CONTENTMENT. MEN act rather like heathens than Christians, when they fret upon some particular inferior disappointments, notwithstanding God's liberality laid forth upon them in many other respects. As Alexander, the monarch of the world, was discontented because ivy would not grow in his gardens at Babylon. Diogenes, the cynic, was herein more wise, who, finding a mouse in his sachel, said, he saw that himself was not so poor, but some were glad of his leavings. O how might we (if we had hearts to improve higher providences) rock our peevish spirits quiet by much stronger arguments!—Ashe. THE CHRISTIAN'S SAVOUR. WE remember reading, in a book of eastern travel, this singular and instructive circumstance, that the travellers had long been destitute of salt, and were anxious to obtain that necessary; and they came to a certain part of the Holy Land where the whole ground was covered over with sparkling salt. They eagerly applied to gather some; but upon tasting it, to their mortification they found that, bleached by exposure to the wind and sun and rain, it had altogether lost its savour. There was the substance, but the savour was gone, and it was to no purpose, it could not profit them. But one among them, more acute than the rest, took off the surface of the salt, and piercing down into some of the crevices of the rock underneath, found embedded there, with its moisture retained by contact with the rock, salt that was full of savour, that abundantly answered their end. It is even so with those who are in contact with the Rock of ages; it is being hidden, as it were, treasured in the clefts of that Rock-it is deriving moisture and savour from Him, that makes the salt to be savoured. So that those who are but surface Christians, that are so exposed to the world and to evil influences, that are so bleached by the wind and the rain of temptation, that they lose their contact with Jesus-they become savourless and vapid, and are of no use, "not meet even for the dunghill, but only fit to be cast out and trodden under foot of men." But those who are in contact, through heavenly communion and vital faith, with the Rock of ages, they retain their savour-not their savour, but His whose Spirit dwells in them.-Hugh Stowell. POETRY. OUR ONE LIFE. "Occupy till I come."-Luke xix. 13. "Tis not for man to trifle! Life is brief, And sin is here. Our age is but the falling of a leaf, A dropping tear. We have no time to sport away the hours, Not many lives, but only one have we— How sacred should that one life ever be,— Day after day filled up with blessed toil, Our being is no shadow of thin air, No vacant dream; No fable of the things that never were, But only seem. 'Tis full of meaning as of mystery, Though strange and solemn may that meaning be. Our sorrows are no phantom of the night— No idle tale ; No cloud that floats along a sky of light, On summer gale. They are the true realities of earth, Friends and companions even from our birth. O life below-how brief, and poor, and sad! O life above-how long, how fair, and glad! Oh, to have done for aye with dying here; Oh, to begin the living in yon sphere! O day of time, how dark! O sky and earth, O day of Christ, how bright! O sky and earth, Come, better Eden, with thy fresher green; - Quarterly Journal of Prophecy. LOOK UPWARD! Toil on in hope! weary husbandman, shrink not Fondly of shades where the summer gales play; Heaven resteth those that have laboured before thee, Bear on, young sufferer, though darkened and shaded, Never lament for the glories that faded When the wild storm-cloud enshrouded thy sky! Heaven healeth those that have languished before thee, Weep on in patience pale mourner! though sorrow Murmur not thou if in prospect, the morrow Wept not the Saviour, whose eye watcheth o'er thee? LYRA. ENIGMA. [Answers in verse are requested.] For when my gloomy pinions veer It is not always thus: the weak, LYRA. HAPPINESS. "All is vanity and vexation of spirit." And were it mine with stately step to tread, And while his eye creation's wealth doth scan, S. X. THE YOUTHS' MAGAZINE; OR, EVANGELICAL MISCELLANY. DECEMBER, 1852. GOOD BYE! IT is not at any time a grateful office to say "Good bye." But there are often mitigating circumstances that take off much from the uneasiness of the task, and transmute it almost into a pleasure. On the present occasion, after an acquaintanceship of nearly twenty years, during which we have held sweet counsel with our readers, we cannot part without some expressions of regret, whilst we are far from cherishing any feeling of vexation that our editorial work is about to close. We feel that we have held no inferior place in the affections of many; that we have honestly and conscientiously attempted to fulfil the trust reposed in us; and above all, that our labors "have not been in vain in the Lord." For forty-seven years, the Youths' Magazine has been before the public, without compromising in any way the majestic principles on which it started. It has borne witness, through evil report and through good report, to the truth as it is in Jesus, and has never attempted to serve the interests of any one party at the expense of |