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of assuming an air of the deepest disgust with the world, the Club, and the mode of life they had been pursuing. He affected to seek Boyle's company in a mood of congenial melancholy, and to sympathize in all his feelings. Thus he succeeded in betraying him into a much misplaced confidence as to his dream, and the effect it had produced upon his mind. The result may readily be guessed. His confidence was betrayed his feelings of repentance ridiculed; and it will easily be believed, that he who "hid the Bible" had not nerve to stand the ribald jests of his profligate companions on such a subject.

I cannot trace the progress, and would not, if I could. Suffice it to say, that, virtuous resolutions once broken-prayers once offered, voluntarily called back by sin from the throne of Heaven-all was lost! yet not lost without such a fell struggle between the spirit of good and of evil as wrung the colour from his young cheek, and made him, ere the year was done, a haggard and a grey-haired man!

From the annual meeting he shrunk with an instinctive and shuddering horror, and made up his mind utterly to avoid it. Well aware of this resolve, his tempters determined he should have no choice. How potent, how active, is the spirit of evil! How feeble is unassisted, unprayerful man! Boyle found himself, he could not tell how, seated at that table on that very day, where he had sworn to himself a thousand and a thousand times nothing on earth should make him sit!

His ears tingled, and his eyes swam, as he listened to the opening sentence of the president's address: " Gentlemen, this is leap-year, therefore it is a year and a day since our last annual meeting!"

Every nerve in Boyle's body twanged in agony at the ominous, the well-remembered words. His first impulse was to rise and fly; but then the sneers! the sneers!

ON DEATH.

Ir is a solemn thing to die-
To sever every earthly tie;
To watch the blooming cheeks grow pale;
To mark the sinking vigour fail;

To count the pulse, which, faint and slow,
Tells of the closing scene below;
To feel eternity draw nigh-
It is a solemn thing to die!

It is a fearful thing to die

The death of a sinner's agony

A prayerless heart-no voice to plead—
Thick darkness, and no hand to lead;
To see beyond the open grave
No star of hope-no arm to save-
No ear for his despairing cry-
It is a fearful thing to die.

It is a blessed thing to die-
To know no sin, no tear, no sigh;
To pass into a world of light,
Where faith itself is lost in sight;
To leave a world of pain and strife;
To find an entrance into life;
To see our Saviour eye to eye-
It is a blessed thing to die.

ABRAHAM'S TREE.

BY JOHN KITTO, D.D.'

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In the 10th chapter of Genesis we read, that after Abraham had parted from Lot, he moved his camp to various parts of Canaan, and at length settled, as it proved, for a considerable period among the terebinths (or as some make it, "the oaks") of Mamre," near to Hebron.-Verse 18. The word rendered here by "terebinths," is unhappily given as "plain" (margin, "plains ") in the authorized! version. Again, at the commencement of the 18th chapter, we read "the Lord appeared to Abraham " among the terebinths of Mamre," where the common version again has "plains." It is clear that trees are intended; and the only question among the learned is, whether they were oaks or terebinth trees. The general opinion of Hebrew critics is for the latter; and with this we concur, but without deerning the matter so clear as to preclude the possibility of oaks being intended. Among these trees it is manifest that there was one with which Abraham's own tent was more immediately connected, and it must have been conspicuous and remarkable; for the patriarch invites the three angels, who visited him in the guise of wayfaring men, to repose themselves The night was gloomy, with frequent and "under the tree;" and we are afterwards told that fitful gusts of chill and howling wind, as Boyle," he stood near them under the tree, and they did with fevered nerves and a reeling brain, mounted his horse to return home.

How many in this world, as well as poor Boyle, have sold their souls to the dread of a sneer, and dared the wrath of an almighty and eternal God, rather than encounter the sarcastic curl of a fellow-creature's lip!

He was more than ever plied with wine, applause, and every other species of excitement, but in vain. His mirth, his wit, were like the lurid flashes from the bosom of a brooding thunder-cloud, that pass and leave it all darker than before; and his laugh sounded fiendish even to the evil ears that heard it.

