that zeal which is the ornament of a true Christian. He mentions, as a proof of this, his noble foundation for Lectures in defence of the Gospel against infidels of all sorts; the effects of which have been so conspicuous in the many volumes of excellent discourses, which have been published in consequence of that noble and pious foundation. He was at the charge of the translation and impression of the New Testament, into the Malayan tongue, which he sent over all the East Indies. He gave a noble reward to him that translated Grotius' incomparable book, "Of the Truth of the Christian Religion," into Arabick; and was at the charge of a whole impression, which he took care should be dispersed in all the countries, where that language is understood. He was resolved to have carried on the impression of the New Testament in the Turkish language; but the Company thought it became them to be the doers of it, and so suffered him only to give a large share towards it. He was at £700. charge in the edition of the Irish Bible, which he ordered to be distributed in Ireland; and he contributed liberally, both to the impression of the Welch Bible, and of the Irish Bible for Scotland. He gave, during his life, £300. to advance the design of propagating the Christian religion in America; and as soon as he heard that the East India Company were entertaining propositions for the like design in the East, he presently sent a hundred pounds for a beginning, as an example; but intended to carry it much further, when it should be set on foot to purpose. When he understood how large a share he had in the forfeited Irish impropriations, he ordered considerable sums to be given to the incumbents in those parishes, and even to the widows of those who were dead, before this distribution of his bounty. In other respects his charities were so bountiful and extensive, that they amounted to upwards of £1000. per annum.

His knowledge was vast and various-sanctified and directed by a sound religious creed, and employed only on the themes of sterling value. "To him,” said the great Boerhaave, “we owe the secrets of fire, air, water, animals, vegetables, fossils; so that from his works may be deduced the whole system of natural knowledge." To our own age, he was of course but the pioneer in these things; but his genuine piety and well-directed

liberality may well put to shame many of the most forward professors of the nineteenth century.

TRAVELLERS WONDERS.

"Travellers' Wonders" are proverbial. Many will run half over the world to discover peculiarities, and chronicle incidents, which they might meet with at home; and will describe in superlatives, the manners, customs, and absurdities of the foreigner, altogether forgetting that, perhaps in his eyes, many of their sayings and doings at home would appear quite as outré and ridiculous., This remark will be better understood by reference to a recent work entitled "Rome in the Nineteenth Century," from which the following passage is extracted:

"We were present to-day at one of the most ridiculous scenes I ever witnessed, even in this country. It was St. Anthony's blessing of the horses, which begins on that saint's day, and lasts for a week; but as this was a festone, I rather imagine we saw it in its full glory. We drove to the church of the saint, near Santa Maria Maggiore, and could scarcely make our way through the streets from the multitudes of horses, mules, asses, oxen, cows, sheep, goats, and dogs, which were journeying along to the place of benediction: their heads, tails, and necks, decorated with bits of colored riband, and other finery on this their unconscious gala day. The saint's benediction, though nominally confined to horses, is equally efficacious, and equally bestowed upon all quadrupeds; and I believe there is scarcely a brute in Rome, or the neighbourhood, that has not participated in it. An immense crowd was assembled in the wide open space in front of the church, and from the number of beasts and men, it looked exactly like a cattle fair. At the door stood the blessing priest, dressed, in his robes, and wielding a brush in his hand, which he continually dipped into a huge bucket of holy water that stood near him, and spirted at the animals as they came up in unremitting succession, taking off his little skull-cap, and muttering every time,Per intercessionem beati Antonii Abatis hæc animalia liberantur a malis, in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sanctus.

Amen.' The poor priest had such hard work in blessing, that he was quite exhausted and panting, and his round face looked fiery red with his exertions. The rider or driver of the creature always gave some piece of money, larger or smaller in proportion to his means or generosity, and received an engraving of the saint, and a little metallic cross: however, all animals might be blessed gratis.

"One adventure happened which afforded us some amusement. A countryman having got a blessing on his beast, putting his whole trust in its power, set out from the churchdoor at a grand gallop, and had scarcely cleared a hundred yards before the ungainly animal tumbled down with him, and over his head he rolled into the dirt. He soon got up, however, and shook himself, and so did the horse, without either seeming to be much the worse. The priest seemed not a whit out of countenance by this, and some of the standers by exclaimed with laudable steadfastness of faith, that but for the blessing, they might have broken their necks."

So much for the "most ridiculous" Italians.

