MAMA. Have you ever thought, since you were aware it had only the Nile to depend on, how it was watered at all?

Could the river run through every man's field and "garden of herbs ?"

MARY. NO; I suppose they must have car ried the water.

MAMA. If you thought so-but I suspect you did not think at all-you would indeed at once have found sufficient employment (without making bricks) for all the countless multitude of Israelitish bondmen. But the thing would even then have been impossible. How do you suppose it was managed; and how came the land of Egypt," that hath no rain," to be the granary of

the civilized world?

MARY. I am sure I don't know.

MAMA. I will tell you. The whole surface of the long narrow valley through which the Nile runs, and which forms the cultivable part of Egypt, was ingeniously filled with canals or ditches, from whence again multitudes of smaller rills intersected every spot of ground within them. Close to the river large reservoirs (or tanks, as they are still called in the east) were dug, with which these canals communicated; and whenever, from the rains in the mountains of Upper Egypt, the yearly rise of the Nile, on which the whole

osperity and vegetation of the country dended, took place, the water filled these reserirs; and for a long time afterwards, during the ole season required for the growth of the ps, each husbandman drew from them, through several canals, the moisture requisite for his ched field or garden.

MARY. I understand this, Mama; but how he water them with his foot?"

IAMA. There are two explanations given his remarkable expression. The first, that Egyptian gardener is still in the daily pracof using his foot to close up with earth one e little rills leading to his beds, and thus eting the water into another. The second, in ancient Egypt a machine or wheel with something resembling our tread-mill, was se for raising up water from the river-a

ing of one of which, as now used in China, exactly corresponds with a description left us of the old Egyptian one.

This has been a long digression; but the contrast between all this labour and fatigue, and the spontaneous fertility of Canaan, must have been striking to those of the Israelites who remembered it; and will not have been lost on ourselves, if we pursue the parallel between their scanty supplies of spiritual refreshment,

and our copious access to the very salvation."

"wells of

The contrasted blessings and curses with which our reading concluded, we shall reserve for consideration in a future chapter, of which they form the entire and memorable subject. But while there they are enlarged on with a special minuteness, which, by its wonderful subsequent fulfilment, may seem to limit them to the Jews,here, at least, all who "run may read" the simple but awful truth, interesting alike to all the subjects of God's government," Behold I set before you this day a blessing and a curse. blessing, if ye obey the commandments of the Lord your God; and a curse, if ye will not obey them, and turn aside out of the way which I command you this day."

A

231

MORNING TWENTIETH.

LESSON.-Deuteronomy, Chapters xii. xvi. and xxvi.

MAMA. Although it was no part of our plan at present, my dear Mary, to dwell minutely or at length on the ceremonial observances peculiar to the Jews, yet I have thought far too important to be omitted, the chapters forming this day's reading; because in them you have recorded the leading and more spiritual features of the Mosaic ritual, accompanied with God's own reasons for their institution, and those moral inducements to their observance, of which the Christian no less than the Hebrew (indeed with infinitely greater clearness) must for ever acknowledge the propriety. Should it ever be your fate to hear the rationality-nay, even when rightly apprehended the spirituality of the Mosaic dispensation called in question-recollect the authoritative, the intelligible and persuasive manner in which the Almighty, in these chapters, asserts his claim to the reverence, gratitude, and obe

dience of his chosen people, and ask yourself, those best acquainted with history, the triumph ant question of Moses, "What nation is there that hath God so nigh to them as the Lord ou God is in all things we call on him for? And what nation is there so great, that hath statues and judgments so righteous as all these which set before you this day ?"

What do we find the first and indispensable preliminary to the appointment of regular worship in the promised land?

MARY. Utterly destroying all the places where the wicked Canaanites had served their gods. Mama, you told me why the heathen chose groves to hide their cruel worship in; but what made them so fond of temples upon hills?

MAMA. A heathen author has supplied us with the answer. He says, "They were then nearer the gods, and more easily obtained a hearing."

MARY. Oh! Mama, what a foolish notion ! But as Christ prayed in a grove, and the temple of Jerusalem was set on a hill, I suppose there was nothing in itself wrong in either,

MAMA. Certainly not. All parts of God's universe are alike consecrated to the service of their Creator; and the silent wood and lofty mountain have a fitness of their own (far removed