opposite the bust of Goethe; and in this pedestal, which was hollow, it was resolved to deposit the skull.

The skull being now in the care of Goethe, it occurred to him that it must be possible to find the skeleton. He placed the matter in the hands of Dr. Schröter, Professor of Anatomy at Jena. The skull was taken back to the Kassengewölbe, and the vertebræ and principal bones were one by one found and fitted together. The skeleton was substantially reproduced, put into a suitable coffin, and taken care of while the skull was restored to the pedestal.

Finally, on the suggestion of King Louis of Bavaria, the Grand Duke proposed "that the skull and skeleton of Schiller should be reunited and 'provisionally' deposited in the vault which the Grand Duke had built for himself and his house, 'until Schiller's family should otherwise determine.' No better plan seeming feasible, Goethe himself gave orders for the construction of a durable sarcophagus. On November 17th, 1827, in presence of the younger Goethe, Condray, and Riemer, the head was finally removed from the pedestal, and Professor Schröter reconstructed the entire skeleton in this new and more sumptuous abode, which we are told was seven feet in length, and bore at its upper end the name

SCHILLER.

in letters of cast-iron. The same afternoon Goethe went himself to the library and expressed his satisfaction with all that had been done."

At half-past five in the morning of December 16th, 1827, Schiller's remains were taken-secretly again-and deposited, with all due form, in the ducal vault. Here they still remain.-Methodist.

ADVERSITY GOD'S FAVOR.-We thank God perhaps, when we do thank him, for health, success, plenty and honor. We do well. They are the gifts of God's Providence, and demand our acknowledgments. But they are not the only blessings his goodness confers on us. Adversity should be added to the number of his favors, and remembered in our most devout thanksgivings. Blessed be God for pain, sickness, disappointment, distress, and every one of those evils with which the life of man is filled, and which are the subjects of our hasty complaints; evils, which are our greatest good; which afflict but purify, tear and harrow up the soul, but prepare it for the seeds of virtue. Blessed be God that he is not so unkind as to try us by the most dangerous of all temptations, uninterrupted prosperity that we are not undone by the accomplishment of our wishes; that he is pleased to chastise us with his legitimate children, and with his dear and only begotten Son, whom we hope to follow through the gate of the grave to a joyful resurrection. Rev. Dr. Ogden.

THE HOME OF JESUS.

This home of our Lord, at the sea of Galilee, was fitly chosen for the great and blessed work of his ministry. He came to preach the gospel to the poor, to call the heavy laden, and to seek and save the lost. And no spot furnished better facilities than the populous cities and villages and thronged shores of this beautiful lake. Situated in the midst of the Jordan valley, on the great thoroughfare from Babylon and Damascus into Palestine, its waters were a central point of passing and gathering by "the way of the sea," "beyond Jordan," of "Zebulun and Naphthali." Depressed to such a depth-six hundred feet below the Mediterranean Sea--its shores have almost a tropical fertility, denied to the bordering uplands, and increased by the beautiful and abundant springs along. the Western coast In this respect there is a marked contrast between the sea of Galilee and that dismal lake into which the Jordan flows and is absorbed. If, as Mr. Stanley well observes, the Southern lake is the Sea of Death, the Nothern is emphatically the Sea of Life-life in its waters and on its banks, and in the time of our Lord a centre of population and traffic. The villages "sent forth their fishermen by hundreds over the lake; and when we add to the crowd of ship-builders, the many boats of traffic, pleasure and passage, we see that the whole basin must have been a focus of life and energy; the surface of the lake constantly dotted with the white sails of vessels flying before the mountain gusts, as the beach sparkled with houses and palaces, the synagogues and temples of Jewish or Roman inhabitants."

It was no secluded spot that our Saviour sought for his home, no hermit life that he lived. Nowhere except in Jerusalem could he have found such a sphere for his labors. Readily from the centre "His fame went throughout all Syria;" vast multitudes were attracted by his teachings and miracles" from Galilee, and from Judea, and beyond Jordan," and "ran through the whole region round about," "bringing the diseased in beds," "where they heard he was;" and whithersoever he entered into villages or cities, or country, they laid the sick in streets, and besought him that they might touch if it were but the border of his garment."

Such was the home of Christ with its surroundings, its scenes and "images which could occur nowhere else in Palestine but on this same spot, and have now passed into the religious language of the civilized world." Oh, what an undying interest clusters around the sea of Galilee! As we retraced our steps, I paused at Magdala for a refreshing bath in the clear waters of the lake

Kindness is a language which not only the dumb can speak, but the deaf can understand.

THE CHIMNEY CORNER.

The old chimney corner! It is endeared to the heart from the earliest recollections. What dreams have been there! What stories told! What bright hours passed! It was a place to think in, a place to weep in, to laugh in and much the coziest place in the house to rest in. It was there where dear old grand-mamma used to sit at her knitting, warming her poor rheumatic back against the warm wall; where grandpa used to fall asleep over his newspaper; where mamma used to place her spinning wheel and papa used to sit there too, and read in the great arm chair.

