God service by helping forward their accomplishment, we find Sarai influencing Abram to act in conformity to the habits of his own and other neighbouring tribes, by contracting a marriage with her handmaid, Hagar the Egyptian. It is evident from the language which Sarai uses in giving this unwise, unwarranted, council to her husband, that it was the result of an impatience wearied with waiting for the fulfilment of the word of God. It was not as when, fourteen years afterwards, the feebleness and impotency of age seemed to have sealed her to perpetual barrenness, so that the annunciation, even from angelic lips, that she should have a son, was received with an outbreak of incredulous laughter. At the period when she proposed this new alliance to Abram, there is no reason assigned, save a hasty and ungrounded assumption that, because God had hitherto denied, so he would still continue to deny to her the blessings of maternity. And with reasoning of a proud and disappointed spirit, Abram was induced to take that step in his history, which, as it was unauthorized and unsanctioned by his God, so it necessarily left him responsible for the aggravated evils that followed in its train. Like the first father of the human race, he suffered not alone, but reaped the harvest of his own transgression, in the wrongs and wretchedness of those most nearly connected with him.

How subtle is pride: how does it love to array itself in the garments of humility, disguising itself from itself, and exhibiting a counterfeit grace for that which is a real sin! The mother of nations counted herself unworthy a share in the covenant of promise. In seeming submission to the divine will, but in actual rebellion against it, she put from her hopes,

which she should have waited for with an earnestness and patience of expectation, neither to be daunted by difficulty, nor wearied by delay. That her conduct was the result of secret impatience and insubmission, is evident, not only from the tone of her address to Abram, but also from the temper of mind in which the seeming success of her own scheme afterwards found her. When, in the providence of God, the measure she had proposed seemed likely to be crowned with the desired blessing; when at length it appeared that a child should be born to Abram,— the presumptive heir of Canaan, the progenitor of the wondrous seed in whom all the nations of the earth should be blessed, the bruiser of the serpent's head, the death-destroyer,-does she rejoice in the apparent fulfilment of a prediction which she had been so anxious to see verified? Ah, no! she who, in a spirit of false humility, had been so willing to write a sentence of exclusion against herself from privileges and promises, is the first to talk of her "wrongs," (Genesis xvi. 5.), when she began to realize the degradation of her altered position, through her own voluntary surrender of both. How does the latent pride now swell within her bosom, and break forth in a torrent of reproaches against him who had erred solely in yielding to the dictates of her own impatient will; and how does it shew itself in acts of oppressive tyranny towards her, who, though apparently about to become the mother of the promised heir, remained her bondmaid still! How subtle is pride, when it lies in the heart, like the small leaven, hid in the fulness of the measure of its good and wholesome purposes! How violent its working, when by the operation of some unlooked

for agency, it is brought into combination with every feeling of the soul !

Oh, Thou! who hast, in the revelation of thyself to us by Jesus Christ, given unto us exceeding great and precious promises, shall we impatiently arraign thy purposes when thou bidst us wait for them? Thou hast, in the depths of thy condescension, given unto us" the sign whereby we know we shall inherit." (Gen. xv. 8.) The altar has been prepared, the victim has been offered, and God and man have met in reconciling bond. Deity has passed between the broken body, in token that the covenant of blessing and of promise shall be fulfilled. Meanwhile we wait till the fruit of the Spirit has sealed to us the visible pledge of our share in this great covenant : but not seldom do we wait in vain. Season after season goes by, and gives no token either of blade or ear: shall we then write a bitter sentence against ourselves, because righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost do not immediately appear?-shall we grow weary of waiting? desiring to reap in undue season the harvest, ere the earing be complete? Oh, let not the trial of our faith work in our corrupt nature the heavings of a sullen despondency, leading us to a base surrender of ennobling, invigorating hope! "Faithful" is he that hath promised. "Able" is he that hath promised; but what if the promise tarry? Then grant to us that we "wait for it."

LYDIA.

TO SYLVIA.

O COME! 'tis merry spring-time now,
The blackbird's note is heard to swell,
And see, upon the hawthorn bough,
The clusters that we love so well!
Let's hasten to the green-wood shade,
There, flow'rs beneath our feet shall rise,
The spangled earth our carpet made,
Our canopy-the spreading skies!
To man, the Lord of all below,

Can fretted arch, or gilded dome,

A nobler mansion ere bestow,

From childhood, to the silent tomb?

'Twas thus, when mother earth was young, Ere furrows marr'd her em'rald vest,

In golden ages, bards have sung,

Our nobler sires would take their rest; They worshipp'd then at God's own shrine

The mountain height-the boundless wave, In dread magnificence combine

To humble, elevate and save!

For could they gaze on such a scene,

By man's proud chisel never wrought,

Nor lift to heav'n the brow serene,

With lowly praise—with grateful thought?

Eternal Being in thy courts

O ever let us worship thee!

O'er hill and vale, the loved resorts
Of pilgrims by thy grace set free.
And when we mark the full-orbed sun
Through ether blaze-a glorious sight!
We'll think, with fervent love, on One
Who pours o'er earth a richer light.
And when, at eve, Sol buried lies,

With ruddy lustre, 'neath the wave,
"Twill speak of Him who bleeds and dies,
A sinful, ruined race to save!

J. D.

THE awakened sinner sees that, throughout the extent of the universe, he hath not a single friendeven an angel cannot befriend him, though he may look down with all the anxieties of pity and sympathy. Nature cannot befriend him; and even God himself must be his enemy-then he feels that he is indeed poor, that he hath not a single friend to flee unto.Rev. Dr. Cooke.