Miscellaneous. were a verse less. The word and occurs 35,543 times. The word JEHOVAH Oсcurs 6855 times. The shortest verse is 1 Chronicles i. 25. The 21st verse of the 7th chapter of Ezra contains all the letters of the alphabet. The 19th chapter of 2 Kings and the 37th chapter of Isaiah are alike. NEW TESTAMENT.-Number of books, 27; chapters, 260; verses, 7050; words, 181,258; letters, 828,580. The middle book is 2 Thessalonians. The middle chapter is Romans xiii., if there were a chapter less, and xiv. if there were a chapter more. The middle and least verse is John xi. 35. OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS.-Number of books, 66; chapters, 1189; verses, 40,264; words, 773,697; letters, 3,556,680. The middle chapter, and least in the Bible, is the 117th Psalm. The middle verse is Psalm cxviii. 8. The Universe.-I believe you will find in all histories that that has been at the head and foundation of them all, and that no nation that did not contemplate this wonderful universe with an awestricken and reverential feeling that there was a great unknown, omnipotent, and all-wise and allvirtuous Being, superintending all men in it, and all interests in it,-no nation ever came to very much, nor did any man either, who forgot that. If a man did forget that, he forgot the most important part of his mission in this world.--Carlyle. A Puritan Worthy.-There is the remarkable conversion of worthy Mr. Bolton, a choice minister in the Church of England, in whose life this is recorded, that being eminently profane, a horrid swearer, and much accustomed to mock at holiness, and those who most shined therein, and particularly that excellent man of God, Mr. Perkins, then preacher in Cambridge, whom he much undervalued for his plainness in preaching the truths of God, yea, was near the length of Popery. But on the Lord's gracious appearance to him, he was put to have other thoughts, with a very remarkable change upon him, though with that terror, that, as he said himself, the Lord seemed to run upon him like a giant, throwing him to the ground; and with such a terrifying discovery of sin, caused him roar in anguish, and oft rise in the night on that account-which continued for divers months. Yea, these assaults in the pangs of the new birth were such, that it might have been said, Ut nec color, nec sensus, nec sanguis superesset (that neither complexion, sensation, nor blood remained to him); but at last a blessed sunshine brake up, and shining light.-Fleming's Fulfilling of Scripture. Broad Church Cant.-'Idolatry to a book,' Enslavement to a book,'-these have become cant terms, which it is high time men of large and liberal ideas' should discard and toss to the kennels. The people are sick of them. They are used as decoys from the true question respecting the true method of studying the Bible, and the value of its contents. Reason enslaved to the Bible hand and foot,' if its contents are true! Is one 'enslaved' to Euclid's Elements because they are true? We thought obedience to truth was perfect freedom, not slavery. Is one an idolater of Newton's Principia, because he appeals to it as an authority on that subject, of which he knows little himself-one track of which he never saw? We are accustomed to call such men sensible, reasonable. Reason is just as much enslaved' to any book that is true, as it is to the Bible, granting that to be true, most 'enslaved' of all to the multiplication-table! Away with such cant! We are told we must be scientific' in our investigations. So be it. Here is the Bible, a book-just as much a book as Plato's Republic. What are you going to do with it? Science investigates facts, books as well as others. The Gospels contain sketches of the life and teachings of Christ. His teachings are Christianity; nothing else is. If you are not sure, for all historical purposes, of what He taught, then it is simple nonsense to talk about Christianity. We may talk about religion-about what the Gospels say is religion; but we have no more right to speak of Christianity-that is, of what Christ taughtthan we have to call any other system of religion or philosophy after a man, all reports of whose doings and sayings are unreliable. Christianity means the teachings of Christ, as much as Aristotelianism, or Platonism, or Hegelianism, means the teaching of these philosophers; and to say that you have a right to 'wholly set aside' the sayings of Christ, and call your guess of what He said, Christianity, is just as honest as to say that you will set aside what Plato has said, and call your ideas Platonism. We have nothing to say against this system now. Let us understand what 'the scientific' method is, to which we are commended. God's Ways of Working.