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that this person, to whom their intercourse and instruction had been made so great a blessing, was his own brother.

Describing her feelings at this juncture, she says: "I could not weep-I could not pray-I seemed to be stupified with horror and agony. At last I opened the letters, and when I saw the hand-writing of my eldest son, whose letter the day before had given me so much comfort, I was confounded. As I read on, and found that the brothers had met; that the eldest had witnessed the last moments of the younger; and that this, my second son, had been met with by the missionaries, and by them turned from the error of his ways; that there was no doubt of the safety of his state; and that he had died in his brother's arms- -O," said she, "it was indeed a cordial to my soul. How marvellous are the ways of Heaven, that both my sons, after turning aside from the ways of God, and from every means of instruction at home, should be converted to God in a Heathen land! O the twenty pounds," she thought; "and the last declaration of my dear dying mother! O what blessings to me were hidden in the twenty pounds! What do I owe to her for that saying, 'You

It will be readily conceived that these two brothers, now united by the strong ties of Christian affection, as well as by those of nature, would feel an indescribable satisfaction, the one in administering, and the other in receiving, the attention and services which such circumstances dictated. The eldest continued to the last, administering to his younger brother all the comfort, both for body and soul, which was in his power; and the younger continued to receive, with unutterable delight, the brotherly attentions and the spiritual assistance which had been so mercifully provided for him in a strange and Heathen land. At length he died, and the surviving brother who had written some time before to his mother the detailed account formerly mentioned concerning himself, and who had also written, during his brother's illness, an account of the circumstances in which he had found him of their meeting, and of his brother's change of heart-will never have cause to repent of giving it to now despatched a third letter, to announce to the bereaved mother the peaceful end of her son, and to console her for the loss, by the description of the happy days they had been permitted so unexpectedly, and almost miraculously, to spend together.

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This last letter was committed to the care of a person about to sail for England, and who undertook to deliver it himself. The former communication, which the elder son had written many weeks before, respecting himself, had met with delay on its passage. The last written letter, announcing the death of Henry, arrived the very day after that first mentioned. The person who had undertaken the delivery of the packet, took it to the good woman, and said, "I have brought letters from your son in India." She replied with astonishment, "I received one but yesterday." "Then," said the stranger, you have heard of the death of Henry?" She had not even heard of the meeting of the brothers. She had only just heard of the conversion of the son that first went abroad. The sudden announcement, therefore, of the death of Henry, quite overcame her. Though the day before, the delightful intelligence had arrived that her eldest son had become a Christian, and a Christian missionary, yet now this beclouded all. She thought," My child is dead-dead in sin against God-dead in a foreign land, among strangers, Heathens-not one to speak a word of divine truth, to tell him of mercy, of a Saviour's dying love, of hope for the chief of sinners-no kind Christian friend to pour out a prayer for his forgiveness, or to direct his departing spirit to that throne of grace where none ever plead in vain."

A torrent of such thoughts rushed into her mind, and filled her heart with an anguish not to be described. She retired to her room overwhelmed with sorrow, and sat for many hours.

the Missionary Society?' Could I have foreseen all this, what would I not have given !"

The influence of these occurrences in confirming the faith and hope of this good woman, may be easily imagined. She could not look back without astonishment at the dealings of God with herself and her children; and she could not recount these remarkable particulars, without connecting them with the last solemn request of her pious mother. The privilege of having two sons rescued in so remarkable a manner from the profligate and destructive courses into which they had entered; the distinguished honour of having one of them employed in the missionary work among the Heathen; and the fact of having them both rescued from vice and destruction, by the friendly and pious labours of English missionaries, as well as the happiness of knowing that the one who was torn from her had experienced, in his last hours, every attention and solace that the affectionate hand of a brother could supply;-all these were so intimately connected with the legacy of her mother, and the almost prophetic words with which it was delivered, that she could not refrain from considering the whole a singular fulfilment of prayers long since recorded on high, and as a singular illustration of the special providence of God toward his people.

THE LAST HYMN.

(From "Home of the Heart," and other Poems, by Miss Aird).

