It may not be improper to notice, that the Hebrews have given names to many animals from their cry, if it was in any way striking; as orud to the ass, ogur to the crane, sis to the swallow, tur to the turtle dove, dukeekut to the hoopoe, and kera to the partridge; each of which serves as a sure mark to ascertain the animal intended.

As the remarkable call of the partridge to its mate, or its young, procures for it the name of kera in Hebrew; so kera, when used as a verb in that language, signifies to call, or express the wish of one man that another should come into his presence, or enter into

conversation.

The partridge being so clearly pointed out by the

name or influence to do a wrong to your brethren. I says the author of a poem entitled "The Village CuAs little can ye be "walking in Christ," so long rate." Such a cry every student of animated nature Buffon thinks the cry of the partridge as ye are vain and puffed up, and walking in the loves to hear. sight of your own eyes, or are placing your hearts harsh, and not unlike the noise of a saw. As the Hebrews have given a name to the partridge upon the pleasures, the honours, and the riches of from its note, so Forskål mentions a partridge which the world; or finally, so long as ye are bad sub- the Arabs, from the same cause, call curr; and Latham, jects, and do not readily submit to the laws of one in the province of Andalusia which the Spaniards your country, or while you ally yourselves with call churn. those "who despise government, the presumptuous and self-willed, who are not afraid to speak evil of dignities." For the religion which, notwithstand ing, ye profess, openly condemns one and all of the courses and practices which we have here enumerated. It enjoins the giving "honour to whom honour is due," "to Caesar the things that are Cesar's, as well as to God the things that are God's." It is built on the foundation of charity or love; and if you but once remove this, all that remains is but hollow and unsubstantial, a mere "sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal." "The wisdom that is from above is pure, peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and of good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy." The Gospel of Him, "in whom," and with whom, we are "to walk," inculcates the speedy forgiveness of injuries, even though repeated against us "unto seventy times a day." "Love, therefore, your enemies, bless them that curse you, yea, bless and curse not, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you; for if ye love merely them which love you, what reward have ye? Do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? Do not even the publicans the same?" "Do unto all men as ye would wish that they should do unto you." "Love is the fulfilling of the law, therefore love one another." "Charity not only endureth all things," but "covereth a multitude of sins," and "never faileth." "Lay aside, therefore, all guile, and malice, and hypocrisy, and envyings, and all evil-speaking; and as new-born babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby;" and thus, through the blood of Christ, shall you at length "receive the end of your faith, even the salvation your souls."

of

INVESTIGATIONS INTO THE NATURAL
HISTORY OF THE BIBLE.

BY THE LATE REV. DAVID SCOT, M.D.,
Professor of Oriental Languages in the University of St. Andrews.
No. II.

THE PARTRIDGE, OR KERA OF THE HEBREWS. THE partridge belongs to the order of birds called the Gallina in the Linnæan system. The first mention of this bird in the Bible occurs in 1 Sam. xxvi. 20, "As one doth hunt a partridge in the mountains." The bird translated partridge in this passage, is kera in the original; and there can scarcely be any doubt that the partridge got this name from its cry, which is very peculiar, and cannot be mistaken by any one who has once heard it.

"I love to hear the cur

Of the night-loving partridge,"

Hebrew name kera, we can scarcely believe that this therefore, we are the more surprised, when we find the name should be intended to denote another bird; and, learned Bochart contending that kera denotes the snipe, a bird frequenting not mountains but marshes; at least if it sometimes rises from the sides of the mountains in the summer months, the hunter commonly finds it among the marshes. There seems to be as little reason for making the kera a woodcock, whose haunts and habits resemble those of the snipe. The common partridge, indeed, frequents extensive plains covered with grass, or large fields covered with stubble, clover, or other grasses: but it cannot be said to inhabit the mountains any more than the snipe or the woodcock. May there not, however, be another species of partridge, which freHebrew Scriptures? This we take to be the rufus, quents mountains, and which is called kera in the or red-legged partridge, a bird quite common in Palestine, Egypt, and all the neighbouring countries It is found in many parts of Italy and France, as well as in the islands of Madeira, Jersey, and Guernsey. In all countries it resorts to and haunts the mountains more than the valleys and plains; but what are we to understand by "hunting this partridge on the mountains?" In those times men used darts and arrows as missile weapons, and some might hunt the partridge with these weapons, the use of the musket being then unknown. The Arabs, says Shaw in his Travels, have another, though a more laborious method of catching these birds; for observing that they become languid and fatigued after they have been put up twice or thrice, they hastily run in upon them, after this effect is produced, and knock them down with their zurwattees or bludgeons. How excellently does Shaw's account of hunting the red partridge apply to the case of David! How like to this kind of exercise was Saul's coming hastily upon him, and putting him up, as it were, from time to time, that he might at length weary him out, and then destroy him!