-That excellent man Junius, whose life we have in some measure set down by himself, with many notable remarks of providences, and who therein shows the Lord's engaging him at first; how being very loose, and carried away with evil company, yea, tempted to atheism, he was one day moved to go and read the Scripture, and, at the first opening, was trysted with that of the first of John; which, whilst he read, as he says, did suddenly astonish him, and leave a marvellous conviction on his soul of the divinity of the subject, the majesty and authority of the writings, that all day he knew not where and what he was, but thus turns himself with these words to the Lord: "Thou wast mindful of me, O my God, according to the multitude of thy tender mercies.' Yea, he gives this account, that he then had a sight of the Scripture, which made him see it did exceed all human eloquence; and this was followed with such power, that his body trembled, and his mind became astonished at such a surprising and marvellous light, and from that day he began to be serious in the way of the Lord.Fleming's Fulfilling of Scripture. Words in Season. BIBLE THOUGHTS. BY THE EDITOR. NAHUM I. 6, 7. THROUGHOUT this chapter, and especially in these verses, let us note these two things: 1st, Jehovah's anger; 2d, Jehovah's goodness. They stand out very strongly in this burden.' I. Jehovah's anger.-(1.) It is real. There is such a thing as anger in God. Many are the expressions used concerning it, both in this chapter and elsewhere,-jealousy, vengeance, fury, wrath; all to indicate its existence, and to show us that the human theories of divine universal benevolence are not true,-being got up for a purpose, and that purpose to persuade the sinner's own conscience that he need not be alarmed because of his guilt; and that no one need dread the infliction of punishment, except, perhaps, a few of the most wicked of our race. But God's words are not exaggerations, nor words of course. There is a terrible truth contained in these oft-repeated words of Scripture, 'His anger was kindled.' Loving and gracious as Jehovah is, his anger is real. When Jesus comes the second time, He comes to 'take vengeance.' (2.) It is righteous.-It is not the rage of selfishness, or passion, or affront. It is judicial anger,the anger of the righteous Judge. It is anger against sin, against the sinner; anger because of insulted law and dishonoured righteousness,-nothing in it unjust, or cruel, or arbitrary. Then the condemned soul will be compelled hereafter to say, 'It was all right and just; it shall be right and just to all eternity.' (3.) It is terrible.-Though calm, it is unutterably awful; nay, overwhelming. No power and no numbers shall be able to stand before it. It shall sweep everything before it like a whirlwind. The expulsion from paradise, the deluge, the ruin of Sodom, are specimens of its terribleness. The lost soul shall be utterly overwhelmed. (4.) It is inexorable.-Nothing shall turn it aside or soften it when once it is kindled. The vengeance of eternal fire,' the 'everlasting burnings,' "the worm that dieth not,'-these are awful words! No bribery, no argument, no influence shall prevail, nor pity to the poor soul. God will forget to be gracious; repentance shall be hid from his eyes. Oh, anger of Jehovah, how real, how righteous, how terrible, how inexorable! Yet, let me say one thing. Should you be one of the eternally lost, and should you, in the course of your weary and tormented eternity, say to yourself, 'Oh that God were not so just!' then think what a wish that would be for yourself. Your security against unjust and over-severe punishments is that very justice against which you petition. Bad as your case may be at the hands of a just God, it would be unspeakably worse at the hands of an unjust God. The anger of a righteous God is, no doubt, terrible; but the unbridled fury of an unrighteous God is something too horrible even to think upon! II. Jehovah's goodness.-He is good, and He doeth good. He is kind to the unthankful and the unworthy. God is love. God loves the sinner. (1.) His goodness is sincere.-He does not utter words of course, nor pretend to feelings which are not in Him. His words mean just what they say; his deeds mean just what they indicate; the works of his hands have a most substantial and authentic expression of goodness. God is not a man that He should lie, either in his words of goodness or of anger. (2.) It is powerful.—It is almighty goodness. He is able to deliver those whom He loves. Their interests are safe in his hands. He is slow to anger, and great in power.' Who can withstand his love? It is God that justifieth; who is he that sondemneth?' (3.) It is watchful.-His eye is on us at all times; specially in the day of trouble. His is watchful goodness. His is the unsleeping eye and the untiring hand. He is not weary of blessing. He delights in opportunities for pouring out his love; and our extremities are his opportunities. (4.) It is unchanging.