Guy had got on any better than usual with his lessons; and if May had at all filled her place, as she had promised to do, in waiting on her mother: and with such thoughts as these she fell asleep. The next morning rose clear and bright after the snow of the preceding day, which had thrown a soft pure white covering over everything: yet as Ethel looked out of her window through the frost-covered panes, she could tell that the view was a prettier one than she had been accustomed to see. In front and at the side of the house stretched the large and tastefully designed garden; while beyond, across the park, rose the towers and chimnies of the Hall. Ethel gazed at that with feelings of strange interest; for there had been passed her mother's days of sunny childhood: and then she turned away from the prospect, as the thought of Mrs Feversham came into her mind. 'I wonder how grandmamma can enjoy that beautiful home,' she said to herself, when she thinks of all she has made mamma suffer. I can fancy now how dear mamma must long to see it all again.' 6 The greater part of the morning was given to study; there was something mooted at breakfast about a holiday; but Ethel herself begged that lessons might begin at once, and she learnt with such zeal and intelligent interest, that Miss Clayton declared it was quite a pleasure to teach her. Acquiring knowledge was a real enjoyment to Ethel; and now that she had the opportunity, she was resolved to make the most of it. Rosalie was much younger than her cousin in everything but years, and her natural abilities were not so good. Mrs Feversham had much wished that she should go to London with them to have the benefit of masters; but both she and Mr Latimer had decided upon that being put off till another spring, especially as Miss Clayton would be leaving them at mid-summer. Rosalie's sorrow for the approaching depar ture of one who had become almost one of the family was deep and sincere; but Miss Clayton was obliged to go. She had lately lost a married sister, and she felt that the two little motherless children needed all the care and attention she could give them. (To be continued.) 1. C Gems from John Robotham. 1647. HRIST is the head of all true prophets and teachers. For as the clouds, from whence the rain descends, have not their water originally and natively in themselves; but from the sea and moistened places of the earth exhaled and drawn up by the heat of the sun so have not the prophets a spirit of prophecy; nor any divine teachers a faculty of teaching heavenly and saving truths of themselves but it is drawn up out of Christ, as out of a full sea of all excellent wisdom and knowledge, and conveyed into them by the heat and vigour, not of their own spirit, but a far higher spirit than theirs, viz., the spirit of Christ. 2. The supply which Christ makes to believers is full-suitable and constant, He must needs therefore be a most precious, a most lovely, a most delightful, and a most desirable object to a believing soul. The faithful soul looks upon Him, and saith, lo! here is most precious and pure blood to wash away my guilt; here is strength to support me in my weakness; here is a garment of righteousness to cover the shame of my nakedness; here is a spirit of truth to lead me and guide me in all my ways; here are sweet mercies and consolations to comfort me in my droopings; here are gold and pearls and precious stones to enrich me; here is perfect purity and holiness to sanctify and cleanse my corrupt nature;-in a word, here is the plentitude and fulness of all grace to fill my empty and destitute soul. 3. The true and healthful temper of the soul is, when Christ is a joy to us, even in the absence and want of all other things; when we can say with the prophets, although the fig-tree shall not blossom, though there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will joy in the God of my salvation.' 4. All the works of Christ are glorious, but His gospel exceeds them all in glory. The gospel is the glass wherein we see the glory of Christ more than in any other way; therefore the words of Christ are much more sweet to a believer's taste, than honey or the sweetest of spices are to the mouth. 5. Fed upon Christ's love, that which we feed upon turns into our own nature: love is fuel for itself, love feeds upon love, and the per son beloved: so let us upon Christ live: the more we live upon Christ's love, the more our love will be inflamed toward Him. Though the distance be great between Christ and the soul, yet faith will bring them easily together. 6. Ministers of the gospel should employ their whole force and strength to display those rich treasures of grace, and that resplendent glory which is in Christ, to publish and spread before men those manifold excellencies which be in Him, that poor souls may be drawn to esteem highly of Christ. Who will seek after that which he knows not of? and who will not seek after a precious jewel? O! then tell people where this jewel, this pearl, this treasure is, that they may seek and search, and become merchants for to adventure all for Christ. 7. Christ was lovely to God, to angels, to saints; He was lovely in His nature and person, in His offices and graces, yea, He is all over lovely, He is wholly delectable! 8. Go to the everlasting fountain of Christ's blood, rince thy soul (as it were) in the blood of the Lamb; apply it for justification and sanctification; so shalt thou be free from the guilt and pollution of sin; thou dost ask but the acquittance, the debt being paid in Christ. 