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space. If you review the events of the past year, you will perceive that the circle of your youthful associates is diminished; and if you survey the surrounding neighbourhood, you will miss many who were living at the commencement of the year, some father or mother, or brother or sister, with whom your eyes were familiar as they passed our house! And as you pursue your journey along the vale of life, you will continue to miss numbers more men fall as leaves in autumn.

for death is ever nigh-and Still more affecting is the

thought, that not only your dear mamma and myself, but you, Charlotte, and you Bernard, will at length die! for it is appointed unto all once to die, and after this the judgment.

It is not a question whether you will die this week or the next, this year or another, this day or to-morrow; for it is certain that you will die eventually; but the great and paramount question is, are you prepared to die? Have you received the mercy offered to you in the gospel? Are you reconciled to God by the death of His Son? Are you safe for eternity, so as to exclaim "To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain!"

The world cannot ensure you any thing as a compensation for the loss of the favor of God. It promises much, but it yields nothing; nothing that can avail the soul in the trying season of affliction, in the debilitated period of old age, in the eventful crisis of a dying hour, in the decisive moment of final judgment. " The world," says Mr. Rutherford, " will be burnt up or you must leave it, why then should night-dreams, day-shadows, water-froth, and common wild flowers, run away with your heart in the mean time? When a real believer comes to the water-side of the river Jordan, and sets his feet, as it were, in the boat which is to convey him over to Canaan, he will wonder at the folly of himself and others in loving the things of the world."

The object, then, which I now propose to you, is the favor and friendship of God, which includes the pardon of your sins and all the privileges connected with the redemption of the soul by the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the highest blessing that a mortal can possess. It is essential to your peace and happiness on earth, and to your enjoyment of the felicities of heaven. And what is most encouraging, it is a blessing promised to all that seek it, humbly and perseveringly, through the merits and sufferings of our blessed Saviour. Have you, my dear Charlotte, and my dear Bernard, have you been convinced of your need of the grace of our Lord Jesus, to bring you into the favor of God? Do you feel a penitential spirit disposing you to mourn over your sins against the great and blessed God? How frequently has He said to you by His faithful ministers-by his written word-by the whispers, and often by the alarms of conscience-" Seek the Lord while He may be found, call ye upon Him while he is near." My son, give me thine heart, I love them that love me, and they who seek me early shall find me, and have you sought Him? Have you given Him your heart? Do you love Him, and is He the chief object of your desire?"

(Here Mr. Beverley paused, as if he expected a reply. The tender manner of his address, his gentle tone, his earnest look, melted his children into tears, and like Joseph before his brethren, they longed for a place where they might indulge their feelings.)

Mr. Beverley proceeded-This is a remarkable day in the annals of time. Humility, gratitude, penitence, and joy, here find their respective situation. Like the traveller who gains some rising summit, as he pursues his journey, you may stand on the eminence on which a new year's day has placed you, and ask yourselves these questions:

WHAT HAS BEEN THE PATH I HAVE HITHERTO PURSUED?
WHAT ERRORS REQUIRE TO BE CORRECTED?

WHAT ARE MY INTENTIONS IN REGARD TO THE FUTURE?
WHAT EVIDENCES HAVE I THAT I AM IN THE PATH TO HEAVEN ?

I shall deliver these questions to you in writing, with the request, and remember it is a father's request-that you will retire to your rooms and examine them seriously and carefully. -My principal desire is, that you should be devoted to God in early life. The advantages of early piety-the comforts attending it-the beneficial effects resulting from it to others, and its glorious issue in eternity, are no mean considerations.-No youths appear so lovely as they who in their bosom wear "the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valley." Extract from the Journal of the Rev. Micaiah Hill. 29

Sprinkled with the blood of Jesus; clothed with His perfect righteousness; gifted with His saving knowledge; and under the constant teachings and blessed influence of His sanctifying spirit, you will be preserved from evils into which others fall; you will be sustained in troubles, which destroy their peace; you will live in the favor and enjoy the smiles of God upon earth, and then behold Him in His glory in the heaven of heavens above.