-Like himself, his goodness is without variableness; not ebbing and flowing, but always flowing. His heart is the heart of the unchangeable One. Not like the tides, or the seasons; but like the sky above us, ever one calm arch of gentle, loving azure, embracing this earth of ours. Such is the God with whom we have to do. He is righteous, and cannot allow sin to go uncondemned and unpunished. Yet is He good and gracious, not willing to destroy or to take vengeance; a God before whom the sinner may tremble; a God in whom the chief of sinners may find forgiveness. I remind you of two passages, which will form the practical improvement of all I have said. 1. The great day of his wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand?'-It is not yet come, but it is coming. Judgment lingereth not, damnation slumbereth not. It will be a day of terror for the sinner, when the pent-up wrath of God shall pour itself out, not in seven vials, or seventy times seven, but in an eternity of vials without number. 2. He is long-suffering to usward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.'-Such is his goodness now. He is rich in mercy. His patience is beyond all conception or measure. And in his long-suffering there is salvation salvation to the uttermost. He pities, yearns, pleads, beseeches, spares; prolongs the day of grace; presents pardon, salvation, life, to the ungodliest, freely,-yes, freely to the last! Let this long-suffering goodness draw us, melt us, awaken confidence, and win us to love. NCE, walking through one of the narrow streets of Cairo, we heard the voice of wailing and loud lamentation coming from one of the tall houses on our left. The sounds were strong and passionate; to us quite unintelligible, partly from their rapidity, and partly from their unknown Arabic. We asked a missionary who was with us what they were and what they meant. The words, he said, were just 'Ya, walladi, walladi,' repeated, or rather vociferated, violently and rapidly. Their meaning was, 'Alas! my son, my son!' The house was one of mourning. One of the family had died that forenoon; and the wailers were uttering their lamentations over the newly dead. We were at once reminded of David's tears, and cries, and words. Our thoughts went back to the scene at Mahanaim in the land of Gilead. We remembered the well-known description: 'The king was much moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept; and, as he went, thus he said, O my son Absalom! my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son! . . . . The king covered his face, and the king cried with a loud voice, O my son Absalom! O Absalom, my son, my son!' may We learn something from David's tears; for they are the tears of him who said, 'I am weary with my groaning; all the night make I my bed to swim; I water my couch with my tears.' And they are tears like his who said, 'Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears!' They are tears like his who said, 'I tell them, even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ.' Nay, they are tears like the tears of Him who wept over Jerusalem in the day of her impenitence and doom. David wept as a man,-a parent,-who had lost a child, and that child a favourite one. Absalom was slain! The son on whom, in spite of unworthiness, he had lavished so much love, had perished. He should see him no more. Could he but weep? David wept as a man of God; as one who was fully alive to Absalom's guilt, and who had the fullest conviction of Absalom's certain doom. His best-beloved son had perished in his rebellion; his sin had found him out; his wickedness had overtaken him; he died as he had lived, a rebel against his king, a hater of his father, an enemy to his God. What hope was there for him? David had elsewhere spoken of the wicked going quick to hell; and was not this now realized in his own son? Absalom had gone to his own place; and David knew too well what that place was; for he had said, 'The wicked shall be turned into hell.' What a thought to a father regarding a favourite child! Cut off in his headlong wickedness and proud rebellion, what hope was there for him, or what comfortable thought respecting his undying soul? From the battle-field of his rebellion; from the oak in the wood of Ephraim, he had gone down to hell; and David knew it, saw it, realized it all! How could he but weep? A soul had been lost; and it was the soul of a beloved son! What anguish, what unutterable bitterness in the thought! His Absalom was now gone from him for ever; he should see his face no more, either in this life or in that which is to come. Truly he sorrowed as one who had no hope. Thus Jeremiah wept for Israel in the day of their wickedness and desolation. 