A LESSON ALL ALIVE:

A BUTTERFLY'S VISIT TO THE INFANT-SCHOOL.

IT was just before noon, on a warm summer's day,
That a very fine butterfly, lively and gay,

When heedlessly flitting and roaming about,
Backward and forward-now in, and now out-

Not thinking of order, nor caring for rule,
Just went in to look at a small infant-school,
Where a few little boys

Were making a noise

In reading the letters marked out on the wall.
The master first saw him, and gave a loud call,
Stop! stop awhile, children; don't read any more,
A lesson is now coming in at the door.

By reading good books we may learn many things,
But here is a beautiful lesson with wings!

It was only last week it looked as though dead,
Its body rolled up, and all covered its head.
Like a poor little mummy it then seemed to lie:
How fine it is now, and how well it can fly!
How small are its limbs, yet how perfect they are!
No skilful mechanic such joints could prepare.
Speak one at a time, boys, and then you can each
Say what it is called, and what it may teach.

FIRST BOY.

A butterfly-a butterfly!

Silence! it is coming nigh.

See the colours gay and bright,

What a very pretty sight!

God, who formed those handsome wings,

Cares for very little things;

Looks on all his hands have made,

And has in his Gospel said

I must humbly seek his aid;
He will then my Father be,
And will always care for me.

SECOND BOY.

As the little butterfly

Wears a finer dress than I,
'T will be very wrong in me,

If I proud or vain shall be.

Though my clothes be old or coarse,
I am not a bit the worse,

Nor the better, though they may

Be very fine and very gay.

THIRD BOY.

My poor little sister was laid in her bed,

I touched her cold cheek, but she moved not her head;

I called to her twice, but nothing she said;

I asked how it was, and they cried, She is dead!"

But I heard the good minister say,

That Jesus, at some future day,

Would raise her to life, not to die any more,
And make her more lovely and good than before.
As I look at this beautiful butterfly now,
And hear what it was but a few days ago,

I trust in his goodness my sister to raise,

To be happy for ever in singing his praise;

There is nothing too hard for his power or his skill,
I know that he can, and believe that he will!

The Cabinet.

CHARACTER OF THE SAINTS OF SCRIPTURE.

IN connection with the morality of the gospel as a source of internal evidence, let us advert to the character of those holy persons, whether Jewish or Christian, in whose lives the influence of the religion of Scripture was fairly exemplified. Though not furnishing a distinct and original argument, the exemplifications of revealed morality in life and action supply an illustrative and confirmatory evidence which ought not to be overlooked. The fresh and truthful portraitures of the Scripture record, in which the traits of human weakness and earthliness are so artlessly interwoven with a moral beauty to which earth presents no parallel, have a very similitude which assures us of their authenticity. Indeed, as it has been justly observed respecting the delineations of a still higher example than that of human saints, the conception of the characters without the living prototypes would be still more marvellous than the existence of the prototypes themselves. A review of these can hardly fail to produce some impression even on the mind destitute of the peculiar experience of the Christian, if it has the power of candid comparison at all; yet the views entertained, without an actual fellow-feeling arising from similarity of character, will be cold, external, and incredulous. Let the real Christian, under the sympathies of his own internal religion, contemplate the same class of examples: he will understand the men who are the subjects of description; he will enter into the peculiar characteristics of their piety; he will appreciate their principles. It may be advisable to consider first the characters depicted at greater length, as those of Abraham and the other patriarchs; of Moses, and Joshua, and Samuel; of David and Josiah; of Elijah and Elisha; of Isaiah and Jeremiah, Daniel and Job; of Stephen and Paul, of Peter and John: and then let those other worthies be regarded whose histories are more briefly sketched. Serious failures of virtue will be found attaching to some of these good men of Scripture; but so far from conceiving such failures to bring into question the genuineness of their loftier principles, a fairly judging mind will acknowledge that even imperfect excellence may be not the less real because of its imperfection, and may be all the more clearly referrible, on that account, to a source higher than man's ordinary nature.

