H minds from that which is good. The enemy does at times come in like a flood, and nothing less than the Spirit of the Lord can enable us to lift up a standard against him. The Apostle Paul might well exclaim, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" But, blessed be God, there is no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus," and to the praise of His glory "He will perfect that which concerneth us." SUSPENDED ANIMATION. IN the course of the address delivered by Dr. Brewer to the guardians of St. George's at St. James's Hall, he said, "I have been more than ence under a condition of apparently suspended respiration, and on being restored to consciousness no feeling of discomfort of any kind attended my experience on either occasion. It is under the truth to say I have known a score of cases of those who have been supposed dead being reanimated. It is not many months since a friend of mine, a rector of a suburban parish, was pronounced by his medical attendant to be dead. His bed was arranged, and the room left in its silence. His daughter hal re-entered and sat at the foot, and the solemn toll of his own church bell was vibrating through the chamber when a hand drew aside the closed curtain and a voice came from the occupant of the bed, 'Elizabeth, my dear, what is that bell tolling for?' The daughter's response was perhaps an unfortunate one: For you, papa.' Schwartz, the first eminent Indian missionary, was roused from his supposed death by hearing his favourite hymn sung over him previous to the last rites being performed, and his resuscitation made known by his joining in the verse." DR. GUTHRIE ON TOBACCO. TOBACCO I would banish, in every manner and shape; but of all shapes that of smoking is the most offensive and the most wasteful. People snuff, and I do not approve of it; but there is many a man who smokes away and blows up in reek what would educate his children, what would clothe them, leaving them to go about in rags, uneducated, untrained, untended, and almost despicable, that he might indulge his wretched habit of smoking tobacco. Reviews of Books. Jesus Christ: his Times, Life, and Work. By E. DE PRESSENSÉ, D.D. Translated from the French by ANNIE HARWOOD. Second Edition, revised. London: Hodder and Stoughton. WE have previously brought this brilliant book under the notice of our readers. This second edition, in a cheaper form, but beautifully got up, and without any abridgment, will be hailed by the religious public. We cordially recommend it to our readers, both as a brilliant history of the Life of Christ and a powerful antidote to the rationalism of Strauss, Rénan, and the whole host of neological writers. The Leisure Hour, and The Sunday at Home, for August, 1868. THESE two periodicals, published by the Religious Tract Society, well sustain the character they long since won, as serials well fitted to instruct and interest, to profit while they please, and to promote healthy piety as well as sound morality, and social virtue and happiness. The Sunday Magazine. Edited by DR. GUTHRIE. London: Strahan and Co. VERY good of its kind. We have expositions of Scripture, and illustrations of parables, blended with pictorial scenes of religious life, diversifying well the matter, to suit variety of taste and condition. ERRATUM.-The author of the Funeral Sermon in our last number was Mr. Thompson, not Mr. Jackson. MAGAZINE. NEW CONNEXION OCTOBER, 1868. Theology and General Literature. THE DROUGHT AND ITS LESSONS. "Water, water everywhere, The very boards did shrink; Water, water everywhere, Nor any drop to drink."-S. T. COLERIDGE. WE are apt to think little of benefits which come unsought, and are universally diffused, however valuable in themselves. We fail to estimate, according to their true worth, the unpurchased, the familiar, the every-day blessings of life. How little, for example, we think of light! Its splendour, its beauty, and manifold uses transcend description. But coming as it does unsought, pouring in boundless floods around us from that exhaustless golden urn, the sun, we seldom even think of it, and still more seldom form anything approaching to an adequate conception of the wonders of Divine wisdom, power, and bounty it displays, or of our own obligation for the blessing. The same remark will apply to the air we breathe. It is the " common air," and yet it is our "vital breath." It is a boon, of which we are to a great extent unconscious. The air enters the countless cells of our lungs, compounded, distilled, prepared with infinite skill, for the work it has to perform there-enters them times without number every twenty-four hours; how often in that time does the wonderful process enter our minds, kindling or fanning appropriate grateful emotion? Water is another of the gifts of Divine Providence, so abundant and so cheap that few, probably, estimate it according to its true value; whilst by too many, as a beverage, it is ignorantly distrusted or ungratefully despised. We learn to