mighty deep instruct you. From the moment a great voyage commences the crew, as a whole, never sleep. There is always, day and night, a hand at the helm, and an eye on the compass: not till they have reached the haven are all heads at once ever laid to rest. To sleep on the ocean, and leave the vessel to herself, would be surely and speedily to perish. So it is with you in relation to your souls. Sleep not, then, as do others, but watch unto prayer. Fix your eye on the goal, and let your cry be, Onward!

III. THE MOTIVES WHICH OUGHT TO PROMPT A ZEALOUS PERFORMANCE OF IT. If these motives are duly appreciated they will be found to comprise principles which exert a power that nothing can resist. Let us consider the chief of them in order.

1. The judgment will be righteously conducted. Here there is no place either for injustice or for deception. There is a sleepless eye upon all your movements, and an unerring record kept of every deed. With respect to this, your minds may be at perfect ease. "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" To this infallible rectitude it is that Paul refers when he says, "There is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day; and not to me only, but to all them also that love his appearing." In the games the successful competitors, at the close of the conflicts, loved and longed for the appearance of the judge, who gave a crown to each and to all who had won it. Men here may underrate, or they may over-rate your merits, and they may extenuate or exaggerate your defects; but he will err on neither side. He is the God by whom actions are weighed, and who will deal with every man according to his works. Be strong, then, and away!

2. You run in honourable company. All the excellent of the earth are pressing on for the same prize. Let not appearances, therefore, discourage you. As individuals, in the family where you live you may, alas! be the only member of it who fears God, a fact which may sometimes dishearten you; or you may be the only household in a street, village, or district, who honour Jesus Christ; or you may stand connected with a small and poor church, despised and neglected by a proud, an ungodly world; but let none of these things move you. Your fellowship is at once great and glorious. It is composed of men of whom the world is not worthy. Its numbers none can tell; and its worth is still greater than its numbers. Lift up your head, then, in the midst of your foes, and press onward!

3. Your success is certain. This is one of those grand features in which the subject surpasses the similitude. In the public races, only one in each body of competitors gained the prize; but here is a race in which all who run aright will infallibly win. Yes, in this glorious conflict victory is actually possible to every racer. Each of you may obtain a robe, a palm, a crown, a kingdom. Will you not then persevere, and, forgetting what is behind, press on to that which is before? See, see the mark in the distance! Every step brings you nearer. Oh! halt not-pause not-looking unto Jesus-run! 4. You are surrounded with a bright cloud of heavenly witnesses. Myriads of Greeks stood collected on the mountain terraces which surrounded and overlooked the race-course, and gazed on the mighty conflicts carried on beneath them. There, too, stood the experienced umpires of merit, and dealt out justice with an even hand. When all the contests were over, at the close of the day, the trumpets sounded, and all was breathless silence to hear the herald's proclamation of the names of the victors, of their fathers, and of their countries, and the kind of contest in which they had severally conquered. The crowns were then presented, and this was the signal to the assembled myriads for rending the air with their applauding acclamations. The eyes

of the whole heavenly world are upon you! The great, the good, the wise, the holy of every age and of every clime, now in glory, are fixed upon you! Can you remain insensible to a consideration so grand, so awful, so animating, so ennobling? The Eternal Judge himself looks on! Run, then-run! 5. The prize is precious above all price. The Greeks contended for what Paul designates a corruptible crown; a wreath constructed of wild olive, parsley, or laurel, according to the different places where the games were celebrated. Such crowns were of no value. Within a short period, although formed of evergreens, they would crumble into dust. Such was the glory of man; but if we contrast with it the inheritance of the believer, that is incorruptible and fadeth not. Within the brief circuit of one sun the dear delusion of Olympic glory had passed away: the victor and the vanquished, the judges and the concourse, were all buried in sleep; and the whole was as if it had never been. Christians! how unlike is all this to your glory! Your palm and crown will endure for ever! Up, then, and onward!