"Cease fond nature, cease thy strife,

And let me languish into life."

O! SING once more before I go
That old familiar hymn,
With Sabbath tone so sweet and low,
Ere morning songs begin.

BURMESE CUSTOMS ILLUSTRATIVE OF SCRIPTURE.

Sing of the love that never dies,
The friends who never part,
Ere earthly love in silence lies,
While leaning on thy heart-
.. O sing that holy hymn.

I learned it at my mother's knee,
And sung it to my sire;
And I have sung it oft with thee,
Beside our ev'ning fire;
Like odour from a faded rose,

Twill breathe of beauty gone-
Sing, ere earth's twilight shadows close,
For hearts must die alone-

Sing low that parting song,

Of faith's adoring mastery,
A victor crowned in dust;
That love's triumphant agony
Which seals our meeting trust,
When broken is the golden bowl,
The silver cord is riven;

Of One who binds the widowed soul.
One, only One in heaven-

To Him our song be given.

The ocean shell, though distant, sings
The music of the wave,
And sanctified affection springs
In song beyond the grave;
The Star that led us all our way,
Whose light I praised with thee,
Which lit our path with pillar-ray-
Thou'lt sing where is "no sea,"

Of all that light with me.

Then touch my heart no more with gloom,
Of passionate farewells,

For through the love-illumin'd tomb
A flood of glory swells;

I hear ONE calling me by name :

"Thou'rt mine-I've ransom'd thee; Fear not, I'm with thee in the flame; I Seba gave for thee."

Hush! hush! my loved One, see!
I come, like the o'er-wearied dove,
My Ark, my Covenant-home;
O! clasp me in the arms of love,
O'er floods no more to roam.
But, hark! the angel-chorals swell,
Sing, glory! glory, sing!

O Grave! where is thy victory? tell,
And where, O! Death, thy sting?
Earth! earth! dim earth, farewell!

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Ir is the privilege of one who knows the Bible well to render all his other studies subservient to it, and to make all his readings in the great book of nature, and in the books of men, yield their tribute of illus

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tration to the Word of God. This is one of the enjoyments peculiar to those who are familiar with the Scriptures; and the satisfaction is varied and extensive in proportion to the degree of our acquaintance with the Sacred Volume. The more we know of Scripture, the more ready and frequent will be our recognition of similar or illustrative facts, customs, and sentiments, in other writings; and this recognition, by the frequent recollections of Scripture which it calls up, refreshes the mind, even in its comparatively secular studies and readings, which, in a certain degree, are sanctified by it.

To show how this habit acts, and, at the same time, to impart to the reader some of the benefits we have ourselves derived from it, we will, in this and some ensuing papers, conduct the reader with us through a few books which might not, at the first view, seem likely to furnish satisfactory materials for this exercise. Let us begin with "Malcolm's Travels in the Burman Empire," and with that part of the work which treats of Burmese Leprosy and Lepers.

Mr Malcolm states that in Burmah the population is divided into eight classes-" the royal family, great officers, priests, rich men, labourers, slaves, lepers, executioners." Excluding the last, this division is not, in its general features, unlike that which prevailed among the Jews under the monarchy. Indeed, with the exclusion intimated, we should be disposed to make little other alteration in it, for the purpose of illustration, than to introduce another class, consisting of the family chiefs, or heads of families and tribes. These, however, held public employments very generally under the kings, and might, therefore, be merged in the class of "great officers." We have selected this fact, however, chiefly for the sake of coming through it to the further statement, that "none of the classes constitute en hereditary caste, except lepers and the slaves of pagodas." The Hebrews had other hereditary castes, or rather orders, namely, priests and family chiefs; but they seem to have also had these two of the Burmeso, and no more. The Nethinim, or servants of the Jewish temple, answered very nearly to the slaves of the pagodas; and that their condition was hereditary is very well known. We feel most interested, however, respecting this hereditary caste of lepers. Was there such a caste among the Hebrews? We know that the Hebrew lepers were excluded from towns, and lived apart; but we know, also, that when any one became clean of this disease, he was, after due examination and probation, re-admitted to the general society of his fellowcitizens. Such a provision does not exist among the Burmese; and it seems incompatible with the idea of an hereditary caste. Still the idea of establishing such a caste, among a people who do not habitually separate themselves into castes, must, we apprehend, have been founded upon the impression that the children of lepers were themselves leprous. It may not have been always so; but it must have been generally so before such a caste could have been established. Now a careful consideration of the particulars concerning leprosy and lepers, which the Scriptures contain, may lead to the conclusion that there was something of this kind among the

