WHO MADE THESE?

When Bonaparte crossed the Mediterranean on his Egyptian expedition, he carried with him a cohort of savans, who ultimately did good service in many ways. Among them, however, as might be expected at that era, were not a few philosophers of the Voltaire-Diderot school. Napoleon for his own instruction and amusement on ship-board, encouraged disputation among these gentlemen; and on one occasion they undertook to show, and according to their own account, did demonstrate by infallible logic and metaphysics, that there is no God. Bonaparte, who hated all ideologists, abstract reasoners, and logical demonstrators, no matter what they were demonstrating, would not fence with these subtle dialecticians, but had them immediately on deck, and pointing to the stars in the clear sky, replied by way of counter-argument, "Very good, messieurs! but who made all these ?"

THE BIBLE TURNED AGAINST ITSELF.

So the struck eagle stretched upon the plain,
No more through rolling clouds to soar again,
Viewed its own feather in the fatal dart,

And winged the shaft that quivered in its heart.

ONE of the most decided forms in which a self-sufficient spirit proclaims itself, in connection with the subject of Inspiration, is that of ignoring the Bible altogether, as a book superannuated and outstript. The religion of human nature is placed above that of the New Testament, and arrayed against it. Man having unconsciously appropriated many of the truths of Revelation, announces them as the excogitations of his own reason. It says much, indeed, for the divinely-adapted and congenial nature of the truths which can thus noiselessly blend with the activity of the human mind in its best moments, as if they were its own offspring; but it says little for man's self-knowledge, or his knowledge of history, which can thus allow him to mistake the whispers of heaven for his own thoughts.

The foremost of the parties in question do not appear to be prodigies, either of intellect or of moral excellence, yet the great problems of antiquity are amongst the easiest of their themes, and all their solutions are delivered as oracles. A Socrates admitted that he could only conjecture, and that his

best probabilia needed the confirmation of the gods: our Deist, so far from wanting divine teaching, can even revise and amend the only record professing to contain a communication from God. A Cicero, with all the old philosophies lying before him, confessed his inability to answer the question, "What is Truth?" by becoming an academic in his old age; but our modern Deist is not only a stranger to all such misgivings: he professes to derive support for his system, if not even his system itself, from those very writings which failed the philosopher, and calls in the authority of Tully himself to justify his confidence. "Our reason," remarks Herder, "is educated by the divine revelation; and the well-educated daughter will not strike the mother in the face." But our Deist, besides ignoring the fact that he has been beholden to the Bible for any of the great truths he may happen to hold, repays the obligation by rejecting and calumniating all the rest. We smile at the rustic for wondering that the sun should shine by daylight; but the conduct of the Deist in professing his independence of divine illumination is strictly parallel; with this exception, indeed, that while mere ignorance will account for the former, a moral defect alone can explain the latter.-Dr. Harris.

THE DUST OF THE GROUND.

That "God formed man out of the dust of the ground," is not a poetical figure, but a great fact. Man and the whole organized world, derive the material elements of which they are formed, from the inorganic world. The tremblings of the earthquake and the eruptions of the volcano are not signs of the divine anger, but indications that changes are going on in the chemical composition of the matter of the earth, by which those elements which are necessary for the growth of plants, and through them for the food of the animal kingdom, are discharged into the atmosphere, and directed towards their ultimate destination. Other elements, again, which do not assume the gaseous form, but necessary for the existence of plants and animals, are embedded in the rocks of the earth; and these, through the researches of the geologist and chemist, have been made available for the culture of plants, and the increase of the plenty which the bountiful earth presents to man.-Dr. Lankester.

POETRY.

THE MEDIATOR.

"And he stood between the living and the dead, and the plague was stayed." CAPTAIN of our salvation! Thou,

Whose life was offered in our stead;

Resume thy post of mercy now,

Between the living and the dead!

Wrath is gone forth from God the Lord-
We dare not meet his jealous eye,
But in thy right, Incarnate Word!
For if we see his face, we die.
But thou, with patient feet hast trod,
In silence, suffering, and alone;
The winepress of the wrath of God,

And cast a rainbow round the throne.

We gaze upon its tender light,

And he who was consuming flame,

Repels no more the vent'rous sight,

But hears our plea, and meets our claim.

THE FIELDS IN SPRING.

"Tell me what wants mee here to worke delyte,
The simple ayre, the gentle warbling winde,
So calm, so coole, as no where else I finde,
The grassie grounde with dainte daysies dight,
The bramble bush, where birdes of every kinde
To waterfalls their tunes attemper right."

SPENSER.

THE air is brisk, and the green lowland rings
With tinkling waterfalls and bubbling springs,
The clouds glance fleetly by, and as they pass,
Fling their light shadows o'er the glitt'ring grass,
The wild thyme trembles as the reckless bee
Springs from its dusky flow'rets fearfully,
The distant hills give back the tedious cry
Of some lone crow that wings it wearily,
And the pale weeds which chafe that tott'ring wall
Lisp to the chirpings of the waterfall.

Through the tall hedge-row, where the straggling rose
Bows its warm blossom as the light wind blows,
And stately elms their twining branches sway,
Streams the full splendour of the noon-tide ray,
While in its sheen the glitt'ring flies prolong
The mazy dance, and urge their drowsy song.
Though with fair speech and music ever new
The woods are vocal, and the waters too;
Sounds less presuming, but to fancy, dear,
Come indistinctly o'er the wakeful ear,
The whirring beetle as it blindly heaves

The scrambling black-thorn, or the sapling's leaves,
Or dash of pebbles in that brooklet's tide,
As the wren nestles in its grassy side.

Oh! could I lose the world, and thus beguiled,

Pass all my days in some secluded wild!

For all it proffers, seems, compared to this,

A thirsty desert, where no water is.

A WISH.

No living bust, no speaking stone,
No glitt'ring cenotaph I crave;
Lay me unfriended and alone,

Where nature may adorn my grave.

When this poor frame lies mute and chill,
I ask no kindred eyes to weep,
For as the evening mists distil,

Heav'n's holier tears my turf shall steep.

I will not ask an earthly tongue
To sound for me the solemn hymn,
"My Father's house" shall hear it sung,
I trust, by choirs of seraphim;

In strains how loftier! you can tell

How free from sin, how full of bliss !--

Oh! angels who in strength excel;

And see our Surety as he is!