6. The loss of the prize would be to you the loss of all things. Men might run for the Olympic, Pythian, Isthmian, or Nemæan crowns, or they might decline; the act was optional. The gain and the loss were alike imaginary, things purely of fancy and passion. Not so here: if you lose this crown, you lose yourselves; if you refuse to run, you perish! Nothing can rob you of your crown but that which stops you in your course. Awake, then, to the dignity of your character, and the danger that surrounds you. Never consider the crown out of peril till it be placed on your head. Looking unto Jesus, run! onward! away!

Dear families, how is it between your souls and God? Are you individually, are you all, inwardly prepared? Are you all externally ready? Are you running? Are you running aright? With multitudes of professors, alas! it is otherwise. They are not running; they are only thinking about it, talking about it, but not in motion. In purity, in knowledge, in zeal, in usefulness, they make no advancement. Unhappy men! you are looking for the crown, while the race has yet to be run!

Again, what numbers began well, but have long since turned back! At the period of their union with the church they were full of promise; but they soon fell away. They have long ceased to serve the Lord in union with any portion of his people. One class of them are somewhat regular auditors; another wander about as fugitives and vagabonds from place to place; a third have cast off all regard even to appearances, and have returned to the world. All are hastening to death and judgment, but for these there is no crown!

Men of the world! Your God has also set a race before you, and, alas! you run it. Vast are your numbers, broad is your way, and it is easy; but it leads to destruction! Persevere in that path, and it will unerringly conduct you to perdition! No man ever yet pursued it to the end, and at last found himself in heaven. Can you form an exception? Advance, and you are undone ! Stop, then, stop! Hear a voice from heaven: "Turn ye, turn ye, why will ye die?" It is the voice of God. Oh! "hear, and your souls shall live."

JERUSALEM AND THE HOLY LAND.

IN the year 1839, the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland sent a deputation, consisting of four ministers, to Jerusalem, to inquire into the condition of the seed of Abraham, and concerning the best method of establishing

Having

a Christian mission in those regions for their especial benefit. reached the promised land, and approached the precincts of the holy city, the travellers thus proceed :-" Every moment we expected to see Jerusalem. Though wearied by our long ride, which had now lasted seven hours, we eagerly pressed on. Mr. M'Cheyne, dismounting from his camel, hurried forward on foot over the rocky footpath, till he gained the point where the city of the Lord comes first in sight. Soon all of us were on the spot, silent, buried in thought, and wistfully gazing on the wondrous scene where the Redeemer died. As our camels slowly approached the city, its sombre walls rose before us; but in these there is nothing to attract or excite the feelings. At that moment we were chiefly impressed by the fact that we were now among 'the mountains that are round about Jerusalem;' and, half unconscious that it was true, we repeated inwardly the words, 'Our feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem.' We got a slight view of the Mount of Olives as we rode toward the Jaffa gate. The nearer we came to the city, the more we felt it a solemn thing to be where God manifest in flesh' had walked. The feelings of that hour could not even be spoken. We all moved forward in silence, or interchanging feelings only by a word. Its dark walls, and the glance we got of slippery narrow streets, with low ill-built houses, and a poor, ill-clad population, suggested no idea of the magnificence of former days. But we were soon to learn that all the elements of Jerusalem's glory and beauty are still remaining in its wondrous situation, fitting it to be once again, in the latter day, 'the city of the great King.'