Israelites, with little other difference than that with them there existed a provision for the restoration to society of such as could show themselves free from the taint of this remarkable malady.

In connection with this subject, the words of Elisha to Gehazi forcibly recur to the mind: "The leprosy of Naaman cleave unto thee and unto thy seed for ever."-2 Kings v. 27. This, as we take it, signifies that Naaman's leprosy was of an hereditary and incurable kind. He had been miraculously cured of it; but now it should be transferred to Gehazi and his descendants, without the hope of cure or relief.

Now Gehazi and his descendants must, in the course of time, have formed one hereditary caste of lepers of themselves; but there were probably others in the same casc, even in his time, unless we suppose, which we have no reason to do, that the disease was in this instance miraculous not only in its transfer from Naaman to Gehazi, but in its hereditary character. But if the leprosy of Gehazi was of such character, and that of Naaman was not, then the leprosy of Naaman was no longer that of Gehazi. But we are told that it was the leprosy of Naaman, and not another leprosy, which clove to Gehazi and to his seed; and if so, it is not pressing the argument too far to infer that it was hereditary leprosy, and that, consequently, a caste of hereditary lepers existed in Syria, and among the Hebrews, in and before the time of Gehazi.

The rule seems to have been, that when a man not born in leprosy became infected by that disorder, his children previously born were considered clean, so that they kept themselves separate from him (2 Chron. xxvi. 21); but his children afterwards born, or any children born of a leprous parent, were considered as lepers till they could satisfy the proper authorities that they were not in that condition.

of the children are sound and healthy, but it is said frequently to re-appear in the second or third generation. Lepers, and those who consort with them, are obliged to wear a conspicuous and peculiar hat, made like a shallow, conical basket. The children, whether leprous or not, are allowed to intermarry only with their own class."*

The chief interest of the above passage lies in this, that it enables us to discover the object and motive of the minute regulations respecting leprosy contained in the 13th and 14th chapters of Leviticus. They are all framed upon the sacred principle, that none but such as were actually subject to a disease supposed to be contagious should be placed under the disabilities and exclusion which it involved; and that, for the benefit of society, none who really suffered under the malady should be allowed unrestricted intercourse with their fellow-citizens. This discrimination could only proceed upon a clear apprehension of the signs

Since writing the above, we have been reminded of a passage in the "Narrative of the Scottish Mission of Inquiry to the Jews," which shows that leprosy among the Burmese is also common in Paleswhat is described above as the prevalent form of tine. That it cannot be recognised in the description given in Leviticus, is doubtless because we have there the first signs and symptoms of the disease, whereas these facts describe the condition to which the leper, under this form of the malady, is eventually reduced. The incident occurred at Shechem or Sychar: "Under a spreading nabbok tree near the gate, we came upon five or six miserable objects, half-naked, dirty, and wasted by disease. Immediately on seeing us, they sprang up, and stretched out their arms, crying most imploringly for alms. We observed that some had lost their hands, and held up the withered stumps, and that others were deformed in the face; but it did not occur to us at the time that they were lepers. We were afterwards told that they were so-lepers on the outside of the city gate, like the ten men in the days of Jesus, who lifted up their voices, and cried, 'Jesus, master, have mercy on us!"

