THE LITTLE ENQUIRER; a Catechism of Bible Doctrines in Verse, with Proofs from Scripture. Lon don: Houlston and Stoneman. This is a very good effort to throw into a pleasing form the grand truths of salvation. A sort of dialogue is supposed to be carried on between a teacher and her charge, in which much truth is brought out in a simple shape. In infant schools, or families where there are little children, the work will be useful; and as its price is only a penny, can be easily obtained, to give an agreeable variety to the more dry and prosy catechisms the little people learn. To give an idea of its style and sentiment, we extract a part of the replies in reference to the seeking of salvation: CHILD. Suppose I try to weep and pray, Will not God's anger turn away? TEACHER. He'll never love you for your prayers, Nor save you just for shedding tears. Tears cannot wash away your sin; Prayers cannot make you pure within. But if you go to Christ in prayer, With all your sins, just as you are, He'll wash you in his precious blood, And give you perfect "peace with God." SENIOR CLASS TICKETS, No. 1. Edinburgh: Gall and Inglis. London: Houlston and Stoneman. Very useful in bible classes, and a good thought well carried out in many respects. Each ticket has a text of scripture printed in full, with some points named under, which it is desirable to prove. One of the tickets (there are fifty-two in all) is given to every member of the class each sabbath, and they are required to bring, marked on the back, the proofs, &c., called for. The plan will be found, we think, to work well; and even where the teacher does not use exactly the points on the ticket, may assist in giving a useful exercise to his class. We copy one of the tickets as a specimen. 6. Great High Priest.-Heb. iv. 14. Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. Show what a priest is. What is a high priest? What sacrifice did Jesus offer? Where and how did he offer it? What is the worth of his sacrifice? Where is he now? What does he in heaven as a high priest? Show our encouragement to per severe. MISSIONARY STORIES from the Two good little books for our South Sea Islands; Original and Selected. No. 203. juvenile missionary friends; they exhibit much improvement on the first of the series noticed LIFE OF MAKEA, Chief of Raratonga. Chapter of Varieties. AN EASTERN STORY. A man was travelling in Syria, leading his camel by the bridle. Suddenly the animal is seized with a panic of fear; he raises himself with impetuosity, foams and bounds in a manner so horrible, that his master abandons him in anguish, and tries to save himself. He perceives at a distance from the road a deep stream, and as he still heard the frightful neighings of the camel, he sought a refuge there, and fell over a precipice. But a shrub held him up. He clung to it with both hands, and cast on every side his anxious eyes. Above him is the terrible camel, of which he does not lose sight for a moment; in the abyss below is a dragon, who opens his monstrous jaws, and seems waiting to devour him. At the side of him he sees two mice, one white and the other black, who gnaw in turns at the root of the shrub which serves him for a support. The unfortunate man remains there, frozen with terror, and seeing no retreat, no means of safety. Suddenly, on a little branch of a shrub he discovers some fruit. At that moment he ceases to observe the rage of the camel, the jaws of the dragon, and the frightful activity of the mice. He reaches out his hand toward the fruit; he gathers it; and in the sweet taste, forgets his fears and his dangers. Do you ask, who is this madman, who can forget so quickly a mortal peril? That man is thyself. The dragon of the stream is the ever open abyss of death; the camel represents the sorrows of life; the two mice who are gnawing at the root of the shrub are day and night; and in this situation the fruit of pleasure attracts you. You forget the anxieties of life, the threatenings of death, the rapid succession of day and night, to seek the plant of voluptuousness on the borders of the tomb. WHY DON'T THEY GET READY? "Mamma," said a little child, "my Sunday school teacher tells me that this world is only a place in which God lets us live a while that we may prepare for a better world. But, mother, I do not see anybody preparing. I see you are preparing to go into the country, and aunt Eliza is preparing to go there; why don't they try to get ready?" DIE IN YOUR SINS. Die in your sins-that is, in their guilt. Oh! it is better to die an outcast-to die in rags-to die in a ditch-to die in a dungeon-to die of the plague a thousand times better die in all the concentrated agonies of every human death, than to die in our sins. For if we die in our sins, we shall rise from our graves in our sins, and stand before the judgment seat of Christ in our sins. If we die in our sins, our sins will be shrouded with us in our coffins and carried with us to the cemetery, and interred | with us, and rise with us at the sound of the archangel's trump, and then we shall be thrust down to hell with them, to dwell with them for ever and ever. True believers send their sins to the grave before they go themselves. They are dead to sin, while they live. But the sins of unbelievers go into the grave with them, and follow after them, and gather upon them, and lie upon them to all eternity. Rejoice, then, fellow-sinner, this is not the day of judgment, but the day of mercy. Now Jesus yearns over you to do you good. He waits to be gracious. Fly to him. He came seek and save that which was lost." "And him that cometh unto me, I will in no wise cast out."