Thou art gone up; and yet, Lord, thou art still below; And where but two or three are met, Mysterious truth, that here and there thou art- And thou wilt come again; The heavens once more shall rend; And know the fulness of the blessings given- Miscellaneous. THE BISHOP AND HIS BIRDS.-A worthy bishop who died lately at Ratisbon, had for his arms two fieldfares, with the motto-" Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing?" This strange coat of arins bad often excited attention, and many persons had wished to know its origin; as it was generally reported that the bishop had chosen it for himself, and that it bore reference to some event in his early life. One day an intimate friend asked him its meaning, and the bishop replied by relating the following story :-" Fifty or sixty years ago a little boy resided at a little village near Dillengen, on the banks of the Danube. His parents were very poor, and, almost as soon as the boy could walk, he was sent into the woods to pick up sticks for fuel. When he grew older his father taught him to pick juniper-berries, and carry them to a neighbouring distiller, who wanted them for making 'Hollands.' Day by day the poor boy went to his task, and on his road he passed by the open windows of the village-school, where he saw the schoolmaster teaching a number of boys about the same age as himself. He looked at these boys with feelings almost of envy, so earnestly did he long to be among them. He knew it was in vain to ask his father to send him to school, for he knew that his parents had no money to pay the schoolmaster; and he often passed the whole day thinking, while he was gathering his juniper-berries, what he could possibly do to please the schoolmaster, in the hope of getting some lessons. One day when he was walking sadly along, he saw two of the boys belonging to the school trying to set a bird-trap, and he asked one what it was for. The boy told him that the schoolmaster was very fond of fieldfares, and that they were setting the trap to catch some. This delighted the poor boy; for he recollected that he had often seen a great number of these birds in the juniper wood, where they came to eat the berries, and he had no doubt but that he could catch some. The next day the little boy borrowed an old basket of his mother, and when he went to the wood he had the great delight to catch two fieldfares. He put thein in the basket, and, tying an old handkerchief over it, he took them to the schoolmaster's house. Just as he arrived at the door, he saw the two little boys who had been setting the trap, and with some alarm he asked them if they had caught any birds. They answered in the negative; and the boy, his heart beating with joy, gained admittance to the schoolmaster's presence. a few words he told how he had seen the boys setting the trap, and how he had caught the birds to bring them as a present to the master. A present, my good boy cried the schoolmaster; 'you do not look as if you could afford to make presents. Tell me your price, and I will pay it you, and thank you besides.' I would rather give them to you, sir, if you please.' The schoolmaster looked at the lad as he stood before him, with bare head and feet, and ragged trowsers that reached only half-way down his naked legs. In 'You are a very singular boy,' said he, but, if you will not take money, you must tell me what I can do for you, as I cannot accept your present without doing something for it in return. Is there anything I can dofor you?' "O yes!' said the boy, trembling with delight, you can do for me what I should like better than anything else.' What is that?' asked the schoolmaster, smiling. "Teach me to read,' cried the boy, falling on his knees; 'O, dear, kind sir, teach me to read.' The schoolmaster complied. The boy came to him at all his leisure hours, and learnt so rapidly that the schoolmaster recommended him to a nobleman who resided in the neighbourhood. This gentleman, who was as noble in mind as in birth, patronized the poor boy, and sent him to school at Ratisbon. The boy profited by his opportunities, and when he rose, as he soon did, to wealth and honour, he adopted two fieldfares as his arms." "What do you mean?" asked the bishop's friend wonderingly, "I mean," returned the bishop with a smile, "that that poor boy was-myself." AN OPIUM DEBAUCH.-One of the objects at this place that I had the curiosity to visit was the opium smoker in his heaven; and certainly it is a most fearful sight, although perhaps not so degrading to the eye as the drunkard from spirits, lowered to the level of the brute, and wallowing in his filth. The idiot smile and deathlike stupor, however, of the opium debauchee, has something far more awful to the gaze than the bestiality of the latter.... The rooms where they sit and smoke are surrounded by wooden couches, with places for the head to rest upon, and generally a side room is devoted to gambling. The pipe is a reed of about an inch in diameter, and the aperture in the bowl for the admission of the opium is not larger than a pin's head. The drug is prepared with some kind of conserve, and a very small portion is sufficient to charge it, one or two whiffs being the utmost that can be inhaled from a single pipe, and the smoke is taken into the lungs as from the hookah in India. On a beginner one or two pipes will have an effect, but an old stager will continue smoking for hours. At the head of each couch is placed a small lamp, as