It is so rarely that we find a satisfactory account of the condition of lepers at the present day, that there is a peculiar interest in the few facts respecting their condition in Burmah which Mr Malcolm furnishes, as they may help in some degree to complete our idea of the condition of the Hebrew lepers, of which we know little more than has been already stated, namely, that they lived apart, but might, when healed, be restored to society. This is his statement: "Leprosy, in several forms, is seen at the great cities, where its victims collect in a separate quarter, and live chiefly by begging-the only beggars in the country. The general form is that which attacks the smaller joints. I saw many who had lost all the fingers and toes, and some both hands and feet. In some cases the nose also disappears. Out of all this arises a question of some interest. It does not seem much to shorten life, and is not very Had any of the lepers whom Christ healed lost their painful, except in its first stages. Those with whom hands or feet? and if so, did the cure restore these I conversed declared that they had not felt any pain precious members to them? The answer would seem for years. to be in the negative. It appears from Mr Malcolm's In many cases it ceases to increase after account of the Burmese leper, that the disease is in a time; the stumps of the limbs heal, and the disease fact cured, as soon as the wounds arising from the is, in fact, cured. I could not hear of any effectual exfoliation of the limbs are healed, and in that case remedy-it seems in these cases to stop of itself. It they would have been re-admitted into general socan scarcely be considered contagious, though in-ciety, under the law of Moses. If, therefore, any of stances are sometimes given to prove it so. suffering under it are by law separated entirely from other society; but their families generally retire with them, mingling and cohabiting for life. The majority

before, Maundrell saw ten lepers; but from the de-
At the same place, one hundred and forty-two years
scription he gives (in a letter at the end of some edi-
tions of his "Journey") it does not appear that any
of them exhibited this loss of hands, &c., which so
strikingly demonstrates the presence of the Burmese
form of leprosy in Palestine. Maundrell states that
the leprosy seen by him, "not only defiles the whole
surface of the body with a foul scurf, but also de-
forms the joints of the body, particularly of the wrists
and ancles; making them swell, with a gouty scrofu-
lous substance, very loathsome to look upon." This
would seem to be merely a modification of, or per- |
haps a stage in, that kind of leprosy under which the

Persons

hands and feet are sometimes lost.

the lepers whom Christ healed laboured under this species of leprosy, they had not yet lost their hands or feet; but they were in danger of that great calamity, and would have suffered it, had not his mercy interposed.

THE POOL OF BETHESDA.

of complete recovery; and these signs are accordingly pointed out in the chapters to which we have referred with remarkable precision and distinctness. The want of some such rules as were by the divine beneficence imparted to the Hebrew people, would among them, as in Burmah, have had the effect of excluding whole generations of men from the free intercourse of life, on account of a disease which may at one time have affected an ancestor; and of preventing those who, from the impulse of natural affection, might place themselves in communication with a diseased relative, from evermore returning to the society of unafflicted men, although they may never, in their own persons, have known the leprous taint. How small, in comparison, would then have been the benefit conferred by our Lord upon the lepers whom he cured! It would, indeed, have relieved them from the disease; but he could not, by that act, also have restored them to their place in the commonwealth, or have enabled them thenceforth to walk the highways and the streets with freedom, or to mingle with glad hearts with the multitudes that kept holy day in the courts of the Lord's house.

A circumstance has just come under our notice, which seem to afford a further corroboration of our impression that there was a permanent or hereditary condition of leprosy among the Hebrews, although among them this was not, as with the Burmese, the rule, but the exception.

The law of Lev. xiii. and xiv. is very minute in its directions respecting the course to be taken by a person when he first comes under the taint of leprosy-how he is to conduct himself while in a leprous condition, and how he is to proceed when he supposes himself cured. Many of these obligations are very onerous; and the afflicted persons might be tempted to neglect or postpone them, were not some heavy penalty thereby incurred. But the Book of the Law does not annex any penalty to disobedience; and we must resort to the Talmud, and other Jewish writings, to know what was the actual penalty in such савев. From this source we learn, that the penalty for an infringement of any of the rules laid down in the law was quite severe enough to insure general attention, and to protect society from the dangers which transgression might involve. It was no less than that his leprosy should cleave to him for ever! We are not sure whether it was supposed that the leprosy became permanent and hereditary by a special judgment from God, as in the case of Gehazi; or that the leprosy of such a person was to be held as never to be cured, and that he was never to be examined by the priest, with a view to his re-admission to society. Taken either way, it shows or implies that Gehazi and his descendants were not alone in their permanent leprosy; but there was a permanent body of lepers-possibly including some persons who, as among the Burmese, were free from disease, not as a necessary effect of their having been lepers, but a penal infliction for disobedience of the law.

