fevered patient may have his snatches of repose, fitful and unrefreshing though they be. But in the glory that is to follow there are no intervals, no lulls, no ebbings in the ever-advancing tide of happiness and joy.

In the sufferings of this life there are many alleviations. The bitterest cup is mingled with some sweet drops-the most aching soul is seldom without some supporting solaces. But the glory which follows knows no modifications. The golden vessels there are, indeed, always filling-always increasing, but they are always full. The "just made perfect," though ever aspiring after fresh draughts of the living fountain, will never be heard uttering the voice of complaint" Oh, that it were with me as in months past!" The glory is a progressive glory-the joy a progressive joy; their change is a change for the better, never for the worse.

The sufferings of the present, in the case of the believer, much as they may cloud and darken his earthly and outward happiness, cannot affect the unassailable bliss of his inner life. But the heavenly glory will interpenetrate alike his outer and his inner being. He will be steeped in bliss. He will have around, and on every side of him, a glory which imagination has never ventured to conceive; while his glorified spirit will reflect, without speck or stain, the image of an all-glorious God!

"The sufferings of the present!" Go up to that bright and glorious multitude, harping with their harps, and crowding the shores of the glassy sea. Hear their one, united testimony. It is that, but for their trials they would never have been there.

Every page in their history bears the signet-mark of "much tribulation." It is endorsed with the words, "So He brought them to their desired haven!" "So!" It was by a way not of their own choosing. "So!" It was through winds, and waves, and buffeting elements ;-the ship tacking about ;-neither sun nor stars for many days appeared, and no small tempest lay upon them." They love now to trace all the mystic windings in that untoward voyage; the "deep calling to deep," the wave responding to wave. They love to think, It was thus He brought me!" There was a time when I was prone to question his wisdom-to arraign his faithfulness; but now, I could not have wanted one thorn, one bitter drop, one tear. As the contrary winds, which carry high the migratory birds, are found in reality to assist their flight, so with the soul; when the winds are contrary, the storm beating fiercely, it only leads it to soar higher and higher-upwards and heavenwards-further from earth, nearer its God! Oh, if we only saw our trials, not through the misty haze of this wold, but in

the light of eternity; the reckoning would not be this-how little they have been, but how precious they have been. How allyes, all-were needed to effect the desired end; all were composite parts of one way, and that way was love. It is with the believer as with the diamond, the more facets there are the brighter it sparkles; so, the more the tools of sanctified affliction have been on him, the brighter and more gloriously will he shine in heaven.

Let me seek, then, to look beyond these portals of sadness, and repose on the glory that is to be revealed. Soon the curfew bell of time will toll, telling that the fires of affliction and trial are extinguished for ever, and that the weary Church may now retire to the rest which remaineth for the people of God. "Live in Christ," says Rutherford, "and you are in the suburbs of heaven. There is but a thin wall between you and the land of praises. Ye are within one hour's sailing of the shore of the new Canaan.' It is a mighty procession that is sweeping onwards to the land of promise. A sainted writer has beautifully compared it to the vast host of Israel entering the earthly Canaan. Some had crossed Jordan; their footsteps were treading the covenanted soil, the land of the patriarchs; others were passing through the river-channel, the waters standing up to make a way "for the ransomed to pass over;" others were patiently occupying their allotted place in the rear, until those that preceded them had traversed the dry bed of the border river. But all were moving on; and those farthest behind knew that every tread of their footstep was bringing them nearer the moment when their desert trials and privations would be at an end, and their voices, too, would blend in the song of victory.

And so it is with the Church of God on earth. Some are already in heaven,-the glorified, safe on the Canaan side. Some are at this moment crossing the Jordan of death, the dark river separating the wilderness from the heavenly land. Some are still in the pilgrim rear, amid the smouldering fires and ashes of their encampment, casting a longing glance towards those who have already begun their everlasting ascription of praise. But the mighty mass moves on. The desert is retreating, and the heavenly shores are nearing. Thousands on thousands of the ransomed Israel of God are already safe landed, "clean escaped," and their triumphant song should only inspire us with fresh ardour to follow their steps and share their crowns. The true JoshuaJesus, the Heavenly Precursor, is even now standing on the celestial shore, and to every faint and toil-worn traveller proclaiming, "These sufferings are not to be compared with the glory about to be revealed."

How the thought of that blessed heaven of | concilable, and some were driven to supeternal respite and rest, should reconcile me to any trial the Lord may see meet to lay upon me here. It was the prospect of future glory which led this heavenly reckoner to make so little of his earthly trials. He called that a "light affliction," which he had borne for thirty years.

