descended to designate his followers, his "friends;" but they ever regarded him as a Friend of a superior nature, towards whom none but the most respectful deportment—the most chastened ardour could be for a moment indulged. The days of the Son of Man on earth have passed away, and his visible Shekinah is no longer to be distinguished, yet he is not beyond the reach of friendship; nay, he stands at the door and knocks-solicits our confiding affection. Marvellous that such fallen creatures should be permitted such an honor! Having passed through the same scenes as ourselves, having been in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin, he is prepared to sympathize with-to console and to instruct us in every position in life, and amid all its vicissitudes. How much its burdens are alleviated by communicating them to this compassionate Friend, let those who have "told Jesus” all their troubles declare. Indeed they need scarcely confirm with their speech the obvious fact, for men will take "knowledge of them that they have been with Jesus." Other friends may change—may remove-may die: but Jesus is the same "yesterday to-day, and for ever." He ever liveth. It is but a thin vail intervening which hides Him from our vision, but he is doubtless as near at hand, as his first disciples often found Him when they least looked for his presence. With the best possible intentions, earthly counsellors are not always infallible; but Jesus will guide us safely and surely to the mansions in his Father's house above. He knows the whole of our future course, and can exactly apportion those manifold trivialities which are to keep us in the right way. As Captain of our Salvation, he never overlooks the smallest item entrusted to his management. But, beloved young friends, while earnestly recommending to you this Friend, who loveth at all times, we must faithfully warn you that there can be no compromise— "Yet know, nor of the terms complain; Remember who has said, us." The friendship of the "He that is not with us is against world is enmity against God, and the converse is equally true, that affection to Christ involves enmity with the world, and the things of the world. "To whom will ye go?" Will you share with a patriarch of old the inestimable title of the Friend of God; or, will you make yourself fit only for companionship with Satan; for the wicked have, strictly speaking, no friends. They may be associates, but no more. Who would not re-echo the resolution of the scribe mentioned in the gospel, and respond "Lord, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest?" Be it so then, dear young reader, and see that you fulfil all the claims of a true-hearted friend towards Christ, avoiding whatever would displease-despising all the world approves. Suffer none to speak lightly of Him in your presence-never be ashamed of his signet. At all seasons, in all society, recollect whom you are privileged to regard as a friend, knowing that those who overcome the temptations of the world, and wash their robes in his blood, He will at the last day hail as his friends, to leave his presence no more for ever! E. W. P. ZACHARIAS, SON OF BARACHIAS. JESUS, in St. Matthew, xxiii. 35, 36, denounces the Jews on account of their treatment of his saints, and threatens them with the most terrible judgments of God; "that," he remarks, "upon this race or generation may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel, unto the blood of Zacharias, son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar." There is certainly here, we are told, a grievous inadvertency; not, doubtless, on the part of Jesus Christ, but on the part of the evangelist who reports his words, and whose memory must have failed. We know from the second book of Chronicles, (xxiv. 21,) that this Zacharias, who was stoned by the Jews in the holy place, was the son, not of Barachias, but of Jehoiada. This is, therefore, an evident error, say these objectors. True, it does not affect doctrine, and cannot in the slightest degree be a ground of disquietude to our faith; but it suffices to demon_ strate that the inspiration could not have descended, as has been pretended, to the choice of expressions, or the indifferent details of inspired narrations. The answer is simple. We wish it were as easy to render it as short as it seems to us conclusive; we will give it at once briefly. There is no reference here to the Zacharias of whom you speak; the evangelist has not erred, therefore, in not naming him, since he had him not in his mind. In fact, do you not see the incompatibility of such a supposition with the thought of Jesus Christ? What has he in view? To recall the long catalogue of homicides, of which an account would be exacted from the race of the Jews; and while he takes up their first murder before the Flood, at the very portal of Paradise, to make them responsible for it, would you desire that he should be content to refer for the last, to a crime committed more than eight centuries before he spoke ? He commences at the son of Adam; and would you imagine that he could conclude with the son of Jehoiada, and thus hold the Jews innocent of the blood shed during 873 years, the most shameful period of their history? Would it not have been more rational to commence, rather than to end, with this Jehoiada? Were not the