ously received. The insufficiency of our own righteousness; the importance of faith in the atoning sacrifice, and of the influences of the sanctifying Spirit; the need of being saved and the way to be saved-as held and taught by the best expounders of the apostolic testimony, with every other related truth-were exhibited and enforced, with such power, richness, and fervor, as, by God's blessing, materially to affect the mind and heart of our Christian enquirer,-to give fulness to his knowledge and impulse to his piety.

"The last and perfecting event, that which gave fixedness and maturity to Sir Fowell Buxton's religion,-which brought it out as life in the experience, as well as light and knowledge in the intellect, was an alarming illness with which he was visited in 1813.

"When Sir Fowell Buxton first felt himself unwell, he actually 'prayed that he might have a dangerous illness, provided that illness might bring him nearer to God.' Such a prayer partakes, perhaps, of infirmity, though God may overlook that in his condescension to our weakness. We ought 'to draw nigh to God' without being forced to it, and without waiting to be driven. The mercies of God should lead us to repentance. The prayer, however was heard in both its parts-its petition and its proviso. He had the illness, imminently dangerous,—and he was drawn nigher to God;-drawn, indeed, so nigh, so lovingly, that he never wished to leave his side, and never wandered more! When the disorder assumed an alarming appearance, he spent nearly an hour in most fervent prayer. He had been perplexed with doubts-his prayer was, to have them removed. The next day he found them not only entirely removed, but replaced by a certain degree of conviction totally different from anything he had before experienced. 'It would be difficult to express,' he says, 'the satisfaction and joy which I derived from this alteration. 'Now know I that my Redeemer liveth,' was the sentiment uppermost in my mind, and in the merits of that Redeemer I felt a confidence that made me look on the prospect of death with perfect indifference. No one action of my life presented itself with any sort of consolation. I knew that by myself I stood justly condemned; but I felt released from the penalties of sin by the blood of our sacrifice. In Him was all my trust.'

P

"Such was the culmination of Sir Fowell Buxton's religious life. It was now, as an inward principle, established and fixed; as a progressive awakening, it had come to 'open vision;'-as the struggling progress of the soul towards God, it had advanced 'even to his seat;'-as an experience, subjectively, of all that he had been for years learning to understand, it was Christ formed in his heart the hope of glory'-oneness, incorporation, vital and conscious union with the Lord. From this time the life that he lived in the flesh, he lived by the faith of the Son of God, who loved him and gave himself for him.""

JOURNEYINGS OF THE ISRAELITES.
(From "Scripture Sites and Scenes.")

ON comparing the Book of Exodus with the Book of Numbers, we see that Moses, after leaving the presence of Pharaoh, whom he had been to, perhaps in Memphis, returned to the Israelites at RAMESES, (Exod. xii. 37. Numb. xxxiii. 3.) one of the towns in which they were allowed to dwell, in which we recognise Heliopolis, from the two names having the same meaning-The City of the Sun.

From Rameses the Israelites hastily departed, and marched to SUCCOTH, (Numb. xxxiii. 5.) which we clearly recognise in Scenæ, from these two names again having the same meaning, The Tents. This is a distance of about fourteen miles. At Succoth they spent their first night; and no doubt their countrymen who dwelt there joined them in their flight.

From Succoth they next day marched twenty-four miles, passing through a village which we only know by its Latin name, Vicus Judæorum, and encamped at ETHAM, (Exod. xiii. 20. Numb. xxxiii. 6.) or Boutham, at the edge of the Desert, which can only be the Thoum of the Roman Itinerary. Thoum was a place of some size, named after the Egyptian god Athom; and though some Jews may have dwelt there, we must suppose that this large body of now hostile people rather encamped in the neighbourhood than entered the gates.

At Etham the Israelites took the right-hand road, and turned towards HAHIROTH, (Exod. xiv. 2. Numb. xxxiii. 7.) which is certainly Heroopolis, because each has given its name to the

Gulf of Suez, which, by the Greek geographers, is called the Bay of Heroopolis, and by the Hebrew writers Pi-hahiroth, or the Bay of Hahiroth. They did not go to the city of Hahiroth, which stands on the rising ground on the left of the valley; nor did they go straight forward to Baal-zephon, or Serapium, which stands between the Upper and Lower Lakes, and was the natural way out of Egypt; but they turned to the right, and encamped by the water-side, between Migdol, the Tower, and the sea, over against Baal-zephon. It was the march in this direction which seemed the fatal move-which made the Egyptians say, "They are entangled in the land: the Desert hath shut them in." It was at this encampment, also, that they were overtaken by the Egyptian chariots in advance of the rest of the army.