The following morning the well-known black steed was found, with saddle and bridle on, quietly grazing on the road-side about half-way to Boyle's country-house, and a few yards from it lay the stiffened corpse of its master!

eat."-Gen. xviii. 1, 8. This tree is brought forward more prominently by Josephus. In speaking of Abraham's abode here, he intimates that the tree, which he calls an oak, was so distinct and important, that it could be, and was, indicated definitely as "the oak Ogyges" (Antiquities, i. 10, 4); and further on he designates it, in connection with the visit of the

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ABRAHAM'S TREE.

angels, as "the oak of Mamre." In this he follows the Septuagint, which also call the tree an oak. In the history of a long subsequent age, speaking of the descent of Simon of Gerasa upon Hebron, the historian points out the great antiquity of the city, and states, that about six stadia from it, was to be seen a large turpentine tree, commonly repeated to be as old as the creation of the world-De Bell. Jud. iv. 9, 7. He does not intimate whether he supposed it the same as Abraham's tree; but the probability is that, as he had just before been alluding to the residence of Abraham there, he intended to indicate the tree which was in his time regarded as the tree of the patriarch. It is true that, as we have before seen, he had called Abraham's tree an oak, and that which he here speaks of is a terebinth. But this confusion of the terms oak and terebinth reigns in all the accounts of Abraham's tree, from the earliest reports down to our own time. This arose probably from the doubt which still exists, whether the original Hebrew word means an cak or a terebinth; and in the early notices this is so perplexing as to create a sus picion that were there actually two great trees in and about the first centuries of the Christian era-one an oak, and the other a terebinth-the rather as one set of traditions rests the claim of the tree to veneration upon the ground of its marking the residence of Abraham, and the place where he entertained the angels; while another pretends that the tree grew from a staff which one of the angels left sticking in the ground. These two traditions are so irreconcilable, if understood in reference to the same tree, that it seems next to impossible that one of them should have arisen while the other existed; but they are quite intelligible if two trees are understood. Without attempting to settle this point, we may proceed to state, that the early ecclesiastical writers afford several notices of Abraham's tree, which they tell us was in their time, and long had been famous for a great fair, or gathering of merchants the greatest in Palestine. It was at this fair, under the tree of their great ancestor, that the captive Jews were, after the war of Hadrian, offered for sale in such great numbers that the market was glutted, and, as had been predicted by one of old, "no man would buy them."-Deut. xxviii. 68. The tree also became the scene of superstitions so gross, and so strongly tending towards idolatry, that in the time of Constantine the Government interfered to correct these abuses. This was accomplished by Eusebius, the celebrated bishop of Cæsarea, who is the first Christian writer who speaks distinctly of the tree and the traditions connected with it. Jerome mentions it several times, and in such a way as to require some attention to reconcile his statements. In one place he speaks of it incidentally, as still subsisting; but in another, he says that it had perished in the time of the Emperor Theodosius. These two contradictory passages are reconciled by another, in which he informs us that the cellulæ, or little rooms, of Sarah, which were her nursery for Isaac, and the vestiges (vestigia) of the oak under which Abraham saw the day of Christ and was glad," were still in his time visited as objects of veneration. It is probable that these remains of

139

the ruined tree did not last much longer, and that the honourable traditions connected with it were transferred to some other large tree that grew hard by. Now, after some interval, we find ecclesiastical writers and travellers speaking of Abraham's tree as still existing and flourishing. The old confusion of names is still kept up-some speaking of it as an oak, and some as a terebinth, but usually the latter. This, in the case of those who actually saw the tree, we can only account for, by supposing that, being diffident of their botanical knowledge, they called it by the name given to Abraham's tree by the authorities on which they chiefly relied; and preferably a terebinth, because the Vulgate gives that name to the tree of Mamre. That which now exists is an oak; but still of a species sufficiently different from those familiarly known to most Europeans to make them hesitate to contradict the authorities which pronounced Abraham's tree to have been a terebinth, which would be still more difficult to those who 'believed, as was generally the case, that the tree was identically the same that flourished over Abraham's tent. What is the age of the present tree cannot, with any certainty, be said. It is, undoubtedly, the same which travellers have, for many centuries past, spoken of as the tree of Abraham; as, from its great size, and the slow growth of the species, it is not improbable that the tree may be the immediate successor of that of which Jerome speaks. This is an antiquity sufficiently venerable; and we incline to think that it cannot be far from the site of the former tree; because there is, close by it, a well with which the name and memory is also connected; and wells are more durable even than trees.