Without travelling farther than the southern shores of our own island, we are enabled to describe a ceremony which, in our unsophisticated judgment, appeared quite as blasphemous and silly. We will do it in similar terms, that comparison may be more easy.

"We were present to-day at one of those spectacles, in which intellectual England takes so much pleasure, but which in our eyes appeared supremely ridiculous. It was a fine day,

towards the close of autumn: the sea broke gloriously on the beach as we were resting on one of the seats ranged along a broad esplanade crowded with fashionable company. Looking across the sunny spread of waters, a lovely island, feathered with many-colored foliage, terraced with pretty villas, and backed by dark blue downs, rose boldly before us, while looking landward, the eye ranged over an extensive common, from which came the din of drums and fifes, and at intervals, the startling bray of the trumpet. A regiment of soldiers was performing a variety of evolutions, mechanically falling into line, wheeling round, and then marching to and fro, with such ludicrous regularity, that they resembled an animated fence,

painted through some strange fancy, red, white, and black, more than anything else. The officers rode rapidly in front of the line, every now and then shouting, in a voice rendered indistinct by its very vehemence, the word of command. These wriggling manœuvres soon came to an end, and the regiment stood stock-still in front of a splendid array of ladies, officers, and gentlemen. After some little time, one of the company, robed as a clergyman, advanced, and in a certain form of words, blessed the flags, which were, as I afterwards found, presented that day to the soldiers for the first time. They were then, with no little ceremony, laid in the form of a cross on one of the drums placed to receive them; and a prayer was offered up to the God of battles that he would make them instrumental in leading on to victory those who were hereafter to bear them—a petition that struck us as rather singular, since we knew of no other way to conquest than through the flesh and sinews of our fellow creatures. A lady then advanced from amongst the company, and made a pretty speech to the soldiers, telling them that England expected them to do their duty, or something of the kind. After this, the guests retired to a splendid dejeuner, and the day was spent in conviviality.

"Since that time, many an adventure has happened connected with the spectacle, which if it have not afforded us much amusement, has at least awakened curious thought. The very flags which were then blessed so devoutly by the clergymanI believe a protestant-have met with some most ludicrous casualties, which say little for the potency of that blessing, though we have not heard that the priest is a whit out of countenance on the occasion. They are now fairly riddled with musket shot, and one of them is torn to ribands. As for the drum, so devoutly signed by the crossed staves, it has long since become useless, and was last seen in the dark hovel of an old Jew, whose name and calling as a dealer in marine stores, are written in such cramped up characters over his door that we cannot read them, and must beg the reader's indulgence on that score. A friend, however, assures us, that but for the blessing, both drums and colors would have fared much worse; and would probably by this time have been hung up as trophies in some votive chapel of our enemies."

"IF HAPLY THEY MIGHT FEEL AFTER HIM."

(Concluded from page 350.)

ASSOCIATED with this sense of sin and destruction, there seem to have always existed in the human mind these two ideas-that the Great Father of spirits was alone competent to make known the mode of access to Himself; and that even this "new and living way" could not be opened up without a propitiatory sacrifice of some kind, by which man might be lifted into a position that would entitle him to plead successfully with his Maker. Atonement and Enlightenment were the grand desiderata of the Gentile world; and the thought in many cases ripened into a conviction, that the things so earnestly desired would eventually be granted.

Believing, as we do, that under culminating aspects, Christianity is as old as the Creation," it is not easy to unravel the web of purely Natural Religion from the woof of traditional revelation. From these two threads has been woven that mystic veil which, whilst it shut out from the poor heathen's view the true Shekinah, led him, with trembling steps, to seek the threshold of that adytum where it shone forth from between the cherubim of God.

The instincts of the natural mind were, in many instances, leavened by traditions derived indirectly from Revelation, disguised and distorted by the clouded media through which they were transmitted, and coloured too often by the corruptions of a heart naturally deceitful and desperately wicked.

But gathering up these fragments as we find them, and submitting them to the light of God's Word, we are often enabled to trace them back to their origin, and at the same time to discover in them a significance overlooked or forgotten in the perverted forms under which they obtained among the heathen, who, changing the truth of God into a lie, had sunk the spiritual and the invisible in the material and tangible.

We find, then, in the minds of the ancient heathen generally, two dominant religious ideas—a deep sense of ignorance and sin, and a hope, amounting almost to a conviction, that there was some provision made, or to be made, for its cancelment. Hence we see with what beautiful propriety the Saviour is called in the sacred Scriptures, "The Desire of Nations;"