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AN EXPERIENCE.

of his house," Bring these men home, and slay, and make ready; for these men shall dine with me at noon." The author to whom we have already referred objects to the truth of this statement, as in most manifest opposition to the sacredness of beasts in Egypt. "The Egyptians," he says, "partake, at must, of consecrated flesh offerings; and the higher castes, especially the priests, with whom Joseph was connected by marriage, abstained entirely from animal food." Again: "The hatred of this people to foreign shepherds is founded on the inviolableness of animals, especially of neat cattle, goats, and sheep, which were killed by the shepherds, but accounted sacred by the Egyptians." This assertion affords an evidence of the boundless credulity of a certain class of writers in regard to everything that seems to militate against the credit of the Sacred Scriptures. The affirmation that the Egyptians abstained from all animal food is

in direct opposition to the statements of every writer of acknowledged authority. Herodotus, for example, mentions that cows only, not oxen, were sacred among the Egyptians, and that the priests received each day

large portion of flesh. On the monuments we have representations of kitchens, to which shambles appear to have been attached for slaughtering and jointing the meat. The servants are represented as slaughtering a great variety of animals, cutting the meat into joints, and carrying the joints as divided into the kitchen, and preparing them for the table, under the superintendence of the head cook.*

THE MESSENGER DOVE.
(From the New York Observer.)
Also he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters
were abated from off the face of the ground."-GEN. viii. 8.
THE stormy wrath of heaven was o'er,

For its deathful work was done;
And the parting cloud revealed once more
The smile of the welcome sun;

While the ark that wandered through the strife,
O'er the buried hills, with its freight of life,
On the lofty mountain found a rest,
That pierced the waves with its lonely crest.

The snowy dove, whose flightless wing

Had rested long unspread,

Went gladly forth with a lithesome spring,
And swift in her freedom sped;
But afar she flew on a goalless track,
And came with a weary pinion back;
For nought she could find but a shoreless sen
Where her verdant haunts were wont to be.

And the messenger dove went forth again
On an eager plume at morn;

And returned at the evening hour-but then
With a leaf from the olive torn.

* In plate 83 of Rosellini's Civil Monuments, one of these

servants is represented as sharpening his knife upon a steci suspended from his waist, and which is exactly similar to the steels employed at the present time. We believe there is an instrument of this kind among the examples of cutlery preserved in the Egyptian Room in the British Museum. There is also a stand, on which are the remains of some of

Once more away! and a last farewell,
For she came no more in the ark to dwell;
But she found a home in the silent wood,
Where the fadeless groves of the olive stood.
There wanders a spirit from many a breast,
O'er the wide world's troubled sea,
That seeketh some bower of peaceful rest,
And a sweet tranquillity:

But it turns full oft from a fruitless flight,
Like the dove with a wearied wing,
Till it findeth a bower of calm delight
Where the flowers of Sharon spring.

AN EXPERIENCE.

55

"Take heed lest your bands be made strong." WHEN visiting an aged Christian a few years ago, his servant frequently referred to the miserable state of mind in which a man was who frequently attended her master. I sought the poor man at the house of my friend, but so to arrange my time of visiting as to meet never could accomplish it, as I believe the poor fellow was so unwilling to converse with a stranger, that he altered his time of coming so as to avoid me. He had, however, for some weeks been failing in his health, and was at Ι length unable to follow his occupation. found out his lodgings, and introduced myself to him, by saying that I had been told he was ill, and unhappy. He received me with a very suspicious and forbidding countenance, and was not at all disposed to enter into conversation. I asked him if he had a Bible; he said he had not seen one, nor attended a place of worship for nearly twelve years. I offered to lend him one, which he rather reluctantly consented to receive. The next time I called, he received me with a more confident and open air; thanked me for the loan of the Bible, and said it brought to mind many things he had once known. He gave me a brief history of himself, to the following effect: "I was once in very different circumstances to those in which you now see me. I was born in Yorkshire, and served my apprenticeship to a painter and glazier. During my apprenticeship I attended the worship of God regularly, and I thought myself, and was thought by others, a decidedly pious young man. I was received as a member of the Methodist Society, attended all their meetings, and used to take my turn at the prayer-meetings. I was very happy, and was much respected. Soon after my apprenticeship closed, I took a small business at a village a few miles from Hull, and for some months all went on very comfortably. I had occasion to go to Hull one market-day to buy colours, &c., and after I had finished my business, I went into a public-house for some refreshment. There I met with a stranger who drew me into conversation. I drank my pint of ale, and was

the animals cooked for an Egyptian feast, in a wonderful disposed to go; but my companion prevailed

state of preservation.