From this encampment, which may have been fifteen miles to the south of Hahiroth, and twenty-five to the north of Clysma, the Israelites were forced hastily to retreat; and they marched southward, murmuring against their leader and against their God, because they had not been left to serve the Egyptians rather than be brought out to die in the desert. Had the Bitter Lake been separated from the Bay of Heroopolis as it is now, they would have been in no such fear; they might have marched near where Ptolemy's town of Arsinoe was afterwards built, or where the Roman town of Clysma stood, or where Suez now stands, each of which, in its turn, has been left by the waters of the Red Sea; but they saw no way of escape, and they marched all the fourth day southward, having the sea on one side and the low desert hills on the other. By night they reached the place where Clysma was afterwards built; and there to their surprise, they saw a deliverance opened to them: "Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided." For an hour or two the waters had the same boundaries as they have now. The Israelites walked over the bed of the sea on dry ground, with the water on their right hand and on the left. The Egyptian chariots followed in the morning; but the wind fell, perhaps the tide rose, and the waves returned to the destruction of the pursuers.

Since that time the shifting sands of the desert have banked back the waters of the bay, and left that remarkable spot always

dry; and every caravan from Cairo to Mecca passes over the spot where the Egyptian army was drowned. "And the Lord," says Isaiah, (chap. xi. 15, 16.) shall “utterly destroy the tongue of the Egyptian sea; and there shall be a highway; like as it was to Israel in the day that he came up out of the land of Egypt." The sands have also choked up the two canals, on one of which Christian pilgrims had sailed even in the eighth century, in their way to the Holy Land, and by both of which the country was irrigated. The Land of Goshen, which the Israelites watered laboriously, like a garden, by means of wells and buckets, is again become a desert. By the sands also the Pelusiac branch of the river has been very much lessened; the ruins of the great towns of Bubastis and Pelusium can no longer be reached by vessels from the sea; and the waters of the Nile, which now flow in fewer and deeper channels, can no longer be forded between Memphis and Heliopolis.

Suppose the Israelites their great deliverance effected—to have landed on the shores of the Arabian Peninsula. Here the new and untried perils of their situation would by degrees daunt and appal their spirits. Accustomed to the verdure of Egypt, the wide expanse of burning sand over which they were painfully toiling, must have been equally fatiguing and fearful. In tracing their march, the desert springs and oases will naturally be our guide; and thus we may feel the utmost confidence that the group of palm trees traditionally called Ayûn Musa, the "wells of Moses," was the first spot where they would take in a scanty supply of water. The district they first traversed, from the spot of the passage till they reached Marah is called the "Desert of Shur," or Etham, a denomination by some confined to this neighbourhood, but by Dr. Lepsius extended as far as Ras Zelime. It is not to be supposed that so great a body of people as the fugitive Jews followed exactly the same track; and thus some might fetch water from the wells of Mabuk and Naba, some distance to the north; but the main body, keeping near the sea, would cross the different "wadies," or depressions in the level which here intersect the desert, at the extremity of one of which, Wady Waradan, but not in the road, is the well, Abu Suweirah, near which, part of the host would probably encamp. To the low sandy plain succeeds at length the welcome relief of

a range of limestone hills; and here, at about sixteen and a half hours' camel's march, or thirty-three miles, consequently a good three days' journey for so slow-moving a body, occurs the fountain Howarah, generally admitted to be identical with MARAH. (Exod. xv. 23. Numb. xxxiii. 8.) In the wilderness of Shur they went out three days and found no water; (i. e. on the main track) and when they came to Marah, "they could not drink of the waters of Marah, for they were bitter; therefore the name of it was called Marah," As regards correspondence of position, Howara is suitable enough for Marah; and we must bear in mind that it would be the first spring, save Suweirah, reached by the wanderers, and where they would of course halt in their extremity before proceeding further. The basin of water about two feet deep and six or eight feet in diameter, is sunk in the hollow of a large whitish mound, formed in the course of time by the gradual deposition of the spring. A few bushes are scattered around, especially the ghurked, bearing small acid and refreshing berries, which are ripe in June; by the admixture of these, some travellers have supposed that the salt bitterness of the water was corrected; but such a process is now unknown to the Arabs and the language of the sacred narrative seems rather to indicate, though it does not indeed expressly affirm, a miracle. There is a curious discrepancy as to the actual taste of the water of this fountain at the present day. Some travellers, without tasting it, have on hearsay, declared it to be so bitter that even camels would not drink of it; others having made the experiment have pronounced it too bitter to drink. Dr. Robinson says, "Its taste is unpleasant, saltish, and somewhat bitter; the Arabs, however, pronounced it bitter, and consider it as the worst water in all these regions; yet when pinched they drink of it, and our camels also drank freely." Suffering severely from thirst, the writer was induced to try it, and even to drink copiously of it, without being able to perceive in it any peculiar nauseousness or bitterness, as compared with Ayûn Musa, or similar desert springs. It is not impossible that the taste may vary under certain circumstances. Dr. Olin reports that Mr. Leider, of Cairo, had discovered another bitter spring, not far hence, but not in the direct track.

At a short distance beyond Howarah, the track descends to