It was there you used to read fairy tales in your childhood, folded all so snug, and warm, and cosy, in its great warm lap, while the wind of a Winter's night was whistling without. Your favorite plumb cake was never so sweet as when eaten there, and the stories you read by the sitting room fireside were never half so fascinating as those read in the chimney corner.

If you were sad, you went there to cry. If you were merry, you, with your brothers and sisters, nestled there to have a right merry time. Even puss and the house-dog loved the old chimney corner!

Look back to the old house, where every room, every nook is so full of pleasant recollections-the family sitting room, where were so many happy meetings; your own chamber, with its little window, "where the sun came peeping in at morn;" mother's room, still sacred with her presence. But, after all, brightest memories cluster about that chimney correr.

You long to be folded in its faithful old bosom again, as you were in childhood, and have a good cry over all those past happy times. It is desolate now. The bright faces clustered there of yore will never come back again. Black and dingy are the loved walls, and the smoke from the kitchen fire never makes them warm any more. But still memory sets up some of the holiest and most beautiful statutes of her carving in the old chimney corner.

The Guardian.

VOL. XIV.---DECEMBER, 1863.--- No. 12.

JACOB'S VISION OF THE MYSTIC LADDER.

BY THE EDITOR.

Jacob and Esau were twin brothers-both the sons of Isaac. "Esau was a cunning bunter, a man of the field; and Jacob was a plain man, dwelling in tents." Esau, being the older, had the birthright. This entitled him to a number of important privileges. 1. A double portion of his father's property. 2. A pre-eminence, or authority, over the family after the father's death. 3. Before the institution of the Levitical priesthood, the oldest son, after the father's death, was priest in the family, offering up the family sacrifices. 4. Through the line of the family of the first-born the promise of the Messiah was to be perpetuated, till He should come; and when He did come it was to be out of that family.

These were the privileges, and advantages of the birth-right; and these Esau, when he was hungry, sold to his brother Jacob, for a mess of pottage. "Thus Esau despised his birth-right."

Afterwards, when Jacob received from his father the patriarchal blessing, which confirmed the privileges of the birth-right to him. who was entitled to it, Esau regretted deeply what he had done. "And when Esau heard the words of his father, he cried with a great and exceeding bitter cry, and said to his father, Bless me, even me also, O my father." But Esau was not the last one who repented of his folly when it was too late!

"And Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing where with his father blessed him: and Esau said in his heart, The days of mourning for my father are at hand, then will I slay my brother Jacob." Rebecca their mother found out the purpose of Esau against his brother; so she told Jacob to flee to Haran, and dwell with Laban, his uncle, till the anger of Esau should be past.

Not willing to lose his own life, nor to afford his brother Esau an opportunity to become a murderer, Jacob consented to become a voluntary exile from his home. Accordingly, after having received a parting blessing from his aged and venerable father, he left his father's house, his country, and his kindred, and soon disappeared in the distance, on his solitary way to Haran.

The tent of Isaac and Rebecca is now desolate! The object of their warmest love is gone. The hate of Esau, like a fire when it has no more fuel within reach, can but consume his own heart to ashes, and then die of itself.

But yonder goes Jacob, in true pilgrim style, with sandaled feet, and staff in hand. Our sympathies are with him! Over hill and vale, through valley and plain, lies his lonely path. Busied in his own thoughts about the home and the hearts he has left behind him; and, for his own consolation, conning over in his heart, the precious promises involved in his father's blessing, he whiles away the tedious hours. At length he sees the sun sink down behind the distant mountains of Lebanon, and the grey twilight gradually grows darker around him.

What now? It is night, and he is alone in the wilderness. No village in sight; no hum in the distance of some encamping caravan; not even the friendly tent of some patriarchal hermit, who will wash his feet, set bread before him, and spread for his repose a couch of skins.

His first feelings, in these circumstances, were, no doubt, those of loneliness. But he remembers that that God who feeds the

ravens

-Is ever present, ever felt,

In the void waste as in the city full!

And where He vital breathes there must be joy.

This consideration calms his anxious fears, and he concludes to lie down upon the earth, like a trusting babe upon the bosom of its mother, and repose under the guardianship of that eye which neither slumbers nor sleeps. He casts his eyes around, and behold a group of almond trees, whose branches embrace each other, and form a kind of sheltering canopy, under which a weary traveller may lie. "And Jacob took the stones of that place, and put them for his pillows, and lay down in that place to sleep." He slept he dreamed-and how beautiful was his dream! A ladder, standing on the earth, reached to heaven. The angels ascended and descended upon it, while God Himself stood above the ladder, and spake to Jacob the most beautiful and cheering promises concerning him and his posterity. (Gen. 18: 11-22.)

We might draw from this beautiful incident in the life of Jacob almost any amount of useful lessons; but we must confine ourselves to a few only.

I. God is present in some places as He is not in others.

Concerning God, it is said in the Scriptures, that His eyes are in all places-that all things are naked and open before Him-that