it is the fashion for ladies to smoke here-not cigars, but cigarettes, highly perfumed, with a gold mouthpiece. At the top window of all is an old man with a long white beard; and you pant for breath, when you think how much breath it must have cost him to get up there. And now I think I have nothing more to tell you, except that aunt and uncle love you both, and papa and mamma too. I must put in an extra bit of love and some kisses for your dear Lbecause to-morrow is your birthday, and I think it is the first birthday that I have not been able to give you a kiss. Uncle sends his love and many kisses; and I am, my dear little girls, and my dear great girl, B Your affectionate Aunt, A MOSES AND THE EGYPTIANS. I. The chief Butler's dream. Pharaoh's chief butler dreamt that a vine was before him, "and in the vine were three branches, and it was as though it budded, and her blossoms shot forth, and the clusters thereof brought forth ripe grapes.' A very accurate old historian, who had travelled through Egypt, and examined very carefully into all he saw, published a book, which is one of the oldest we have in the Greek language3. This writer tells us, that the Egyptians in his day drank a kind of beer, for that there were no vines in Egypt. All the unbelievers (who are a kind of men ready enough to believe any body and any thing that contradicts the Bible) were delighted at this: it proved, they said, that the book of Genesis was written by some later writer, who had never been in Egypt. Unluckily for them, a great deal has come to light about Egypt of late years: especially a great many 3 Published about 456 years before the birth of Christ. temples and tombs have been opened, in which are found walls covered with paintings, of which the colours are still quite fresh. These walls show us pictures of all the trades, and employments, and feasts of the Egyptians; of their houses, their battles, the prisoners they took, the nations that brought them tribute, and so on. On the walls and pillars of the temples and tombs, and in other places, are what the Egyptians used instead of writing; a sort of picture-language, in which letters are not used, but the figures of animals, and other signs. It was plain, by the regular way in which they stood, and from their being so often repeated, that they gave an account of the pictures and of the names of the kings painted. At last men have learnt to read this picture-language; and all that has been made out by the pictures and the picture-language agrees wonderfully with the books of Moses. It is proved by these pictures, that the good old Greek writer made a mistake about the vines, and that Moses did not. The pictures show that in Egypt, even in the most ancient times, the vine was cultivated and wine made. "In the grottoes of Beni Hassan are found representations of the culture of the vine, the vintage, the bearing away and the stripping off of the grapes, two kinds of winepresses, the one moved merely by the strength of the arms, the other by mechanical power; the putting up of the wines in bottles or jars, the carrying them into the cellar, the preparation of boiled wine":" and so on. The old Greek writer would have been very glad to be set right; I fear that the unbelievers will not. 4 Called Hieroglyphics. 5 Champollion. The Churchman's FEBRUARY, 1844. C IN THE CHALDEAN LANGUAGE.' IN Bibles that have the marginal references, you will find printed by the side of the eleventh verse of the tenth chapter of Jeremiah, 'in the Chaldean language:' that is to say, 'in the language spoken at Babylon. The meaning of this remark is this: the prophecies of Jeremiah were, of course, written in the Hebrew language; the language of the Jews:-but in the middle of one of them there occurs a passage in the language of the Babylonians. This seems very strange, but we shall find a good reason for it, and a reason, that teaches us a good lesson. When Jeremiah prophesied, the Jews were about to be carried away for their sins into the country of Babylon, where they were to remain seventy years, far away from Jerusalem, the city of David, from God's house, the glorious Temple, and its daily offices of sacrifice and worship. - In Babylon, they would be surrounded by idolaters; and these idolaters would mock the God of the Israelites, who had been too weak (they would say) to defend them and their country; and would praise their own Gods, who had given them the victory, and enabled them to D carry away the Jews captive, to be the slaves of the Babylonians. This and the constant example of idolatrous worship would be likely to lead many Jews astray they had already shown, again and again, how ready they were to fall into idolatry : and so God mercifully put an answer into their mouths, which every Jew was to use, when he was tempted by the people of the land to idolatry. "Thus shall ye say unto them" (this is the verse)— "The Gods that have not made the heavens and the earth, even they shall perish from the earth, and from under these heavens.". -This answer God taught the Jews, and He taught it them in the language of the people, who were about to carry them away captive. How mercifully did God act in this! When a Jew was tempted to fall away from his God, and go after the gods of the Babylonians, he would remember that an answer to the temptings he was subjected to, had been supplied to him by God!-This would be to him a strong call to believe in the foreknowledge of God (who had seen what was to happen, and guarded against one of its accompanying evils), and to trust in the goodness of God, who had thus protected him. It would also remind him of God's hatred of that idolatry, which He had thus warned him against, in so singular a manner. To feel this suppose that we had been conquered by the French in the last war, and numbers of us carried away as prisoners into France, at the time that the wickedness and madness of the nation was at its height in the time of the French Revolution, and the nation had thrown off the very name of Christianity. Suppose that we had then found in our Bibles a verse in French (which had always been in French from the time when that part of the Bible was written) saying, " The nation that denies the God that made heaven and earth, and His Christ who purchased us with His blood, even that nation shall never prosper"―a verse which all had known familiarly, and which all (whether they knew French or not) could at once use in reply to any one who should tempt them to deny God and Christ :- would not this be a great safeguard to many? a great proof of God's foreknowledge, and goodness, and power? Such was the proof of God's foreknowledge, goodness, and power, which the Jews would have in the verse of Jeremiah, which they had learnt to repeat in the foreign language it was written in. I want, however, to make another use of this verse: to show from it the importance of short statements, committed to memory-in other words, of Catechisms and Catechizing. When the Israelites were in great danger of being led away to worship idols, God armed them beforehand with an answer to any tempter, who might try to seduce them. He taught them this answer in a language they did not understand: but this form committed to memory, was sure to be of use to them afterwards. So the child is made to commit to memory a form of words which it does not fully understand. But when temptation comes in after life, these familiar words rise up with their warning sound, and save, or (if they do not save) condemn him, who learnt them as mere words. Suppose, for instance, a person to be told by some deceiver, that Baptism is but a form, and that forms cannot avail, till the heart is changed, and so on. "Why" (he may reply)" I was taught in my Church Catechism, that I was made by Baptism a member of Christ, the child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven. Surely these are not only real, but immense spiritual benefits; and that cannot be a form only, that bestows such benefits." He will feel (though he may not be able to express his feeling in words), that Baptism must be, not a mere form, but a great channel of grace, if it conveys to us such blessings as these ;-if it translates |