and saw the shadow of a passenger cast on the glossy leaves and beautiful flowers of a China rose-bush, which served as his window-screen. The servant came to say, that one calling himself an old college acquaintance was in the kitchen; and there for he declined to enter the room-in old rusty black, out at the knees and elbows, with his head hanging down, stood a beggar-in whose haggard face he traced the features of one whom he had known as an accomplished student, the pride of his parents and family, and once the envy of many. Degraded in his own eyes, he would not lift up his head, nor speak, nor stay, but, clutching at the offered charity, he hurried offa man who might have adorned a pulpit, now a vagabond on the earth, cast off by all his friends, to die by a dyke-side, and be laid, with no regrets, in a drunkard's grave.

But three weeks ago, on going up the High Street, a sudden start, and the rapid turning away of a face, called my attention to one who had reached the lowest infamy. In her swollen and bloated features I recognised one whom I had known in better days, and had last seen when, five years ago, I prayed beside her mother's dying bed, in the garret-storey of a high tenement of the Cowgate. From her childhood she had been the widow's best earthly comfort -the little ewe-lamb of her bosom-and I have heard her mother, who blessed God for the fair opening of that flower, tell, with tears of joy in her eyes, how Mary sang her hymns, and with what power she prayed to God in their lonely home. Happily now for her, the mother lies at rest in the Grayfriars Churchyard; but her Mary, who, from a Sabbath-school scholar had grown up into a Sabbath-school teacher,

walks the High Street, another victim added to the thousands whose first fall often dates from these festive seasons-who begin with a glass, and end with a bottle.

Our larger towns are becoming a disgrace to Scotland; and our country, with its old character for piety and sobriety hanging in threadbare rags upon its back, is becoming a disgrace to the empire. We have small hopes from Justices of Peace or Members of Parliament. If this evil is to be stopped these waters dammed up and driven back-it must be, through the blessing of God, by you the people themselves; and to you, therefore, we presume to make this appeal; the necessities of the case are our apology.

We wish you, indeed, a happy new year. We are not the enemies, but, on the contrary, the friends of every recreation and amusement which can exhilarate the spirits, and give a tone of cheerfulness to the mind, and health to the body. These would help our cause instead of hindering it. In innocent sports, expeditions to the country, visits to museums, gardens, picture-galleries, public buildings, let such amusements be sought and enjoyed; but against drinkingplaces and customs let every master warn his workmen-every mistress her servants →every man and mother their children. At this season let all be specially on their guard -their motto this:-" Touch not, Taste Let the readers of this not, Handle not." paper resolve to do what they can, by their example, influence, and advice, to stop this annual debauchery. Offer no spirits-refuse them when offered.

"Be not partakers of other men's sins.' "Let him that standeth take heed lest he fall."

&c.

Is Ezra vii. 26, forming part of Ezra's commission from Artaxerxes, to be considered as agreeable to the Divine will? If so,-Are the powers with which the magistrate is there invested to be regarded as peculiar to his office under the Jewish dispensation?

Does the United Presbyterian Church require of her members an absolute denial of the civil magistrate's power circa sacra;

or does she merely disown the clause in the Confession of Faith having reference to the question, as constituting a part of her creed as a church, leaving individual members to adopt such views on the subject as they may consider best?

[The commission of Ezra, so far as it referred to the enforcement of religious ordinances, permitted or authorished him to carry into effect the Divine law which had previously been given to the Jews, and which had been temporarily kept in abeyance during the Babylonish captivity. Thus far his commission was certainly agreeable to the Divine will, and that it went farther there is no evidence.

The United Presbyterian Church, according to the Basis of Union, does not require of its members an absolute denial of the civil magistrate's power circa sacra. It only requires that they admit the Westminster Confession to be the confession of their faith, with the exception of the doc

trine it teaches, or seems to teach, respecting the magistrate's power in religion. Whether they admit or deny the doctrine of the Confession on this subject, the church, according o its standards, does inquire.]-ED.

