Jabez is thus conspicuous, like Jonadab, among his brethren, for power, honour, and greatness, he may be taken as a type of the Kenites of those times, in the matter of piety, love to God, and earnest religious feeling. No doubt it was a very remarkable fulfilment of the covenant with Hobab, that so many of his seed should be exalted into an honourable and important position in the land; but it was very much more so that they who by birthright were aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and under a sentence of exclusion from spiritual privileges, should to such a general extent be made partakers of the grace of God. That this was to a general extent, shall appear in the next section. treason against the religion and policy of the kingdom, in order that his vineyard might be taken from him. Lest we be driven from the country and from the ordinances of the Lord, let us at once renounce everything. Let them have our vineyards and our houses. It is better to have the God of Israel as our portion, and to have the salvation of our souls, than to enjoy these worldly advantages. And that no excuse whatever be afforded to this wicked nation to cast us out, let us abstain from wine and everything of the kind, lest any one, when intoxicated, should offend them, and so arouse their anger against us all. Let us give no reason for them to say of any of us, 'ye 5. At the darkest time of Israel's have blasphemed God and the King. history, when Ahab and Jezebel were Thus would Jonadab address them; and laying waste the Lord's heritage, there lay we see, from the scene in Jeremiah, how hid among the people a leaven of godly carefully and unmurmuringly the vow and devoted men,-"the seven thousand." had been kept. The personal character (1 Kings xix. 18.) There is reason for of Jonadab appears very clearly in his believing that many of these seven thou- interview with Jehu. Jehu said to him, sand, if not all of them, were Kenites. "Is thy heart as my heart?" He was By comparing 1 Chron. ii. 55; 2 Kings manifesting zeal for the Lord of Hosts. x. 15; Jer. xxxv.; 1 Kings xxi. 1-16, To all appearance his conduct was promptwe obtain an exhibition of devoted piety, ed by a spirit of true godliness. And and a firm maintenance of religious though we know that Jehu was a selfprinciple, which has seldom found a deluded, or a hypocritical man, Jonadab parallel. At the time when Naboth lost did not know that. Hence, when he said, his life, and his vineyard was wrested in reply to the question, * "It is," we see from his family by a base monarch, Jonadab the son of Rechab, a descendant of Hobab, rises in the dark firmament like a constellation of light -spiritual light. He persuades and enjoins all the Kenites to give up their possessions, vineyards, houses, lands (Jeremiah xxxv.), and to abstain from wine and strong drink, in order that " they might dwell long in the land wherein they were strangers. Apart altogether from the personal character of this man, we see at once that no motive but a strong religious one could lead him to enjoin, and his people so readily to comply with, this giving up of all earthly advantages and possessions. It is as if he had called them around him, and said, "You see how these covetous Israelites are acting. Our brother Naboth has been accused of * From the terms of the indictment, Naboth can hardly be supposed to be an Israelite. Jezebel's intention seems to have been, to take advantage of something peculiar about him, in order to give a colouring of truth to her charge. If Naboth belong to another people than Israel, there will be a plausibility about the accusation. And from the peculiar vow which Jonadab laid his people under, at the time, it is probable that Naboth was a Kenite. the very soul of Jonadab laid bare. He had a zeal and a love for the Lord of Hosts which Jehu knew nothing of—a zeal which led him to renounce everything that he might be "set as a seal upon Jehovah's heart." (Song viii. 6.) Thus do we see the religion of the God of Israel passing away from a wicked nation, whose birthright it was, but who despised and renounced it, and becoming the possession of Hobab's descendants, who clave to the Lord with their whole heart. It should be observed, from the places referred to in this section, that Jonadab occupied a position of great importance in the country. Jehu desired his friendship and co-operation, knowing that his opposition would counteract, in a great measure, his political designs, and that his countenance would give a religious aspect to his operations, greater than they would otherwise possess. In this the temporal element of that covenant with Hobab is presented. We do not certainly know how the Kenites occupied themselves afterwards. The opinion of the Rabbins (from 1 Chron. ii. 55) is that they were scribes, and generally of a learned profession. As regards the spiritual element, we have now evidence to see how faithful our God is. All was of grace. The religious principle which moulded and pervaded these men was of the operation of God. Strong must have been the love of that man's heart to the souls of his people, and to the service of God, which would prompt him to urge a universal sacrifice of all their worldly possessions and comfort. Equally powerful must have been the religious principle in them to act so; and calm, deliberate, pure, must that Christian integrity have been which enabled them to maintain such a course of life for generations running. This is love to God, to His word, to His ordinances. This is Rechabitism, and not that paltry thing which has been fondly called so. It is a giving up of everything "for Christ's sake and the Gospel's." Do we not hear the echo of those words now floating athwart the distance?" It shall be, if thou go with us, yea it shall be, that