posterity so much for his wickedness as for their own. Upon Ham the prophecy itself must have been a heavy curse, since he is not to be supposed devoid of natural instincts; for it foretold the sins and subjugation of all his posterity, of Canaan in particular. And it was all true as far as records reach, dreadfully do we find the events, and exactly corresponding. First, for Canaan: when the wickedness of the land of Canaan was filled up, the God of Shem himself marched his Israel into it; and under Solomon, a descendant of Shem, every remnant of the old population became tributary. By the sons of Japhet fell their colonies; Thebes by Philip, Tyre by Alexander, Carthage by Scipio, Hannibal himself exclaiming, 'Agnosce fortunam Carthaginis.' So much for Canaan : but the prophecy included under the curse a wider posterity; and Africa was more widely peopled by Ham. Egypt was the land of Ham; and in due time "Egypt shall be the basest of the kingdoms." And to this day, alas! poor Africa, a servant of servants to thy brethren!

With Africa contrast China, whether peopled by the posterity of Shem, or subdued by that of Japhet. China, whose admitted annals run back to above two hundred years before Abraham, and nearly to the flood, remains, to this day, the most populous empire on the earth. This single precept, "Honour thy father and thy mother," the simple principle of patriarchal government, has been the basis of the peculiar prosperity and duration of the Chinese family. The parental authority they have upheld, and God has upheld them; "long have their days been on the earth." My son, maintain the paternal authority, but beware of austerity,

Then, in a lower strain, the grandfather points to experience. How apt the paternal authority is to de

generate into distance, austerity; and, in spite of instinct itself, in some flagrant instances, into downright obduracy, redounding even upon the child's child, when the father himself has become a grandfather.

Especially, he reminds the father, that falsehood lies at the base of almost all vice, and at the base of almost all falsehood lie fear; beware, then, lest at any time your own severity become father to your child's prevarication. Rather say, "My son, give, I pray thee, glory to the Lord God of Israel, and make confession unto Him and tell me now, What hast thou done? Hide it not from me." Fear God, and fear nought.

:

But the grandfather and the mother are the great natural allies; and her he fails not to remind how St. Paul himself, after thanking God for the faith of Abraham, and of his own ancestors, has, in a manner canonized Lois, and the mother of Timothy.

Then, since the mother's love for her future pupil is not to be questioned, (a requisite much to be inculcated on most other teachers), his first advice to her therefore is to begin, from the very beginning, to study well even that little one. And next, by way of prevention, he suggests how pitiable is that extreme pertinacity with which some mothers, otherwise amiable, persist in the excess of maternal indulgence.

But, above all, the grandfather labours to elevate the mother's reverence and taste for the Holy Scriptures; pointing out, how she may get the start of all his classic masters, by initiating our boy betimes in a Sublime above Homer, a Beautiful surpassing Virgil, and a Marvellous beyond Ovid; while theirs is all fiction, but our's is all truth, eternal truth and everlasting, and all alive with terror and pity, such as poetry never feigned.

In a word, with the old man the heat of the day is

past, but in every stage of life, and especially in his family relations, he must do his duty; and so he will but aim at it meekly, smoothing the wrinkles from his heart, the young will only love the more, the less they shall have time, as they forebode, to listen to the garrulous, grasshopper chirping of the grandfather.

H. G.

Without the spirit of prayer, there may be attention, earnestness, sincerity; yet without one spiritual im→ pression upon the conscience, without one ray of Divine light in the soul. Earthly wisdom is gained by study; heavenly wisdom by prayer. Study may form a Biblical scholar; prayer puts the heart under a heavenly pupillage, and therefore forms the wise and spiritual Christian. The word first comes into the ears; then it enters into the heart; there it is safely hid; thence rises the cry-the lifting-up of the voice in awakened prayer. Thus the entrance of the word giveth light; it giveth understanding to the simple. God keeps the key of the treasure-house in his own hand. For this he will be inquired of to open it unto thee.-Rev. C. Bridges.

ESSAYS ON IDOLATRY.

No. II.

We will now proceed to state the opinions of sundry Bishops and godly men, as given in the Homilies from which these essays are chiefly taken, but must first call your attention to the very striking manner in which their testimony is spoken of, and the care taken to keep it in complete subservience to the written word of God. The words of the Homily are "Now although our Saviour Christ taketh not, or needeth not any testimony of men; and that which is once confirmed by the certainty of eternal truth, hath no more need of the confirmation of man's doctrine and writings, than the bright sun at noon-tide hath need of the light of a little candle, to put away darkness, and to increase his light yet for your farther satisfaction it shall be declared, that this truth and doctrine concerning the forbidding of images and the worshipping of them, as taken from the Holy Scriptures, was believed and taught of the old Fathers, and most ancient learned Doctors, and received in the old primitive Church, which was most uncorrupt and pure. And this declaration shall be made out of the said holy Doctors' own writings, and out of the ancient Ecclesiastical Histories belonging to the

same.

Tertullian, a most ancient writer and Doctor of the Church, who lived about one hundred and three score

years after the death of our Saviour Christ, both in sundry other places of his works, and specially in his book written against the manner of crowning, and in another little treatise entitled, of the Soldier's crown or garland, doth most sharply write and inveigh, against images or idols; and upon St. John's words "Little children, keep yourselves from idols," he saith, "Keep yourselves from idolatry, and that not merely from the service and worshipping of them; but from the images or idols themselves, that is, from the very shape and likeness of them; for it were an unworthy thing, that the image of the living God, should become the image of a dead idol! And the writer of the Homily adds,"Do you think those persons, which place images and idols in churches and temples, yea shrine them even over the Lord's Table as it were for the purpose of having them honoured and worshipped; take heed either to St. John's counsel or that of Tertullian :-For so to place images, which is it, to keep themselves from them, or to receive and embrace them?

Origen, in his book against Celsus, saith thus ; "Christian men and Jews, when they hear those words of the law, "Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God, and shalt not make any images," do not only abhor the temples, altars, and images of the Gods, but if need be, will rather die than they should defile themselves with any impiety." And shortly after he saith, "In the commonwealth of the Jews, the carver of idols and the makers of images were cast far off and forbidden, lest they should have any occasion to make images which might pluck certain foolish persons from God, and turn the eyes of their souls to the contemplation of earthly things. And in another place of the same book he adds "It is only a mad and frantic part to worship