in which their several duties are discharged. “Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward. For this is thanksworthy, if a man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully," 1 Pet. ii. 18, 19. Nothing can be clearer than the truth, that Christian masters, mistresses, and servants are called on every day of the week, and every hour of the day, to practise self-denial. This, though an important part of Christianity, is one of the rarest of Christian attainments; and nothing but the grace of God can perfect it in our hearts. Let us not deceive ourselves in this matter; for the Christian spirit is a self-denying spirit, as well as a spirit of love and kindness. It is possible to endure much, to assist much, and to give much without practising self-denial: we may do all these things with a selfish motive. How patiently does the pearl diver endure the dangers of his painful calling, that he may obtain a reward! how willingly the miser assists the spendthrift with money when he has a good security, and can obtain usury; and how liberally the sower scatters his seed, that he may reap an abundant harvest. Here is much selfishness, but no self-denial. O Christian! consider more the self-denial of your Lord, the example of him who bought you with a price, and endured such contradiction of sinners, and ask yourself whether, in your private life, in " 'your daily walk and conversation," you manifest the Christian spirit of self-denial? To conquer self in little things is a great victory. "The greatest pope," said one, "is pope Self," and there is too much truth in the observation. Self is an enemy to Christian kindness, a tyrant, that lords it over the heritage of others, and an idol that robs God of his glory. Christian husband, parent, and master, give me your attention. It is true, that wherever the Christian goes, his principles go with him; for he cannot put them on and off like his garments; yet still it is in the bosom of his family that he is best known. If a man be not a Christian in private life; if he be not known and acknowledged as such at home; if he be not loved, respected, and honoured in his own house; if those who sit at meat with him, and gather round his hearth, cannot bear testimony that, amidst all his infirmities, his heart is right with God; if there be a doubt, whether he is on the Lord's side-then is there reason for lamentation. A Christian may wander and return again; he may fall, and rise again; but if he return not with a humble heart from his wanderings, and rise not with a broken spirit from his falls, then is he as an alien among God's people. But my inquiry is not, now, so much about either the strength or the general consistency of your principles, as it is about your manifestation of them in the lesser things of life. You, who can bear an earthquake, can you endure a common annoyance without passion or ill temper? You, who can forgive the injury of an enemy, can you regard with affectionate forbearance the errors of those who are dearest to you? When the wife of your bosom has been a little wayward, when your children have been thoughtless, and your servants neglectful of your commands; are you considerate or unreasonable, meek or excited, forgiving or implacable? On great occasions you may call forth your great principles; while as to lesser things you may be unwatchful and careless. Ever remember, that great danger may arise from little sources. Watch and pray, lest ye enter into temptation. I have heard of, nay I have seen instances, unlovely instances of an unchristian spirit breaking forth on trifling occasions; how is it with you? When a disciple of the Redeemer, an heir of immortality and glory, becomes hasty, petulant, unreasonable, and severe, about a late dinner, a mistake in a butcher's bill, a joint over or under done, a forgotten message, an unpaid letter, or any other minor irregularity, it is a melancholy exhibition of infirmity. The Christian head of the family should set an example in these things; for him to be an unkind husband, a severe parent, and unreasonable master, is to forfeit his own respect, and to decline in the estimation of his household. He cannot do this with impunity; he must either strive against his infirmities, or give up his claim to be ranked as a Christian man. Am I too hard upon you? I think not. Let the balance be held with a steady hand. Not willingly would I spare myself; let me not then unkindly spare you. When the Christian, as husband, parent, and master, like a vine laden with goodly clusters, is rich in the fruits of the Spirit, he meets the daily vexations and trials of common life with calmness. Others may fret and chafe themselves, but he, with an unruffled temper, looks around him without a murmur. It is only, when forgetful of what manner of men they ought to be, that any are hasty and boisterous, and high-minded. "Learn of me," said the Redeemer; "for I am meek and lowly in heart and ye shall find rest unto your souls," Matt. xi. 29. Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty," said David: "neither do I exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for me," Psa. cxxxi. 