The condition of the Hebrew leper is described in the following words: "His clothes shall be rent, and his head bare, and he shall put a covering upon his upper lip, and shall cry, Tarnee, tarnce!' (unclean, unclean!) All the days wherein the plague shall be

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in him, he shall be defiled; he is unclean: he shall dwell alone; without the camp shall his habitation be."-Lev. xiii. 45, 46. The reader will do well to compare this with the short description of the condition of the Burmese leper which we have quoted from Malcolm. Most of the points coincide in substance, and differ only in some small details. In almost every country where leprosy prevails, the leper is obliged to wear some kind of distinctive dress, so that people may know and avoid him. Among the Burmese his head is covered with a conical cap; among the Hebrews his head was bare; his garment was rent (in front it is understood), in token of his afflicted condition; and, in the presence of a clean person, he stood covering his mouth with his hand, or the skirt of his robe. In addition to which distinction of dress, the leper is, in some countries, obliged to notify his presence or approach by some loud and peculiar sound. In some places a small drum is used for this purpose; in others, the leper strikes a metal dish, or rattles something in it; but the Hebrew leper, when he saw a stranger approaching, or when he found himself near any place of resort, was obliged to keep up his melancholy cry of Tarnee, tarnee!

THE POOL OF BETHESDA.

BY THE REV. PATRICK FAIRBAIRN, SALTON. WE are informed, in the 5th chapter of the Gospel by John, that on a certain Sabbath our Lord fell in with a man beside the Pool of Bethesda, who had been labouring under an infirmity for thirty-eight years. He had come there hoping to obtain the cure of his disease; for it was ascertained that an angel at certain times went in to agitate the waters, and that the person who first afterwards stepped into them was cured of whatever disease he had. This unhappy individual was so disabled in body, and so utterly destitute of help, that he could not move himself at the proper time, and thus had the mortification of seeing himself always anticipated by some more fortunate neighbour. But now, finding an interest in the sympathy of Jesus, he was immediately restored to such soundness of health that he could take up his couch, and carry it away. Regarding the Pool itself we have no further information, than simply that it was beside the sheep market (or gate, as it should rather be), and that it had five porches. The word rendered pool, however, literally signifies a swimming place, a bath; and the name Bethesda is made up of two Hebrew words, which mean house of mercy; so that in all probability it was, as to its proper design, a public bath, constructed and built round with porches, for the accommodation and refreshment of the poorer classes. The beneficial effects on health and comfort which such a work would be fitted to produce on them, especially in such a country as Judca, might well entitle it, on that score alone, to be called a house of mercy. We can only speak of this, however, as a matter of probability, for Jewish writers are silent regarding it; and its very position is now involved in a degree of uncertainty. What is pointed cut as the remains of it, is a dry basin or reservoir outside of the northern

wall of the Temple Mount, and which has been so carelessly examined that the most widely different accounts are given of its dimensions. For example Röhr makes its length to be one hundred and twenty feet, its breadth forty, its depth eight; while Robinson, the latest and best authority, makes the length three hundred and sixty, the breadth one hundred and thirty, and the depth seventy-five.

It is not, however, what Bethesda might be as a public bath that deserves any particular notice here; for as such it could only have resembled, more or less, works of a similar kind, which were to be found in most ancient cities, Rome itself possessing upwards of eight hundred of them. What alone calls for special consideration, is the remarkable circumstance mentioned concerning the waters of this Pool-that they were occasionally moved by an angel, and that when so moved the first person who then stepped in, but only the first, was healed of his infirmity. Does it not look like a somewhat strange office this for an angel to perform? And if so exalted a messenger did really stoop to perform it, does not the effect resulting from his agency appear very partial and capricious? Why was only one victim of disease healed, and that the first who stepped in, rather than any other?

