children left or neglected by their parents, or who by poverty are deprived of early mental culture and moral care. Whoever observes providences, will see that children early afflicted, and falling upon the compassion and care of others, are oftener celebrated for piety, distinguished for usefulness, and rendered eminently worthy, than those whom no cloud overshadows and no early hardships inure to vigor, hope, or energetic enterprises. How often do young people, while careless of religion, study and learn that knowledge which genuine conversion consecrates afterwards to the high and holy service of preaching Christ's gospel, and extending the power of his love! God says, "I will bring the blind by a way that they know not, I will lead them in paths that they have not known, I will make darkness light before them, and crooked things straight. These things will I do unto them, and not forsake them." "I will be their God, and they shall be my people in truth and righteousness."

What Moses did for God and the Israel of God, proves his pious appreciation of the Divine goodness which rescued him from an early death. Impelled by allegiance to his preserver and love to his people, he refused and cast from him, as useless baubles, the pageantry of a voluptuous court, and the crown of

Egypt, then the richest and most powerful nation on the earth. Yes, he esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt. He joined his own countrymen, despised and enslaved as they were, delivered them from bondage, and led them into liberty; established among them that splendid system of religion, which was emblematical of another and more glorious one which Christ came to give.

When they were hungry he fed them with manna, teaching them to live by faith on the bread of God, through Jesus Christ, who came down from heaven. To supply their thirst, he brought water out of the rock; they drank of it, and that rock was Christ. When they sinned and deserved national death, he pleaded rather to be blotted out of God's book, than that these sheep in the wilderness should perish. When bitten by serpents, swollen and dying, Moses lifted up among the despairing a brazen serpent, and cried, Look and live-showing forth man's final cure of sin by Jesus Christ and him crucified. When the wasting pestilence, whose very vapor was death, melted its thousands and its tens of thousands, he clothed Aaron in his sacred vestments, put a censer of holy incense in his hand, and sent him forth to stand between the living and the dead, and so the plague was stayed. All before where Aaron

stood were consumed all behind were preserved; beautifully symbolizing the Lamb of Calvary, who met the burning wrath of Jehovah, and turned it aside from a guilty world.

Moses led the people forty years in the wilderness, until their journey was at an end; he loved and watched them with more than parental fondness, and carried them as it were in his arms, as a good shepherd carries the lambs and feeble ones of his flock; and when the hour of his departure drew nigh, he assembled them around Mount Pisgah, from whose towering summit he clearly saw the goodly Canaan afar off. Here he sung

his swan song, and poured out his whole heart, foretelling their long eventful history, over which and their sins he wept. He then revealed that brighter scene of extraordinary glory and prosperity, when they should be gathered and restored to the land of their fathers, and become a joy and a praise in all the earth. A magnificent type of the gathered fullness of all nations before the throne of God at last, who are redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. Moses resigned his charge to Joshua, and went up the Mountain of Nebo, and in obedience to the command of God there died, and the Lord buried him ; and his sepulchre no man knoweth unto this day.

RUTH AND NAOMI.

BY MRS. RILEY.

LEAVE thee, my mother? think'st we can part?
Doth not thy look belie thy lips' command?
Will not the sunshine of one faithful heart
Cheer thy sad journey to thy native land?
A son-less widow'd wanderer though you be,
Thou art not childless while I am with thee.

Thy slightest wish was wont in happier days,
In our glad home to serve as a behest;
Thy wish, if not thy word, she still obeys,
When thy child seeks with thee a peaceful rest,
Where Israel's faith with Israel's name is found,
And holy worship makes it sacred ground.

Think'st thou the faith taught by thy lips I loved Hath faded with the voice that gave it birth? That vision of a life to come, which proved

His hope in death, is dimmed by thoughts of earth?

No, through the night of sorrow, that bright star, Hath pointed to a home of peace afar.

Together we rejoiced in brighter years;
Sharing the self-same home-the self-same lot,
Together we have mingled bitter tears:
To leave me now, my mother, ask me not!
Where'er thou wanderest, thither will I roam,
Thy God shall be my God- thy home my home.