fire must be held to the drug during the process of inhaling; and, from the difficulty of filling and properly lighting the pipe, there is generally a person who waits upon the smoker to perform the office. A few days of this fearful luxury, when taken to excess, will give a pallid and haggard look to the face; and a few months or even weeks, will change the strong and healthy man into little better than an idiot skeleton. The pain they suffer when deprived of the drug after long habit, no language can explain; and it is only when under its influence that their faculties are alive. In the houses devoted to their ruin, these infatuated people may be seen at nine o'clock in the evening in all the different stages. Some entering half distracted, to feed the craving appetite they had been obliged to subdue during the day; others laughing and talking wildly under the effects of a first pipe: whilst the couches around are filled with their different occupants, who lie languid with an idiot smile upon their countenance, too much under the influence of the drug to care for passing events, and fast merging to the wished-for consummation. The last scene in this tragic play is generally a room in the rear of the building, a species of dead-house, where lie stretched those who have passed into the state of bliss the opium smoker madly seeks-an emblem of the long sleep to which he is blindly hurrying.-Six Months in China, by Lord Jocelyn. London: Published by JAMES BURNS, 17 Pertman Street, Portman Square; W. EDWARDS, 12 Ave-Maria Lane, St. Paul's; and to be procured, by order, of all Booksellers in Town and Country. PRINTED BY JOSEPH ROGERSON, 24, NORFOLK STREET, STRAND, LONDON. THE REBUILDING OF JERICHO. BY THE REV. THOMAS BEDFORD, M.A., Curate of St. Andrew's, Whittlesey, Cambridgeshire. JEHOVAH is not mocked-is not insulted with impunity, and without hazard disobeyed. To tempt forbearance is not wise, and to despise Omnipotence is less allied to fortitude than madness. PRICE ltd. warning not to overlook or slight God's dreadful purpose to devote the ruins to perpetual contempt, it was added, in the spirit of prophecy, that whosoever should presume to disregard this caution, and attempt the restoration of the city, would do it at the sacrifice of all his earthly hopes and happiness : "And Joshua adjured them at that time, saying, Cursed be the man that riseth up and buildeth this city Jericho: he shall lay the foundation thereof in his first-born, and in his youngest son shall he set up the gates of it." Eight hundred years passed by, and no one yet was found presumptuous enough to violate a word so awfully accredited, till wicked Ahab rose, and did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger, than all the kings of Israel that went before him. "In his days did Hiel the Bethelite build Jericho: he laid the foundation thereof in Abiram his firstborn, and set up the gates thereof in his youngest son Segub; according to the word of the Lord which he spake by Joshua the son of Nun." So found the bold transgressor who rebuilt the walls of Jericho. This city, situate near the banks of Jordan, was the first that was compelled to bow the neck before the Israelites on their being brought into possession of the promised land. No sooner had they crossed the river by a miracle, than by a miracle this first fruits of the Canaanitish spoil became their prey. "By faith," the apostle says, "the walls of Jericho fell down;" and the expectant Israelites, with Joshua, Moses's servant, at their head, commenced forthwith the demolition of the town and the extermination of its people. Of so atrocious a description was the lewdness and idolatry of Canaan, and especially of Jericho, that the Israelites were ordered, under pain of the Almighty's heaviest displeasure, to visit everything they found alive with indiscriminate destruction"man and woman, infant and suckling, camel and ass;" and the rest, whatever appertained of precious things and goodly stuff, to burn without compunction or reserve, together with The man who thus defied the Holy One the place itself. Besides all this, the very of Israel was, we are told, one Hiel, an insite on which it stood was to continue an habitant of Bethel, a city infamous for its eternal token to succeeding times of the idolatry. It was at Bethel, then called Luz, punishment in store for unrepented guilt. It that the vision of the heavenly ladder was was never to be built again. And, as a vouchsafed to Jacob, who, in order to com VOL. XI.-NO. CCCXII. In perusing this remarkable accomplishment of prophecy, one cannot but observe the emphasis with which it is asserted that, "in his (in wicked Ahab's) days, did Hiel the Bethelite build Jericho." From these few words we may collect his character who founded it; and the character of the age in which the enterprize was carried on. (London: Joseph Rogerson 24, Norfolk-street, Strand.] Y 290 memorate the glory of that revelation and The other circumstance I mentioned as his wife stirred up." The licentiousness of design, when an event occurred which proved | suffer him, it may be asked, to violate God's that God was in existence, and, moreover, pleasure with impunity, whilst retribution zealous to avenge the violation of his honour overtook the innocent? To this, it is replied, -that he had not repented of the curse he we have no evidence to shew that Hiel's sons had pronounced 800 years before on Jericho, were not associated in their father's