Until our own day few travellers had visited Hebron for more than one hundred and fifty years, and those few who had been there furnished no satisfactory notices of Abraham's tree. Now, however, that Hebron is again visited, the activity of modern research, and the exactness of modern observation, have supplied ample information on the subject. Full descriptions have been supplied; the species has been accurately determined; and a fine print in Borrer's "Journey from Naples to Jerusalem," exhibits the tree itself before us in all its noble proportions.

The tree stands at the head of a fine open valley, which extends north-west of the town, from which it is rather more than a mile distant. Large trees of any kind are very rare in this part of the country; and Dr Robinson declares that he hardly saw another like it in all Palestine, and certainly not anywhere south of the Plain of Esdraelon. The trunk of the tree measures twenty-two feet nine inches around the lower parts. It separates almost immediately into three large boughs or trunks, and one of these again into two. The trunk is twenty-five feet nine inches in girth at the point where the branches separate. The spread of the branches is, in one direction, eightynine feet, and in another eighty-three feet in diameter. Such dimensions are calculated to attract attention in a country where large trees are so uncommon; and they certainly do constitute what would anywhere be considered as a magnificent and remarkable

tree. Oaks of larger dimensions, however, exist in our own country,* but not of the same species. As to the species, Dr Robinson calls it Quercus ilex; but Mr Borrer, who submitted to competent examination a specimen which he brought home, found it to be the Quercus gramuntia, or holly-leafed grammont oak. This species is only known in Britain, as a small and struggling tree; but in Spain, which is regarded as its native country, it often attains to very noble proportions. It is a species that grows very slowly, which indicates that the particular tree of Mamre may be of much greater age than would be claimed for oaks of as large, or even much larger size, of kinds more quick in growth. Still, the celebrity of a tree is only from the time of its becoming great; and it would be perilous to assign to this tree any higher antiquity than might belong to the successor of the one mentioned by Jerome. Dr Robinson says that it is still in a sound and thriving condition; but this is denied by Mr Borrer, who "observed with sorrow, that time was working its destruction, for a hole in the trunk betrayed its hollowness."

The oak of Abraham stands alone in the midst of the field, and as the ground beneath it is grassy and clean, with a well of water near, a more beautiful spot for recreation and refreshment can hardly be found in that country. Travellers like to rest under the oak, and families sometimes come out from the city to spend the day beneath the shade of its branches. One of the liveliest passages of Dr Robinson's somewhat heavy book, is that in which he describes a party of this kind. It is also interesting, as a picture

of Oriental manners, and from the contrast which the mind involuntarily draws between this scene and that which once took place under a similar tree in or near the same place. Yet it is not all contrast, for there are some points of analogy, which render it still more interesting:

......

"About eleven o'clock, we went out to pay our respects to Elias and his family, under the great oak. There we found them spending the day, and enjoying themselves beneath the wide-spreading shade of the noble tree. The party consisted of himself, his wife, her sister, a young woman of about eighteen, their little son, four or five years old, a young man, one of the secretaries of the Government of Jerusalem, and two servants. They had brought with them a rope, and suspended it as a swing from the branches of the tree. The two men were lounging at their ease upon carpets, smoking, and occasionally tasting 'arak,+ which was presented in a small shallow bowl. A fire was kindled not far off, at which the mistress and servants seemed to be engaged in cooking; while the sister and child were

playing and swinging. We took our seats upon the

carpets; pipes were offered, and 'arak presented and tasted freely by the others; coffee was not brought. The guest joined in the sports of the sister and child; pursuing each other, swinging, laughing, and romping. "After about an hour, a servant came from the town, bringing a warm breakfast in a tray upon his

* The Fairlop Oak, for instance, was thirty-six feet in girth, at three feet above the ground.