prize our mercies too generally only by their loss; and the partial drought we have lately experienced has tended to impress upon us all the value of water, and the exceeding desirableness of a constant and an adequate supply of it. To enumerate all the uses of water would be impossible. To understand its importance it is sufficient to say that it is essential to vegetation, to animal life, to domestic comfort, and, in some form, to almost every process of art and manufacture. Let the supply begin to fail, and its necessity is speedily felt. In the recent drought the pastures became parched, the grass brown, sheep and cattle, in consequence of the failure of the herbage, famishing, springs and streams failing, so that in some districts L L water for daily use had to be brought from several miles distance. Suppose this had continued. Suppose another Elijah to have startled the land with the message: "As the Lord God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word." If such a sentence had been executed, the heavens would have become as brass, and the earth as iron. The springs would have rapidly dried up; the thousand rills and streamlets which beautify and fertilize the land would have disappeared, leaving their beds dry as summer's dust; the rivers would have almost ceased to flow; the earth would have been scorched as with a fever, her robes of vegetable beauty and her flowery crown would have withered; even the glory of the forest would have departed, and the sapless trees have been turned into black skeleton trunks; and how terrible the consequence to all the living tribes! At once fevered and famished, all the joy of life would have gone; spectacles of agony and horror would have been everywhere visible, and death would have reaped a ready and plentiful harvest. When the rain at length came, after the late dry season, how eagerly it was welcomed! The sound of the drops was as music, and some, we know, went into the open air with uncovered head to enjoy the unwonted refreshment. What would have been our condition if no rain had fallen for even one entire year? To what a terrible state then must the land of Israel have been reduced by a drought extending over three years and a half! "What a picture," says John Foster, "might have been exhibited if the sacred historian, like other historians, had been disposed to amplify for the purpose of a striking effect! Great numbers must have perished-the rest were in a deplorable state. The cattle were nearly all destroyed-as appears from Ahab's orders to Obadiah. The king himself went out to survey a part of his desolate, miserable realm and dying population. At every step he saw the effect of his abominable idolatries. It was, in truth, one vast sacrifice which he had made, and was making to Moloch; a nation of human victims offered, and all the brute tribes in addition." This, and other parts of Bible history, show that water, or the withholding of it, has, at least occasionally, been employed for the execution of great moral ends; and it is largely used in the Bible for the purpose of conveying religious instruction. Before glancing at this, however, a brief view may be given of the arrangements in nature for the distribution of water. The proportion of water to land on the surface of the globe has doubtless been established with a view to its diffusion in sufficient quantity over the land, for the purposes of vegetable and animal life.* What seem ocean-wastes are, in reality, a fountain of life, beauty, and enjoyment. An all-important part in this work is performed by the atmosphere. The heat contained in it draws up the water in the form of elastic, aqueous vapour. This vapour, still under the influence of heat, ascends into the higher atmospheric regions; it is borne by atmospheric currents to great distances. Sometimes it descends in the form of dew, at *As beautifully shown in the very excellent articles which have recently appeared in the Magazine. others condenses into mist, and at others becomes shaped into clouds, which carry their contents into some distant thirsty spot. Truly sublime are the Psalmist's expressions: "He maketh the clouds His chariot;" "the clouds are the dust of His feet," as illustrating the majesty of Jehovah; but equally worthy of the wisdom of God is the mechanism, so to speak, by which the clouds bear in their bosoms, and sift down in rain upon the earth, their all-renovating treasure. With as much truth as beauty does Shelley make "The Cloud" say "I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers, From the seas and the streams; I bear light shade for the leaves when laid "From my wings are shaken the dews that awaken When rocked to rest on their mother's breast, "I wield the flail of the lashing hail, And whiten the green plains under; "I am the daughter of earth and water, I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores- A further part of the apparatus for the due distribution of water is the inequalities of the earth's surface. These