nate, at the Bar, and again in our Universities. Is it in church alone that we can afford to dispense with state forms, and court etiquettes, to be homely and unpunctilious, without risk to the interests of decency, order, and reverence? Nothing, surely, that is cheap or commonplace; nothing that savours of the earth, and reminds of the world; no vulgar forms; no chamber postures; no familiar phrases; no colloquial tones; nothing but what is choice, orderly, composed, solemn, graceful, harmonious, has its place in our LORD's sanctuary: the resort of the angels; the asylum of the sick and weary soul; the school of Divine wisdom and heavenly music.'

A friend of mine once gave his congregation this test, by which to try their behaviour in church. "If the great GOD of heaven and earth were to appear in bodily Presence among you, as He is in His spiritual, which of would not have to change his posture, his look, or outward behaviour, if not the very thoughts of his mind ?"

you

And now will you not consider my question ? And I pray GOD to bless the thoughts of your heart for His glory and your good.

"Take my soul and body's powers,

Take my memory, mind, and will;
All my thoughts, and all my hours,
All I know, and all I feel;
All I think, and speak, and do,

Take my heart, and make it new.”

B. M.

THE DANGERS OF THE DEAD SEA.

FIRST and foremost among the dangers of this territory of the Curse, stands the almost total absence of the two great essentials of life-food and water. The former of the two is, of course, altogether wanting in this barren and desolate region. It is, therefore, absolutely essential that those who wish to explore the country, should carry with them all the provisions that may be wanting for the support of them and their followers. As regards

the latter-fresh water it is only to be met with at certain points of the shore, known to the Arabs who inhabit the neighbourhood. In journeying, therefore, from place to place, even water must be transported across the country-otherwise death will speedily arrest the traveller's progress. It was to the neglect of these necessary precautions, that the unfortunate traveller, Costigan, owed his melancholy death, about thirty years ago. He embarked, in the middle of the heat of summer, on the waters of the Dead Sea, in an open boat, which had been constructed under his superintendence at Jericho. Ignorant of the character of the region, he went totally unprovided with either provisions or water, and accompanied only by one servant. The two voyagers succeeded in reaching, at length, the southern shore; where they remained for two or three days, without fresh water, and exposed to the fierce beams of a midsummer's sun. making great exertions, they got back to the northern shore, where they lay for two days utterly helpless, and almost unable to move. At length the servant succeeded in getting to Jericho, where Costigan's horse was; which was immediately sent to fetch him, with a supply of water. For the purpose of obtaining medical advice, he was conveyed to Jerusalem; but the journey exhausted what little strength was left, and medicine failed to recruit his wasted energies. Shortly afterwards he expired: a victim, it must be confessed, to his own rashness and indiscretion.

After

Another source of danger and of death to the hapless explorers of this accursed region, is the fearfully unhealthy nature of the climate. Not only is the heat of the air in the neighbourhood of the Dead Sea far above that of Palestine and Asia in general-but travellers assure us that noisome and pestilential vapours abound on the coast, if they do not arise from the waters of the lake itself. To this cause more than one eminent man has fallen a sacrifice.

The excessive heat of the Dead Sea, occasioned principally by the circumstance of its being inclosed on every side by mountains, is strikingly illustrated in the following extract from the diary of Lieut. Lynch, the com

mander of the American expedition, which visited this region in the year 1849. Under date of April 26th, he

writes:

"The heat rather increased than lessened as the sun went down. At eight, p. m., the thermometer was 106° five feet from the ground. At one foot from the latter, it was 104°. We threw ourselves upon the parched, cracked earth, among dry stalks and canes, which would before have seemed unsupportable from the heat. Some endeavoured to make a screen of one of the boat's awnings, but the fierce wind blew it over in an instant. It was more like the blast of a furnace, than living air. At our feet was the sea, and on our right, through the thicket, we could distinguish the gleaming of the fires, and hear the shouts from an Arab encampment.

"In the early part of the night, there was scarce a moment that some one was not at the water-breakers; but the parching thirst could not be allayed; for, although there was no perceptible perspiration, the fluid was carried off as fast as it was received into the system. At nine, the breakers were exhausted, and our last waking thought was, water. In our disturbed and feverish slumbers, we fancied the cool beverage purling down our parched and burning throats. The mosquitoes, as if their stings were envenomed by the heat, tormented us almost to madness, and we spent a miserable night, throughout which we were compelled to lie encumbered with our arms, while by turns we kept vigilant watch.