on me to stay a little longer, and take another

pint with him. This was the fatal step. I had never been used to drink so much, and it produced an unnatural elevation of spirits, which disposed me to drink more. I became intoxicated. I got home, however, and contrived to conceal my fall from my minister and the Church. This," he said, " occasioned all the mischief that followed. I lost my peace of mind; it made the miserable to meet my Christian friends, and my conscience was distracted. If I had confessed my sin, and humbled myself before God and his people, they would have pitied me, prayed for me, and watched over me. I could not do this: pride and shame induced me to hide my iniquity. The next time I went to Hull, I had resolved beforehand not even to venture into a public-house; but my resolution failed me; I drank again, and then drank too much, on purpose to drown reflection. Thus I went on, till at length I became a confirmed drunkard, and till, by my profligacy, I lost my business and my little property. Christian friends were obliged to turn their back upon me, and I soon became the companion of the drunkard. I wandered about from place to place; for I was ashamed that my relations should know how wicked and how miserable I was. When I could get no one to employ me, I learned the trade of a barber, and have travelled through several counties, gaining, in that way, a precarious subsistence. About four years ago I came to this place; here I found great encouragement, and I resolved again in this new place to change my habit, and be a sober man. This resolution, however, I soon broke; and I seldom went sober to bed if I had money to buy liquor, or could get credit. For some months my constitution has been giving way, and it will soon be all over."

It was in vain that I set before him promises or threatenings he appeared "twice dead." My visits seemed so perfectly useless to him, that they soon became painful to myself; and as his medical attendant gave him hopes of recovery, he was very little disposed to see me. In this way for about three weeks I lost sight of him. It was then told me that he was worse, and that his landlady scarce knew what to do with him. I went immediately. The landlady said, "He is dying; will you walk up and see him. I said, "Certainly." I entered his apartment; two nurses were standing by his bed. He seemed to have lost his sight, and to be sinking fast. The women told me they had been dreadfully frightened; that they never saw anything so terrible in their lives; that he thought death was on him; that he struggled so hard to get out of bed that they were obliged to call men up stairs to hold him; that he said he could not die he would not die. Now," they said, "he is too far gone." His countenance was set, but in the very image of despair. I tried to arouse him, and fancied he was not so near death as the nurses supposed. I said, " Can you not cry, 'Lord save me, I perish ?--Have you no hope?"

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He made a violent effort to speak, but could not; by a sort of convulsive struggle he forced both his hands over his head, and a little raised himself; gave a vacant look; his head sunk back; his hands slid down over his face gradually, and then fell on the bed; he drew a long breath-it never returned-the silence of death pervaded the room: we who witnessed the scene lost our respiration for a few moments. All was over; the spirit had fled the day of grace was ended-the sad scene had closed in the darkness of death.

O my soul! never mayst thou forget the awful impressions of that moment; never mayst thou lose the deeply solemnized feeling with which thou didst contemplate a fellowcreature in ruins. He had made his bands strong, and he could not break them.

JOHN BUNYAN-THE CITY OF DESTRUCTION-THE STRAIT GATE.