† A kind of brandy.

head, thickly covered over with large thin sheets of the common bread of the country. Soon after came the wife's mother, who had remained at home to prepare the food. She was mounted on a fine grey mare, which, while yet at some distance, took a start, and came up the field and steep banks at full speed, the lady sitting on both sides, and exhibiting no mean skill in Eastern horsemanship. She was an active, lively, elderly woman, and seemed to be the life and soul of the whole family. We joined the men in breakfasting by ourselves; after we had finished, the women sat down apart at some distance. Such is Oriental custom even among Christians. These females, and especially the elder, were not wanting in intelligence, though they had never been taught to read. They wore no veils, and exhibited no par ticular shyness before strangers. They were, how ever, from Damascus; where the Christian females are understood to enjoy more freedom than in many other parts of the East. We spent here a couple of hours, and then returned to our tent."

DUTY TOWARDS A PASTOR.

1. RECEIVE your pastor, not as an idol to be worshipped, but as a messenger to be heeded; not as an immaculate angel, but as a man of like passions and faultless, even in a liberal sense of that term; none infirmities with yourselves. Few ministers are perfect. Be not slow to cast the soft mantle of charity over his failings. It is not uncommon, indeed, for great virtues and shining abilities to be connected with some marked constitutional defects. Pray the object of your attachment with unseasonable adulamore earnestly for him you love. But spoil not the tion. Dr Lowth, in a dedication to the "Most Reverend Father in God, William, Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of all England, and Metropolitan, and one of his Majesty's Honourable Privy Council" (such are the titles rendered), holds this language in the dedicatory preface to his Commentary on the Book of Daniel: "This might afford me a proper occasion to draw a parallel between his (Daniel's) and your Grace's accomplishments," &c. This is an extreme specimen of the fulsome adulation with which ministers are often saluted. It is stretching to a painful tension that beautiful precept: sake." Does not this rather inculcate a commen"Esteem them very highly in love for their work's datory state of mind, than authorize its positive expression to a man's face?

2. Pray daily for your pastor. In all the range of intercession, there is not a more needy subject. Did Paul himself, with all his splendid gifts and graces, beg Christians to pray "that utterance might be given to him, that he might open his mouth boldly," and is your pastor less needy?

3. Shut your ears against disparaging remarks on his character and performances, especially if they fall from lips habitually censorious. Some men are

always in a complaining mood. To such take the contrary mood. Speak of his good qualities, and you convey a delicate reproof to your friend, who must, per force, consent, and thus contradict and condemn himself. He may even think better of his pastor.

4. Are you a parent? Let all you say and do in strengthen him in the affections of your children, and your family, touching and towards your pastor, of all others in your house. One unguarded expres sion may work irreparable injury in their minds. What father or mother says comes to them with the

THE CONNECTION BETWEEN BODILY DISEASE AND SIN. 141

force of law, especially if it fall in with the naturally evil tendencies of a child's mind.

ject in the light in which Scripture itself presents it, we shall find no great difficulty in seeing that the prophet and evangelist are entirely at one, and that it is only men's hasty, partial, and superficial views which incline them to think otherwise, by seeking to divide what God has inseparably joined.

It is not necessary, neither is it our purpose, to enter into a close examination of the words of the prophecy; but it is not unimportant to mention that the evangelist, in quoting them, departs from the Greek translation, which was then in current use, and gives another, which, of course, must have been intended to present a more exact and faithful copy of the original. Now, if we look simply to the words of

5. No mortal man can satisfy the domestic thirst for pastoral visitation. Do not, therefore, complain of him for not coming oftener, who has one hundred and ninety-nine other families to visit, besides duties to the sick, the poor, the recently dead, and the newly afflicted, to say nothing of the numerous institutions of the age, which require a kind of ubiquity in a man that can be only in one place at a time. When the pastor comes, waste not a word either in apologies or complaints. The former lower you in his estimation, and are worse than the original offence, if any you have committed. The latter, if directed, however gently, against him, discourage him from coming again. "I thought you was never coming," says a pleasant lady. "I really supposed Isaiah, it may seem doubtful whether by the things you had entirely forgotten us," exclaims another. Yet these may have been most frequently visited. to be borne and carried were meant bodily or spiriExpel not the children from the room when the tual evils, though the first of the two expressions is minister comes, for fear they will mortify you. If commonly used of bodily troubles, and the second they have been taught to behave at family prayer, denotes pains or sorrows generally. When the evanand at other times, they will show their good breed-gelist, however, puts "sicknesses" or "diseases" for ing, and be quiet now. It is your business to ask the pastor to pray. For the want of this invitation many a man, though improperly, has made a prayerless visit. If there are servants, give them the privilege of being present. Some pastors are very diffident. Put them at ease, and help them in every suitable way. They will appreciate your kindness, and come again. If any of your family are seriously impressed, let him know it, and be thou serious too. Let thy conversation be holy, not trifling, nor even common-place, at such a time. No efforts can be too earnest to save a soul.