LET us to-day return to the passage in which Job desires for his words some enduring monument. He says, "Oh, that my words were now written! Oh, that they were printed in a book! That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever!"

In an antiquarian point of view, this is a deeply interesting passage, being the earliest existing reference to the most ancient modes of writing-not to one of them, but to several, to all, in fact, that appear to have been known at the time this book was written.

The strange blunder of the translators about printing in a book, is calculated to provoke a smile, and is on that ground alone censurable. We knew a man by no means ill informed or unintelligent, who contended from this that printing was but the revival of an ancient invention known in the time of Job; with the only alternative, that else Job predicted the invention, and declared his conviction that his words would hereafter be printed in a book-" and this has really come to pass," he triumphantly added, deeming that his acumen had added one more to the long list of fulfilled prophecies. This carelessness is the less excusable, as the earlier versions are free from this fault. In them we have, "O that they were put in a boke;" or, "O that they were written in a booke."‡

Still there might be something to mislead in the words "written" and "book," not that they are absolutely incorrect, but that they have acquired more restricted signification than they anciently possessed. Not, however, to enter into questions as to the meanings of words, we shall give the translation which seems to us preferable

"O that my words were now recorded!
O that they were engraven on a tablet!
With an iron graver upon lead;

That they were graven in a rock for ever." The careful reader will here find four ideas,

Extracted, by permission, from Dr Kitto's "Daily Bible Illustrations," Vol.I, Evening Series. + ROGER's Bible, BISHOPS' Bible,

Geneva Bible

rising to a climax in the grandest and most durable form of writing.

Job first expresses a wish that his words were simply written down or recorded in the ordinary mode, without specifying any -neither shall we now, as there will be a future occasion to do so. But we cannot help pointing out the error of those who contend, from the text before us, that graving on metal or stone were the only modes of writing known in the time of Job, and, consequently, that there were no such things as books, or rather rolls (which was the ancient form of books), in existence. But why not? The world was already 2,200 years old at the very earliest date ascribed to the history of Job, and men inherited, through Noah's family, the knowledge and accumulated improvements of the antediluvians. And as this is urged by those who insist upon the most ancient date of the history and the Book of Job, it may well be asked, How, in the alleged absence of the means of copious writing, in the shape of books of leaves or bark, or rolls of skins (not parchment, which was later), linen, or papyrus, the Book of Job itself came to be written and preserved? No one will surely contend that a volume so large was engraven on stone, or even on metal. Further, in the time of Moses, materials for large rolls of writing existed, or how else were the books of the Pentateuch written, for only the ten commandments were engraven upon stone? Lastly, we have actual possession of Egyptian papyrus rolls of the most remote Pharaonic age; and through the sculptures, we are enabled to ascertain that this mode of writing was common in the age of Suphis, or Cheops, the builder of the great pyramid, more than 2000 years before Christ, and therefore anterior to the age of Job.

The patriarch then goes on to engraving or writing on tablets. These tablets may have been of wood, earthenware, or bone. Waxen tablets we take to be of a later age, not well suited to a warm climate, and never used but f or temporary memoranda, like our slates. We mention bone, in the

recollection that the shoulder blades of sheep were, in ancient times, and especially among pastoral tribes, the representatives of our ivory tablets.

Then Job comes to the process of writing on tablets of soft metal with a pen or stylus of harder metal-with a pen of iron on tablets of lead. Metal tablets for the purpose of writing, were composed of plates of lead, copper, brass, and other metals. These, as also tablets of wood, mentioned before, were either single, or frequently from two to five leaves were done up into a sort of book, something like our slate books. Lead, from its comparative cheapness and softness, and from the facility of beating out or melting down writing no longer useful, was much used, and was probably first employed for this purpose, though the prominent mention of it by Job does not imply that no other metals were used. It is stated by Pliny that sheets of lead were still in his time used for important public documents. A zealous antiquary of the seventeenth century, Montfaucon, states that he

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first are inscriptions, in Greek and Etruscan characters, unintelligible to him, but which might probably now be deciphered. The characters inscribed on every leaf are copied in Montfaucon's work. He also gives from Father Bonanni's Museum Kircherianum, the representation and description of another leaden book, which had been taken from an ancient tomb, containing_seven leaves inscribed with Greek, Hebrew, Etruscan, and Latin characters; all of which are declared (perhaps too summarily) to have been unintelligible. Both these books are probably not older than the early ages of the Christian era; but they adequately represent a custom of more ancient date.