BY THE REV. J. A. WYLIE,

Author of The Modern Judea," &c., dr. THE two grand sources whence Bunyan drew the various and rich materials which compose his work, were the BIBLE and his own HEART. Both he had studied with an intensity which it is not easy for words to describe the one, that he might know how he might be saved; and the other, that he might know whether he was saved: both, therefore, he thoroughly knew. His acquaintance with himself gave him that profound knowledge of human nature which enabled him to paint with perfect truth and unequalled power all the varieties of human character; and his familiarity with the Bible not only furnished him with those great truths which are the staple of his work, though expressed symbolically. but gave him also that singularly graphic style, that simplicity combined with power as a writer, in which he remains to this day, as he is likely to do for a long time to come, altogether unrivalled. Now let us compare Bunyan with his "Pilgrim," not for the purpose of establishing an identity between the two. which we believe has no existence, and to seek for which, therefore, would be absurd; but for the purpose of showing that there is a striking resemblance between the leading events which befell both, and that the life of the one is the best illustration of the }} pilgrimage of the other.

Than the opening scene in the "Pilgrim," nothing could be more graphic. The curtain rises, and that moment our attention is arrested, never again to be let go, till Christian has passed in at the Celestial gate. Right before us is the city of Destruction, oversha dowed by dismal mountains, and standing, with all its giddy multitudes, on a soil beneath which rages the fires of the Pit. In the foreground of the picture, and forming the most prominent object in it, is a man in rags. We see him standing in the open plain, in the neighbourhood of the city, with a great burden on his back, and an open book in his hand, on which he continues to gaze with a look of most intense and stedfast earnestness. He lifts up

JOHN BUNYAN, &c.

his eyes, and oh! we never can forget that face; there is an air of anguish upon it that were enough to draw pity from a heart of stone. He utters a most piercing cry: “What shall I do to be saved ?" He looks this way and that way. Why does he not flee? Alas! he beholds nothing but destruction all around him. While in this miserable plight he is joined by Evangelist, who directs him to the wicket gate with the shining light over it. The gate he is unable to see, but, keeping the light in his eye, he sets out, over a very wide field, in order to reach it. Now, where, unless in the pages of the Bible, shall we find a picture like this, so complete in all its parts, and revealing at a single glance the whole inward and outward state of the man, drawn with so few touches? The picture explains itself; no one needs to be told that the man before him is an awakened sinner.

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Now let us turn to Bunyan. We adequately describe Bunyan's youth, when we say that he "lived without God." The iniquities in which he indulged were not of a kind to brand him, in the opinion of the world, as a profligate, or to give him a very marked distinction among his fellow-townsmen of the city of Destruction. Eschewing enormities, Bunyan stood out from others by the fact that he threw his whole heart into the enjoyment of the delights of the world. Among his godless companions his laugh was the loudest and the lightest. His mornings and evenings were passed without prayer. No sanctuary attracted his steps to its sacred threshold. The Sabbath was spent in idleness, or in unhallowed sports. His throat was an open sepulchre, from which lies and cursings were often poured forth. Thus God was not in all his thoughts-a course of life which escapes the censure, and even the notice almost, of the world, but which is seen to be full of guilt and misery, when the fiery light of the Law shines into the conscience.

57

quality which enables the mere narration of the dream to make so awful an impression on the mind: for to stand and hear the man tell it, is about as dreadful as if, in the darkness of the night, it had visited our own pillow. "So he took Christian by the hand again, and led him into a chamber, where there was one rising out of bed; and as he put on his raiment, he shook and trembled. "This night, as I was asleep, I dreamed, and, behold, the heavens grew exceeding black. Also it thundered and lightened in the most fearful wise, that it put me into an agony. So I looked up in my dream, and saw the clouds racked at an unusual rate; upon which I heard a great sound of a trumpet, and saw also a man sit upon a cloud, attended with the thousands of heaven. They were all in flaming fire, also the heavens were in a burning flame. I heard then a voice, saying, 'Arise, ye dead, and come to judgment;" and with that the rocks rent, the graves opened, and the dead that were therein came forth. Then I saw the man that sat upon the cloud open the book, and bid the world draw near. . . . . I heard it also proclaimed to them that attended on the man that sat on the cloud, 'Gather together the tares, the chaff, and stubble, and cast them into the burning lake;' and with that the bottomless pit opened just where about I stood. . . . . . It was also said to the same persons, 'Gather my wheat into the garner.' And with that I saw many catched up and carried away into the clouds; but I was left behind. I also sought to hide myself, but I could not; for the man that sat upon the cloud still kept his eye upon me." If in his after days Bunyan slept in the chamber called Peace, whose windows opened towards sunrising, surely it may be said of him at this period of his life, that he lay down, night by night, in the chamber called Guilt, whose windows opened towards the blackness of darkness.