Having spent a short time in converse with some English gentlemen, whom they were gratified to meet, they retired to their lodgings, and they thus describe the events of the first evening and morning in Jerusalem. "When the darkness came down, we heard the wailing of mourners over some dead friend, a peculiarly melancholy sound at all times, but doubly so while the plague is raging. Yet we never heard any more joyful sounds in the streets of Jerusalem: so true is the prophetic word, I will cause all her mirth to cease.' It is with feelings that can be better imagined than described, that, for the first time in our lives, within the gates of Jerusalem, we committed ourselves and those dear to us, our church, and the blessed cause in which she had sent us forth, to the care of Him who sits as a king upon the holy hill of Zion. We rose early, and, finding the road to the Jaffa gate, went a little way out of the city, and sat down under an olive-tree. We turned to Psalm xlviii. 'Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in the mountain of his holiness. Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is Mount Zion, on the sides of the north, the city of the great King. God is known in her palaces for a refuge.' Reading this with the eye upon Jerusalem, the scenes of former days seemed to rise up as a flood. We could imagine holy prophets and men of God in these fields and within these walls. The vivid associations of the place, with all our Bible readings and hours of holy study, made it appear like a spot where we had once met with beloved and honoured friends, whose absence spread a sadness over all. We read part of Lamentations, and could feel sympathy with the prophet: How hath the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger, and cast down from heaven to the earth the beauty of Israel. hath swallowed up Israel; he hath swallowed up all her palaces.' Towards the west, the object that first met our eye (in their lodging) used to be a solitary palm-tree, growing amidst a heap of ruins, and waving its branches over them, as if pointing to the fulfilment of the prophecy, Jerusalem shall become heaps.'

He

On visiting the British consul on the 11th of June," He told us," say they,

"that a remarkable circumstance had occurred that morning. The Turkish governor of Jerusalem had allowed Sir Moses Montefiore and his attendants to enter the tomb of David upon Mount Zion, and to pray over it, a privilege not granted to a Jew for many centuries. The governor had called on Sir Moses the day before, and shown him great respect; and that morning had sent him a present of five sheep. The ground of the governor's respectful treatment of him was the fact of his being a native of Great Britain."

Their

From the consul the Deputation learned that, in round numbers, there were only about ten thousand Jews in the whole of Palestine. He states that few young men come to the holy land; the bulk are elderly persons, who leave no families behind them to increase the population. The influx of such persons is constant, but it merely supplies the annual deaths. Their poverty is great. The contributions from Europe of late have been smaller than usual; and when they arrive, instead of doing good, they are the cause of heart-burnings and strife. In Jerusalem there is no display of the beauty of "brethren dwelling together in unity;" no Jew trusts his brother. strifes are endless, and the consul is often required to act as an arbitrator among them. The European contributions, moreover, operate much in the same way as did the old English poor-law. Many live in idleness, that they may become qualified for receiving the bounty. The Jewish population of Jerusalem are about five thousand, and of these about one thousand are paupers, one half of them avowedly, and the other in "a more quiet way." Many are so poor that if not relieved they would perish in the winter. few are shopkeepers; a few more are hawkers; and a very few are operatives. It is a remarkable fact, that not one of them is an agriculturist; not a single Jew cultivates the soil of his fathers. Among other peculiar causes of poverty, they are obliged to pay more rent than other people for their houses; and they are often oppressed by their own Rabbies. The common people hate them, and they are otherwise exposed to continual wrongs. The soldiers, likewise, occasionally break into their houses, and compel them to lend articles, which are never restored.

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The Deputation conclude one of their excursions with the following touch of tenderness. "Remounting our horses, we bade farewell to our Monkish friends, and wound slowly down the northern slope of Bethlehem, amongst vineyards and barley-fields, where the reapers were engaged as in the days when Ruth and Naomi returned from the land of Moab. We soon arrived at the well of the Magi, where the holy city comes in view. We could not but linger on the spot. Behind us lay Bethlehem, before us Jerusalem; on the one hand, the spot where the love of God was first made manifest; on the other, the spot where that love was completed in Immanuel's death on the one hand, the spot where Jesus was born; on the other, the spot where Jesus died."

The Deputation were strongly impressed with the importance of erecting a House for God on Mount Zion, where Protestant worship might be maintained in its purity, that the Jews may thereby learn the nature of true Christianity. They happily regard the Greek and Roman churches as idolatrous and licentious in the extreme; and as for the English people, they consider them to be Neologians, or infidels, wholly destitute of religion. Time will tell how far the Anglican bishop will correct the latter notion; and as to the former, long may it continue!

Essays, Extracts, and Correspondence.