The prophet Jeremiah (xvii. 11.) also mentions the kera: "The partridge sitteth, and produceth not; so he that getteth riches, and not by right, shall leave them in the midst of his days, and in the end shall be a fool." This passage does not imply, that the partridge sitteth on the eggs of another bird, and on that account fails in hatching them; but, that she sometimes cannot hatch her own eggs, because, being placed on the ground, they may be spoiled by damp, or crushed by the foot, or carried away by the beast of prey. And thus shall the hopes be blasted of him that acquires riches by unjust means, and broods over them as if they belonged to himself, and not to another. By

some unlooked for occurrence, they shall be snatched | forth to the right hand and to the left, pervading the out of his grasp, and the detection of his villany rouse the indignation of his neighbours, and his mortification and grief heighten the triumph of his enemies. The poor partridge suffers mere disappointment when she sits upon eggs and produces not; but the unjust possessor of wealth, when it is taken from him by violence, or by the course of events over which he has no control, bears, at one and the same moment, the uneasiness arising from the ruin of his prospects, the agony of conscious guilt, and the contempt and abhorrence of mankind. We need hardly observe, that the celebrated critic Michaelis thinks the hen understood by the kera in this passage of Jeremiah; probably because she sometimes sits on the eggs of another fowl, particularly the duck or goose; and when the young ones take to the water, she is terrified and perplexed. It also deserves consideration, that the partridge and hen are species of the same genus, and not unlike one another in size and manner of feeding, if not in crying.

In the apocryphal book of Ecclesiasticus occur these words: "Like a partridge taken in a cage, so is the heart of the proud; " that is, as the decoy partridge allures those of its kind into the hands of the fowler; so does the proud man allure simple and silly men into snares by direct flattery, or concealed artifice.

The bill and irides of this partridge are red, as well as the legs. The male, but not the female, has the blunt knob, or spur, behind the claws. Flesh, whiter and of higher flavour than that of the grey, distinguishes red partridges. They are found in flocks, but the grey in coveys. They perch on trees, but the grey on the ground. Tournefort says, that they are so tame in the island of Scio, that they are driven to the fields like so many sheep to seek their food, and that each family intrusts its partridges to a common keeper, who manages them by a whistle. About Trebizond a man leads above four thousand of these partridges. He marches on the ground, and they follow in the air till he reaches a certain camp, three days' journey from Trebizond. When he sleeps, the birds alight, and repose around him.

Some persons in Provence have acquired such skill in taming partridges, whether the red or grey we know not, that they yield an implicit obedience; and Willoughby takes notice, that a Sussex man had rendered so tame a covey of partridges, that for a wager he drove them from that county to London, though their wings were grown, and there was no restraint upon their freedom.

Attempts have been made to stock England with red partridges. In these attempts, the Earl of Rochford, and the Marquis of Hereford, have been the most successful. Poachers chiefly prevent their spreading over the country, by resorting to all methods of destroying them; a gun reaches them with difliculty, as when the dog sets, they run away, and rise at a great distance.

THE RISE OF THE REFORMATION
IN SCOTLAND.

BY THE REV. DONALD FERGUSSON,
Dunnichen.

THERE is no other evidence required, than that pre-
sented by the history of our own country, to prove the
withering influence of the faith of Rome upon the
moral and spiritual scenery of any nation, however
much of loveliness and fertility may have previously
distinguished it.