-N. 0. Presbyterian. THE SOURCE OF HAPPINESS. 66 to You might wear a crown, but a guilty conscience would line it with thorns; you might roll in wealth, but an accusing conscience would haunt you like a demon; you may launch into the pleasures of the world, but conscience will register every deed, and foretell a day of reckoning. Milton has put the deepest philosophy into the mouth of the arch-fiend, when he exclaims- "The mind is its own place, and of itself hell." Can make a hell of heaven-a heaven of We all seem rather to inhabit ourselves, than dwell anywhere else. The world within is our home and constant abode. Our thoughts are our mansion, our food, our wealth, our inheritance. Everything is viewed through the medium of thought. Here, the present world, the world to come, ourselves, our friends, our foes, and even the Deity are reflected, surveyed, and contemplated; and hence to have peace within is heaven. When all is tranquil around, the mind may be like the troubled sea; and, on the contrary, the last thunder may roar, the earth quake, and the heavens dissolve and melt with fervent heat, and yet the soul, far from feeling the least alarm, may exult and sing. Nor need we wait for our happiness till death has unlocked the portals of bliss. Why not be happy now? To walk by faith, and serve our generation according to the will of God, will enable us to realise no small amount of blessedness.-Par sons. THE SABBATH. Sole relic of an innocence which is no more; and still the sacrament of benison and holiness which sin cannot despoil! The only garland rescued from Paradise, faded, but still beautiful and redolent, with no thorn of the after curse and of the blighted world!-R. W. Hamilton. "As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God."-Psalm xlii. 1. THE Hart, so often and so elegantly referred to in Scripture, is an animal of the deer kind, one of the most beautiful order of animals with which we are acquainted. Dr. Shaw thinks that the name in Hebrew may be taken to include all the species of the deer kind, whether they are distinguished by round horns, as the stag; by flat ones, as the fallow deer; or by the smallness of the branches, as the roe. However this may be, the allusions of many of the poetical parts of Scripture to apparently one of the tribe of peculiar beauty, elegance, and fleetness, have made commentators generally fix on the Antelope Arabica, the most lovely of all the species, as that probably referred to, and of which an engraving is given above. This animal may be called the BIBLE CLASS MAGAZINE.] [OCTOBER, 1849. L gazelle of the Arabians, and when seen scampering over its own open wilds, at once reminds the looker-on of many fine and touching allusions of Holy Writ. It is naturally of a dry and arid constitution, and lives amidst plains often parched by the summer heat, subjecting it to extreme suffering at times from thirst. It is of a buff or dun colour; exceedingly timid; very swift of foot; and delighting in the solitudes far removed from man, where it may feed unmolested and at its ease. The great beauty of its skin, as well as the delicious character of its flesh, and valuable uses of its horns, make it an object of pursuit with the Arabian hunter, forcing it to keep close to its favourite retreats, and making it extremely shy whenever attempted to be approached. A few of the scripture allusions to it will perhaps furnish the best view that we can give of its character and habits, while the explanations we may offer will help to clear up some of the most beautiful of Bible images. Our motto refers to its "panting after the water brooks." In the summer heat, when brooks and springs dry up, the hart, living amid the parched plains of Arabia, may be easily supposed to pant for the refreshing stream; but the allusion seems to refer rather to the pursued and hunted hart, flying before his pursuers, and eagerly desiring the deep and cooling river, into which he may plunge, and so at once quench his thirst, cool his burning veins, and renew and invigorate his strength. The tired, parched spirit of the psalmist, hunted like the timid hart, flying for refuge it knows not where, and almost completely exhausted by thirst, fatigue, and heat, longs to find its God, as the refuge from each fell pursuer, the fountain at which to refresh itself, the river of joy in which to bathe, and from whence to come with renovated strength. In Habakkuk iii. 19, there is a beautiful allusion to the hart: "The Lord Jehovah is my strength; he will make my feet like hinds' feet; he will cause me to tread again on my own hills." The same figure, and almost the same words, are employed in Psalm xviii. 33. Here is a double allusion, referring not only to its proverbial swiftness, but to the ease and safety with which it stands and leaps in high and dangerous places, upon the mountains and amidst the rocks; and to the solidity and hardness of its hoofs, which Virgil compares to brass, and by which it could the better tread the rocky hills with ease. The twenty |