9. Christ will be with His people in the furnace of affliction; and either He will provide that it shall not be overheated, or else He will work a miracle to restrain the power of the flame: He will both preserve them in, and deliver them out of trouble: He will so sanctify affliction, that it shall prove a very blessing and mercy to them. 10. Look upon Christ as the most gainful and profitable thing to the soul that can be imagined: nothing more enriching than Christ is. Whatsoever we give unto Him we lose it not, there is no alienation of it, but it is ours still, and ours in a far safer custody and keeping than in our own if we cast our affections upon Christ they be not lost; He only makes them better: if we give them to the word, they differ little or nothing from the affections of beasts; but if Christ have them, He makes them heavenly and gracious, and such as will fit us for the presence of God; if we lay down our lives for Him, they be not lost neither but gained unto life eternal. T LESSONS FOR THE LAST DAYS.* HE long-suffering mercy of God, | duly develop itself. Ahaz walked in the ways still lingering around Israel, had of the kings of Israel, and made also molten given them in Jotham a king who images for Baalim. Moreover he burnt incense was willing and anxious to lead in the valley of the son of Hinnom, and burnt them in right paths. There are his children in the fire, after the abominations few greater or more needed blessings than right of the heathen whom the Lord had cast out guidance. We need it alike in the Church and before the children of Israel. He sacrificed in the world. We need both to be instructed also and burnt incense in the high places, and and to be governed by those greater and wiser on the hills, and under every green tree.' than ourselves. Yet there is no appointment 2 Chron. xxviii. 2-4. Yet Ahaz in doing these of God against which man more persistently things did but reflect the character of Judahstruggles than this. Self-government is the privileged, favoured, enlightened Judah. only government that self-will tolerates, and was grateful to them to be placed under this thus a path is trodden that leads farther and leadership for evil. They desired it. Head farther away from Truth, and from happiness, and heart were alike diseased. and from God. There is no greater proof of the whole moral framework of society being diseased than when opportunity of being led in right paths is afforded, but rejected. So was it with Judah. They refused the guidance of Jotham. Jotham did that which was right in the sight of the Lord... BUT THE PEOPLE DID YET CORRUPTLY.' 2 Chron. xxvii. 2. The voice of the people was found to be anything rather than the voice of God.' The people withstood the voice of God. They did corruptly. No doubt if Jotham had been more uncompromisingly stern-if he had refused to spare 'the high places and the groves,' and had swept them all away, he would have prospered more. Compromise can never subserve the ends of Holiness and Truth: all that it does is to strengthen evil by affording occasion and encouragement to its continued development. Nevertheless the personal faithfulness of Jotham was not unacknowledged; 'he became mighty because he prepared his ways before the Lord his God.' 2 Chron. xxvii. 6. Yet notwithstanding this recognition of the uprightness of Jotham, the persistent progress of the people's evil came also in remembrance before God, so that even in Jotham's reign preparation for its punishment was made. 'In those days the Lord began to send against Judah, Rezin the king of Syria, and Pekah the son of Remaliah.' Nevertheless Jotham was taken to sleep with his fathers, before the gathering storm was allowed to break. Ahaz succeeded Jotham. In him the people found a leader suited to the desire of their hearts. Under him the mind of society in Judah-public opinion' as it is called, could • From Thoughts on Isaiah, by BENJAMIN WILLS NEWTON. London: Houlston and Wright. It The storm therefore which had gathered in the days of Jotham, was now allowed to break on the head of Ahaz. 'The Lord his God delivered him into the hand of the king of Syria; and they smote him, and carried away a great multitude of them captives, and brought them to Damascus. And he was also delivered into the hand of the king of Israel, who smote him with a great slaughter. For Pekah, the son of Remaliah, slew in Judah an hundred and twenty thousand in one day, which were all valiant men; because they had forsaken the Lord God of their fathers.' 2 Chron. xxviii. 5. Nor was this all. Encouraged by success, the hosts of Syria and of Israel united themselves, and advanced together against Jerusalem itself: they were not, however, permitted to prevail. 'And it came to pass in the days of Ahaz, son of Jotham, son of Uzziah, king of Judah, that Rezin, king of Aram [Syria], and Pekah, son of Remaliah, king of Israel, went up to Jerusalem to war against it, but he could not war against it (i.e., so as to succeed). And it was told the house of David, saying, There resteth Aram [Syria] on Ephraim, and there shook his [the king's] heart, and the heart of his people, like the shaking of the trees of the wood before the wind.' Thus chapter vii. opens. Dark indeed and evil was the condition of Jerusalem: yet this was the very sphere for which Isaiah had been sanctified, that in it (after his lips had been touched by the live coal from the altar) he might act for and with God. From Uzziah's reign onward he had seen evil steadily progressing, and now (notwithstanding the chastisements that had been sent) he beheld it advancing still. During this lengthened period, no public act is recorded of him. Deserted and despised, save by a very few, he wept, no doubt, in secret places. But now the time was come for him to act. He was sent to meet Ahaz in the day of his calamity, with a message from the Lord. It was a message of goodness and compassion. 