as that in which they have any serious part to play, as that which must be the better or the worse for their life. ter, they read the Bible, and they have a clear knowledge of the system of Christianity, and of the controversies between the different sects of Christians. What then is wanting in these? The fact is, that just here they leave the matter. They do not apply their knowledge, with regard to religion especially, to themselves. They do not recognize practically the fact, that they are moral beings, accountable to God for the way they spend their time and their faculties. They do not feel, deeply at all events, that Christianity is for them; and that it demands not only that they should understand it, but that they should act it out, and bring its motives into living play. And thus, in great measure, their knowledge and reasoning are thrown away; and those whom we should expect the most strikingly to exhibit the effects of Christianity, are, for all the advantage they get for themselves, or for all the good they do to others, or for all the honour they bring to God, but little better than machines-mere vegetables or brutes endowed by their Maker with the power of understand Such a one is to be met with every where; at home, in the counting-house, in the workshop, and in our chapels too. He is always ready with a merry laugh, and has a smart reply to whatever may be said to him. He talks of where he was yesterday, and of what so-and-so said; but he never looks within, or casts his thoughts forward. He reads just enough to carry him without difficulty through ordinary conversation; knows the names of the most celebrated authors, and has made himself familiar with some of the lightest and least thoughtful of their writings. He will agree with you on anything rather than be at the trouble of an argument; and you may persuade him to do, or say, or believe just what you will, if you are only sufficiently loud and earnest in your recommendation, and it does not require any reflection or self-sacrifice on his part. He needs decision of character. He needs to realize the dignity of manhood, and the importance of life; and till he does this all effort for him is thrown away, and all hope from himing and thinking, but withholding from is futile. He will remain the same till the circumstances of life force thought upon him; and then, in all probability, his character will be so fixed and his time so occupied, as to give little chance of a happy or a useful life. them a conscience and a heart. Besides these there is a third class, and of this the young men in our churches mainly consist. These have felt in some measure the importance of life and their responsibility to their And then there is another class-a God. They have looked, too, within class not so numerous, but far more them, have seen that there there was hopeful. These may be called the specu- pollution and weakness, and have turned lative young men. They think and they to Christ for pardon, and to the Holy read; they hear and they debate. They Spirit for help. They show that they are pretty well acquainted with general are sincere by seeking as far as may be literature. They know the history of to benefit the world and help on God's their own country, and something of cause. They are to be found in the that of others. They are informed with Sunday-school striving to dispel mental regard to astronomy and chemistry, and and moral darkness, or to be seen visitare conversant with geological, and ma-ing on errands of mercy the haunts of thematical, and mechanical science. depravity and distress. They are pious; They listen with attention to the minis-but they are not thoughtfully pious. They are Christian; but they are so for the most part from impressions and not from reasons. They have been educated as Christians, and have felt the adaptatation of Christianity to their own cases, and therefore they have embraced it; but they have never at all thoroughly investigated its claims, nor do they take a thoughtful, comprehensive view of the subject. Hence they are frequently to be found seeking to show the truth of Christianity by arguments that will not prove it, reasoning with atheists, for instance, by quoting texts against them out of the Bible ;—and hence, too, they take only a contracted view of the doctrines of Christianity, and are in consequence to be found looking only on one side of truth. Truth has many sides, and the man that will not take the trouble to examine all, has no right to imagine that he understands any. These young men-who are in fact looked upon as the type of the religious young man thus bring discredit on that which they love, and stand in the way of that which most they would cherish. They represent religion as a thing necessarily connected with limited information and weak reasoning powers. They mingle with others and show their inferiority to them in all that relates to history or science, to general information or the power of argument; and thus the stamp of insignificance is fixed on Christianity, and it is branded as though it could exist and flourish only among the ignorant and unreflecting. What the Christian young man should be is something different from all these. He must-in regard to this there can be no compromise he must have realized the solemnity of life, and have resolved earnestly to urge on its work. He must, too, have fixed on some grand object for which that life is to be spent. He must also be thoughtful, and bent on extending his knowledge; it would be for a shame and a blasphemy that when our VOL. XV.