store for his supper. The rest of the evening is his own. If it is summer he can work in his garden, or take his little ones a stroll out; if it is winter he sits by his fire, and can read his Bible, and hear his little ones say their prayers. It may be that his supper has been only bread and cheese, and that his dinner was the same; but is not his lot to be envied when compared with the Russian peasant? Moreover, if when we follow an English labourer home we find that home uncomfortable, the cupboard empty, the children crying, the mother scolding, are we not sure also to find that the fault is in themselves, and not in their service? Some vicious habit, some sinful indulgence, some evil passion is at work, and has caused the mischief.

Let me persuade you, then, my neighbours, when you are tempted to murmur and complain of your scanty fare, and of the hardships of a labourer's life, to think of these stories of the poor Russians, and to bless God for having made you to differ so greatly and so happily from them. And let me persuade you to consider also whether the troubles, which press so heavily upon you, do not arise from your want of Christian principles, the very same want that is the cause of the misery in Russia. Are you leading a pure and holy life? striving to serve God rather than man? trusting in his fatherly care, and obeying Him in all things? If not, how can you expect his blessing? and without his blessing how can you be happy?

"Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God." (Ps. cxlvi. 5.) E. A.

MOUNT CARMEL.

THIS is the rocky mountain from which Elijah saw a cloud rising out of the sea, “like a man's hand" (1 Kings xviii. 42—44), when God was about to send the fertilizing rain, which had been so long withheld in judgment upon the land. Indeed the whole of that interesting chapter of Holy Scripture is connected with this place; for it was to Mount Carmel that all the priests of Baal were gathered together to sacrifice to their false god,

when Elijah's sacrifice to the true God was consumed by fire from heaven. Every attentive reader of the Bible, or even those who listen to the Sunday Lessons in church, will remember the remarkable circumstances of that event. Elijah challenged the priests of Baal to come together, and show who was the true God that the Israelites should serve. He exhorted all Israel no longer to "halt between two opinions, and if Baal was God to follow him, but if the Lord was God to follow Him." We seem to see at this mountain now before us a great concourse of the people assembling together, the priests, the nobles, and the deluded worshippers of Baal, pouring into one place, which some say is now to be seen near the sea, and is a large cave in the rock. We read the account of all that occurred, in the 18th chapter of 1 Kings, with considerably more interest when looking at an exact representation of the scene. In the valley under the hill side still flows the brook Kishon, where Elijah ordered all the prophets of Baal to be slain, and whose waters must once have been red with blood. It was the commandment of God that idolaters should be destroyed out of Israel; and they were, no doubt, taken to Kishon in order that the stain of so great a slaughter might be washed away, and the land become sooner purified. Directly the evil stain of this idolatry was removed, Elijah called upon the king to make haste and return; "for there is a sound of abundance of rain." God was graciously pleased immediately to withdraw the curse, which had rested on the country for three years and six months, as soon as they became free from the open guilt of idolatry. Elijah confidently ascended the mountain, bent himself in humble prayer to God, and ordered his servant to look to the edge of the sea; the servant, after having looked several times in vain, as if on purpose that he might learn to wait God's time, returned with the message that he saw a little cloud, like a man's hand, rising out of the sea. This was the signal Elijah recognized of God's willingness to answer prayer; and he sent to Ahab, advising him to get his chariot ready to go back to his palace, lest the rain should stop him-the

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rain which had not been seen in Israel for three long years and a half.

Surely there was here enough warning and instruction to keep the backsliding nation from ever falling into idolatry again; but nothing could then suffice to make them wise. They could not but see God's hand manifested here, controlling the clouds of heaven; and they could not but see the utter weakness and nothingness of Baal. How they could ever again turn to worship so senseless an idol, can only be accounted for by the love of sin which is natural to man's heart. We have always thought it is easy to discern the cause why false gods have been so commonly preferred to the true; it was because the idol does not forbid the sins which man loves to commit, but rather is supposed to sanction and approve iniquity; and because their worship too generally consists in the very indulgence of those evil passions which true religion condemns.

THE NEW TESTAMENT.

THE Old Testament was the Jew's Bible; but do not mistake and call the New Testament the Christian's Bible; for the whole Word of God, the Old as well as the New Testament, is the Christian's Bible. The Christian has more of God's Word than the Jew had; yet be not tempted to think the Old Testament less precious, less holy, or less the Word of God than the New. When the Saviour said, "Search the Scriptures'," he meant the Old Testament; for none of the New was written until long after he had ascended up to heaven. St. Paul meant the Old Testament, when he said, that Timothy had, from a child, known the Scriptures, which were able to make him wise unto salvation; and that all Scripture was given by inspiration of God, and was profitable', for when Timothy was a child, none of the New Testament had yet been written. St. Peter meant both, when he said, that St. Paul had written things which the unlearned and unstable wrested (or twisted) to their

1 John v. 39.

2 2 Tim. iii. 15, 16.

own destruction, as they did also the other Scriptures, or the Old Testament3. Both the New and Old Testaments are that Word of God which holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

The New Testament was written in the Greek language, which the Jews, Romans, and people of the East, generally understood, besides their own tongue. Some have thought that St. Matthew wrote another copy of his Gospel also in the Hebrew language. St. Matthew's Gospel was the first written of the New Testament books; and perhaps only a few years after our Lord's ascension, whilst the other apostles were scattered about the world preaching salvation. Next came the Epistles to the Thessalonians and the Galatians, about twenty years after Christ. Within a dozen years more, all the other books (except those of St. John) were written, one or other almost every year. Soon after, St. Paul, St. Peter, and most of the apostles, were slain for Christ's sake: and next, forty years after the Saviour's death, Jerusalem was overthrown and burnt by the Romans, as he had foretold. Just about that time St. John wrote his Epistles; and nearly thirty years after, when he was a very aged man, he wrote his Gospel and the Revela

tion.

The books of the New Testament were not written in one place, but different apostles wrote a Gospel or an Epistle for different Churches, and sent or gave them. Each of the Churches, for whom a holy Apostle or Evangelist had so written a book, kept it safely as God's precious message by that Apostle whom they knew to be speaking by the Holy Ghost. Different Churches got copies from each other of their Gospels or Epistles; and after St. John, the last of the Apostles, was dead, they gradually gathered them into two volumes or rolls: the first had the Gospels and Acts, and was called The Gospels, or The Evangel, another word for gospel; and the second had all the rest of the New Testament, and was called The Apostles, or The Epistles. Some Churches bound them in six, some in eight volumes, but generally

32 Peter i. 21; iii. 15, 16.

4 Luke xix. 41-46.