LITTLE PHOEBE was playing one fine sunny day,
With brothers and sisters, all happy and gay;
They were running and jumping as brisk as could be,
When they came full in sight of a beautiful tree!
They shouted, and ran through the grass to its root,
There peeped through its leaflets a store of ripe fruit.
Said Eunice, "See! here is a feast for us all;
Climb, brother, for plums, in our laps let them fall!"
Now, Phoebe was youngest, and never had known
How sinful it is to take things not our own;

But sweet were the plums, and she liked them so well
That she gathered to eat them as fast as they fell.

She filled her small apron, and hasted to run,
To tell her kind mother of what she had done;
For she knew that she loved her, and always was glad
To hear of the pleasure her little ones had.

Her mother was sorry, and told her 'twas sin
To take what's not ours, were it small as a pin ;
That children who steal cannot taste of God's love,
Nor go when they die to his mansions above!

Poor Phoebe cried sadly and long for her theft,
And ran to take back all the plums that were left.
The owner forgave her, and said, "Do not weep;

For, now that you've told me, the plums you may keep !"

Too sorry to take them, she hastened away,

And knelt in her own little chamber to pray.

She said, "Lord, I grieve that so naughty I've been.
Oh, bless and forgive me, and make my heart clean!"

Poor Phoebe long after remembered that day,
And never beside the green plum-tree would play ;
The plums mamma offered she never would take,
For the thought of her sin made her tender heart ache!

SCRIPTURE ILLUSTRATED.

THE FULFILMENT OF PROPHECY AS EXEMPLIFIED IN THE HISTORY OF THE JEWS.

THE Jews are frequently called in the Word of God a peculiar people peculiar in their origin and history-peculiarly favoured with religious privileges, and signally and awfully punished for their sins. To them were committed the oracles of God. They held the true knowledge and worship of Jehovah when Gentile nations were sunk in darkness and idolatry. In the Jewish nation our blessed Saviour was born, performed his stupendous miracles, exercised his ministry, and at last died upon the cross. It is from the Jews, under God, that we have derived every spiritual blessing. From them we have received the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testament. Consequently, all our correct ideas of God, all our spiritual light, all our knowledge of a Saviour and a future world, with all the sublime truths of Christianity, come to us from the Jews; that is, to them they were first given, and through them they have been committed to us. Thus, then, the Jews are a peculiar people, and it becomes every Christian to be well acquainted with their history. I shall first advert to their origin, and then notice, in a series of instances, the fulfilment of prophecy as exemplified in some of the most important events of Jewish history.

With respect to their origin. The great father of the Jewish nation was Abraham, who, on account of his faith and holy obedience, is called the pattern of believers and the friend of God. He lived about 400 years after the Deluge.

Abraham was favoured with much intercourse with God. The Almighty was pleased to reveal his divine counsel to his servant; and he made known to him distant events with regard to his own progeny. He promised him that he should have a son, and that he should become the father of a mighty nation. He foretold that his offspring should suffer oppression in the land of Egypt for a season; that afterwards they should possess the land of Canaan; and that in his seed all the nations of the earth should be blessed. Now, all these promises and events came to pass.

The promise that Abraham should have a son was fulfilled in a remarkable manner, when both Abraham and Sarah were stricken in years. The very existence of Isaac was miraculous; and from it we should learn, not to measure our confidence in

God by what is probable or improbable in the ordinary course of nature, but should rest on the unchanging promises of God's Word, knowing that he is faithful to his promises and faithful to his Son.

1. We have remarked that it was revealed to Abraham that his seed should suffer affliction and bondage in a strange land during the space of 400 years. This prediction is very clear, and is expressed in the following words (Gen. xv 13, 14.): And he said unto Abraham, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years." Their deliverance from that country, too, was foretold to Abraham in the next verse: "And also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge; and afterward shall they come out with great substance." This prophecy declares both their cruel bondage in Egypt, and their deliverance from it by the mighty hand of God. And we are sure many of our young readers will at once see its striking fulfilment. You well remember that during the life of Jacob, the grandson of Abraham, Joseph was sold by his guilty brethren into Egypt. Afterwards, a famine prevailing throughout the country, the patriarch and his whole family had to leave Canaan, and sojourn in the land of Egypt. Here for a time they were kindly treated: but when Joseph died, and their numbers began to be multiplied, the Egyptians became jealous of their growth and prosperity, and grievously oppressed the Lord's people; for it is said their lives were made bitter unto them, and that they sighed by reason of hard bondage. But when the time of deliverance which he had promised to Abraham drew nigh, He judged the guilty and oppressive nation, smote them with divers plagues, and brought forth his people with a high and mighty hand. In the prophecy we have quoted, it is declared that they should come out of Egypt with great substance. So they did. They were great in number, and great in riches; for, though the Egyptians had before treated them as slaves, they at last loaded them with riches, and were glad to be rid of them at any rate. They had rather part with their jewels than their lives, for they said, " If these people stay, we be all dead men." Therefore they came out with great substance.