-FOURTH SERIES. Maker has endowed us with intelligence, and has written his power and wisdom and love in the heavens above and on the earth beneath, these perfections of his character should through our negligence be unrecognized. And no less must there be the deep feeling of the heart, going out towards that God who preserves and that Saviour who redeems us. Nor is there little to urge us forward in such a course. Our own happiness is bound up with our holiness, and we cannot but believe that it must also be greater the more our faculties are developed and our powers called forth. Our Father above asks that we as loving children should be jealous of his honour. Our Saviour demands the grateful consecration of our whole lives to his service. The church has yet much in it that needs elevating, much that needs enlightening; its knowledge must be increased, its efforts guided, and its love to God and man purified and called more constantly into play. And the world, with its thousands on whom Christianity has as yet made no impression, and on whom its teachers have no hold-this surely has a claim on the vigour of our lives. The thing may be done. Now is the time to effect it. Soon it will have passed from you; and you will be able only to mourn over your imbecility. But it may be done. The man who in the course of the last few months has drawn out the sympathy of all England, and has taught our hearts in our own language to vibrate to his love of liberty and fatherland, is an instance of what decision and intelligent application and ardent love can accomplish. These qualities it is that have lifted Kossuth to his people's bosom, and have enshrined him for ever amongst earth's noblest sons. And with a higher and a nobler end than even his, we may emulate his character and his deeds. His life stands T not alone. The lives of Alfred and of Cromwell, the lives of Luther and of Whitefield, -the lives of Carey and Williams and Knibb,— "The lives of great men all remind us We may make our lives sublime; Footprints on the sands of time :- "Footprints that perhaps another Sailing o'er life's solemn main,- "Let us then be up and doing, PHILOS. SUBTERRANEAN SCENERY IN ASSYRIA. BEFORE leaving Nimroud and reburying its palaces, says Dr. Layard, I would wish to lead the reader once more through the ruins of the principal edifice, and to convey as distinct an idea as I am able of the excavated halls and chambers. Let us imagine ourselves issuing from my tent near the village in the plain. On approaching the mound, not a trace of building can be perceived, except a small mud hut covered with reeds, erected for the accommodation of my Chaldæan workmen. We ascend this artificial hill, but still see no ruins, not a stone protruding from the soil. There is only a broad level platform before us, perhaps covered with a luxuriant crop of barley, or may be yellow and parched, without a blade of vegetation, except a scanty tuft of camel-thorn. Leaving behind us a small chamber, in which the sculptures are distinguished by a want of finish in the execution, and considerable rudeness in the design of the ornaments, we issue from between the winged lions, and enter the remains of the principal hall. On both sides of us are colossal winged figures: some with the heads of eagles, others entirely human, and carrying mysterious symbols in their hands. To the left is another portal, also formed by winged lions. One of them has, however, fallen across the entrance, and there is just room to creep beneath it. Beyond this portal is a winged figure, and two slabs with bas-reliefs; but they have been so much injured that we can scarcely trace the subject upon them. Further on there are no traces of wall, although a deep trench has been opened. The opposite side of the hall has also disappear On examining it attentively, we can detect the marks of masonry; and we soon find that it is a solid structure built of bricks of unbaked clay, now of the same colour as the surrounding soil, and scarcely to be distinguished from it. We descend about twenty feet, and suddenly find ourselves between a paired, and we only see a high wall of earth. of colossal lions, winged and humanheaded, forming a portal. I have already described my feelings when gazing for the first time on these magestic figures. Those of the reader would probably be the same, particularly if caused by the reflection, that before those wonderful forms Ezekiel, Jonah, and others of the prophets stood, and Sennacherib bowed; that even the patriarch Abraham himself may possibly have looked upon them. The slabs of alabaster, fallen from their original position, have, however, been raised; and we tread in the midst of a maze of small bas-reliefs, representing chariots, horsemen, battles, and seiges. Perhaps the workmen are about to raise a slab for the first time; and we watch, with eager curiosity, what new event of Assyrian history, or what unknown custom or religious ceremony, may be illustrated by the sculpture beneath. Having walked about one hundred feet amongst these scattered monuments of ancient history and art, we reach another door-way, formed by colossal winged bulls in yellow limestone. One is still entire; but its companion has fallen, and is broken into several pieces-the great human head is at our feet. We pass on without turning into the part of the building to which this portal leads. Beyond it we see another winged figure, holding a graceful flower in its hand, and apparently presenting it as an offering to the winged bull. Adjoining this sculpture we find a perfect series of highly-finished bas-reliefs. There is the king, slaying the lion and wild bull, engaged in battles and in sieges, and receiving as captives the chiefs of the conquered people. We have now reached the end of the hall, and find before us an elaborate and beautiful sculpture, representing two kings, standing beneath the emblem of the supreme deity, and attended by winged figures. Between them is the sacred tree. In front of this bas-relief is the great