what goodness the Lord shall do unto us, the same will He do unto thee." 6. "Jeremiah said unto the house of the Rechabites, Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, Jonadab, the son of Rechab, shall not want a man to stand before me for ever." Let us carry our minds back to the interesting scene in Numbers x. 29-32; let us trace the covenant's development as the Scripture history rolls on, and can we doubt for a moment whether this promise in Jeremiah shall be literally fulfilled? We feel irresistibly convinced that some incident in God's providence shall yet arise to show all men that it is so. Evidently in the fulfilling of prophecy the descendants of Hobab shall yet be brought before the view of the Church, and honoured there. Dr. Wolff, in his Journal, tells us that he met two men who took his Hebrew Bible, and pointed out some of the passages to which we have referred, and said, "Jonadab was our father, and Hobab was our father; and there are many thousands of us living" in a district of country, to which they pointed. The Kenites still live there. We would expect so much from the closing words of the thirty-fifth of Jeremiah. And we may look for more special notice being providentially directed to them before long. We may be permitted to suggest one reflection before closing. The writers of Scripture had one great task to fulfil. Their minds were wholly taken up with the history of God's procedure among their own people. Yet here we have incidental allusions of a most natural kind, which, when placed together, give the headings of a most interesting historya history which we would expect to follow that transaction between Moses and his father-in-law. Yet no one can imagine that the different writers of the Bible were at all conscious of the history which God was carrying on in their incidental allusions. A clearer instance of one great mind pervading and superintending these writers we cannot conceive of. cannot be deceived in gathering an argument from this matter, which all the sophistry of Rationalistic men cannot overthrow, nor even gainsay. And there are many such undesigned arguments for the divinity of the Bible. Lessons by the Way. SPARKS FROM "THE LAMP AND THE LANTERN."* WHEN you cast your eye over this British | Commonwealth, and over the equally numerous Transatlantic Republic, when you recal the lesser companies of believers in France, Italy, Switzerland, the goodly bands in Prussia and Holland, and the Mission Churches of Polynesia, India, and Africa; when you think what all the Bible has been to you; when you think of the Saviour "The Lamp and the Lantern; or, Lights for the Tent and the Traveller." By James Hamilton, D.D. London: Nisbet and Co. VOL. V. And we W. whom it has revealed, of the earthly home it has gladdened, and the bright hereafter which it has opened and ensured; and when you further consider, that all which your Bible has been to you is as nothing compared with what it has been to more vivid believers; to those not only for whom, but in whom Christ lives; to whom all its promises are yea and Amen;" to whom its heaven is not a mere futurity commencing by and by, but a blessed present, which can never cease; when you consider all this, you will allow that it would be a less Q calamity which would withdraw the sun from the firmament, or the oxygen from the atmosphere, than that which would rob regenerate humanity of the vital air and cheering light of revelation. * * Countless instances might be quoted where, to every range of intellect, from the little child up to the learned philosopher, and in all emergencies from a matter of daily routine up to a question of life or death, the all-fitting and all-foreseeing Word of Christ has been the antidote of temptation, the incentive to duty, the joy in tribulation. On its nail fastened in a sure place thousands have suspended their earthly future as well as their eternal all, and they have not been confounded. With its sword turning either way they have put to flight armies of doubts and fears, and whole legions of Satanic suggestions. Times without number, on the guilty conscience or the troubled spirit has a healing leaf descended, fresh from the Tree of Life, and charmed into the evening's ecstacy the morning's anguish. Under God's eye read God's own book, and pray for that Comforter's teaching who can make the literal Scripture a living message, and a transforming power. Then, when your principles and rules of action are derived from this celestial source, you will understand how a man by becoming truly scriptural becomes "a temple of the Holy Ghost." And, if you cannot say it yourself, when Christ's Word dwells in you richly, you will understand how another could say it, "I live, yet not I; Christ liveth in me." Believing God's truth and receiving God's Spirit, as long as the Lord lives you need never want a friend, nor as long as He has a cause in the world, need you ever want a pursuit. * late kindred the world is grown a great sepulchre, and the most tender friends are vain comforters; when letters of condolence lie unopened, and words of compassion fall like hail-stones on the heart, the first thing that sends a warm ray into the gloom, and brings to the eye tears that are not bitter, is when Jesus himself breaks the silence, and you hear, "I am the resurrection and the life he that believeth on me, though he were dead, yet shall he live." The world is full of sufferers; and if you do not meet with them in the streets, City Missionaries and others will soon direct you to their dwellings. There, as in the public hospital, you will find them, bed-rid, consumptive, palsy-stricken, blind, wasting away in direful diseases: and what can you do for them? What can philosophy do? What can mere human philanthropy do? The one would discourse