'His soul wept in secret places' for them. Thus Paul wept over the enemies of the cross of Christ; he told them weeping' that their end was destruction. เ Thus it was that the Son of God wept over Jerusalem. He saw its wickedness, its impenitence, its overthrow, its eternal sorrow. He understood, far beyond what David could do, or Jeremiah, or Paul, what is the doom of a lost soul. He had spoken of his Father's joy over the saved, and of his own like joy in the recovery of the lost. He realized the errand on which He had come to earth. He knew the value of a soul. He could measure its infinite capacity for joy or grief. He knew what the wrath of God was against sin. He knew the certainty and horror of the sinner's doom. He knew that that doom was irreversible. He looked into the eternal future, and saw the everlasting sadness. He comprehended all that vast reality wrapt up still,' is to the last the expression of wistful longing after the wanderer, as he goes further and further off. And as he drops into hell, and disappears from this earthly scene within the fiery gate, back from which none return, may we not hear the great David's voice giving utterance to his latest yearning, in the words once uttered so piercingly and pathetically in the tower above the gate of Mahanaim, 'O Absalom, my son, my son?' It is not for us to attempt to penetrate divine mysteries, or to ascribe to God the feelings, and tears, and sorrows of men. Nothing, we know, can in the very least mar the light of heaven, or interfere with the perfection of the divine blessedness; but if there be joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth; if the good Shepherd calls together his happy angels to rejoice with Him over the lost sheep found; can we suppose that there is nothing on the other side, corresponding to the tears of Jesus over Jerusalem, when the long-suffering of God is exhausted, and the sinner, having resisted all love and all entreaty, is abandoned by the God that made him, and perishes, like Absalom, in the midst of his rebellion and ungodliness? Does the infinitely compassionate Jehovah, who has no pleasure in the death of a sinner, contemplate with cold indifference the loss of a soul, and the consignment of the lost one to endless and irretrievable woe? This sorrow was honest and true; these tears were sincere-infinitely sincere. Whether we can comprehend the mystery or not, here is the wondrous fact,-divine grief over lost souls, and divine grief giving vent to itself in human tears. Here was the true David, the Son of God, not only yearning, but weeping over his offspring, his rebellious Absalom,-over those who sought his throne and his life; who not only said, 'We will not have this man to reign over us,' but, 'This is the heir; come, let us kill him.' As no amount of evil in Absalom could quench David's love, or forbid his grief; so no amount of sin and unloveableness can destroy the love of Christ, or turn his grief into indifference, or alienate his tender, gracious heart. The very things which make the sinner unmeet for his complacent love, are the things which make him the object of his compassionate love. It was not because Absalom was a 'pleasant child' that David loved him, and mourned over his untimely death; so it is not because the sinner is pleasant, and obedient, and loveable, that the Son of David yearns, in pitying love, over the sinner He is his pro-heart is moulded; and still less can we read of perty, as was the sheep the shepherd's; therefore He cares for him. He is his offspring, as was the prodigal the father's; therefore He loves him, and longs after his return. The link between Christ and Jerusalem was something indescribably strong and tender; even such is the link between Him and every sinner upon earth. 'How shall I give thee up?' is still his utterance of bitter grief. 'I do earnestly remember him We need not speculate on so profound a theme, nor attempt to be wise above what is written; but we cannot read of the grief of David over Absalom, without asking what must, in such a case, be in the heart of Him, after the model of whose fatherly heart an earthly parent's the tears of Jesus over Jerusalem without feeling that we are at the very gate of an infinite mystery; that a little of the curtain has been drawn aside for a moment, to show us what is the heart of Him who made us towards the most worthless and unloveable of all his offspring. Let us listen, and wonder, and adore. Let us learn also to comprehend something more than we have ever done of the mercy of the Lord our God. T AN INDIAN BISHOP; OR, SKETCHES FROM THE LIFE OF DANIEL WILSON. HE estimate formed by two great men of one another, is generally free from those paltry jealousies Of which mark inferior minds. this we have