.....

....

She

But though Bunyan, meanwhile, was a dweller His slumber was now disturbed, but not completely in the city of Destruction, God had thoughts of shaken off; and if God had not employed other peace regarding him, and began by times to draw means, Bunyan would have dwelt to his dying-day in him to himself to make the fiery light we have the city of Destruction. His marriage, at the age of spoken of fall upon his conscience. It has often nineteen, to a woman who had received a religious been seen that there is a beautiful adaptation be- education, was the means of deepening the imprestween the mental constitution of the sinner and the sions he had been already brought under. agency employed by God in his conversion. This brought with her (it was all her dowry) two reliadaptation is very visible in the case of Bunyan.gious books; and from these Bunyan learned more God addressed his conscience first through his imagination. Scarcely had the days of his childhood passed away, till there began to gather around his nightly pillow the most terrific dreams. The quiet of the day was succeeded by the doleful apprehensions of the night. Sometimes he thought that the archangel's trump had sounded, that the dead were risen, and standing before God, himself among them, to be judged. At other times he imagined himself to be in the eternal world, with fiends and lost spirits around him, and about to take up his abode in the midst of everlasting burnings. The recollection of these terrors may be traced in other descriptions in his "Pilgrim's Progress," besides the scene of the man in rags, with which the book opens. The dream which Bunyan puts into the mouth of the man in the interpreter's house is no doubt one of his own early visions; and to this may be attributed that peculiar

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certainly that the end of the place where he now dwelt would be with fire and brimstone from heaven. We now see the man in rags looking this way and that way; and if he does not flee as yet, it is because he knows not whither to flee. God commonly honours his own ordinance-the preaching of the Gospel-for effectually awakening and converting the sinner. It was a sermon on the sin of Sabbathbreaking which appears to have brought Bunyan's guilt and danger fully before him. This was his darling sin; and the preacher became a Nathan to him, who said, "Thou art the man." As he returned from church, the "great burden on his back" was that day heavy indeed. Having taken his mid-day meal, the strong man resolved to shake himself as at other times, and go forth to his sports. He was already on the scene of his unhallowed pastime, ir. the midst of his companions: he had struck the ball.

pint with him. This was the fatal step. I had never been used to drink so much, and it produced an unnatural elevation of spirits, which disposed me to drink more. I became intoxicated. I got home, however, and contrived to conceal my fall from my minister and the Church. This," he said, "occasioned all the mischief that followed. I lost my peace of mind; it made me miserable to meet my Christian friends, and my conscience was distracted. If I had confessed my sin, and humbled myself before God and his people, they would have pitied me, prayed for me, and watched over me. I could not do this: pride and shame induced me to hide my iniquity. The next time I went to Hull, I had resolved beforehand not even to venture into a public-house; but my resolution failed me; I drank again, and then drank too much, on purpose to drown reflection. Thus I went on, till at length I became a confirmed drunkard, and till, by my profligacy, I lost my business and my little property. Christian friends were obliged to turn their back upon me, and I soon became the companion of the drunkard. I wandered about from place to place; for I was ashamed that my relations should know how wicked and how miserable I was. When I could get no one to employ me, I learned the trade of a barber, and have travelled through several counties, gaining, in that way, a precarious subsistence. About four years ago I came to this place; here I found great encouragement, and I resolved again in this new place to change my habit, and be a sober man. This resolution, however, I soon broke; and I seldom went sober to bed if I had money to buy liquor, or could get credit. For some months my constitution has been giving way, and it will soon be all over."