guilt; nor would relax one tittle of the woe he had and one rarely sees a child that does not more predicted on the head of whosoever should or less reflect the likeness of its parents' tempresume to counteract it. Abiram, "his per and infirmities. If otherwise, if they first-born, his might, and the beginning of were clear of his transgression, then we may his strength," was made to bear the penalty of suppose that, whilst God served his purpose his infatuated father's stubbornness; for the and fulfilled his prophecy in the untimely Lord smote him that he died," according to dissolution of these little ones, he had provided the word that he spake by Joshua the son of for them in the "land that is very far off" a Nun." Still unconvinced, or, if convinced, sevenfold recompence-that he withdrew unterrified, the haughty nobleman persisted them prematurely from the sorrows and conin the work, and saw his children one by one tentions of an evil world, to install them in a fall victims to his perseverance in this iron- perpetuity of honour and felicity. Proud hearted enterprize, without the least abate- though he was, and hard, Hiel, we may ment or repentance of his desperate resolu- infer, was more distressed by that succession tion. One only child survived to see the ill- of disasters that befel his family than he had omened work approach to a conclusion; when, been by any visitation that could happen to lo! the arm that reaped the souls of his de- himself; not to insist on what is probable, to parted brethren fell heavy on his own. He wit, that he himself, when he had seen this also died and Hiel saw his "sole remaining piecemeal dissolution of his earthly happiness, joy" untimely blasted to chastise his own was summoned hence to expiate the madness perverseness, and expiate his own misdeeds. of a day with infinite despair. We must not think that Hiel was divested of Before proceeding with the moral of this the feelings of humanity; we must not think awful history, it may be well to add that that he beheld his children strewed like Jericho increased from that time forth into autumn leaves on the adventurous path he a city of considerable note. We shortly was pursuing, without the natural yearnings after find a college of young prophets there of a parent's heart. Nay; but the worst located, and Elisha, at their instance, healing, passions of his nature were in dreadful exer- with a cruse of salt, the rank and deleterious cise, and, in the excitement of the heart's re-waters of the place; for, owing perhaps to bellion against heaven, its soft emotions were the effect of Joshua's curse, the "water," as absolved, and all its sensibilities, if not ex- they told the man of God, was naught, an tinguished, swept away. Incredulous of the the ground barren." The vial of God's Almighty's word, or in contempt of his wrath was emptied on the fortunes of the authority, he had commenced his impious house of Hiel, and there the fury of his indigessay, and subsequent conviction and calamity nation stayed. Once raised from its foundawere insufficient to induce him to suspend it. tions, Jericho grew up and prospered till our Pride interposed to keep him from repent- Saviour's day, when it became the scene of ance, passion fortified temerity: the die was one of his most favoured miracles; for there cast he was engaged, and would go on; and blind Bartimæus recognised the Lord, the though he perish, he will not recant. "Son of David," and there his eyes were opened to behold the Lord's Anointed. It was included in the general revolt, and felt, in consequence, the vengeance of the Roman arm. It never afterwards recovered from this second overthrow, and now-such are the sad vicissitudes of earthly grandeur—is dwindled to a mean and miserable village. Such is the usual issue of presumptuous transgression. We consciously offend till we insensibly proceed so far that no return seems open to us, and nothing left but to persist and die. Our evil genius supports us in rebellion, till what at first was nothing but our own ungracious choice becomes, alas! our destiny; and, though we seek at last to enter in, we find ourselves eternally shut out. One crime is linked invisibly, and imperceptibly connected with a thousand others, that whilst the wretch is flattering his soul, that "so far will I go, and no further," he is approximating fast to hopeless reprobation. To some, perhaps, it may appear unjust that God should visit Hiel's contumaciousness upon his unoffending offspring. Why 66 The inference it behoves us to gather from the history just considered is, that what the Lord has sworn, no lapse of time can alter, and no circumstance suspend or set aside. "The Lord is not a man, that he should lie; or the son of man, that he should repent." God so presents the future time, that every thing is present, or, as the apostle has it, "naked to the eyes of him with whom we have to do." The Great Supreme can never labour under disabilities; does not devise in darkness, or decree in ignorance. He needs not to reconsider his resolves, or alter his decisions. Effects and causes, times and circumstances, and all the etcetera that must enter into human_calculations and control our judgments, are but the appointments of his will, who "speaks, and it is done-who commands, and it stands fast." When God sends forth the word, he waits not the fulfilment; does not sit watching the event, like us poor creatures of suspense, suspicion, and