Go, my dear children, meditate on these things. Go and enter into covenant with the God of your father, and the God of your mother-Go, and aided by the will divine, determine from this day to be the Lord's.

Here Mr. Beverley finished, and affectionately embraced his children. Their hearts were softened and their eyes suffused with tears, "while they told the thanks they could not speak," and retired to meditate.

Wakefield.

COMBINATIONS OF THE ALPHABET.

R. C.

ALLOW me to refer your correspondent LECTOR, to the En cyclopedia Britannica, for the article Combinations, to correct an error relative to the letters of the alphabet. It will there be found, that the number of permutations of which the 24 letters of the alphabet are capable is 62,044,840,173,323,943,936,000.

It may be amusing to your youthful readers, to be informed (from the same source) that it would require a surface 18,620 times as large as that of the earth, to write all the combinations, each letter only occupying the hundredth part of a square inch. A. a.

EXTRACT FROM THE JOURNAL OF THE

REV. MICAIAH HILL.
(Illustrating Deut. xxv. 4.)

"Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth (margin thresheth) out the corn."

MONDAY, Nov. 27, 1826. Left Berhampore, and arrived at Doulta-Bazaar. The country on every side exhibited the pleasing scenes of industry; some persons were preparing the

+ Missionary Transactions, No. 48: page 420.

ground by digging, and others by plowing with oxen, for a future crop; others were cutting their harvest of rice, and others treading out their grain, after the manner described in Scripture. At one place I noticed two sets of oxen, four abreast, the one set following the other in a circle, and which, as they trod out the grain continued eating. I inquired of the men why they permitted the oxen to eat? They replied "It is contrary to our Shasters (holy books) to muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn." A pundit, when referring to this law, observed, it was written, "That they who muzzled the ox, when treading out the corn, would not be enriched by that of which they had deprived their beasts, for God would cause their substance to decrease." B. V.

BANIAN TREE.

"BEFORE entering Doulta-Bazaar," says Mr. Hill, “I passed under the shade of a venerable banian tree, the roots of which having suspended themselves from the branches, till they had reached the earth, had planted themselves and become as thick as the parent stock, so that it was difficult to discover from which stem the tree had been produced. This tree being almost literally many trees, and yet but one tree, might, I thought, serve both to illustrate the union of believers with Christ, (for they being many are one in Him,) and also their union with each other, being knit together by the love of Christ and of each other."

ρ κ.

SCRIPTURE ILLUSTRATIONS.

THE WHIRLWIND.

On the day before we reached Casvin, whilst we were encamped at the village of Hassanabad, a violent wind arose from the eastward, called the Baad Ray. It prevailed from the morning to about two o'clock, P. M. when it changed about to the westward, and was then called the Baad Shehriar. At the time of the change whirlwinds were to be seen in different parts of the plain, sweeping along the country, in different directions, in a manner quite frightful to behold. They carried away in their vortex, sand, branches, and the stubble of the fields, and really appeared to make a communication between the earth and the clouds.

The correctness of the imagery used by the prophet Isaiah, when he alludes to this phenomenon, is very striking to the eastern traveller. The whirlwind shall take them away as stubble, Chap. ix. 24. Chased as the chaff of the mountains before the wind, and like a rolling thing before the whirlwind. Chap. xviii. 13. In Psalm lxxxiii. 13. we read make them like a wheel as the stubble before the wind, which is happily illustrated by the rotary action of the whirlwind, which frequently impels a bit of stubble over a waste just like a wheel set into rapid motion. In this instance the original is the same as in the other from Isaiah, galyal, no doubt the word is sometimes used for the wheel of a carriage, but the attendant imagery in both instances here adduced, compels us to accept the meaning as given in Isaiah xvii. or as the Lexicons sometimes express it pulvis rotatus.

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LADY DOYLEY took me, this evening, through some of the bazaars, and a part of a long avenue of trees, extending several miles into the country. Many of them are of great size, but the whole, she said, were planted by the senior judge, Mr. Douglas, an old man, who has been a resident in

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