"We had spent the day in the glare of a Syrian sun, by the salt mountain of Usdum, in the hot blast of the Sirocco, and were now bivouacked under the calcined cliffs of Moab. When the water was exhausted, all too weary to go for more, even if there were no danger of a surprise, we threw ourselves on the ground,-eyes smarting, skin burning, lips, and tongue, and throat parched and dry; and wrapping the first garment we could find around our heads, to keep off the stifling blast, and in our brief and broken slumbers drank from ideal fountains.'

Nor was it only by land that the effects of the climate were felt. Whilst on the sea, our travellers seem to have been equally exposed to its pestilential influence. We

have seldom read a more graphic picture than that which Captain Lynch has given of the state of his companions, on one occasion, whilst sailing on this sea of death.

"At 12.15," says he, "started for the eastern shore. A light air from the south induced me to abandon the awning and set the sail, to spare the men from labouring at the oars. A light tapping of the ripples at the bow, and a faint line of foam and bubbles at her side, were the only indications that the boat was in motion. The Fanny Skinner (the other boat) was a mile astern, and all around partook of the stillness of death. The weather was intensely hot, and even the light air that urged us almost insensibly onward had something oppressive in its flaws of heat. The sky was unclouded, save by a few faint cirri in the north, sweeping, plume-like, as if the sun had consumed the clouds, and the light wind had drifted their ashes. The glitter from the water, with its multitude of reflectors-for each ripple was a mirrorcontributed much to our discomfort; yet the water was not transparent, but of the colour of diluted absinthe, or the prevailing tint of a Persian opal. While busied with such thoughts, my companions had yielded to the oppressive drowsiness, and now lay before me in every attitude of a sleep that had more of stupor in it than of repose. In the awful aspect which this sea presented, when we first beheld it, I seemed to read the inscription over the gates of Dante's Inferno,'- Ye who enter here, leave hope behind.'. . . To my disturbed imagination, there was something fearful in the expression of their inflamed and swollen visages. The fierce angel of disease seemed hovering over them, and I read the forerunner of his presence in their flushed and feverish sleep. Some, with their bodies bent, and their arms dangling over the abandoned oars, their hands excoriated with the acrid water, slept profoundly; others, with heads thrown back, and lips cracked and sore, with a scarlet flush on either cheek, seemed overpowered by heat and weariness, even in sleep; while some, upon whose faces shone the reflected light from the water, looked ghastly, and dozed with a nervous twitching of the limbs, and, now and then starting from their sleep, drank deeply from a breaker, and sank back again to lethargy. The solitude,-the

scene, my own thoughts were too much; I felt, as I sat thus, as if I were a Charon, ferrying, not the souls, but the bodies of the departed and the damned over some infernal lake, and could endure it no longer; but, breaking from my listlessness, ordered the sails to be furled, and the oars resumed: action seemed better than such unnatural stupor."

To the unhealthy nature of the climate, was owing the nervous fever which attacked several of the men forming Captain Lynch's expedition, and carried off Lieutenant Dale, the other officer of the company. He expired at a village twelve miles up the Lebanon, whither he had retired, in the hope of being invigorated by the mountain "Lieutenant Dale had reached the age of thirtyfive. He was a man of fine appearance and elegant manners. His loss," adds Lieutenant Lynch, "will be greatly felt in making up the Report of the expedition, the end of which he was permitted to behold, but not to participate in its fruits, nor enjoy its rewards."

air.

Last, but not least, in our enumeration of the fearful dangers of this sea of death, ranks that arising from the marauding Arabs who infest the region, and who still fulfil to the letter the prophecy of Scripture," His hand shall be against every man.' So great is the danger apprehended from this source, that to travel in the country without an armed guard, is to expose oneself to almost inevitable death.-Tayler's Vestiges of Divine Vengeance.

THE RUINED CHURCH.

(By the Author of the "Matin Bell.")

"And if of old they so could feel
Who at this altar came to kneel:-
Nor superstition mar the sense
Of heart-exalting reverence;

'Twere well if pilgrims would repair
Again to drink this sacred air."

The Baptistery.

BEAUTIFUL and happy summer hours were those that I spent on the shores of the Solent Sea, at the time when the events occurred which are recorded in these pages.