choose to enter in. This ark is Christ, who is the way, the only way of salvation from impending ruin, John xiv. 8.

CHAPTER VIII.

1. An ingenious friend gave me what struck me as a very beautiful idea on this verse. He informed me that near the Poles the mountains of ice are of such immense magnitude that if the whole were dissolved it would furnish more than sufficient water to overflow the earth in a second deluge. The wind here mentioned, he conceives to have blown the waters to the Poles, where they have ever since remained, confined in bonds of ice; and thus has the Lord "shut up the water in bounds they cannot pass," and said to the ocean" Hitherto shalt thou go and no farther, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed," in a sense more grand and sublime than a mere reference to their ordinary course, to which the words are usually applied.

3. This returning of the waters continually appears to be the tides. Whether the tides only now began to flow and to retire, or whether, on the subsiding of the flood, they but resumed their former course I am not able to inform you.

in

11. Hence the dove and the olive-tree have been regarded as emblems of peace. The latter, even nations where the scriptures are not known, probably from tradition. The Holy Spirit appears (Matt. iii. 16.) in the likeness of a dove; and the olive-tree is given as a type of him. Zech. iv. 11. Rev. xi. 4.

21. The nature of a covenant between the Creator and his creature, as before explained, Note on vi. 18,

is here made plain; só far from the gracious promise here given being conditional of any good thing in man, it is expressly stated that it is because the imagination of his heart is evil that God will no more disturb the course of nature on account of his sins. Those sins being interwoven in his nature, (See note on ii. 17.) and therefore continual, if they were to be punished in this manner, the course of nature would be so frequently interrupted that the benefits of a regular course would be utterly lost. not to be we may gather from Matt. xxiv. 22.

Why this is

FEMALE DRESS.

THE following letter appeared in that valuable newspaper 'The Record,' a short time since. We transfer it, with the Editor's remarks, to our pages, as being peculiarly suited for the consideration of Christian ladies.

SIR,

It is a great pity we have not a Spectator, as our ancestors had, to expose the folly of the age. Your valuable journal has done more than any other publication of the present day to purify professors of religion from the dross of the world; but I do not recollect that you have ever aimed a blow at the indelicacy of the evening dresses of ladies. Independently of the absurdity of suffering themselves to be deprived, for the sake of fashion, of that most useful part of a garment, the shoulder-strap, and looking as if they were pinioned for execution, the exposure this makes of their persons is sinful and disgraceful in every female, but especially in those who are professors of godliness, and sometimes are the wives and daughters of ministers of the gospel. What would such ladies think of their female servants, if they were in any degree to follow their example in this respect? Would they not discharge them for it? And are not mistresses, as well as servants, required to abstain from all appearance of evil, and not to be conformed to the vain and sinful customs of this evil world? Ladies thus attired often lose in a party the conversation of well-disposed men, who will not willingly approach them. This is the

feeling of the writer, who invariably avoids them. Thus the object many of them may have in view by such exposure is defeated. It is recorded of Buonaparte, that, on one occasion, at an entertainment he gave at court, being displeased with the impropriety of the ladies, he rang the bell and ordered their shawls. Well would it be, if this were sometimes done in what are called our religious parties. We are often referred to the pictures of our great-aunts and grandmothers, as an excuse for this indelicacy. We may as well return to the double-entendres and loose conversation of our great-grandfathers. Is not the age of our virtuous Victoria to be purer than that of the profligate Charles? And is the great increase of religious knowledge and profession to have no effect on our conduct? When a minister or master is closing the evening with family prayer, and perhaps entreating at the throne of grace, to be preserved from every thing that is inconsistent with the gospel, what must his servants think, when they see his wife and daughters thus conforming to a world from which they ought to be separated?-T. H.

[We very cordially concur in these remarks of our reverend and estimable correspondent. The sinful indelicacy ought assuredly to be checked in every family professing godliness. In our younger days, that loose thing Fashion commanded the exposure before instead of behind, and the bosoms of females used to be shamelessly exposed. We are expecting to see a revival of this greater enormity: but whether we have the one or the other to participate in, the indecency is sin, while it is utterly disgusting to every man of just feeling and correct taste.-EDITOR.] Record, May 21, 1840.

THREE USES OF TRADITION.

WE have heard, within the last two or three years, much of the revival in the Church of England and Ireland of a reverence for tradition. We are told by numbers, that the Bible is not, and was not intended to be, a sufficient guide for the church, and that therefore it is our duty, as Protestant churchmen, to exercise our acumen in separating those traditions which are genuine and catholic, from the novel and sectarian traditions of the intrusive and ambitious church of Rome. Others accustomed to regard tradition as the property of Rome alone, and a reverence for it as one of the marks of the apostacy, start back astounded at the very name pronounced by Protestant lips, and regard the propounders of such an opinion as the secret emissaries of Rome, and denounce men, respectable for their learning, devotion, amiability, and uprightness, as hypocrites, who having crept into the sanctuary of our church, are labouring to undermine her bulwarks, and to betray her to the tyranny of her bitterest enemy. Now such is evidently not the fact. Character is, alas! no guarantee against heresy of any kind; but character such as that maintained by some of the modern upholders of tradition, does afford evidence that nothing dishonest or dishonourable is mixed with their purposes. What then, it may be asked, can have induced Protestant men of learning and piety thus to en