Bible your dwelling place! May you say, Psal. cxxxii. 14, “This is my rest; here will I dwell, for I have desired it." Then let us sing with the heart: "I love the Volume of thy word; What light and joy those leaves afford, INSTINCTS OF ANIMALS. THESE Wonderfully illustrate the wisdom, power, and goodness of God. What are the instincts of inferior irrational creaturesof birds, and beasts, and fishes, and creeping-things, and insects? We answer, Those lessons which God teaches them, and which are necessary for their sustenance, their protection, their happiness, and their continuance in succeeding races and generations. Who teaches the sparrows to build their nest? God. Ps. lxxxiv. 3, "Yea, the sparrow hath found an house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young." The stork, the crane, and the swallow are migratory birds, and when the season of winter draws near, they move off to warm southern regions. And who taught these birds this lesson, without which their whole races would soon become extinct? God. Jer. viii. 7, "Yea, the stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times; and the turtle and the crane and the swallow observe the time of their coming." In reading the following short account, may your heart be filled with the admiration of God, who taketh under his care, and condescends to be the Teacher of the meanest of his creatures! The young bee, on the day that it first leaves the cell, without teaching and without experience, begins to collect honey, form wax, and build up its hexagonal* cell, according to the form which its progenitors have used from the earliest generations. Birds build nests of a certain structure after their kinds, and many species at certain seasons, excited by some internal impulse, take their migratory flights to other countries. The insect, which never experienced a parent's care or a mother's example, labours assiduously and effectively for the future development and sustenance of an offspring which it, in its turn, is doomed never to behold. Others toil all summer, and lay up stores for winter, without ever having experienced the severity of such a season, or being in any sensible way aware of its approach. A common quail was kept in a cage, and became quite tamed and reconciled to its food. At the period of its natural migration it became exceedingly restless; it beat its head against the cage in many efforts to escape; and, on examination, its skin was found several degrees above its usual temperature. We often observe a dog, when going to sleep on the floor, turn himself several times round before he lies down, and this is just one of the lingering instincts which he has retained; while in his wild state, he is accustomed thus to prepare his bed amid the tall grass or rushes. My young friends, unite with me in the following exclamation of the holy Psalmist, Ps. civ. 24, "O Lord, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all!" JONAH AND JESUS. Plain Hints for Little Children on Matt. xii. 41.-" The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here." THE Bible is a book of sublime comparisons, elevating ideas, ennobling principles, exalted and illustrious achievements. Its comparisons show the difference between evil and good, darkness and light, holiness and sinfulness, righteousness and depravity, the works of God and the works of men. The above verse presents a very forcible illustration of this fact, and shows the infinite superiority of the teaching of HIM who taught as man never taught, or ever could teach; and it opens up to the mind three sources of instruction, which, by the powerful teaching of God's Spirit, may savingly affect the soul: first, two preachers are noticed; secondly, two sermons preached; and thirdly, two congregations assembled; and the effects produced on them. First. The two preachers. They were Jonah and the Lord Jesus Christ; the one a man, the other the glorious God and Man-Mediator: the one was the fugitive prophet, who went down to Joppa and shipped himself for Tarshish, to avoid delivering God's message to the Ninevites; the other came on the wings of love, yearning over the miseries of our lost nature, and hasting to proclaim to the perishing and rebellious multitudes the message of mercy and grace: the one was Jonah, and the other Jesus. Secondly. The two sermons. Jonah's was a message without a Christ, without one promise in it; it was a sermon of threatenings, of warning, of destruction, and of vengeance. The sermons of Jesus were full of love, of grace, of rich promises, of strong consolation, of tender rebuke, of heart-searching and soulwinning persuasion. They set forth man's state as a sinner, and his need of a Saviour; the riches of Divine Love; the infinitude of Divine Mercy; the heights and depths of saving grace, as emanating from the eternal mind of the great Jehovah, through the intercession of a crucified Saviour. PRINCE of Preachers. Jesus is well called the Thirdly. The two congregations, and the effects produced on them. The one consisted of idolatrous ignorant pagans, and the other of educated self-righteous Jews, possessed of the oracles of God, and rich in privileges. The one heard and believed; the other heard and despised. The one escaped threatened vengeance; but, alas! the other perished in unbelief, heaping up to themselves wrath against the day of wrath. Dear young friends, may God enable you to accept the following invitation of love! "Come, ye