sequences of this resentment are more difficult to bear than the consequence of the original offence. There is a pleasure in doing a kind action, in giving comfort or assistance to others, and in feeling that they are obliged to us; and, on the contrary, it is very disagreeable to know that we are disliked and despised, and that our neighbours will rejoice if they hear of our leaving the neighbourhood. So that even, in this world, it is our interest as well as our duty to leave vengeance to God, and to strive to imitate his never-failing goodness, to forgive as we hope to be forgiven. When this wicked spirit then tempts us, let us think of these words: "Why boastest thou thyself, thou tyrant, that thou canst do mischief? whereas the goodness of God endureth yet daily." E. A

LOCUSTS IN THE EAST.

THE following account is given by a gentleman who resided for some time in Syria:-"Immense swarms of locusts had come from the south-east, and settled for many leagues around, laying their eggs in holes in the ground, which they bore, as far as I could observe, with a sort of auger, which nature has sheathed in their tails. Their eggs form a small cylinder about as big as a maggot, and in minute appearance like an ear of Turkey corn, all the little eggs as so many pin's heads lying in rows, with that beautiful uniformity so constant in all the works of the Creator. How many of these conglomerate little masses each female locust lays I know not, but those I handled were enough to equal in size a hazel-nut, and united by some glutinous matter. They are hatched about May; but no sooner had the swarms laid their eggs, than, to prevent their hatching, an order was enforced all through the district where the locust had settled, obliging every member of a family within a certain age, to bring for so many days half a gallon of eggs to the village-green, where lighted faggots being thrown on them, they were consumed. The order was in full force for, probably, three weeks, until it was supposed that the greatest part of the eggs had been dug up and destroyed. The peasants know by certain signs

where the females have laid their eggs; and as each clot of the size of a nut may produce 5000 locusts (for the peasants told me that each separate cluster of the size of a maggot contained more than a hundred eggs), it may easily be imagined how they swarm as soon as they are hatched. What one first sees is a black heap, about the size of the brim of a coal-heaver's hat; a day or two after the heap spreads for some yards round, and consists of little black grasshopper-like things, all jumping here and there with such dazzling agility as to fatigue the eye. Soon afterwards they begin to march in one direction, and to eat; and then they spread so widely through a whole province, that a person may ride for leagues and leagues, and his horse will never put a foot to the ground without crushing three or four at a step; it is then the peasants rush to their fields, if fortunate enough to meet the vanguard of this formidable and destructive army. With hoes, shovels, pickaxes, and the like, they dig a trench as deep as time will permit across their march, and there, as the locusts, which never turn aside for any thing, enter, they bury, burn, and crush them until exhaustion compels them to desist, or until, as was the case this year from previous destruction of the eggs, and from having only partial swarms to contend with, they succeeded in nearly annihilating them. When they fly, the whole village population comes out with kettles, pots, and pans, and by an incessant din, tries to prevent their settling. The greatest enemy to locusts is a high wind, which carries them to the sea and drowns them, or, opposing their course, drives them back to the desert, probably to perish for want of sustenance." Sent by M. P.

ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE WORLD. CHEATING ITS

VOTARIES.

HAPPENING to take up a newspaper of last year, I saw an account of a woman named Martha Browning, who was executed for murder.

The murder was committed in order to obtain possession of a five pound note; but the glittering bait

which led to this complicated crime, proved to be not a note of the Bank of England, as the wretched woman supposed, but what is called a "flash note" of "The Bank of Elegance."

Is there not a moral in this? How many who have sacrificed their happiness, their conscience, and their immortal soul, to win some worldly toy, have found that after all their anxiety they have obtained only a counterfeit-nothing sterling-a flash note of some chimerical "Bank of Elegance." This applies to the world in all its forms, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life; but in a peculiar manner it applies to that form, in which the world is most worshipped in this our commercial land. "They that will be rich" fall into temptation and a snare; and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition: for the love of money is the root of all evil; which, while some have coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows."