Let me often school myself in the devout arithmetic of the tried apostle, putting all my trials into one scale, and all the blessings, from grace to glory, which my God bestows, into the other; and then, dare I murmur? Lord, it is my prayer that my trial-my peculiar trial-be what it may, may be sanctified. It is a "muffled drum" in the march of life; but it is beating"Home, brothers, home." Let every promise of Scripture seem as if a bright angel hung out from the skies a guiding signal, saying, "The darkness will soon be past, and the true light will shine." "Yet a little while, and He that shall come will come, and will not tarry ;" and then the reckonings of earthly trial will give way to the reckonings of unending bliss. The voice of the Beloved will thus be heard calling on his weeping bride to dry every tear, and prepare for a tearless home. "Lo the winter is past, the rain is over and gone, the flowers appear on the earth. The time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away." (Song of Solomon, ii. 12.)-From the Grapes of Eshcol.

ILLUSTRATIONS OF SCRIPTURE.

BELSHAZZAR'S PROMISE TO DANIEL.

"And_the_king_spake, and said to the wise

men of Babylon, Whosoever shall read this writing, and shew me the interpretation thereof, shall be clothed with scarlet, and have a chain of gold about his neck, and shall be the third ruler in the kingdom."

"In that night was Belshazzar, the king of the Chaldeans, slain."-DAN. v. 7, 30.

pose two falls of Babylon, to escape the seeming contrariety. But out of all this confusion and uncertainty a small, simple, but most important discovery, which was made by Sir Henry Rawlinson, from documents obtained at Mughur, the ancient Ur, has delivered us. From these he learned, that Nabonadius, the last of the kings of Babylon, associated with himself on the throne, during the later years of his reign, his son, Bel-shar-uzur, and allowed him the royal title. That this was the prince who conducted the defence of Babylon, and who was slain upon the massacre which followed upon the capture, cannot be doubted, while the father, who was at the time in Borsippa, surrendered, and experienced the clemency which was generally shown to fallen kings by the Persians. But this is not all. In the discovery of Belshazzar's position as joint ruler with his father, a remarkable, yet most obvious light is thrown upon an expression which twice occurs in the 5th of Daniel, and which, read in the light of the facts discovered in the documents of Sir Henry Rawlinson, reflects back confirmation on the historic credibility of the documents themselves. The expression we refer to is the promise of Belshazzar to the successful interpreter of the handwriting on the wall, that he should be raised to be the third ruler in the kingdom. Why not the second, as Daniel seems to have been under Nebuchadnezzar, and as Joseph was in Egypt, and Mordecai in Persia? No reasonable answer could before have been given to this question; but now the answer is obvious and simple. There were two kings at the time. Belshazzar in elevating Daniel to the highest position tenable by a subject, could only make him the third personage in the empire.

THE Belshazzar of Daniel has been confidently pronounced an invention of Truth may wait long for its vindicahis own, and the evidence of the unhis- tion; it may be slain in the streets, and torical character of the entire narrative. in their joy over its fall men may make It was difficult to meet the argument of merry, and send gifts one to another. these objectors in former times. They But it is as a buried seed. There is in had a strong hold in the fact, that the it the spirit of life. The earth will not Chaldean historian, Berosus, a high au- for ever cover up her dead. From the thority, makes the last Babylonian mo- subterranean catacomb, the ruined palace, narch absent from the city at the time of the rubbish mound, the entombed city, its captivity by the Persians, nay, the buried truth will awake to life, the speaks of him as taken prisoner after- very "stones shall cry out of the wall, wards at Borsippa, and as then not slain, but treated with much kindness by Cyrus. The two narratives of the fall of Babylon were thus, in appearance, wholly irre

and the beam out of the timber shall answer it," in witness to that marvellous volume,-God's best gift to man, that it is "no cunningly devised fable”—that

in its history, as in all its records, it is absolutely and in every respect true.

"He that believeth shall not make haste."-Family Treasury.

"He shall set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left."-MATT. XXV. 33.

A Scripture illustration, by which we were particularly struck, was derived from the flocks of sheep and goats that fed together in the same field, or on the same common. The goats were of a finer breed than I had before seen, and the

THIS interesting event was celebrated in Freemasons' Hall, London, on Thursday evening, the 20th Dec., by the three bodies of Presbyteriansthe English Presbyterian Church, the Established Church of Scotland, and the United Presbyterian Church. The Hon. Arthur Kinnaird, M,P., took the chair. The large hall and galleries were crowded. After singing and sheep had long, coarse, hairy wool; so prayer, Dr. Lorimer read an able that in casting your eye over the field, paper, giving an Historical Sketch of you could hardly say at the first glance the rise, progress, and consummation which were goats and which were sheep. of the Scottish Reformation. He was The shepherd, I perceived, at evening followed by Dr. Cumming, who conbrought the flock home, and separated cluded an eloquent speech on the them into two parts, putting the sheep "Reformation in its Protestant Asby themselves, and the goats by them-pect," by expressing a hope, "as a selves. The words of the Saviour never Christian and a Scotchman, that the came home to my mind with greater three Presbyterian churches in Scotforce than after witnessing this arrange- land, the Established, the United ment. Clark's "Glimpses of the Old

World.