1. What say you? while in the weightier cares of life, others are ready to "curse God, and die," is your language, "It is the Lord let him do what seemeth him good?" and while worldly men have their outbreaks about mere "sticks and straws," are you showing forth the spirit of love, forbearance, patience, resignation, and thankfulness, in your daily concerns? Be honest to yourself, and seek not to evade this homely questioning. Nor let the Christian mistress take unkindly the well-meant interrogatories of Old Humphrey. Blind must I have been, and insensible, in passing through the world, if I have not observed and honoured many a Christian wife, mother, and mistress, shedding a benignant light around her dwelling, and adorning the Christian character; but I must speak openly, even to you. It is possible, nay probable, that, in the lesser things of life, you have not always preserved that love, meekness, and considerate kindness, which for the most part may characterize your conduct and conversation. Christian wives are sometimes neglectful of the comfort of their partners, and become wayward and trying in various ways, forgetful of the various irritations, vexations, and weighty cares that their husbands have to contend with. Are you careful, in little things, to promote your partner's peace? "I spoke but one word," said a wayward wife, "and my husband is in a tempest.' Alas! she knew that that one word would be as a spark among gunpowder. Christian mothers, sometimes, are weakly indulgent to their children. A Christian parent excused the sinful follies of her son, when he was a child, because he was "so droll." Alas! he grew up to be a droll man, and his sinful follies are "A now wringing that parent's heart. child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame," Prov. xxix. 15. A child once spat in the face of a servant: "Why did you not complain of this?" inquired the mother of the child: "Because, ma'am,' said the servant, "I considered that it was not so much the child as his parents who had ill-treated me; for they have never at any time rebuked him for his bad conduct to me." Are you ever hasty, unjust, inconsiderate, and unreasonable? If a servant is rebuked tartly, accused wrongfully, required to do beyond her ability, or, when weary with her work, trifled with by unnecessary summonses of the bell, or unduly disturbed at her meals, no wonder that ill-will is excited. Be careful in these points, I beseech you, and indeed in every other. In your own house, and in the dwelling of your neighbour, when walking abroad, or mingling in company, carry about with you the ornament of a meek, a quiet, a considerate, and a Christian spirit. No doubt you occasionally visit a sick bed; what feminine excellences and Christian virtues may there be exemplified! "Wouldst thou enter kindly and wisely," said one, "into the sorrows of the afflicted, use no harshness, bear with their infirmities, and put thy soul in their soul's stead. Remember, that though faith, hope, and charity, are all Christian graces, the greatest of these is charity," 1 Cor. xiii. 13. Are you quite sure that you are not given to pry into others' affairs, nor to make free with their characters and reputation? Christians should ever stand well with their neighbours, for being lovers of quietude and peace. They should not be tattlers and busy-bodies. It is said in Holy Writ, that "charity [or love] shall cover the multitude of sins," 1 Pet. iv. 8; and certain it is, that a truly Christian spirit will rather hide, than make known another's infirmities. There must needs be something out of joint in the framework of his affections, who spreads an evil report of another, be it true or false. Christian charity is kind, and hopeth all things. "Believe not every slandering tongue, Christian servant, how is it with you? I have spoken freely to your master and mistress; there can be no reason, then, why you should be passed by. I call not in question your honesty, your fidelity, nor your habits, but rather give you credit for being an upright, diligent, faithful, and conscientious domestic. Still my question must find its way to your heart-Do you, in your common, everyday affairs, manifest the meekness and loveliness of the Christian character? Your steady attachment to your Christian profession, and your being ready to go through fire and water for your master and mistress, will neither justify a pert reply, a duty left undone, nor a churlish, unthankful, and repining spirit. "My servant is an excellent servant," said a kind mistress, "but she is never satisfied; she does her duty, but she does it in a bad spirit; she obeys me, rather as a matter of compulsion, than with that cheerful obedience that would give a double value to her services." I hope you are not such an unlovely and unchristian character as this. Your wages are not given you for rubbing and scrubbing, sweeping and scouring, waiting at table, and going on errands merely, but for that willing obedience which makes labour lighter to yourself, and doubly acceptable to those you serve. Christian masters, mistresses, and servants, from sunrise to sunset, there is, and there will be, a continual succession of domestic comforts and annoyances, joys and sorrows, to test the temper, and try the spirit we possess; but when Christians are weighed, they should not be found wanting; and when put into the crucible, they should "come forth as gold." As we profess the same faith, and look to the same Saviour for salvation, whatever may be our station, let us manifest therein a Christian spirit. Let us "up and he doing in our daily concerns, provoking one another to love and good works, that it may no longer be said with truth, that the Christian overlooks his opportunities to exhibit the beautiful fruits of the Spirit, in the lesser things of life. Let us manifest the spirit of our calling in Christ Jesus, "by pureness, by knowledge, by longsuffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned, by the word of truth, by the power of God, by the armour of righteousness on the right hand and on the left," 2 Cor. vi. 6, 7. Let charity take up its abode in our hearts; let kindness be as a lamp to our feet, and let love at tend us, as an ever flowing fountain, bordering and beautifying all our paths. UNDESIGNED COINCIDENCES OF WHAT was the charge on which the Jews condemned Christ to death ?