During the youth of Christianity in Scotland, the faith of the Gospel having been sown in its purity sprung up, and bore good fruit. Planted and cherished by the bands of devoted servants of Christ Jesus, it spread

whole land with the knowledge of divine truth, and
bearing along with it the blessings of civilization and
refinement; so that penetrating the cloud of a dark
intervening age, we can even now find tolerably marked
vestiges of softened manners, and an advanced stage of
improvement in the scene beyond, just as, beneath a
layer of arid sand, the geologist may discover traces of
primeval verdure, indicating the existence of green
pastures and fertile fields, before the ocean had swept
over their loveliness, and left a wilderness behind.
In the secluded valleys of Scotland, whither the
gloomy sway of Romanism had been unable, or had
despised, to penetrate, there had continued to exist a
remnant of the devoted worshippers of a former age,
who persisted in preserving the ancient purity of faith
as their most precious inheritance, and who never ceased
to long and pray for the return of the good old times of
their fathers,-a chosen few who, in the days of deepest
religious thraldom, bore the fires and the tortures of
persecution, unshaken,—and who, by their firmness and
constancy in death, like the parent bird of Eastern fable,
nurtured, by their own blood, a generation of Christian
patriots to succeed them. Spirits like these, animated
with the pure flame of holy fervour, required only a
hand to excite them to activity, and a head to direct in
the glorious struggle for their religious freedom.

Meanwhile, the Church of Rome was itself working its own ruin. The enormous wealth and secular influence of its religious establishments, and their infamous traffic of every thing even the most sacred, in order to swell their hoards of treasure, began to induce men to scan their pretensions with closer scrutiny. The result of this observation was far from favourable, for while the lives of the Romish clergy displayed a grossness of immorality, revolting to every upright mind, sober reason judged their system itself as a solemn mockery upon the wit and the wisdom of man; and in proportion as the tenets of their faith became more indefensible from their absurdities, and the conduct of their officials more flagrant from its immorality, in the like proportion did their exactions become more unsparing, in order to furnish a cloak for the one, and to procure gratification for the other. Caring for nothing but the support of that hideous mass of corruption to which habit and inclination alike attached them, they rushed, in a blind fatuity, upon their own destruction, at once resisting the current of public opinion, and trampling upon every feeling of conscientious independence.

Such proceedings, however, instead of tending to quench, served rather to stimulate, the spirit of inquiry which was beginning to circulate in the land; and, in the words of a learned historian, knowledge increased with inquiry, courage grew with victory, and the invention of the art of printing submitted the speculations and reasonings of the learned to the most general remark; the nations of Europe, starting from the lethargy into which they had fallen, were forward to attend to their dignity and importance, and while they sought a remedy for the old superstitions, or acted on their overthrow, were strenuous to rear up barriers to secure their civil rights." The defences which had been reared around the papal fabric, defying alike the remonstrances of policy and conscience, having once been overleaped, served no longer to screen the internal weakness and deformity of the system; and at last the long threatening volcano commenced to burst forth in the very heart of Europe, and shook all the neighbouring nations from their slumbers. Luther in Germany, and Zuinglius in Switzerland, applied the torch to the spirit of the age, already rendered inflammable by long and bitter oppression; and the flame, thus kindled on the continent, was soon communicated to native spirits of congenial sentiments, who were prepared to fan and feed its blaze in Britain.

At the commencement of the sixteenth century, the state of Scotland was, politically speaking, most favourable to the diffusion of the Reformed opinions. James V., intent on humbling the power and pride of an aristocracy too mighty for the crown, had engaged the clergy to support his views. The nobles, again, courted the favour of the lower orders, who were just beginning to emerge from the degradation of the feudal servitude. Exasperated against the Church, the leading men began to foster the growing spirit of the Reformation, no less perhaps, at first, from motives of selfishness, than from a conviction of its purity. The king, on the other hand, partly from his own distaste to innovation, partly for the purpose of gratifying his Church partizans, instituted diligent inquisition against the heretics, and lighted up the fires of persecution for their extirpation.

Patrick Hamilton, abbot of Ferne, a young noble of royal blood, was the first public victim to the papal vengeance, for his adherence to the doctrines of the Reformation; but immediately after his death, the persecution became general; nay, even those whom the monarch was inclined to pardon, the clergy proudly refused to spare, declaring that "the grace of a sovereign could not be extended to criminals, whom THEIR law and determination had doomed to suffer."