on the pain-conquering power of a resolute will, or would expatiate on the lot of mortality, as if writhing anguish could be mesmerised by stoic saws, or a fever could be cured by fatalism. And the other, wiser and kinder, would seek for the tossing sufferer better attendance, or a purer air, or a less uneasy couch; but it is a short limit to which, when humanity has gone it can go no farther. The best skill cannot cure old age; the rarest cordial cannot tempt the sickly palate; the purest air, the softest couch, the kindest nursing cannot conjure into health those that are doomed to die. But in his mercy, God has provided an assuagement for such misery, an effectual antidote to the worst ingredient in the cup of woe. Visiting your poor neighbour, you will, probably, find that antidote already in the house, but its value is still unknown. It is your privilege to be the ministering angel, and to point out to the dying Hagar the hidden well. Putting into the words as Fond as you are of books, there is only much of Christ's own tenderness and kindone that you will value at last; and withness as you can, you read or repeat some apyour head on the pillow you will hardly care to be told that a new volume of the Great History is published, or a marvellous epic, out-peering all its predecessors. "No; read me the twenty-third Psalm. Let me hear the fourteenth of John." When your strength sinks yet lower; when your inter est in all under the sun has faded away, and ebbing life affords not even a parting tear, it will for a moment rally the worn faculties, to hear the whisper, "My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me." And when all is over; when to orphan children and deso ever." : * propriate passage; and, just as the scanty strength can bear it, you add here a little and there a little, and renew your visits till, in an arrested ear and an opening heart, God crowns your love and answers your prayers. And those only who have seen it, can tell the difference between the sick chamber where there is no hope, and one lit up with immortality-between the dull endurance, or the rebellious resistance of the stricken transgressor, and the patient cheerfulness and prophetic joy of a Lazarus, whose sorry couch is spread in glory's vestibule. * Would it not be good for everyone to keep for himself a little store-house of Bible-illustration? Every work that elucidates Scripture is useful; but to each person the most serviceable of all commentaries would be one of his own compiling. Were anyone to get an interleaved Bible, or still better, perhaps, a blank paper book; and whenever, in reading a theological treatise, or a work of eastern travel, or in listening to a sermon, he found a dark saying expounded, or a trite saying happily applied, he treasured it up; his casket would soon fill with treasures of great price. Even although, as is usually the fate of such experiments,-even although the record was imperfectly kept up, its value would be unspeakable. Every text thus illustrated becomes in turn an illustration; not only an enlightened surface, but a luminous source, a torch to a hundred parallels, a candle to all the context. And although you never made more than a few dozen entries in such a book, they would shed more meaning over the Bible than days of careless and cursory perusal; and when you had nearly forgotten all other books and sermons, the biographical incidents, the theological elucidations, the illustrative maxims and memorabilia, which you had thus garnered up, would survive, as interesting and instructive as ever. LAYS AND "EVERY branch of human knowledge," says Goethe, "if generalized to its full extent, brings us into the region of metaphysical research; and, in proof of this conclusion, he instances the pursuits of the chemist when investigating the ultimate atoms of matter; of the mechanician, when engaged with the laws of dynamics, involving the notion of power; and of the physiologist, when examining the idea of life. Whether or not it depends on the same principle we cannot say, but a similar result takes place in poetry, when it is subjected to a process of extreme refinement. It even ends in something infinitely more intangible than metaphysics. Burns, when once advised by one of the Belles Lettres Edinburgh Professors, to submit his style to this process, replied that "he knew persons in his part of the country, who could spin so fine that the thread was fit for nothing." There is every reason to believe that, now that the outburst of genuine song with which the present century began has ceased, poetry itself has been falling into this attenuated state. Who, for instance, does not recollect the innumerable "Annuals,"—those silken volumes of refinement and finery? And who is there that now recollects a single line of their contents? These have passed away; but still, in our present poetry, a subtilizing spirit prevails, combined with a strange haze, which throws a muddy-watery glory round every natural sentiment, and every useful truth, obscuring all. We are glad, in this dearth of distinct, intelligible and practical poetry, to be able "Lays and Lectures for Scotia's Daughters of Industry." By the Rev. CHARLES MARSHALL, Dunfermline. Published for the Author, by Sutherland and Knox, Edinburgh. 1853. LECTURES.