stone platform, upon which, in days of old, may have been placed the throne of the Assyrian monarch, when he received his captive enemies, or his courtiers. As we gaze upon these singular sculptures the description of Ezekiel is brought vividly to our minds. The prophet, in typifying the corruptions which had crept into the religious system of the Jews, and the idolatrous practices they had borrowed from the strange nations with which they had been brought into contact, thus illus trates the influence of the Assyrians. "She saw men portrayed upon the wall, the images of the Chaldæans portrayed with vermillion, girded with girdles upon their loins, exceeding in dyed attire upon their heads, all of them princes to look to, after the manner of the Babylonians of Chaldæa, the land of their nativity." The prophet is prophesying on the banks of the Chebar, or Khabour, in the immediate vicinity of Nineveh, previous to the destruction of the Assyrian capital, an event which he most probably witnessed. He points out the rich and highly ornamented head-dress of the sculptured kings, and evidently alludes to the prevalence of that red colour, remains of which are so frequent in the ruins of Nimroud and Khorsabad. Nor can the resemblance between the symbolical figures pictured on the walls and those seen by Ezekiel in his vision fail to strike us. As the prophet had beheld the Assyrian palaces, with their mysterious images and gorgeous decorations, it is highly probable that, when seeking to typify certain divine attributes, and to describe the divine glory, he chose forms that were not only familiar to him, but to the people whom he addressed, captives like himself in the land of Assyria. He chose the four living creatures, with four faces, four wings, and the hands of a man under their wings on the four sides, the faces being those of a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle,—the four creatures continually introduced on the sculptured walls, and by them was a wheel, the appearance of which " was as a wheel in the middle of a wheel." May not this wheel have been the winged circle, or globe, which, hovering above the head of the kings, typifies the Supreme Deity of the Assyrian nation? To the left of the great bas-relief at the eastern end of the hall is a fourth outlet formed by another pair of lions. We pass between them, and find our selves on the edge of a deep ravine, to | other by a high wall of earth, half buried, the north of which rises, high above us, in which may here and there be seen a the lofty pyramid. Figures of captives broken vase, or a brick painted with bearing objects of tribute,-ear-rings, brilliant colours. We may wander bracelets, and monkeys,-are sculptured through these galleries for an hour or on the walls; and two enormous bulls, two, examining the marvellous sculpwith two winged figures above fourteen tures, or the numerous inscriptions that feet high, are lying prostrate on the surround us. Here we meet long rows ground. of kings, attended by their eunuchs and priests, there lines of winged figures, carrying fir-cones and religious emblems, and seemingly in adoration before the mystic tree. Other entrances, formed by winged lions and bulls, lead us into new chambers. In every one of them are fresh objects of curiosity and surprise. At length, wearied, we issue from the buried edifice by a passage on the side opposite to that by which we entered, and find ourselves again upon the naked platform. We look around in vain for any traces of the wonderful remains we have just seen, and are half inclined to believe that we have dreamed a dream, or have been listening to some tale of Eastern romance.-Popular Account of Discoveries at Nineveh. As the ravine bounds the ruins on this side, we must return to the yellow bulls. The entrance formed by them leads us into a large chamber surrounded by eagle-headed figures: at one end of it is a doorway guarded by two priests or divinities, and in the centre another portal with winged bulls. Whichever way we turn we find ourselves in the midst of a nest of rooms; and without an acquaintance with the intricacies of the place, we should soon lose ourselves in this labyrinth. The accumulated rubbish being generally left in the centre of the chambers, the whole excavation consists of a number of narrow passages, panelled on one side with slabs of alabaster; and shut in on the CAPTAIN COOK'S DEATH. IT is a common saying in Hawaii, that Captain Cook's mark was deep and deadly. In the providence of God, he met his death by his own rashness and self-confidence at the very hands of the incensed barbarians whom he had wrongly allowed to worship him, and who were restrained from injuring him when they felt themselves wronged by the belief that he was a god, until a chief, whom he struck with his sword, instinctively grasped and held him in his powerful arms, at which Captain Cook uttered a cry of distress. dread charm of his divinity was at once broken by that cry, and the chiefs and people fell upon him in anger 'and instantly slew him, exclaiming, "He groans! He is not a god!" The The Hawaiian authors of a little text-book of history called, "Moolelo Hawaii,” collated by Rev. Mr. Dibble, quote, in their simplicity, and apply to this event, that passage of God's word, wherein it is said of Herod when he received acclamation as a god, that he gave not God the glory, and was eaten of worms. Their inference is, that God's hand was in his death; in thinking of which, at this late day, our most painful reflection is that the great navigator did not direct the rude natives to the God who made heaven and earth, instead of receiving divine homage himself. But we are willing to believe that he was not aware to what extent they honoured and served him as a god.-H. T. Cheever. |
