blue concave overhead were to be converted into a huge metallic reflector, casting down rays of the fiercest light and heat. It is this oppressively splendent aspect of the sky that is the first of the two leading ideas in the passages quoted above; and such an appearance we might almost term the ordinary one during an Indian hot season. The precise hue of colour, or rather of lustre, the heavens should assume, was evidently of less importance, for in Leviticus it is compared to that of iron, and in Deuteronomy to that of brass. The latter term, many of our readers are aware, should have been rendered copper. In India, or, still better, if you sail down the Red Sea, with the Nubian desert on the one hand, and the Arabian sands on the other, you will at times see the greater part of the sky overspread with an illuminated haze, not at all unlike the reflection from polished iron, whilst the addition of a tinge of red makes what one of our poets terms a hot and copper sky," or that precise kind to which the passage in Deuteronomy refers.

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It was not, however, merely the heaven, but the earth that was to become like iron and brass. The idea seems to be not now of metallic lustre, but of metallic hardness. In a country like our own, where we rarely have a week without rain, the soil has never time to acquire the hardness of which it is capable. Throughout the interior of India, however, with the exception of a few showers about the new year, no rain falls between November and the middle of June. The cotton soil, which, during the wet weather, was a tenacious clay, now daily increases in hardness, becoming at the same time covered with a network of cracks, as it contracts under the rays of the sun. A friend informs me, that when in this state he has failed to make a sensible impression on it with a pickTrees languish and lose their green colour; herbs have yet scarcely begun to appear; and the whole country is in process of becoming a desert, when, in the middle of June, the monsoon or rainy season sets in, overspreading the earth, with a rapidity to which we find no parallel in northern lands, with a carpet of the liveliest green. Were the rains withheld for a few years, India would become like the Sahara, its fields converted into barrenness, its cities silent, its inhabitants perished,-an awful monument of the divine wrath. And it was of such a judgment as this that the passages in Leviticus and Deuteronomy were designed to tell.— Family Treasury.

axe.

John xi. 18.-"NOW BETHANY WAS NIGH UNTO JERUSALEM, ABOUT FIFTEEN FURLONGS OFF."

1260. Bethany.-What particularly struck me in all my visits to Bethany was its solitude. It looks as if it were shut out from the whole world. No town, village, or human habitation is visible from it. The wilderness appears in front through an opening in the rocky glen; and the steep side of Olivet rises close behind. When Jesus retired from Jerusalem to Bethany, no sound of the busy world followed Him-no noisy crowd broke in upon His meditation. In the quiet home of Martha, or in some lonely recess of Bethany's secluded dell, He rested, and taught, and prayed. How delighted I was one evening, when seated on a rocky bank beside the village, reading the story of Lazarus, to hear a passing villager say, "There is the tomb of Lazarus, and yonder is the house of Martha!" They may not be, most probably they are not, the real places; but this is Bethany, and the miracle wrought there still dwells in the memory of its inhabitants. And when the unvarying features of nature are there too-the cliffs, the secluded glen, the Mount of Olives-few will think of traditional "holy places." From the place where I sat I saw-as Martha and Mary had seen from their housetop-those blue mountains beyond Jordan, where Jesus was abiding when they sent unto Him, saying, "Lord, behold, he whom Thou lovest is sick," John x. 40; xi. 3. I also saw the road "from Jerusalem to Jericho " winding past the village, and away down the rocky declivities into the wilderness. By that road Jesus was expected; and one can fancy with what earnest, longing eyes the sisters looked along it—ever and anon returning and looking, from the first dawn till waning twilight. And when at last He did come, and Martha heard the news, one can picture the touching scene, how she ran along that road, and with streaming eyes and quivering lips uttered the half-reproachful and still halfhopeful cry, "Lord, if Thou hadst been here my brother had not died."

Bethany is now, and apparently always was, a small, poor, mountain hamlet, with nothing to charm except its seclusion, and nothing to interest save its associations. It is a remarkable fact that Christ's great miracle has been to it as a new baptism, conferring a new name. It is now called El-Azarîyeh, which may be interpreted, "The Place of Lazarus." The "palms" are all gone JULY, 1965.

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which gave it its old name Beth-any, "house of dates;" but the crags around, and the terraced slopes above it, are dotted yet with venerable fig-trees, as if to show that its sister village, Beth-phage,

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house of figs," is not forgotten, though its site is lost. The houses of Bethany are of stone, massive and rude in style. Over them, on the top of a scarped rock, rises a fragment of heavy ancient masonry-perhaps a portion of an old watch-tower. The reputed tomb of Lazarus is a deep, narrow vault, apparently of no great antiquity.-PROFESSOR Porter.

1 Kings xviii. 21.-"AND ELIJAH CAME UNTO ALL THE PEOPLE, AND SAID, HOW LONG HALT YE BETWEEN TWO OPINIONS? IF THE LORD BE GOD, FOLLOW HIM : BUT IF BAAL, THEN FOLLOW HIM." 1261. Halting between Two Opinions.-The expression, "How long halt ye between two opinions?" is rather an explanation than a literal rendering of the original, which to us has a significance that ought not to be lost. Literally the words may be translated, "How long leap ye upon two branches ?"- —a most beautiful poetical allusion to the restlessness of a bird, which remains not long in one posture, but is continually hopping from branch to branch. Somewhat less expressive, but still very significant, is the version which others extract from the original word,-" How long limp ye upon two hams ? "—alluding to the alternate movements of the body— now on one side and then on the other-of a lame man in his walk. -Kitto's Daily Bible Illustrations.

Those who "halt between two opinions," in the matter of religion, are like travellers who halt in indecision at cross-roads, with tempest and the night hurrying up behind them; like a railway pointsman, who hesitates which way to move the points whilst a train is rapidly approaching; like a pilot, who doubts what to do with the helm when the ship is driving before the wind through a dangerous channel; like a cragsman, who has quitted hold on the rope by which he has let himself down from the overhanging brow of the cliff to the eagle's nest, and hesitates to spring and seize the rope in its rapidly diminishing oscillations.-Union Magazine.