on the scene that is before him? Being formed by our Creator for enjoyments, even in this life, we are endowed with a sensibility to the objects around us. We have affections, and we delight to indulge them; we have hearts, and we want to bestow them. Bad as the world is, we find in it objects of affection and attachment. Even in this waste and howling wilderness there are spots of verdure and of beauty, of power to charm the mind, and to make us cry out "It is good for us to be here." When, after the observation and experience of years, we have found out the objects of the soul, and met with minds congenial to our own, what pangs must it give to the heart to think of parting for ever! We contract an attachment even to inanimate objects. The tree under whose shadow we have often sat; the fields where we have frequently strayed; the hill, the scene of contemplation, or the haunt of friendship, become objects of passion to the mind, and upon our leaving them excite a temporary sorrow and regret. If these things can affect us with uneasiness, how great must be the affliction when stretched on that bed from which we shall rise no more; and looking about, for the last time, on the sad circle of our weeping friends;—how great must be the affliction to dissolve at once all the attachments of life; to bid an eternal adieu to

the friends whom we long have loved, and to part for ever with all that is dear below the sun! But let not the Christian be disconsolate. He parts with the objects of his affection to meet them again; to meet them in a better world, where change never enters, and from whose blissful mansions sorrow flies away. At the resurrection of the just in the great assembly of the sons of God, when all the family of heaven are gathered together, not one person shall be missing that was worthy of thy affection or esteem. And if among imperfect creatures, and in a troubled world, the kind, the tender, and the generous affections have such power to charm the heart, that even the tears which they occasion delight us, what joy unspeakable and glorious will they produce when they exist in perfect minds, and are improved by the purity of the heavens !

LOGAN.

CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. THE morality he taught was the purest, the soundest, the sublimest, the most perfect that had ever before entered into the imagination or proceeded from the lips of man. And this he delivered in a manner the most striking and impressive; in short, sententious, solemn, important, ponderous rules or maxims, or in familiar, natural, affecting similitudes and parables. He showed also a most consummate knowledge of the human heart, and dragged to light all its artifices, subtleties, and evasions. He discovered every thought as it arose in the mind; he detected every irregular

desire before it ripened into action. He manifested, at the same time, the most perfect impartiality. He had no respect of persons. He reproved vice in every station, wherever he found it, with the same freedom and boldness; and he added to the whole the weight, the irresistible weight, of his own example. He, and he only, of all the sons of men, acted up in every the minutest instance to what he taught; and his life exhibited a perfect portrait of his religion. But what completed the whole was, that he taught, as the evangelist expresses it, with authority, with the authority of a divine teacher. The ancient philosophers could do nothing more than give good advice to their followers; they had no means of enforcing that advice; but our great lawgiver's precepts are all divine commands. He spoke in the name of God: he called himself the Son of God. He spoke in a tone of superiority and authority, which no one before him had the courage or the right to assume: and finally, he enforced every thing he taught by the most solemn and awful sanctions, by a promise of eternal felicity to those who obeyed him, and a denunciation of the most tremendous punishment to those who rejected him.

These were the circumstances which gave our blessed Lord the authority with which he spake. No wonder then that the people" were astonished at his doctrines," and that they all declared "he spake as never man spake."

BISHOP PORTEUS,

THE

CHARACTER OF JESUS CONTRASTED WITH THAT OF MAHOMET.

CONSIDERED then in all its circumstances, the history of Christ shrinks not from comparison with the most partial and lofty representation of the prophet of Arabia.

Of both we find that the earlier part of life, before the publication of their respective missions, passed away in silence, private and undistinguished. The first years of Mahomet were busied in the cares of merchandise; till returning to his native city, he devoted to solitude and retirement the leisure which his opulence had procured. The youth of Jesus was spent in domestic privacy, and was remarkable only for affectionate and dutiful submission to his parents; unless, indeed, when in the temple, he by his ready answers to the questions of the Rabbins, and his skilful exposition of the Scriptures, astonished those that heard him, and gave an omen of his future greatness.

The designs of Mahomet were gradually and cautiously unfolded, and in order to prepare the minds of his countrymen for the reception of his faith, he first artfully persuaded his own relations and domestics, and drew to his side the most powerful of his neighbours.

Jesus walked forth by the sea of Galilee, and saw fishers casting their nets; these were his first converts and disciples. Though they were desti