Jews far more responsible for their homicides committed in their last nine centuries, than they could be for blood which was shed before the Deluge! Had they not, for instance, pursued and killed with fearful fury the prophet Urijah. (Jer. xxvi. 23.) "Which of the prophets," demands Stephen, "have not your fathers persecuted? and they have slain them which predicted the coming of the Just One." (Acts vii. 52.) There is, therefore, no reference to the son of Jehoiada in the passage of St. Matthew. Our answer might terminate here; but it will doubtless be asked, who then was the Zacharias of whom Jesus Christ spake? If we did not know this, it would not be a difficulty, and we might satisfy ourselves by replying, it was a righteous man whom the Jews slew, not only in "the court of the temple," as the son of Jehoiada, but between the temple and the altar;" and this righteous man was the son of Barachias. The point, nevertheless, may be carried further; for history enumerates to us two or three others of the same name, sons of Barachias, about whom the opinions of learned men are divided. The first was "a man of understanding in the visions of God," as he is represented in the second book of Chronicles (xxvi. 5,) and who, it is believed, is the person spoken of by Isaiah in his eighth chapter. However, he lived too short a time after the son of Jehoiada, for our objections against the one, not to have equal weight against the other. The second is the prophet Zechariah, son of Berechiah, and grandson of Iddo, (Zech. i. 1,) who came from Babylon with Zerubbabel, 325 years after the days of Jehoiada, and whose writings form the last book but one of the Old Testament. Scripture, it is true, has not recorded to us his martyrdom, any more than that of the other prophets, who were almost all persecuted and put to death. The temple and the altar had just been rebuilt by his instrumentality as by that of the prophet Haggai, (Ezra vi. 14,) and Zacharias, as it appears, was killed "between the temple and this altar." We read in the Targum, or the Chaldee paraphrase of Jonathan Ben Uzziel, who, it is believed, was contemporary with Jesus Christ; the following passage which proves to us that such was already, previously to the time of our Saviour, the tradition of the Jews concerning this prophet, who was indifferently called the son of Iddo, and son of Barachias-(Zech. i. 1.-Ezra v. 1; vi. 14.) The paraphrast (Lam. ii. 20,) introduces the house of judgment answering to that lament of Jeremiah, "The priest and the prophet, have they not been slain in the temple of the Lord ?" "Was it well of you to kill a prophet as you did Zacharias, the son of Iddo, in the house of the sanctuary of the Eternal, because he endeavored to reclaim you from your evil ways ?"* It may, therefore, be seen, that Jesus Christ might remind the Jews of the sacrilegious murder of this prophet, the son of Barachias, son of Iddo, with which the prophecy of the Old Testament was to close. Gaussen. TRUE RICHES. He is rich who contents himself with his poverty. * Whitby, on Matthew xxiii. 35. Socrates. THE PORTRAITURE OF JERUSALEM. THE direction to portray the city upon a tile, (Ezek. iv. 1.) seems at the first view a strange mode of representation. But it was the most natural and obvious mode of representation that could be devised in Chaldea, where the practice of writing and portraying, by indented figures upon broad and thin bricks or tiles, is now well known from abundance of actual remains. Great numbers of such bricks, charged with inscriptions, and with figures of animals and other objects, have been found among the ancient ruins of Chaldea and Assyria. The bricks employed for this use are mostly of fine clay, hardened in the fire. They are of various sizes, but usually of a foot square by three inches in thickness. In those that have been found, one of the broad surfaces is immensely charged with inscriptions in the wedge-shaped character; and some of them, in addition to the lines of inscribed writing, have the figures of animals and other objects, with other lines of inscription attached to them. It has hence been conjectured, that these tiles comprise public and private documents, with the names and seals of witnesses, and that the ruined edifices from which they have been obtained were the repositories of such archives. In fact, the second discovery by Mr. Layard, in his last visit to Nineveh, of a large chamber filled with such inscribed tiles, places this beyond question; and establishes the probability that the record-chambers at Babylon and at Ecbatana, which were successively explored for the original decree of Cyrus in favor of the Jews, were such chambers as those, and the records like these inscribed on tiles. The object, doubtless, was to give them the most enduring shape-as durable as inscription on stone, perhaps more durable, while far less expensive and cumbersome. There is much reason to hope that the inscriptions on tile and marble already brought to light, and more that is assuredly yet to be found, will ere long be deciphered, as already has been partly done. As to the mode of representation in the case before us, it may have been by impressing the name or symbol of Jerusalem upon the tile. The direction given to the prophet is, however, to "portray Jerusalem" itself. We incline, |