It was in vain that I set before him promises or threatenings-he appeared "twice dead." My visits seemed so perfectly useless to him, that they soon became painful to myself; and as his medical attendant gave him hopes of recovery, he was very little disposed to see me. In this way for about three weeks I lost sight of him. It was then told me that he was worse, and that his landlady scarce knew what to do with him. I went immediately. The landlady said, "He is dying; will you walk up and see him. I said, “Certainly." I entered his apartment; two nurses were standing by his bed. He seemed to have lost his sight, and to be sinking fast. The women told me they had been dreadfully frightened; that they never saw anything so terrible in their lives; that he thought death was on him; that he struggled so hard to get out of bed that they were obliged to call men up stairs to hold him; that he said he could not die he would not die. "Now," they said, "he is too far gone." His countenance was set, but in the very image of despair. I tried to arouse him, and fancied he was not so near death as the nurses supposed. I said, " Can you not cry, 'Lord save me, I perish ?'--Have you no hope?"

He made a violent effort to speak, but could not; by a sort of convulsive struggle he forced both his hands over his head, and a little raised himself; gave a vacant look; his head sunk back; his hands slid down over his face gradually, and then fell on the bed; he drew a long breath-it never returned-the silence of death pervaded the room: we who witnessed the scene lost our respiration for a few moments. All was over; the spirit had fled the day of grace was ended-the sad scene had closed in the darkness of death.

O my soul! never mayst thou forget the awful impressions of that moment; never mayst thou lose the deeply solemnized feelings with which thou didst contemplate a fellowcreature in ruins. He had made his bands strong, and he could not break them.

JOHN BUNYAN-THE CITY OF DESTRUCTION-THE STRAIT GATE.

BY THE REV. J. A. WYLIE,

Author of The Modern Judea,” &c., &c. THE two grand sources whence Bunyan drew the various and rich materials which compose his work, were the BIBLE and his own HEART. Both he had studied with an intensity which it is not easy for words to describe the one, that he might know how he might be saved; and the other, that he might know whether he was saved: both, therefore, he thoroughly knew. His acquaintance with himself gave him that profound knowledge of human nature which enabled him to paint with perfect truth and unequalled power all the varieties of human character; and his familiarity with the Bible not only furnished him with those great truths which are the staple of his work, though expressed symbolically, but gave him also that singularly graphic style, that simplicity combined with power as a writer, in which he remains to this day, as he is likely to do for a long time to come, altogether unrivalled. Now let us compare Bunyan with his "Pilgrim," not for the purpose of establishing an identity between the two, which we believe has no existence, and to seek for which, therefore, would be absurd; but for the purpose of showing that there is a striking resemblance between the leading events which befell both, and that the life of the one is the best illustration of the pilgrimage of the other.

Than the opening scene in the "Pilgrim," nothing could be more graphic. The curtain rises, and that moment our attention is arrested, never again to be let go, till Christian has passed in at the Celestial gate. Right before us is the city of Destruction, oversha dowed by dismal mountains, and standing, with all its giddy multitudes, on a soil beneath which rages the fires of the Pit. In the foreground of the picture, and forming the most prominent object in it, is a man in rags. We see him standing in the open plain, in the neighbourhood of the city, with a great burden on his back, and an open book in his hand, on which he continues to gaze with a look of most intense and stedfast carnestness. He lifts up

JOHN BUNYAN, &c.

his eyes, and oh! we never can forget that face; there is an air of anguish upon it that were enough to draw pity from a heart of stone. He utters a most piercing cry: "What shall I do to be saved?" He looks this way and that way. Why does he not flee? Alas! he beholds nothing but destruction all around him. While in this miserable plight he is joined by Evangelist, who directs him to the wicket gate with the shining light over it. The gate he is unable to see, but, keeping the light in his eye, he sets out, over a very wide field, in order to reach it. Now, where, unless in the pages of the Bible, shall we find a picture like this, so complete in all its parts, and revealing at a single glance the whole inward and outward state of the man, drawn with so few touches? The picture explains itself; no one needs to be told that the man before him is an awakened sinner.

Now let us turn to Bunyan. We adequately describe Bunyan's youth, when we say that he "lived without God." The iniquities in which he indulged were not of a kind to brand him, in the opinion of the world, as a profligate, or to give him a very marked distinction among his fellow-townsmen of the city of Destruction. Eschewing enormities, Bunyan stood out from others by the fact that he threw his whole heart into the enjoyment of the delights of the world. Among his godless companions his laugh was the loudest and the lightest. His mornings and evenings were passed without prayer. No sanctuary attracted his steps to its sacred threshold. The

| Sabbath was spent in idleness, or in unhallowed sports. His throat was an open sepulchre, from which lies and cursings were often poured forth. Thus God was not in all his thoughts-a course of life which escapes the censure, and even the notice almost, of the world, but which is seen to be full of guilt and misery, when the fiery light of the Law shines into the conscience.