The persecution, abundantly fiery before, was renewed with sevenfold violence by the accession of David Beatoun to the archiepiscopal see of St. Andrews, and primacy of Scotland. The haughtiness and ambition of this dignitary were equalled only by his utter want of principle and feeling; a stern bigot to the Church of Rome, and attached to her cause by the still stronger ties of self-interest, he was scarcely installed in the primacy when he gave convincing proofs of his intolerance and cruelty, by the most unrelenting persecution of all who ventured to express or entertain opinions derogatory to the spiritual supremacy and infallibility of Rome, whatever might be their age, or sex, or station. England, however, offered an asylum to those who were fortunate enough to escape the cardinal's vengeance; Henry VIII., who then occupied the English throne, having himself thrown off the yoke of the papacy, employed all his skill and influence to induce his nephew, the king of Scotland, to adopt the same resolution; but, blinded by the intrigues of the clergy, James resisted all his persuasions. The death of James, however, which occurred shortly afterwards in 1542, tended, during the disunion of their adversaries, and the struggle of parties, to foster the strength, and extend the ramifications of the Reformed opinions, although it did not, to any great extent, lessen the peril of those who publicly avowed them, since Beatoun's influence generally controlled every regency; and as the aspect of the Reformation was now beginning to look more imposing, he determined to exert the strongest measures for its overthrow.

To strike terror into the less elevated and able of its professors, he resolved to commence by the condemnation of some of their leaders. George Wishart, a man of more than respectable rank, of high attainments, of distinguished piety, and of untiring zeal, having rendered himself particularly obnoxious to the cardinal, by his loud and ceaseless invectives against the errors of the Church, and the gross immoralities of its priesthood, was seized, condemned, and burned at the stake. Several others of less note shared his fate; but, far from producing the effect anticipated and desired, such violent proceedings only tended to fan the flame of deep and burning indignation, against a system which required such measures to support its cause; and every drop of the blood of the martyred saints seemed, like the blood of the monster of ancient fable, to call forth fresh legions of spiritual heroes, to fight the battles of the Lord of Hosts.

Shortly after, Beaton overtaken by retributive justice, himself pleaded in vain for that mercy which he had often so inhumanly refused: but his death could scarcely be said to have improved the situation of the Protestants at the time; for although the ecclesiastical violence against heresy was occasionally relaxed, particularly during the war with England, yet, immediately upon the renewal of peace, the persecution was resumed and carried on as unsparingly as before.

The spirit of the Reformation had, however, spread so widely, and had been adopted by men of such distinguished rank and talent, that the difficulty of checking its progress was hourly increasing. The Earl of | Glencairn, the Lords of Lorn, Maxwell and Dun, and Lord James Stuart, had publicly announced themselves as leaders of the Faithful, and assumed the title of "Lords of the Congregation:" and being encouraged and stimulated by the determined spirit of Knox, they commenced to adopt plans, not merely for insuring their own safety, but also for propagating the principles of the Reformed Religion: and seeing that the Queendowager, a subtle daughter of the bloody house of Guise, had been elevated to the regency; that, upon the demise of Edward VI. of England, his sister Mary, a ruthless bigot to a ruthless faith, had ascended the English throne, and that a matrimonial connection betwixt the young Queen of Scotland and a Popish Prince, was already in prospect,-alarmed at all these indications of a gathering storm, they judged it necessary to take precautionary measures for averting, the peril that threatened them; and pledging their faith at once to their God and to each other, to enter into some bond of union, for the defence at once of their persons and of their religion.

We are now entering on historic ground, that must be hallowed in every Scottish heart,-ground which, upon every fresh visit, acquires fresh interest. There is so much of the chivalrous blended with the stern godliness of these other days, that when tracing the page of history, we can almost fancy ourselves engaged in the stirring scenes which that history records; feeling as if transported into an atmosphere less mild, indeed, but far purer and holier than the present, where we inhale some of the spirit of the ancient times, and are animated by a deeper and more fervent devotion towards a Church, which was reared amid such wrestlings, and which has stood amid such

storms.

CHRISTIAN TREASURY.

The purifying power of Religion.-True religion seats itself in the inward man and acts effectually upon the vital powers, killing sin in the heart, and purging its designs and delights from carnality and selfishness; engaging the heart for God, and setting it as a bird in its full bent for him, in the approaches we make to him.-FLAVEL.

Death to a Believer.—When a person is going into a foreign land, 'tis comfortable for him to consider,"Though I am embarking for an unknown country, yet it is a place where I have so many friends, who are already settled there, that I shall be in fact at home How sweet for a dying the instant I get thither." believer to reflect that, though he is yet a stranger in the world of spirits, still the world of spirits are no strangers to him! God his Father is there; Christ, his Saviour, is there; angels, his elect brethren, are there; saints, who got home before him, are there, and more shall arrive every day. He has the blood and righteousness of Christ for his letters of recommenda tion, and the Holy Spirit for his introducer. goes upon express invitation from the King of the country. TOPLADY,

He also