articles of utility and ornament. Of it artists' pencils are made. It is also manufactured into shawls, which are held in high estimation. In ancient times a coarse species of cloth was made of it, which seems to have formed peculiarly the dress of a prophet. (Zech. xiii. 4.) John the Baptist, we are told, was habited in a garment of camels' hair; and Elijah the Tishbite is described as "an hairy man, and girt with a girdle of leather about his loins," (2 Kings, i. 8.)-that is, dressed in a garment of hair-cloth. In the present day the Arabians make their tents of camels' hair, "something like our coarse haircloths, to lay over goods."

THE OX.

66

In the earliest ages we find the ox mentioned among the animals of which the riches of the patriarchs consisted. Abraham was very rich in cattle" (Gen. xxiv. 35), and Jacob also possessed "much cattle" (Gen. xxx. 43). Job, who proba

bly was contemporary with Isaac, had "five hundred yoke of oxen" (Job, i. 3); and even thus early had the strength of this useful animal been applied to the purposes of agriculture; for when the Sabeans fell upon the patriarchs' herds and took them away, "the men were ploughing, and the asses feeding beside them."

The Ox was declared clean by the law, and was generally used by the Hebrews for sacrifice. Among the Egyptians it was an object of veneration, and divine honours were paid to it. It was without doubt in imitation of these people that the golden calf was set up and worshipped by the Israelites at the foot of Mount Sinai in their passage through the wilderness.

The references to the ox, the bull, the heifer, and the calf are very numerous in scripture. The Hebrew bard compares the shaking of the earth and the reeling of the mountains with their forests, when Jehovah descended in terrible majesty to deliver the law from the top of Sinai, to the friskings of the young calf: "He maketh them also to skip like a calf;" and in foretelling the destruction of Jerusalem, Jeremiah denounces his countrymen,

"Because ye were glad, because ye rejoiced, O ye destroyers of mine heritage, because ye are grown fat as the heifer at grass, and bellow as bulls;" and Malachi describes the joy of his people at the appearance of the promised Messiah, in similar terms: "But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of Righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth and grow up as calves of the stall" (Mal. iv. 2).

The bull is chosen by the sacred writers to symbolize the fierce and implacable enemies of the Redeemer: "Many bulls have compassed me: strong bulls of Bashan have beset me around" (Ps. xxii. 12); and Isaiah, in his sublime prediction of the complete destruction of the strong and cruel enemies of the church, which probably is to take place as a precursor of its millennial state, uses the very remarkable and emphatic denunciation, "And the unicorns shall come down with them, and the bullocks with the bulls, and their land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness" (Isa. xxxiv. 7).

But besides the use of this animal to symbolize the active and relentless enemies of the church, we

find it also used as the representative of the blindness and stupidity of those who turn away from God to follow after sensuality and sin; in this sense the prophet contrasts its character and actions with those of Israel: "The ox knoweth his owner and the ass his master's crib; but Israel doth not know, my people do not consider" (Isa. i. 3). "To eat grass like an ox," was part of the punishment which the Almighty inflicted on the proud and tyrannical king of Babylon; deprived of reason which he had so greatly abused, and resigned to the full influence of the most beastly and depraved appetites, he was hurled from his throne and dignity, and expelled from the society of his fellow men, to roam in the open field, exposed, like the herd with which he associated, to all the inclemency of the weather, and like them to satisfy the cravings of his appetite with the grass of the field: a terrible but instructive lesson for the oppressors of every succeeding age.

"The flesh of the ox was not only used by the chosen people, but also reckoned, when young, one of their greatest delicacies. The patriarch

Abraham accordingly, with ardent hospitality, entertained the angels under the oak at Mamre with "a calf, tender and good" (Gen. xviii. 7); and the Pythoness at Endor could think of nothing so acceptable to set before Saul as a calf fattened in treading out the corn (1 Sam. xxviii. 24). The young of the herd were numbered among the blessings which Jehovah promised to bestow upon his ransomed people, and classed with the choicest viands. The father of the family in the parable had nothing more delicious to set before his repentant son than the fatted calf. "Therefore they shall come and sing in the height of Zion, and shall flow together to the goodness of the Lord, for wheat, and for wine, and for oil, and for the young of the flock, and of the herd; and their soul shall be as a watered garden; and they shall not sorrow any more at all." The voluptuous nobles of Israel, in the days of Amos, lay upon beds of ivory, and stretched themselves upon their couches, and ate the lambs out of the flock, "and the calves out of the midst of the stall." It is obviously the design of the indignant prophet to inform us, that the no