Brass, as a more durable metal, was used for inscriptions designed to last the longest; such as laws, treaties, and alliances. These were, however, usually written in large tablets of the metal. The ornamental brasses on our own churches, many of which are still in good preservation, though many

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centuries old, illustrate this still more ancient use of tablets of brass. The stylus or pen for writing on metal tablets was sometimes tipped with a diamond; a circumstance to which there is an allusion in Jer. xvii. 1.

It was certainly a grand idea for man to think of committing to the living rock, and of thus giving a magnificent permanency to the record of his history and his thoughts. There are rocks presenting cliffs so smooth, with stone of texture so soft, as absolutely to tempt the idle saunterer to write or to scrawl unmeaning figures on them. In time this would suggest the desirableness of inscribing harder rocks with memorials designed to last; and where a smooth surface was not naturally presented, the face of the rock would be levelled for the purpose.

Many such monuments of the most ancient date have been found in various countries, but none more extensive or remarkable than those in the Written Mountains

of Sinai, which also derive especial interest from the locality in which they are found, so memorable in Jewish history, and not so remote from the place of Job's abodesome, indeed, making it much nearer than we do but that he might have known of them had they then been thus sculptured. It is not, however, likely that they were, though this passage shows that his view was directed to such monuments.

These inscriptions are found in the neighbourhood of Mount Sinai; or, to speak more accurately, in the hills and valleys which, branching out from its roots, run towards the north-west to the vicinity of the eastern shore of the Gulf of Suez: insomuch that travellers now-a-days, from the monastery of Mount Sinai to the town of Suez, whatever route they take (for there are many) will see these inscriptions upon the rocks of most of the valleys through which they pass, to within half a day's journey, or a little more, of the coast. Besides these

localities, similar inscriptions are met with, and these in great numbers, on Mount Serbal, lying to the south of the abovementioned routes; as also, but more rarely, in some valleys to the south of Mount Serbal itself. But the valley which, beyond all the rest, claims especial notice, is that which stretches from the neighbourhood of the eastern shore of the Gulf of Suez for the space of three hours' journey in a southern direction. Here, to the left of the road, the traveller finds a chain of steep sandstone rocks, perpendicular as walls, which afford shelter at mid-day, and in the afternoon, from the burning rays of the sun. These, beyond all besides, contain a vast multitude of tolerably well preserved inscriptions, whence this valley has obtained the name of Wady Mokatteb, or the Written Valley. Adjoining to it is a hill, where stones in like manner are covered with writing, and which bears the name of Djebel Mokatteb, or the Written Moun

of letters. The letters are in an alphabetic character, not otherwise known to palæographists, and many attempts have been made to decipher them, but not until lately with any degree of success. The inscriptions were first noticed by the traveller Cosmas in the year 535, and the character was even then unknown. He supposed they were the work of the ancient Hebrews; and says, that certain Jews who had read them, explained them to him as the journey of such one, of such a tribe, in such a year and month. This explanation might be understood to intimate that the inscriptions were made by members of the succes

tain. Intermingled with the inscriptions, images and figures of men and animals are of frequent occurrence, all executed in so rude a style, as may be well supposed to have belonged to the time, when men first began to inscribe upon the rocks their abiding memorials, and evidently with the same instruments and by the same hands as those which formed the inscriptions. Indeed, those who have taken the pains to copy portions of these, declare that it was often difficult to distinguish these figures from the letters. This suggests that the writers sometimes employed images as parts of letters, and, vice versa, images for groups