Now, observe, the time in which their deliverance was to be accomplished was to be at the end of 400 years. Was it so? Yes; for the sacred historian, speaking of the departure of the children of Israel from Egypt, states, "Now, the sojourning of the children of Israel who dwelt in Egypt was four hundred and thirty years; and it came to pass at the end of the four hundred and thirty years, even the selfsame day it

came to pass, that all the hosts of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt." Thus will God deliver his people from all foes.

2. It was foretold to Abraham that his seed should be as the stars of heaven and the sands of the sea-shore for multitude. At this time Abraham was childless. He had no issue by Sarah. Nor had he any until he was upwards of a hundred years old, and even then only Isaac, and he was called the son of promise. Isaac himself had only two sons, Esau and Jacob. But as Esau was the father of the Edomites, there remained still only one person as a father of the Jewish race so that from Abraham to Jacob there was really no increase in the promised seed. This failure in offspring was undoubtedly ordained of God to try the faith of his servants the patriarchs. But in a few years afterwards they multiplied exceedingly. Jacob had twelve sons, and before his family had been in Egypt many years, their numbers became so vast as to awaken the jealousy and induce the oppression of the haughty Pharaoh. Yet in defiance of all his cruel murders and edicts, they still waxed greater and greater. When they left the land of bondage, we read that they consisted of 600,000 on foot that were men, besides children. They afterwards increased to a mighty nation, and have continued such for 3000 years. Even at the present day they exist in prodigious numbers scattered over almost the face of the whole earth. Thus has God fulfilled his promise, in multiplying the family of one man to a number like the stars of heaven or the sands of the sea-shore for multitude.

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3. God promised to Abraham that his seed should possess the land of Canaan for an inheritance: "And the Lord said unto Abraham, Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art, northward and southward, and eastward and westward; for all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it and to thy seed for ever." Again: Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river Euphrates." Now at this time the land of Canaan was occupied by many nations. The Hittite, the Perizite, the Amorite, the Canaanite, and other tribes of people dwelt in the land. Humanly speaking, there was not at that time the most distant probability that the family of this one man would be able to contend against such powers, much less extirpate them from their country. But those nations were devoted to destruction in consequence of their sins; and what the Lord purposes he is well able to perform. In the fulness of time he led his people through the desert to the borders of the promised land. Then the waves of Jordan divided like those of the Red Sea, and the armies of Israel passed over as on dry land. Then the walls

of Jericho fell down flat, and the city was taken. One army after another was defeated, one city after another was subdued and taken, until the victorious armies of the Lord took full possession of the land-the land that flowed with milk and honey. Thus did God fulfil the word he had spoken to his servant Abraham, and not one word failed of all that he had said. So surely shall the believer finally enter eternal rest. For it is the same God who has said, "The saints of the Most High shall take the kingdom and possess the kingdom for ever, even for ever."

Sin is always hateful to God, and no matter who they be that are guilty thereof, they are the objects of the Divine displeasure. When the Israelites became established as a nation, they often turned aside to idolatry and sin; and in consequence thereof were threatened with the anger of God. Although the Lord long bore with their iniquity, and used various means to restore them to repentance, he at length poured down his indignation upon them. We shall notice a few remarkable instances, in which God fulfilled his awful threatenings against them.

4. There is one remarkable prediction which foretels the entire dissolution of the kingdom and the name of Israel-that is, of the ten tribes of Israel. For in the reign of Rehoboam, ten tribes of Israel revolted from their king, and the nation became divided into two distinct kingdoms. The tribes of Judah and Benjamin were governed by Rehoboam, and the other ten tribes by Jeroboam. In consequence of the wickedness and idolatry of the ten tribes, God threatened to deliver them into the hands of their enemies, and to blot out their name for ever. In Isaiah vii. 8. we have the following awful denunciation: "Within threescore and five years shall Ephraim be broken that it be not a people." Ephraim is put for all Israel, because he was the chief of the ten tribes; and the meaning of this prophecy is, that the ten tribes of Israel, then a distinct kingdom, should in the space of sixty-five years be subdued, have their government dissolved, be carried as captives from their own country, and thus no longer exist as a distinct people. Now observe its fulfilment.

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Not long after this the Lord permitted the Assyrians to prevail against them. In the reign of Pekah, King of Israel, Tiglath Pilezer took many of the Israelites, even the Reubenites, and the Gadites, and the half tribe of Manasseh, and all the land of Napthali, and carried them captive to Assyria, and brought them unto Halah, and Habor, and Hara, and to the river Gozan." Afterwards his son, Shalmanazer, took Samaria, and carried away still greater numbers unto Assyria, and "put them in Halah and in Habor, by the river Gozan,