* Familiar as this question may at first seem, the answer is not so obvious as might be supposed. By a careful perusal of the trial of our Lord as described by the several Evangelists, it will be found that the charges were two, of a nature quite distinct, and preferred with a most appropriate reference to the tribunals before which they were made. Thus the first hearing was before "the chief priests and all the council," a Jewish and ecclesiastical court; accordingly Christ was then accused of blasphemy. "I adjure thee by the living God, tell me whether thou be the Son of God," said Caiaphas to him, in the hope of convicting him out of his own mouth. When Jesus in his reply answered that he was, "then the high priest rent his clothes, saying, He hath spoken blasphemy; what further need have we of witnesses? behold, now ye have heard his blasphemy," Matt. xxvi. 65. Shortly after, he is taken before Pilate, the Roman governor, and here the charge of blasphemy is altogether suppressed, and that of sedition substituted. "And the whole multitude of them arose, and led him unto Pilate. And they began to accuse him, saying, We found this fellow perverting the nation, and forbidding to give tribute to Cesar saying that he himself is Christ a King," Luke xxiii. 1, 2. And on this plea it is that they press his conviction, reminding Pilate that if he let him go, he was not Cesar's friend. This difference in the nature of the accusation, according to the quality and character of the judges, is not forced upon our notice by the Evangelists, as though they were anxious to give an air of probability to their narrative by such circumspection and attention to propriety; on the contrary, it is touched upon in so cursory and unemphatic a manner as to be easily overlooked; and I venture to say, that it is actually overlooked by The following argument was suggested to me by reading "Wilson's Illustration of the Method of Explaining the New Testament by the Early Opinions of Jews and Christians concerning Christ." most readers of the Gospels. Indeed, how perfectly agreeable to the temper of the times, and of the parties concerned, such a proceeding was, can scarcely be perceived at first sight. The coincidence, therefore, will appear more striking if we examine it somewhat more closely. A charge of blasphemy was, of all others, the best fitted to detach the multitude from the cause of Christ; and it is only by a proper regard to this circumstance, that we can obtain the true key to the conflicting sentiments of the people towards him; one while hailing him, as they do, with rapture, and then again striving to put him to death. Thus, when Jesus walked in Solomon's Porch, the Jews came round about him, and said unto him, "If thou be the Christ, tell us plainly. Jesus answered them, I told you, and ye believed not." He then goes on to speak of the works which testified of him, and adds, in conclusion, "I and my Father are one. The effect of which words was instantly this, that the Jews (that is, the people) took up stones to stone him "for blasphemy," and because, being a man, he made himself God, John x. 22-33. Again, in the 6th chapter of St. John, we read of five thousand men, who, having witnessed his miracles, actually acknowledged him as "that prophet that should come into the world," nay, even wished to take him by force, and make him a king: yet the very next day, when Christ said to these same people, "This is that bread which came down from heaven," they murmured at him, doubtless considering him to lay claim to Divinity, for he replies, "Doth this offend you? What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before?" Expressions at which such serious offence was taken, that "from that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him." So that it is not in these days only that men forsake Christ from a reluctance to acknowledge (as he demands of them) his Godhead. And again, when Jesus cured the impotent man on the sabbath-day, and in defending himself for having so done, said, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work," we are told, "therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God," John v. 17, 18. So on another occasion, when Jesus had been speaking with much severity in the tem ple, we find him unmolested, till he adds, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am," John viii. 58; but no sooner had he so said, than "they took up stones to cast at him." In like manner, (to come to the last scene of his mortal life,) when he entered Jerusalem he had the people in his favour, for the chief priests and scribes feared them; yet, very shortly after, the tide was so turned against him, that the same people asked Barabbas rather than Jesus. And why? As Messiah they were anxious to receive him, which was the character in which he had entered Jerusalem; but they rejected him as the "Son of God," which was the character in which he stood before them at his trial: facts which, taken in a doctrinal view, are of no small value, proving, as they do, that the Jews believed Christ to lay claim to Divinity, however they migh tdispute or deny the right. It is consistent, therefore, with the whole tenor of the gospel history, that the enemies of Christ, to gain their end with the Jews, should have actually accused him of blasphemy, as they are represented to have done, and should have succeeded. Nor is it less consistent with that history, that they should have actually waved the charge of blasphemy when they brought him before a Roman magistrate, and substituted that of sedition in its stead; for the Roman governors, it is well known, were very indifferent about religious disputes; they had the toleration of men who had no creed of their own. Gallio, we hear in after times, "cared for none of these things;" and in the same spirit, Lysias writes to Felix about Paul. that he perceived him to be accused of questions concerning their law, "but to have nothing laid to his charge worthy of death or of bonds," Acts xxiii. 