6. If it be possible, always be in your place, not only in the church, but at the prayer-meeting. These punctual ones are the true supporters and encouragers of the pastor. He loves to see them present, as much as he is troubled to think of them as absent.-N. Y. Observer.

THE CONNECTION BETWEEN BODILY
DISEASE AND SIN.

BY THE REV. PATRICK FAIRBAIRN, SALTON. "He cast out the spirits with his word, and healed all that were sick; that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses."-MATT. viii. I¤, 17.

In this passage there seems, at first sight, to be a confounding of things which materially differ. The thought is very apt to present itself, when glancing hastily over the words, that the application which the evangelist makes of the prophecy he quotes from the 53d chapter of Isaiah is not only beneath, but somewhat beside its proper meaning; and that it was evils of a far worse kind than the pains and sicknesses of a mortal body which Christ was predicted to come, and actually did come, to bear in our room and stead. Hence it has been imagined by some divines, not very strict in their views of inspiration, that the evangelist merely accommodated the words of the prophet to the occasion of Christ's healing the sick; while others have thought that there was a kind of first, though very low and imperfect fulfilment of them in that work of Christ, without prejudicing thereby the much higher fulfilment they received in his atoning death. If we view the sub

So

this second and more general expression, the fair and
natural conclusion is, that bodily things are meant
in both expressions. No doubt, "sickness" is some-
times used in other languages, as well as our own, of
spiritual disorders; but it is not commonly so used,
and never unless, from the connection or otherwise,
we can easily understand such to be the case.
that whatever learning might be employed to estab-
lish a different sense for the prophet's words, and a
good deal has sometimes been employed, we have in
the very meaning the evangelist puts upon them, to
say nothing of the application he makes of them,
plainly his authority, which is that of the Spirit of
God, for asserting that it was bodily infirmities, and
bodily pains or sicknesses of which the prophet
spake.

But then, since these infirmities and sicknesses were described as ours by the prophet, and by the evangelist are regarded as, in part at least, belonging to the diseased who came to Christ to be healed, the question arises, How could they with propriety be said to be borne and carried by Christ? Do these expressions merely intimate that they were simply removed by Christ, like a burden lifted up and taken out of the way? We might say so, perhaps, if we had only the words in our own language to look at; but those in the original are more express, and cannot fairly be understood of anything but a taking personally upon one's self. They represent the Messiah as in a manner removing the infirmities and pains in question from the shoulders of others, whose they properly were, and placing them on his own. But how could this be said of the Messiah in regard to the bodily diseases of his people? How could it properly be said, even of those he healed in the days of his flesh, which he merely removed from the persons affected with them by the word of his power? And when they are spoken of as personally borne and carried by Christ, are not those bodily diseases regarded as if they were actually one with the spiritual evils, the sins, which Christ did indeed take upon himself, that he might bear the penalties due to them?