* to direct attention to the small volume, recently published by the Rev. C. Marshall, -a volume rich in sentiments, but without a particle of sentimentalism. It contains both prose and poetry; "Lectures" alternating with "Lays." It is a sort of book much wanted, but which few are capable of supplying. It is quite a novelty; and yet it has an "auld warld" air about it. It is in many respects original; and yet there is scarcely a verse in it but wakens some deeply cherished thought that had slept, perhaps, for years, down in some recess or other of our heart. Every piece is very much to the point; and all the pieces combine to carry out a great moral and religious purpose. Each Lay advances, like a troop of horse, to assail some force of sin, or dislodge a habit of vice,—establishing in their room some form of holiness or virtue; and lest any mischance in the movement should befall, the Lay is supported by the Lecture, as by a well-compacted square of infantry in the rear. The book is "bilinguis." The Lectures throughout are written in good firm English, with no nonsense about them-no loose fibres-no uncombed clauses, that leave the reader at a loss to know what is really said, or whether the writer means what he says. The Lays, on the other hand, are given in good broad Scotch; not deluging the page indeed with "a spaet o' clatter," as some unskilled writers in that Norland dialect do; but with select words, terse phrases, and archaic idioms, exhibiting the pith and pathos of the classic Doric,-old Scotland's mother tongue. To all good people who love that tongue, whose earliest, sweetest, and most enduring associations of thought are bound up in its remembered accents, it must be singularly gratifying to find it, in this instance, made the effective vehicle not only of tasteful imagery and exquisite natural feeling; but also of sound scriptural truth, and wholesome moral precept. Too long has it been otherwise. Too often, from the era at least of James V., the author of the Gaberlunyie-man, down to that of Robert Burns, with his Bacchanalian glees, have the sense and wit, the genial fancy and overflowing tenderness of Scottish song been unhappily tainted with thoughts and images which pollute rather than purify the soul. We own in sorrow, with a touch of shame, the stains that rest, like mildew, on the lyric leaves of our most gifted men. And it is not to be denied that licences in this respect have, when thus blended with the element of genius, imparted an increased virulence to the power of sin from age to age, operating, so far, as an antagonist to the power of Gospel truth in the land. Allan Cunningham, a writer of talent and worth, attempts an apology for these objectionable moralities of our land's lyrics. "That we wish," says he, "such spots removed from the white garments of the muse, is a proof that our taste is different from that of our ancestors, but no proof that we are right, and that they were wrong. The simplicity of former times, and the frank directness of conversation, allowed greater latitude of expression to the muse.' But this extenuation cannot be accepted, except at the expense of reducing the principles of morals which are permanent, to the level of maxims of taste which are variable. And even with this concession, the apology is at fault, and must be abandoned. So to palliate is to encourage. And nothing is left for us but to lament the sins of our literature as we do the other sins of our nation; and to rejoice when a purer and better spirit takes possession of our poets and our popular poetry, just as we rejoice when purer principles come to influence our princes, and better laws to prevail in our magisterial courts. Song to which imagination and music have lent wings and voice, song which, strongly and rightly seizing the heart of a nation, is heard amidst the duties of the cottage, and mingles with the sounds of nature amongst the labours of the field, becomes, along with pulpits and Parliaments, one of the mighty agencies which influence for good the generations of men. In the poetry of the little volume before us (the first of a series calculated for the meridian of the industrial classes), we have a movement in the right direction. Intended for popular use, it aims at popular improvement. It seizes the resources of the ancient tongue, the tongue dear to every Scot, which he studies least, but knows best,-the tongue indigenous to the homesteads and workshops, the rural villages and crowded towns of his native land. Handling these resources with spirit and lovingkindness, the book addresses itself to young women. It instructs them in the common duties of life, and shows them the way to happiness, pleasure, and peace. It realizes the positions, and deals with the incidents that are most familiar to them; and which, however unregarded by those of other classes, become the pivots, on which their lot for time, as well as their destiny for eternity, are, in thousands of cases, found to turn. The first removal from the parental dwelling,— the daily work and daily demeanour,-company and courtship,-marriage, its weal or woe,-temptation in its most prevailing forms, trials, in their ends and uses: these constitute the staple topics of admonitory counsel which, with truthful and terrific pictures of the sin of intemperance, mingled with fatherly persuasives to sobriety, purity, and godliness of life, are here presented, in a style of much originality and graphic power, to the minds of the maidens of Scotland. In what more kindly or more sage words could a Christian mother bid farewell to a beloved daughter, leaving home, than in those of the following "partin' counsel :”— "The blessings o' a mither's heart, My bairn, rest on thy youthfu' head, Now, Jeanie lass, thou'rt gaun to dwell But hark-a partin' word frae me. Wi' strange chiels in yon unco toun: When tongues are supple, hands are slack,— Be wary of ilk fremit loon. Be carefu' o' thy master's gear Beneath thy hand let naething tyne, Betimes repair the tear and wear, Mind, lass, a steek in time saves nine.' To make thee blythe 's the morning lark, The lecture which follows is a piece of frank, genial, and encouraging counsel to mothers, as to the virtuous up-bringing of their daughters. We cannot withhold a specimen, though necessarily brief: |