inequalities, which give us hill and valley, and provide an unfailing source of enjoyment in the rich variety of scenery thus produced, are essential to the circulation of water. The vapour rising from the ocean condenses among the hills, which become water-sheds for large tracts of land: the converging streams uniting to form the rivers, which are the very arteries of a nation's life and commerce. Still further, geology reveals, in the structure of the earth's crust, arrangements harmonizing with those of the ocean and the atmosphere for the same useful end. Few subjects would at first appear more barren of interest than a bed of gravel, consisting, as it usually does, of nothing but fragments of broken pebbles and sand, heaped together in apparently inextricable confusion. Yet such beds, dispersed, as they very generally are, over the surface of the regular strata, administer materially to the wants of man, in affording him the means of supplying himself readily with that important necessary of life, water. "From the irregularity in the form and size of the component parts of gravel, and the slight degree of cohesion by which they are united, the whole mass is necessarily porous; and hence, readily transmitting the rain which falls on its surface, becomes charged with water to an extent proportionate to the quantity of rain which has penetrated it; being enabled to retain the water thus accumulated, in consequence of its resting on some substratum, as clay, which is impermeable to water. So that, if an excavation sufficiently deep be made into any part of the gravel, the water immediately drains into this excavation, and rises at length to the level of the general mass of water contained in the whole bed; by which easy process, in such instances at least, those reservoirs called wells are formed, and these reservoirs are never exhausted so long as the whole bed of gravel retains any considerable proportion of water."* Instances of the importance of this source of supply are abundant, but one of the most striking is the artesian well in the Plain de Grenelle, near Paris, which from a great depth ejects sufficient water in a few days to supply the whole city for a year. And finally, water often flows from rifts and fissures, and what geology terms faults in the rocky strata. Many valuable springs have their origin in these "faults ;" and thus it is in the material as in the moral world, what seemed at first a catastrophe terminates in a blessing. This description of the machinery for the distribution of water is far from being complete. A closer examination of the subject-of the fine balance of forces in the atmosphere, the relations of heat and frost, of atmospheric and electric currents to the contemplated result, securing a distribution of water as regular almost as that of the circulation of the blood in the human body-will tend to excite still growing admiration of the Divine wisdom and goodness in planning, and power in accomplishing it. "Sing unto the Lord with thanksgiving; who covereth the heavens with clouds; who prepareth rain for the earth." "He sendeth the springs into the valleys." "He watereth the hills from his chambers." These passages only represent a multitude of Scripture passages which attribute the beneficent result we have been describing to the purpose and power of God. We have said that the element of water has been employed for moral purposes. The very fact that the word “water or "waters" is employed in the Scriptures at least 400 times, besides the frequent use of the words "rain," "dew," "springs," "floods," &c., is significant not only of the importance of the element itself, but of its adaptation as a medium of religious instruction. This paper may be fitly concluded by a few words on some of the Scripture uses of water. The earliest reference to it, after the account of the rivers of Eden, is as the instrument of God's judgment upon the world, when all flesh had corrupted its way. With what an intensity must all the ele ments of impure and malignant passion have fermented in antediluvian society, when such expressions as we find in the sixth chapter of Genesis were needed to describe it, when Noah seems to have been at last the solitary exception to the universal wickedness, and when neither his preaching of righteousness, nor of the "judg ment to come," nor his preparation for it by building the ark, made any impression! To have the world once more without sin, it must be without men. "The waters prevailed upon the earth," and all the sounds of that godless life were eventually hushed. Having answered the end, the waters of the flood retired, leaving for us the ever memorable lessons of the hatefulness of sin, the holiness of God, and his absolute control over the storehouse of Nature. No sooner, however, had water executed the righteous judgment God than it was employed, in the rainbow, as a symbol of mercy. The rainbow is in itself an object of surpassing beauty. *Kidd's Bridgwater Treatise. |