repeat the same action; and thus, in process of time, by the combined efforts of millions, are groups of islands built up in the midst of the fluctuating ocean, which eventually arrive at the climax of their purpose, by becoming the permanent abode of man himself.

Here is, indeed, a marvellous edifice, and an invisible architect,—a progress continually advancing, unaided and unnoticed by the world. But there is a more mysterious edifice, which has been in progress for six thousand years, an edifice permanent and beautiful, of which the world takes no account. Would you see it? It is but in fragments here. Its chief,-its foundationstone was long since cut out of the mountain, without hands. The living stones with which its walls are built, are hewn and fitted in the quarry :—all their irregularities being there smoothed away, all their rough places broken off, they are polished and rendered beautiful before they are removed to be placed in the walls of that living temple, of which Solomon's was but a feeble type. But what, ask you, is this noble temple? and where is the busy quarry out of which its stones are hewn? Reader, it is “God's building!" This world is the quarry ;—you are perhaps yourself, or, at all events, you may, if you will, become one of those living stones, built up a spiritual house. Have you ever been moulded under the warnings or invitations of the word of life? It is because the Master Builder has shed an effusion over the stone of your hard heart, and, thus prepared, it has yielded to the hand of the workman. Has conscience become quickened by the power of conviction, and rent off some darling sin? Then was a visible alteration produced in the surface of the stone. Has calamity broken away some inveterate evil, and left you suffering but ductile, and praying, “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" Then may you well believe that you are in the hands of the Workman, and that the process of fitting you for the spiritual building is going on in earnest. Take heed to it, watch for it, pray over it, lest the work

VOL. III.

L

be impeded, and the Master Builder cease to apply his forming hand to you. Muse much on that living temple:-Its foundation is laid in atoning blood,-blood shed for many;-and why not for you? Salvation it has for walls and bulwarks ;-and there all the saved shall find their appropriate place. But if the builders of the temple on Mount Zion would have rejected a stone, whose proportions or whose polish failed to suit the designed place, how much more will the Holy One reject from among his living stones, any one whose dispositions and whose delights are unsuited to the heavenly edifice! In Christ Jesus, himself being the chief corner-stone, is all the building fitly framed together, and groweth up unto an holy temple in the Lord; in whom all who love Him are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.

The work is silent, the world heeds it not; or if it hears, believes not in its reality; else, if its reality is forced upon its conviction, it puts forth impious hands to pluck it down. But the building grows apace. The eye of God is not withdrawn from his designed and glorious habitation. If each stone of that wondrous work is "living,”—each instinct with the conscious presence and approbation of the Deity,—each a temple for the Holy Spirit to inhabit, what must the grand united and completed temple be? Let not your heart die within you at the thought, as if you never could have an assigned place there. The scarcely living coral insect erects many a palace in the fathomless deep, because his Creator aids him, he applies his powers to that for which they are designed, and prospers;-and will not God the Redeemer prosper you, when you apply yourself to do that for which you were bought with a price, namely, to "glorify him in your body and in your spirit, which are God's?"

As little will a single Christian, persecuted it may be, or tempted, or at best" faint, yet pursuing," give us a clear idea of the church triumphant, as a single cornice

or pillar will represent the Vatican, or the labour of a single coralline enable us to form an idea of the far-extending submarine labours of a colony of these animalcules. Examine the coral insects alone, and suppose each individual to act independently of the rest, and they will appear as nothing. Imagine them departing from their coral cradle, and diverging to right and left at the bottom of the deep, they might toil there till the world had become hoary, they might spread themselves over the sands and rocks, as a carpet of moss is extended over the bosom of a mountain; but they would not ascend to the surface of the waters; they would form no islands. Or suppose them building each alone, or in feeble communities, their paltry edifices would be snapt in sunder by every billow, and they dispersed, to form other and still feebler settlements in other localities.