29. It may be remarked, that this is not so much a casual coincidence between parallel passages of several Evangelists, as an instance of singular but undesigned harmony, amongst the various component parts of one piece of history which they all record; the proceedings before two very different tribunals being represented in a manner the most agreeable to the known prejudices of all the parties concerned. Řev. J. J. Blunt. THE PERAMBULATOR. STONEHENGE ON SALISBURY PLAIN. THAT things appear to us great or small, high or low, limited or extended, only by comparison, is a trite observation; but, independently of this truth, the circumstances in which we are placed sometimes impart a new character to the things around us: thus, he who for the first time ascends the weathercock of a church spire has a more fearful conception of height than when he afterwards climbs a mountain; and the benighted wanderer on the moors of Westmoreland has a more oppressive sense of loneliness than he who by day traverses alone the more extended steppe, the pampa, or the prairie. To one of our celebrated circumnavigators, the British Channel was a contracted space; while to me, when buffetted about by the angry billows, it has more than once appeared as a boundless ocean. These Wiltshire Plains, too, that are now before me, by those who are accustomed to explore vaster tracts of uncultivated lands, might be considered small; but unbounded as they are to the eye, they somewhat oppress me with their nfagnitude. They are to me as "The loneliness of earth that overawes The lama driver on Peruvia's peak." The silence, the solitariness, and the apparently immeasurable extent of these retired wilds, impress me with a sense of desertion. I feel that to be banished from my kind would be indeed an affliction; and I yearn with a kindlier feeling for the association and sympathy of my fellow-beings. Here and there I can espy on these wide extended downs a lonely hut, and even now in the distance I can discern a shepherd in the midst of his straggled flock, nor is the barking of his dog altogether inaudible. Strange that with huge Stonehenge in my mind so small a thing as a daisy should arrest me; yet so it is: the one at my feet is strikingly beautiful, perhaps the more so just now as it grows so lonely. "Take but the humblest floweret of the field, And if our pride will to our reason yield, It must, by sure comparison, be shown That on the regal seat, great David's son, Arrayed in all his robes, and types of power, Shines with less glory than that simple flower." It may be that, here, many a pious keeper of sheep, looking on this extended plain as the floor of a mighty_temple, whose roof is the clear blue sky, has worshipped God in sincerity while his scattered flock have fed round him. The remembrance comes upon me uncalled for, that David was a shepherd, and sang, per | chance, some of his own glorious psalms "To Him whose temple is all space, All nature's incense rise." I am on my way to Stonehenge, and feel as I approach the place a feverish excitement, lest, even now, something should occur to prevent my gazing on what has called up within me an irrepressible interest and curiosity. I am drawing near one of the wonders of the world, and feel as I think I should feel if the pyramids were about to burst on my sight. The traditional accounts of Stonehenge are only curious for their vagueness, their wildness, their silliness, and their superstition. It is said that the stones of this celebrated pile lay on the premises of an elderly woman in Ireland, and that the prophet Merlin desirous to have them on Salisbury Plain, employed the author them. This he effected by taking the of evil to bargain with the old lady about shape of a gentleman, and offering her as much money as she would count out in odd The old lady gladly agreeing to this proposorts of coin, while he removed the stones. sal, set down to a heap of fourpenny-halfpenny pieces, ninepenny pieces, thirteenthe moment she set her finger on a fourpenny-halfpenny pieces, and others, but penny-halfpenny coin, the stones were gone. Wild as this tradition may appear, it has not exceeded the belief of the credulous, and even now people are to be found who give credit to the tale that the huge stones were conjured across the seas by Merlin the enchanter. The account given by Giraldus Cambrensis seems rather to favour than to discountenance this wild tradition. "There was," says he, "in Ireland, a pile of stones worthy admiration, and corresponding with those at Stonehenge, called The Giant's Dance,' because giants from the remotest parts of Africa brought them into Ireland, and in the plains of Kildare, not far from the castle of Naase, as well by force of art as strength, miraculously set them up. These stones |