"But Jehoshaphat said, Is there not here a prophet of the Lord, that we may inquire of the Lord by him? And one of the king of Israel's servants answered and said, Here is Elisha, the son of Shaphat, which poured water on the hands of Elijah."—2 KINGS iii. 11.

I sought in the manners and the customs of the people among whom I moved remnants of the manners and customs of scriptural stamp. . . It was, then, with such feelings, and for such a purpose, that I sat in an upper room in my host's house, and there with him dipped my hand in the dish, for there was only one; after which, water was poured upon my hands first, then upon his, and we rose from the table, or rather from the ground, in no wise hindered from following our journey at once by the length or the nature of our meal.Three Months in the Holy Land.

The Oriental method of washing is universally different from that practised in the west. Nowhere is water previously poured into a basin; but the servant pours water, from a pitcher, upon the hands of the master. The custom of washing hands before dinner prevails also to this day. The servant goes round to all the guests with a pitcher, and a vessel to receive the water falling from the hands, and performs the office here attributed to Elisha. The same service is repeated when the repast is ended.Rev. J. Hartley.

Presbyterian, and the Free, might ere long be united." Dr. King (late of Glasgow) read an able address on "The Reformation in its Presbyterian Aspect," which we publish in our present number; he was followed by Dr. Archer, on the "Social and Political Rev. W. Chalmers, on "The EvangeAspect of the Reformation," and the lical Aspect." After a short address from Dr. Hamilton, the Rev. R. Redwhich was seconded by the Rev. J. path moved the following resolution, Edmond, of Islington:- That this meeting rejoice in the privilege of commade three hundred years ago by the memorating the noble stand for truth Reformers of Scotland, and resolve, in the strength of God, to follow their tending the knowledge of the Gospel great example by maintaining and exof the grace of God, and the liberty wherewith Christ hath made his people free."

We regret to learn that the Rev. John Hunter has resigned the pastoral charge of Chalmers' Church, Halifax. The state of his health and that of his family has caused him to take this step.

Among the notices of applications to Parliament, which appear in the Canada Gazette, is the following:-"To incorporate the Presbyterian Church of Canada and the United Presbyterian Church of Canada, as the Canada Presbyterian Church."

Miscellaneous Papers.

THE REVIVALS.

THE work of revival is spreading both at home and abroad. A very remarkable work has been going on for the last few months in Orkney. The island of Sanday has been more particularly the scene of this awakening, and the Presbyterian Churches generally have shared in the blessing. The following letter from Mr. Paul, the United Presbyterian minister of Sanday, with the introductory note from Dr. Paterson, of Kirkwall, will be read with solemn interest :

Sanday, 26th Nov. 1860.

MY DEAR SIR,-I did not receive yours of the 19th till Saturday, owing, I suppose, to the stormy weather preventing our packet from getting out sooner; and as our sacrament of the Supper was yesterday, I could not attend to your request to let you know something of the remarkable religious excitement that prevails in the island till now (Monday evening). That the work going on is the work of the Spirit, I have no doubt, and it seems to me to be in some respects more striking and wonderful than any revival I have read or heard of, unless it be that which has taken place in some You will find a letter from Mr. Paul parts of Ireland. The account given in to me, that I acknowledge to be in many the Herald of the 20th of the scene in respects more satisfactory to me on the the Free Church on Wednesday is not great subject of revival than anything exaggerated, if indeed it comes up to the that has come under my eye. There are reality; and the meeting that took place undoubtedly here all the great marks of in our church on the following evening a Christian awakening: a meeting of was, in some respects, still more astonishChrist's servants with their fellow-men ing, and the excitement greater than it to observe his ordinances; the truth had ever been. I cannot describe it to about Christ spoken; a great number of you-apart altogether from my want of minds simultaneously arrested; deep con- space and time, my pen cannot. viction of sin; anxious inquiry; great believe no pen could give you a full idea humiliation of spirit; a deep sense of of it. But I shall endeavour to present the preciousness of the soul and its to you what will be but a faint sketch. interests; earnest prayer; new dis- The church was filled in all its parts by coveries of the great Saviour; joy in the hour of meeting, five o'clock. The believing (a first joy, a new joy, why devotional exercises were begun and proshould it not be rapturous?) deep solici- ceeded with for some time without intertude about the salvation of others, ruption. These exercises consisted of especially of friends and relatives; noth- praise and prayer, the latter conducted ing extravagant, or scarcely anything by two individuals who had been deeply worth mentioning. What can we make impressed, and portions of Scripture were of all this? I can make nothing of it, read between these services by myself but that it is God fulfilling his promise, and Mr. Armour. As these were pro"I will pour water upon him that is ceeded with, I perceived symptoms of thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground; great excitement all around me. Some I will pour my Spirit upon thy seed, and were trembling from head to foot; others my blessing upon thine offspring." And rubbing and wringing their hands. Some if this can be made of it, let us hope were whispering in an agitated manner that the churches will be moved, and to their neighbours, and others starting that the world will be reached as they as if about to rise, and then trying to have not been in our day. O that God may send down these blessed rains on all the fields of Zion! The question of the use which the churches should make of such events is one of great importance.