This forms too correct a representation of the church militant. Instead of being joined in one spirit to our head, we are subdivided, estranged, imbittered, enfeebled. Instead of having the simple design, which we follow with singleness of heart, to strive for the extension of the edifice, until the whole world produce living stones, we are distracted by some inferior design, which we place foremost, because it is our own, or of our own contriving. Instead of looking steadfastly to Him who is the cornerstone, and aiming to extend His glory to the ends of the earth, our efforts are cramped, and our strength paralyzed by upholding some Apollos or Cephas, who fills so large a section of our vision, as almost to exclude the view of the Redeemer.

Would that men aimed at the simplicity of purpose, and power of combination, which produce such amazing results in the insignificant coralline. Then how swiftly would that house not made with hands be completed. Then how many, who are now left unhewn in the quarry, would come forth as living stones. Then how soon would that glorious consummation be achieved, on which

the eye of the Master Builder is set, and "the headstone of the building be brought forth with shoutings of grace, grace unto it."

M. G. L. D.

SIXTH WEEK-MONDAY.

INSECT TRANSFORMATIONS.-THEIR LARVA STATE.

THE first state in which an insect appears when it is separated from the egg, is that of a caterpillar or grub, or of a maggot or worm, the former being furnished with feet, and the latter not. Both are by naturalists called larvæ. I shall not enter into any scientific details with regard to the nature of the animal in this state, but shall confine myself to the mention of one or two interesting particulars.

With regard to the general appearance of the common caterpillar tribe, it is not easy to give a description which will answer them all. One of the most conspicuous of the class is thus graphically portrayed by old Isaac Walton. "The very colours of caterpillars, as one has observed, are elegant and beautiful. I shall, for a taste of the rest, describe one of them, which I will sometime the next month show you feeding on the willow-tree, and you shall find him punctually to answer this very description; his lips and mouth somewhat yellow; eyes black as jet; his forehead purple; his feet and hinder parts green; his tail two-forked and black; the whole body stained with a kind of red spots, which run along the neck and shoulder blade, not unlike the form of St Andrew's cross, or the letter X, made cross-wise, and a white line drawn down his back to his tail; all which adds much beauty to his whole body."—" And it is to me observable," this pleasing writer continues,

* The press-moth.

his

"that at a fixed age this caterpillar gives over to eat, and towards winter comes to be covered over with a strange shell or crust, called an aurelia, and so lives a kind of dead life, without eating all the winter. And as others of several kinds turn to be several kinds of flies and vermin the spring following, so this caterpillar then turns to be a painted butterfly."

"

But there is another kind of larva, called a watergrub, whose history is still more remarkable. One species is the produce of the gnat, the extraordinary instinct of which, in constructing a boat of its eggs, I have elsewhere described. These eggs fall to the bottom of the water, where they remain till they are hatched. They then become grubs, whose element is the water. Their organs for breathing, which are very singular, are not situated in the head, as in the higher species of animals, nor in the sides, as in caterpillars, but in the tail. A tube, for the purpose of respiration, goes off from the terminal ring of the body at an angle. Its main buoys are this tube and its tail, both of which end in a sort of funnel, composed of hairs, in form of a star, anointed with oil, so as to repel the water. It is thus suspended with its tail upward, so as to reach the surface, and its head constantly immersed to the extent of its body in the water, where doubtless it procures its supplies of nourishment. If the oil be removed from these hairs, the grub will sink to the bottom. “I have, on these occasions," says Swammerdam, "observed it put its tail in its mouth, and afterward draw it back, as a water-fowl will draw its feathers through its bill to prepare them for resisting water."+ The air, which enters into several openings in the breathing tube, passes onwards to two lateral windpipes, very similar to those of caterpillars. When it wishes to descend to the bottom of the water, it folds up the hairs of the funnel; but by means of its oil retains at their

* Walton's Angler, chap. v.

"Spring," p. 129.

Biblia Naturæ, Part 1st, p. 154.