uncertainty, as if his plans could fail of their intent; but what he once determines, is irrevocably fixed and done its certainty, that is to say, is so inevitable, so independent of all intervening times and accidents, that it is virtually fulfilled already-his will is fate. We witness the effects of time upon the institutions, works, and laws of human kind; see this in ruins-that disused; see every thing around us undergoing variations, or, what is yet more common, hastening to decay; till we are ready to reflect the frailty of our operations and appointments on the words and works of the Almighty, as if they too must be affected by the revolutions that demolish empires and transfer dominions, making the forms and fashions of to-day, to-morrow out of date. We forget it is not God, but we that change. We forget that time, which of course implies a limit of duration as meant to apply to an eternal, self-existent Being, is a confusion of ideas; for with the Infinite there is neither past nor future, but all and every thing is ever present. He calleth things that are not, as though they were; and, to help us to a right conception of his being, he designates himself the great, immutable, 'I AM." spo To shut up all with an appropriate moral, we are all of us more or less engaged in enterprises, or intent on objects, that the Deity denounces, and will surely visit. "Hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he ken, and shall he not make it good?' Like Hiel, we are occupied too commonly in building up what God prohibits, and wilfully pursuing what his word informs us must incur his bitterest resentment. One may venture to pronounce, without exaggeration or a breach of charity, that the greater half of the professing Christian world evince, in their prevailing tempers, recreations, and pursuits, an awful disregard of God's supremacy, and the most flagrant violations of his law. They know that he forbids a multitude of sins it would be easy to deny, and commands a multitude of duties that might readily be done; and yet, from year to year, those are persisted in-these unperformed. Perhaps no earthly master, howsoever insignificant, was ever subjected to half the provocations and imperti nences that every day assail "the High and Mighty One that inhabiteth eternity.' Shall we infer, with the psalmist, that the fool has begun to "say in his heart, there is no God?" Do the kindness and long-suffering of heaven put into man's heart that taunting proverb, "Where is the promise of his coming?" Truly the hour approaches that shall verify the saying, that "the Lord is not slack." The accusations that are written in the word are just as fresh in the remembrance of that God, "with whom is no variableness," as if his Spirit had to-day indited them; and, if he come not yet, as he has said, "to smite the earth with a curse," it is because "the iniquity of the Amorites," the cup of our offences, "is not full.” In spite of his apparent slowness to revenge the world's apostacy, to us, as individuals, he is very near, yea, even at the door; and, whilst the infidel is mocking at his long delay, death suddenly announces his arrival, thundering in his ear that now too lateconviction, "Behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to render to every man according to his works." Sacred Philosophy. CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE NATURAL THEO LOGY OF THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM. BY ROBERT DICKSON, M.D., F.L.S. No. XII.-PT. 3. ANOTHER modification of leaves requires to be noticed here, in which the primary design is more manifest, viz., where tendrils or claspers of different kinds are formed to support the plant, or some part of it. seen in other works of the Great Architect; so varied The object is always the same-the means varied, as indeed, that there is not only no part of a plant capable of being indurated into a thorn, but a corresponding part in some other plant is susceptible of being entire stem becomes a clasper or twiner, and so lengthened into a cirrhus or tendril; nay, even the ascends and supports itself and its different organs by the aid of some neighbouring plant or body. The observations of Ray and Paley on tendrils are so just, that the following remarks are merely a commentary on them, supplied by naturalists who have recorded the phenomena simply as occurrences in the vegetable kingdom, without either regarding or disregarding the final cause. The axiom quoted by Ray, in other part of his work, is strikingly applicable here, viz., "that nature abounds not in what is superfluous, neither is deficient in what is necessary;" and he remarks," that some sorts of plants, as vines, all sorts of pulse, hops, briony, pumpions, melons, gourds, cucumbers, and divers other species that are weak and unable to raise or support themselves, are either endued with the faculty of twining about others that are near, or else furnished with claspers and tendrils, whereby, as it were with hands, they catch hold of them, and so ramping upon trees, shrubs, hedges, or themselves and their fruit." And again-"We see poles, they mount up to a great height, and secure not so much as one tree, or shrub, or herb, that hath a firm and strong stem, and that is able to mount up and stand alone without assistance, furnished with these tendrils*." an * Paley further remarks-" Our second observation is upon a general property of climbing plants, which is strictly mechani |