Unquestionably, it is somewhat in this light that

they are regarded; but that, on purpose, not by mistake, as if things essentially different and disconnected were thrown together-as if what could with propriety be affirmed only of the one were incorrectly spoken of the other. But to see the matter in its true light, we must take a look below the surface, and especially keep distinctly in view the connection between disease and sin, as unfolded in other passages of the Word of God. That there was a very close connection between them under the Old Testament dispensation, so that the forgiving of the sin and the removing of the outward trouble or affliction went hand in hand, is clear to all who have given the least attention to the subject. And hence such prayers of the Psalmist as this: "Look upon mine affliction and my pain, and forgive all my sins;" and such Psalms as the 6th, which implore, at the same time, deliverance from the Lord's hot displeasure, and the removal of severe outward distress. But we are entirely mistaken if we suppose such a connection belonged only to the Old Testament state of things, or speak of the views and feelings to which it gave rise as peculiarly Jewish. In the days of our Lord there were certain misapprehensions among the Jews upon the subject, which he undoubtedly sought to correct, and in particular, the idea that every great calamity was to be regarded as the judgment of Heaven upon some special, heinous crime; so that persons visited with more than ordinary troubles must have been sinners of the most flagrant kind. Hence, in reference to the question of the disciples concerning the man that was born blind, whether he or his parents had sinned, that such a calamity was inflicted on him, the reply of our Lord was: "Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents, but that the works of God should be made manifest in him." There had been no sin, in the sense understood by them; that is, no particular, heinous iniquity, on account of which the visitation of blindness had been sent, though still his blindness, being a disorder, an evil, was an undeniable proof that he was by nature "a child of wrath even as others"—" conceived in sin, and shapen in iniquity." With the same view, also, did Jesus shape his reply to the persons who reported to him the case of the Galileans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices, charging them not to suppose these greater sinners than others, or even than themselves, but to consider that unless they repented they should likewise perish. This very charge, however, implies that they were all sinners, and sinners to such an extent that calamities of the kind mentioned were no more than their deserved portion. But this thought, implied there, was more distinctly brought out on another occasion by Christ, when he exhorted the impotent man, whom he found and restored to health beside the Pool of Bethesda, to "go and sin no more, lest a worse thing should come to him;" plainly teaching that he had already suffered because he was a sinner, and that if, after the wonderful deliverance wrought for him, he should now addict himself to the ways of sin, he might expect even a heavier visitation than that from which he had been delivered. Nay, on another occasion again we find Christ proceeding a step further still in pointing

out the connection between the diseases of the body and the sin of the soul, when he addressed the paralytic that was let down upon a couch before him, with the words: "Man, thy sins are forgiven thee." For there he views the disease and the sins as in a manner one lump-deals with them as inseparably linked together; so that the one being removed, the sins being forgiven, the disease must of necessity disapppear too-the righteous God who, to mark his displeasure of sin, had sent the disease, could not but || remove it again, when the sinner was forgiven his iniquity.

Now, it is precisely this connection between suffering and sin-this, and nothing more, nothing else! that the evangelist seeks to indicate, when he describes Christ's healing of diseases as a fulfilment of the prophecy: "Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses." It is true that the prophet there delineates the Messiah as the surety and substitute of guilty men-as bearing in his afflicted, sor- ' rowful, and suffering condition, the plain manifestations of God's displeasure; these, however, as due to us, not to himself-the deserved punishment of our sins. He sees the Messiah as a personification of disease-a plague-stricken man of sorrows, because the fearful load of human guilt met and concentrated itself in him. But that he did thus take upon him the burden of man's guilt, to suffer and atone for it, afforded a reason, the only valid reason, why he could, interfere, either with sin itself to pardon it, or with the bodily evils and distempers which were its consequences and signs. These bodily evils and distempers are the visitation of God on account of sin-a part of the revelation of his righteous testimony against it; and he who can put forth his hand to remove the visitation can be none other than he who has taken upon him, and is able to satisfy for the sin itself; while doing the one, he was giving substantial proof that the other was sure of being accomplished. In short, it was simply because he came to suffer in the room of men what was due to their sins, that he | could remove from men any portion of the sufferings which their sins had brought upon them.

Though there is truth, therefore, it is not by any means the whole truth, which is here expressed by Calvin, when he remarks: "In the miracles which Christ performed by healing men's bodies he gave a specimen of the saving benefit which he brings to our minds, and hence Matthew transfers to the symbol what properly belonged to the matter and truth itself." The cures Christ effected upon men's diseased bodies were doubtless the symbols of the cures he specially came to effect upon their distempered souls. None but the blindest hearts could fail to perceive this. For all Scripture testified of Messiah as coming to do the work, not of a bodily physician, but of the great restorer of a fallen world; so that the bodily cures he performed could never have been intended to stand by themselves; they must have been designed " to be symbols of something higher and better-and symbols, too, that should have been the more easily understood by the men of that generation, as they were accustomed from their childhood to symbolical instruction, and were constantly taught to look

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