I

settle themselves down again. A portion of Scripture was about to be read, and in introducing the subject, the name of Jesus was mentioned, when a young man who had been deeply impressed, and who

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was sitting before the pulpit, started up, many had left the Free Church during and stretching out his arms and looking the meeting of the previous evening, for eagerly in the direction in which he the purpose of being more completely pointed, cried out in ecstacy, "Jesus! alone than they could be in any part of Jesus! See him! See him! He is the church, I was anxious to know if anyglorious in holiness! He is the chief thing of the kind was occurring this among ten thousand! He is altogether evening, and on going out and looking lovely!" and turning to the audience, about me, I found many about the church he proceeded with great fluency and and dyke-sides, some of them standing, power to speak of Jesus' suitableness as but many kneeling on the cold wet a Saviour for sinners. But his voice, ground, praying earnestly, the most of although a stentorian one, was soon them audibly, some with a suppressed drowned by a tremendous outburst of voice, and others so loudly as to be easily feeling-piercing cries of agony-loud heard at a great distance. In the corner acclamations of joy prayers uttered of the back garden, there issued forth a audibly, and with great earnestness; and girl's voice evidently, greatly suppressed persons rushing through the passages, at first, but gradually waxing louder, and and addressing friends and acquaintances she was bewailing the sins and shorton the great interests of their immortal comings of herself and her companions, souls. The whole proved a scene such as I never witnessed, and was to me perfectly overpowering. I think I can restrain my feelings as well as most people, but on this occasion I was completely overcome. I laid my face upon the desk and sobbed for a while, and I am sure I was not singular. I felt powerfully the sentiment of the patriarch, "How dreadful is this place! Here is the great God working wondrously. He is present in almost visible manifestations, and I felt awe and fear as well as joy."

some of whom were likely with her, from the way in which she spoke-" O Lord, how thoughtless and sinful we have been, in neglecting and misimproving our precious privileges! I'll speak for myself without reserve, and I acknowledge that I have often on Sabbath dressed myself as well as I could to make my body look well, never thinking of my precious soul and its wants and miseries! Often have I gone to church thinking of anything and any person rather than of Christ! Ŏ how good God has been to us in sparing us and blessing us amid such provocations; " and then she concluded with a beautiful and appropriate prayer for forgiveness, and for grace to help her and her companions in future. In short, the spirit of supplication was remarkably displayed throughout the evening, and was one of the best features of the whole scene. There were several instances of persons being struck down, and of bodily prostration, but time would fail me to tell you the particulars of the cases, as well as of many persons who have been deeply impressed in a more quiet manner, and who were moaning and struggling in secret.

During the part of the evening that followed (and the meeting was protracted till near midnight), the excitement continued unabated, and its leading features much the same as I have described-all were more or less impressed, but very differently. Some were on their knees praying, and others lying on their faces groaning in agony. Some running about apparently wild with joy, and others in groups singing hymns and psalms of praise. The session-house had been set apart for those who wished to retire, but to be there was no great retirement, for it was crowded during the evening with praying people, and so were the porches of the church, and the back seats of the gallery, and many were found prostrate on the floor of the church, between the seats and in out-of-the-way corners, in great mental agony; and I have seen two or three little girls, apparently about eight or ten years of age, kneeling on the floor with their faces on the seat-board, and one of their number, about the same A remarkable revival has taken place in age, praying most earnestly over them Jamaica. The people were "stricken down" and for them; and there were many such in large numbers, and remained in the instances of juvenile earnestness. As churches day and night.

There have been several meetings, both in Mr. Armour's church and ours, since then; and although the excitement is a little subsided, the audiences are increasing to such an extent that the church cannot conveniently contain them-the movement is now universal-all denominations attending.