These characters bring support to several points of internal evidence. In the first place, they show the practicability of the religion and morality of Scripture. Who, looking dispassionately at the biographies, can fail to discern how justly flowing from the principles attributed are the characters developed; how warm with the life and ease of nature! Does it not, indeed, seem to us, while we consider their faith, so pure and simple, and their actions, so har

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monious and befitting, that we have before us the very style of life and conduct worthy of human beings? How plain, then, that the religion of Scripture has the power of embodying itself in living character. We see it to be the same thing in its theory and in its practice. Our conviction is thus confirmed that it has a perfect adaptation to man's nature and condition, and possesses internal energy; or else that it derives a power to influence from Divine energy; or rather still, the proof of both these things is strengthened. Secondly, observe in what harmony with the professed position of the saints of Scripture, as men divinely taught, is another circumstance in their history: that they do not appear as men in search after what true goodness is, but in the practice of it as a thing known and familiar. They are not seen emerging with difficulty from the errors which have elsewhere so bewildered human reason, but as perceiving truth without effort, and taking the path at once to all virtue. How remarkable was this in the case especially of the Old Testament saints! At a time when civilization was most imperfect, and philosophy had not yet begun its course, we find them practising a pure and sublime morality, which the maturest speculations of after ages have not made obsolete. This agrees with the case of men on whom wisdom had descended from above. The words of the prophet describe their condition: "He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" | Thirdly, the high excellence and beauty of the characters forms a separate support to the argument from Scripture morality. Take the features of goodness presented; suppose them to be completed in measure, and freed from acknowledged flaws; then we can conceive no higher style of moral excellence; we are not left still wanting something of a different kind to form a perfect character.

Fourthly, observe an essential peculiarity in the virtue of the good men of Scripture, as compared with heathen virtue. It is not morality originating in social relations, and rising to piety: it originates in piety as the great element, and descends to social relations. It is pre-eminently the morality of godliness, which must ever be the great characteristic of the virtue taught by God. While heathen morality did not exclude piety towards the divinity, that attribute formed but an addition to the merits of a virtuous character. Who will say that, even with those philosophers whose moral notions were the most exalted, the fear and love of God formed the foundation of character, the first grand element of excellence, to which all else was subordinate? But upon this idea of virtue, the only rational one, the holiness of the saints of inspiration is based. Their first sentiment seems to be devotion; they act out in their lives the great morality of intelligent natures, to fear and love the Author of their being, to seek him in dependence, to praise him in gratitude, to live for his approbation as the grand end of action, and to fulfil all duties towards their fellow-men as one great act of service towards

Him. This principle of Divine love gives a character to their goodness towards their fellow-men; a principle in them which, though mistaken sometimes in its directions in the case of the earlier saints, by reason of their deficiencies in light, exhibited still the likeness of that Divine benevolence presented to their imitation by Him who revealed himself to them as their Almighty Father, and called them the sons of God.

Again, it seems peculiar to the morality of Scripture to seize at once the simple element of true virtue-love to God and man. Disencumbering that element from those merely useful properties of character which entered much into the composition of the cardinal virtues of the heathen, Scripture exhibits it as the ruling feature of the holiness of the saints.

Again, how peculiarly characteristic of the scriptural character is the dependence upon God for all moral and spiritual excellence visible in the saints of inspiration! We have not a mere acknowledgment of the need of help; the humility of conscious weakness, and the earnest resort to Divine strength, are inwoven with the very texture of their piety, in striking correspondence with the great truth of Scripture, that religion in the souls of men has its origin in God, and is sustained by the special internal operation of his power. Their virtue has all the aspect of a principle which is not the product of a self-relying philosophy or of a discipline of ascetic enthusiasm; but of one formed and maintained by waiting upon God: "Give me understanding, that I may keep thy statutes." "Hold up my goings in thy paths, that my footsteps slip not."

Once more, mark the identity of Scripture character in all ages, as strikingly illustrative of the identity of inspiration. There is no mistaking the resemblance in the saints of Scripture: the religion of Abraham is one with that of Paul. Perpetuated through a long succession of ages, the character is the same at the lowest extremity of the chain as at the commencement, varied only in the immaterial circumstances of its mode of exhibition. How demonstrative this, that the piety of Scripture has been inspired by one Spirit, and that the moral influence of inspiration proceeds from one scheme of truth!

Assemble, then, these features of the Scripture character into one view. Contemplate the believers of the Old and New Testament revelation, in the simple but sublime piety of their walk with God; their life of faith and love; their reverential obedience; the heroic constancy of their adherence to the true worship; their calm equanimity of moral strength, gentler and yet deeper than all the force of heathen Stoicism; the copious internal spring within them of devotion towards God and goodness to men; their humility and penitence under Divine reproofs; their sensibility of conscience; the purity and self-denial of their motives; their life as strangers and pilgrims upon earth, amidst the multiplied allurements of their earthly condition; their surrender of all temporal interests before