But though Bunyan, meanwhile, was a dweller in the city of Destruction, God had thoughts of peace regarding him, and began by times to draw him to himself-to make the fiery light we have spoken of fall upon his conscience. It has often been seen that there is a beautiful adaptation between the mental constitution of the sinner and the agency employed by God in his conversion. This adaptation is very visible in the case of Bunyan. God addressed his conscience first through his imagination. Scarcely had the days of his childhood passed away, till there began to gather around his nightly pillow the most terrific dreams. The quiet of the day was succeeded by the doleful apprehensions of the night. Sometimes he thought that the archangel's trump had sounded, that the dead were risen, and standing before God, himself among them, to be judged. At other times he imagined himself to be in the eternal world, with fiends and lost spirits around him, and about to take up his abode in the midst of everlasting burnings. The recollection of these terrors may be traced in other descriptions in his "Pilgrim's Progress," besides the scene of the man in rags, with which the book opens. The dream which Bunyan puts into the mouth of the man in the interpreter's house is no doubt one of his own early visions; and to this may be attributed that peculiar

....

57

quality which enables the mere narration of the dream to make so awful an impression on the mind: for to stand and hear the man tell it, is about as dreadful as if, in the darkness of the night, it had visited our own pillow. "So he took Christian by the hand again, and led him into a chamber, where there was one rising out of bed; and as he put on his raiment, he shook and trembled. ...This night, as I was asleep, I dreamed, and, behold, the heavens grew exceeding black. Also it thundered and lightened in the most fearful wise, that it put me into an agony. So I looked up in my dream, and saw the clouds racked at an unusual rate; upon which I heard a great sound of a trumpet, and saw also a man sit upon a cloud, attended with the thousands of heaven. They were all in flaming fire, also the heavens were in a burning flame. I heard then a voice, saying, 'Arise, ye dead, and come to judgment;" and with that the rocks rent, the graves opened, and the dead that were therein came forth. . . . . Then I saw the man that sat upon the cloud open the book, and bid the world draw near. . . . . I heard it also proclaimed to them that attended on the man that sat on the cloud, 'Gather together the tares, the chaff, and stubble, and cast them into the burning lake;' and with that the bottomless pit opened just where about I stood. It was also said to the same persons, 'Gather my wheat into the garner.' And with that I saw many catched up and carried away into the clouds; but I was left behind. I also sought to hide myself, but I could not; for the man that sat upon the cloud still kept his eye upon me." If in his after days Bunyan slept in the chamber called Peace, whose windows opened towards sunrising, surely it may be said of him at this period of his life, that he lay down, night by night, in the chamber called Guilt, whose windows opened towards the blackness of darkness.

.....

His slumber was now disturbed, but not completely shaken off; and if God had not employed other means, Bunyan would have dwelt to his dying-day in the city of Destruction. His marriage, at the age of nineteen, to a woman who had received a religious education, was the means of deepening the impressions he had been already brought under. She brought with her (it was all her dowry) two religious books; and from these Bunyan learned more certainly that the end of the place where he now dwelt would be with fire and brimstone from heaven. We now see the man in rags looking this way and that way; and if he does not flee as yet, it is because he knows not whither to flee. God commonly honours his own ordinance-the preaching of the Gospel-for effectually awakening and converting the sinner. It was a sermon on the sin of Sabbathbreaking which appears to have brought Bunyan's guilt and danger fully before him. This was his darling sin; and the preacher became a Nathan to him, who said, "Thou art the man." As he returned from church, the "great burden on his back" was that day heavy indeed. Having taken his mid-day meal, the strong man resolved to shake himself as at other times, and go forth to his sports. He was already on the scene of his unhallowed pastime, in the midst of his companions: he had struck the ball.

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