Such questions very naturally occur, if the circumstance is viewed apart from its great end and object -the bearing it was intended to have on the appearing and work of Christ-and treated simply as a piece of common history, recording events that belonged to an ordinary age of the world. In that case, like the demoniacal possessions, it lies open to various doubts and surmises of unbelief, which are more easily stated than satisfactorily disposed of. And hence it is that so many shallow and ridiculous suppositions have been resorted to, with the view of accounting for, by natural causes, what the evangelist plainly ascribes to a supernatural one-such as that the waters of the Pool possessed some mineral quality, which had a healing influence on certain diseases; or, that the entrails of animals slain for the temple service were thrown into it, and rendered it capable of exerting such an influence, when stirred by some messenger appointed for the purpose. These are the poor devices of a half-infidel Christianity, which would not altogether reject the Gospel history as a "cunningly devised fable," but can as little rise to the apprehension of the great truths and principles with which it is interwoven. Of that history Jesus Christ, God manifest in the flesh, is at once the great centre and the grand miracle. To view the other circumstances belonging to the age and time of his appearance apart from him, were as unwise, and as unlikely to lead to satisfactory results in divine truth, as it would be in philosophy to consider the phenomena of this earth without respect to the sun, which is their common source and centre. But if, on the other hand, viewed, as they all should be, in their proper connection with Christ, there is nothing in any of them but what may admit of a most satisfactory explanation-certainly there is nothing here.

We take it for granted that at such a time, when such a personage appeared, and such a work was in progress on the earth, there must have been many

things of a peculiar and extraordinary kind, because these were necessary to furnish Jesus with the opportunities he needed to bring fully out before men his real character and Godhead. Supernatural manifestations of divine power and goodness, such as clearly bespoke the operation of a gracious God, were the fit and proper heralds of his approach, as these, exercised in surpassing measure by himself, were the natural indications of his glorious presence, and the seals of his divine commission. Hence, immediately before his being manifested to Israel, there were gifts of prophecy then again beginning to show themselves forth in the Church-in the devout Anna, in the aged Simeon, and especially in John the Baptist, who, in some respects, was even more than a prophet. But the only purpose for which they were so gifted, was to point the minds and expectations of men to Christ, as the great light of the world, and to render the more conspicuous that glory in him which so far excelled what was in them. In the spiritual as in the natural world, a dawn preceded the bright shining of the glorious orb of day. For the same purpose, also, there were gifts of healing; which sometimes, at least when exercised with prayer and fasting, we have good reason to think, were successful in relieving to a certain extent such as were labouring under the oppressions of the adversary, which were then permitted peculiarly to abound. The design and tendency of such gifts was only to herald the coming and display the peerless majesty of Him who, both in respect to body and mind, was to cure every form of disease, and to heal all that were oppressed of the devil. And that such preparatory and inferior gifts of healing should have been connected with the Pool of Bethesda was the more natural, as it was not only in itself a place of refreshment for the weary, but the waters with which it was filled flowed from that Fountain of Siloam, or Shiloah, which, even in ancient times, was taken to represent the safety and blessedness derived from the gracious presence and help of Jehovah. When the Jews, in the days of Ahaz, revolted in their hearts from the Lord, and put their trust in an arm of flesh, they were charged as "refusing the waters of Shiloah that go softly" (Isa. viii. 6); for that perpetual and copious spring of waters, rising within the walls of the city, and constituting one of its greatest natural advantages, was fitly regarded as a striking emblem of the sure and unceasing flow of benefits that its people might derive from the presence and blessing of God. In later times, the people perfectly understood the allusion of the prophet, and carrying it too far, as persons of a Pharisaical spirit never fail to do with everything of a like kind, they came to look upon those waters of Siloam as in themselves possessing a kind of divine property, from their supposed peculiar connection with God, and on the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles, when they poured out bucket-fulls of them on the sacrifice, they gave utterance to their sentiments by singing with enthusiastic joy the words of the prophet: "With joy shall ye draw water from the wells of salvation."

This, of course, was an unwarranted, a superstitious use of the allusion in question; but it at least indicated a marked, and in itself a becoming, atten

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