children, poor and wretched, Weak and wounded, sick and sore! Jesus ready stands to save you, Full of pity, join'd with power; He is able, He is willing; doubt no more." MISSIONS. SCOTTISH MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF THE UNITED PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. CALABAR MISSIONS. THE Old Calabar mission is a stupendous enterprise, as it may be said to be the first station in a heathen country peopled by numerous millions. It is the door of entrance to the vast, fertile, and thickly-inhabited regions drained by the waters of the Niger, the Schadda, and the Cross rivers. Till recent times, but little comparatively was known of this part of Central Africathe land of the negroes, the most important and interesting portion of that great continent; but the travels of Mungo Park, Clapperton, and the Landers, and the various expeditions that have been sent up the Niger, the Schadda, and the Cross rivers, have to a certain extent unfolded it to the knowledge of Europeans. When we ascend beyond the tribes living on the coast, who are debased and brutalised by the slave trade, we find not only more interesting and healthy countries, but a population somewhat advanced in the arts of civilised life, and with whom there is reason to believe that a great and profitable commerce will yet be carried on. There are in those extensive districts unwrought but ample materials, which the merchant, the schoolmaster, and the missionary are yet to turn to noble purposes. From thirty to fifty millions of people, with good talents and disposed to industry, inhabiting a land rich in the varied bounties of the beneficent Creator, are yet to be influenced by European merchandise, civilisation, and religion. To lift this people to their due place among the nations that walk amid the light of the Gospel, will be the grandest achievement of New Testament benevolence. The mind, animated by those notices of mercy and love which the Bible holds out to the children of Africa—notices which tell us that the despised negro race shall soon stretch out their hands to God in confiding trust- that they shall be numbered among his living and favoured sons, and that from the most distant and hitherto unexplored parts of that continent God's suppliants shall come, bringing his offeringdwells in fond, earnest, and yearning contemplation over those fine regions, now filled with spiritual darkness, cruel superstitions, and bloody customs; "desolate heritages," but still a part of Christ's promised kingdom, a land on which light, mercy, and love shall yet rest, and which, throughout all its broad plains, along its mighty rivers, and up its green mountain-sides, shall re-echo with the glad songs of salvation and of praise. Now, it is a remarkable fact that to these regions, so full of interest and of hope, containing the elements of prosperous kingdoms and of multitudes of Christian churches, Old Calabar is the natural entrance. The great desert on the north, the lofty chain of mountains on the east, the Kong ridge and the pestilential Delta on the west, and the Cameroon mountains and the absence of navigable rivers on the south, forbid frequent intercourse. But the open Calabar firth, navigable at all seasons for ships of any burden-the fact that the Cross river is within forty miles of the Schadda, and the high grounds at no great distance from Old Calabar, offering a salubrious residence,-all combine in pointing out Old Calabar as the door by which white men should enter Central Africa, in order to spread there the benefits of knowledge and Christianity. This is an advantage which our missionaries did not foresee. The Lord led them in a way that they knew not, and conducted them to the spot which recent information assures us is the best that could have been chosen along the whole coast, as the place where a mission destined to evangelize Central Africa should land and erect its first station. This view invests our mission with a peculiar interest, and with a momentous responsibility. We have taken possession of this entrance—this key of the interior, and we must be prepared for the results. Vast multitudes are waiting beyond Old Calabar for the Gospel. Already an urgent cry, thrice repeated, has come to us from Bonny, asking teachers and missionaries; and there can be no doubt that the calls from other places will, ere long, be many, earnest, and imploring. The mission is great in itself; but in its consequences it is immense. Should our missionaries be sustained in health, should the cause be firmly established in Old Calabar, and should well-educated native converts, fit for acting the part of missionaries, be raised up there, those who have contributed to the mission ship may yet be delighted to hear that those regions of which we have spoken, now the most destitute in the world, have had the Gospel preached to them, and that their inhabitants have turned from all their superstitions to serve the living and the true God. 48 LINES ON HEARING A PASSING-BELL. LINES Penned on hearing the Passing-Bell toll for an Infant. DEAR little creature! thou hast fled Far from our aching, groaning sight;— Dear little creature! thou art now Cold and stiff;-thy beauteous head Dear little creature! thou hast gone And shining always clear and bright. Dear little creature! thee we'll take Thou'st 'scaped, and all the serpent wiles. But go and try to weep no more. Dear little creature! oft we'll seek |