'Then said the Lord unto Isaiah, Go forth now to meet Ahaz, thou, and Shearjashub thy son, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool in the highway of the fuller's field.' Isaiah went, and Shearjashub stood by his side. of Jerusalem's strength. Its citadel was there. And Moriah (which virtually was one with Zion) was the mountain of Truth, for on it the temple stood. Think of what Zion will be in that future day, when streams of blessing issuing thence shall fill the whole earth with gladness. Think how it will be recognised then as the place where Heaven's Almighty power will have associated itself with Heaven's pure Truth, Shearjashub and Mahershalalhashbaz (see in order that that truth might not only be chap. viii.) are the symbolic names of the two diffused throughout the earth, but maintained children of Isaiah. The latter is a name of in its rightful supremacy. But what Zion will woe and of judgment. It conveys the thought be in the day of its glory, that Zion measurably of the spoiler hastened on by God to his ap- has already been. There God's mighty power pointed work of rapine and ruin. Mahershalal-operated of old: there it watched over and hashbaz may be taken as the superscription of guarded Jerusalem, His chosen city- the city all those parts of Isaiah's prophecy that speak of the great King.' Thence, too, have emanated of Israel and of Judah as smitten and desolated. the blessings which we, Gentiles, now receive. This desolation was soon about to begin: it 'Salvation is of the Jews.' The stream that continues still, and will not end until the Land Ahaz beheld silently and softly flowing from of Immanuel shall once more be brought under beneath Zion, symbolized a power of ceaseless the outstretching of the dark wings of the last blessing that was steadily bearing on Jerusalem, great Assyrian-Antichrist. "The spreading and which has not, even now, been taken from out of His wings shall be the filling of the the earth. The stream of grace that has come breadth of Thy land, O Immanuel.' The force forth from Zion, flows steadily still through the of the word, Mahershalalhashbaz, therefore, is world's wide wilderness-unnoticed often, or not yet spent. It is still to be kept before our else seen only to be despised. There are, howeyes. Forget it, and we shall soon lose our- ever, some-a remnant, a little flock, whose selves in darkness. On the other hand, Shear- eyes are opened to discern what it is, and jashub [a remnant shall return] is a name of whence it comes; and they rejoice in it, and consolation. Our eye rests upon Shearjashub drink of it, and find in it the waters of healing, first, before we hear of Mahershalalhashbaz. and of cleansing, and of eternal life. We are cheered by a view of the final joy before we hear of the antecedent sorrow. Moreover, although the immediate object of this name is to assure us of mercies yet to comemercies still hidden in the womb of time, yet faith also discerns in it the pledge of present blessing for as there shall be a remnant pre-filed garment made white. What thoughts served and borne through the day of fiery visitation (Zech. xiii. 9), and made God's witnesses in the millennial earth, so now also, there is, and ever has been, a remnant (this is as true in Gentile Christendom as in Israel), whom grace preserves in the midst of the moral darkness that broods, and will brood over the earth, on to the very end of the day of mana remnant watched over by the Lord, and taught of His Spirit-a remnant that might be (save for their own wilfulness and worldliness) gathered into a place of honoured separateness like unto that which pertained to Shearjashub as he stood by the side of Isaiah, sharing the lot, and identified with the testimony of God's blessed, but rejected servant. The place in which Isaiah was directed to meet Ahaz, was one well suited to a message of mercy. It was in the fuller's field, by the side of a stream that flowed from beneath the sides of Zion and Moriah. Zion was the mountain How was that stream needed by Jerusalem and her people! Daily it sustained them, for they drank thereof, and without it they could have had no 'fuller's field;' the fuller's field was the place of cleansing-the place where uncleanness was washed away, and the de are more grateful to the conscience-stricken sinner than those associated with the fuller's field? It was the waters of Siloam that gave to Jerusalem the fuller's field. Thus, too, was supplied that wondrous pool, which up to the time when Immanuel came, remained in Jerusalem as the one solitary witness that the miraculous power of God had not utterly forsaken the still beloved city. The pool of Siloam continued to bear witness to the presence of God's power to heal, until it was superseded by that mightier power of healing-healing unto eternal life which is found in that 'fountain which has been opened for sin and for all uncleanness' in the blood of Immanuel. Yet notwithstanding all this, the waters of Siloam were by Ahaz and his people rejected, and the river of Assyria chosen. Could the petty stream that flowed through the fuller's field be compared with the waters, 'strong and many,' of Euphrates? Ahaz answered, No: and many |