It excites

The world has ever proved to its admiring votaries 65 a broken cistern which can hold no water." desires which it cannot gratify; and with fiendish malignity it imitates the cruel torture practised upon the rebel Hugh Macdonald (mentioned by Dr. Johnson in his Tour to the Hebrides), who was served with a plentiful meal of salt provisions, and when he was parched with thirst, and earnestly entreated for water, was tantalized by a cup being let down to him in his dungeon, which on lifting the same he found to be empty.

Another portion of the wretched Martha Browning's story also deserves to be repeated, for the sake of the lessons which it conveys to heads of families and to

servants.

The account says, "Martha Browning, executed lately at Newgate, was a native of Alton. Her parents being very poor, she was early sent out to service, and maintained an excellent character as long as she remained in her birth-place. In London it was her grievous misfortune to be hired into irreligious families. In one, as she told the Chaplain of Newgate, she was re

quired to do a large wash every Sunday. In another, the mistress kept the needlework to be done on that day, and she had not entered a church from the time she had left home till after her committal. Subsequent to her sentence she appeared deeply penitent, and repeatedly said that all her sins were to be traced to Sabbath-breaking." All religious principles were then blotted out from her mind, and being surrounded with enticements to sin, she fell into vice, and so into crime, and was executed in her twenty-fourth year.

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How true, that "the wages of sin is death," that "whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he reap;" and that "godliness is profitable unto all things; having the promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come." "Therefore, "set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth."-From the Christian Observer for July, 1846.

THE CUSTOMS OF EASTERN NATIONS.

(Taken from the Narrative of the Rev. Dr. Wolff, who has been engaged for many years in teaching Christianity in the East.)

"How eternal and inextinguishable appear the customs of the East! For instance, the shepherd precedes his sheep, and his sheep follow him; the judges sit under the gate; the disciples of the learned pour water on the hands of their masters; the Jews swear by the temple of Jerusalem; and Jew, Christian, and Mahometan by their heads; the bride is awakened by the screams of other women, exclaiming, "The bridegroom cometh;" torches are carried before her at midnight; the war about wells, as in the time of Moses and Jacob, still subsists in Yemen; the lamentations over a nurse are also continued; the names of people are still given to indicate the events of the period; the king bestows a name significant of his employ on his minister; the lepers sit outside the gates of cities; bad wines are called wines of Sodom; holy places are approached by putting the shoes from off the feet; the scarf is wrought on both sides; the Rechabite plants no vineyard, sows no seed, lives in tents; the Dervesh, like the Nazarite of old, still makes vows that no razor shall come upon

his head; barren women still perform pilgrimages to holy places, and this state is held in abhorrence, as in ancient times; Armenian women vow, like Hannah of old, that if they receive a son, he shall be devoted to GOD; cities of refuge for the shedder of blood unawares, still subsist, and the person guilty of blood must flee with his family, like the first murderer, to other places."

STORIES ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE CHURCH CATECHISM. VI. THE MANNA IN THE WILDERNESS.

You all remember that when the children of Israel were wandering in the wilderness, in their way to the promised land of Canaan, they had no bread to eat, after they had eaten up what they brought with them out of Egypt. Now the wilderness was a place where nothing grew that was good for food; there were no fruit trees, no corn to make flour from, no herbs fit for the use of man, nothing but dry sand and hard rocks all around them. This would have been a dreadful place to go through if they had had no one to watch over them, and no one able to provide for their wants. But you all know they had One who could have made even the wilderness bring forth food, had He so pleased, for his people. But it did not so please Him. He wished to teach them, by making them feel want, how entirely they depended on Him for every thing. As long as they were in Egypt they had plenty of food, because that land brought forth abundantly. "They sat by the fleshpots, and did eat bread to the full." Having so long been accustomed to plenty, they had quite forgotten the Giver of that plenty. They forgot that it was God alone who made the corn to grow in Egypt, and who made their flocks and herds to multiply, so as to supply them with flesh daily. Therefore when they found themselves in the wilderness, in a country where they saw no signs of plenty, but barrenness all around them, they began to murmur, as if their God had forgotten them, and as if He could not by his Almighty power provide for them there, as well as He had done for them in Egypt. Their merciful God, instead of punishing