an instance in the tribute to Daniel Wilson's memory, paid by Alexander Duff: When he arrived here a quarter of a century ago, he was in the very zenith of his powers of active usefulness; and certainly few men have toiled more, or to more good purpose. Naturally endowed with great energies of mind and body,-energies in his case happily sanctified, and consecrated exclusively to the promotion of God's glory, he kept all around him in a constant state of friction and glow.' While of Duff we find Wilson writing: He is indeed a marked man in his generationlike Dr. Chalmers. But he has worn himself out at the age of forty-eight.' In presenting our readers with a few sketches from the long and eventful life of Bishop Wilson, we propose to view him under four different aspects-I. His Business Clerkship. II. His Student and College Life. III. His Pastorate in England. IV. His Episcopate in India. I. His Business Clerkship.-Born in London on 2d July 1778, he was in infancy remarkably delicate; though, as he passed into boyhood, he became much stronger, having a firm step, buoyant spirits, and a handsome intellectual countenance.' Even when at school the boy proved the father of the man, as he used frequently to 'get upon a chair, select a text, and preach sermons to his school-fellows.' Sent to a school under charge of Rev. Mr. Eyre, he was soon appreciated by his master, who said of him, 'There is no milk-and-water in that boy; he will be something either very bad or very good.' Under this master's care he remained till he was nearly fourteen, when he was apprenticed to his maternal uncle, 'an extensive silk manufacturer Here his work was not 'laboand merchant.' rious,' but 'constant.' Fourteen hours a day in summer, and thirteen in winter, formed the term of his occupation. Even then, however, he prosecuted his studies diligently-taking two hours, before retiring to rest at night, to extend his knowledge of Latin and French; while notebooks of that period show how he also practised English composition on religious and moral subjects. Yet at this time, he himself tells us, he was a stranger to the power of vital godliness: 'I could criticise a sermon, and talk and dispute about particular notions; but I loved my sins, and could not bear to part with them. I never had gone so far as to deny any one doctrine of the gospel. I acknowledged them to be true; but for want of that necessary attendant, selfapplication, I could hear whole sermons, but not a word belonged to me!' Awakened to serious thought on the im | portance of prayer, by the passing remark of a 'It is not the pleasures of this life, nor the possession of its vain riches or honours, which I seek after. No; but it is the happiness of my immortal soul, which must exist for ever and ever. Oh, may the word ETERNITY never enter my ears without impressing my heart!' It was when in this state of mind that he was introduced to John Newton-so eminently fitted to guide an anxious inquirer to the true source of peace, and to direct him to right views of divine truth and religious experience. Deeply did the Lord wound and exercise the soul of the young clerk; but through all this training he was made to pass with a view to his fitness for future work. Amid the depths through which he had to go, the Divine Physician himself at times drew near,-giving him such glimpses of himself, as tended to revive his drooping and doubting heart. Such expressions as these are cheering, when viewed in connection with the gloom which had overwhelmed his soul: 'All I can do is to look unto Jesus as my only helper, and cry unto Him for mercy; and but for that blessed word UTTERMOST, my case would be hopeless.' The Lord, who had taken a saving dealing with the soul of Daniel Wilson, at length brought him to repose in quietness and assurance at the foot of the cross; but, at the same time, gave him earnest longings after an enlarged opportunity of spreading the knowledge of Jesus to heathen lands. Speaking of his emotions as he encompassed the Lord's table, he says: 'I have even wished, if it were the Lord's will, to go as a missionary to heathen lands,'-a desire which was accomplished thirty-five years after it had been excited within his bosom. The first uprisings of this desire he had checked, as the offspring of pride; but again and again it returned, till the question of its real origin was forced on his inquiring mind. Satisfied at length that it was from the Lord, he made it known to his friend Mr. Eyre. On a similar communication being made to his father, he at once opposed it; but the young aspirant to the work of the ministry was not to be repressed. And in writing to his mother a full statement of his reasons for desiring a change, he concludes by saying: 'I feel sure it is of the Lord; and I humbly believe |