Yes, ment. There was food enough and clothing enough for all. The little girls were sent to school; one of them proving a fine scholar, Mdetermined to educate her! her money worked out by daily labour would pay for the child at the academy; and so to the academy she went; and there she continued, year after year, pursuing the same course with the best scholars in the village. Anna grew up a tall, slender girl, and M-- - looked upon her with delight and gratitude. She was to be the pride and blessing of her old age, and repay her love and care. Every year added to the promise and prospects of the young girl, who was so nobly urging her way forward to usefulness and respectability. But God had other purposes. Anna was cut off like a flower in the very bloom. A typhus fever laid her low; she lingered a week or two, and died. It was a dreadful stroke to poor M. She was the next victim. She took the fever, and followed the child of her adoption and hard labour. The poor aged mother did not long survive, but left the world in peaceful hope of a better, through the redemption of Christ Jesus. The little tenement was now closed up, but what riches of grace had visited its inhabitants! It is easy to perceive that the instrumentalities in this case were very small. They cost nothing. A kind word, a prayer, a little risk, a little trust! "No labours or watchings, no hunger or thirst, or cold or naked ness." Kind words to the erring, how easy! Punctual payments to the poor labourer, how necessary! A watchful tenderness for the immortal soul. Let us not forget a soul is worth a word! A soul is worth a prayer! This story is not even garnished, every syllable is true. The time is short. Let us to-day look over our neighbourhood to see if beneath the shadow of the church, the school, the rich mansion, there may not be a lonely outcast for whom Christ died!-Am. Mother's Magazine. SCRIPTURE DIFFICULTIES MET. BY DR. HEWLETT. "And he made a covering for the tent [or tabernacle] of rams' skins dyed red, and a covering of badgers' skins above that."-Exod. xxxvi. 19. "And they shall spread upon them a cloth of scarlet, and cover the same with a covering of badgers' skins, and shall put in the staves thereof."-Numb. iv. 8. Also Numb. iv. 6, 10, 11, 12, and 14. IN reference to these passages the inquirer puts the following questions: "Was the badger an unclean animal among the ancient Jews? and if so, were the skins of badgers used as a covering of the tabernacle ? as in this case must not the Jews seemingly have contracted uncleanness by skinning these animals?" In attempting to answer this threefold inquiry, we admit that the badger is an unclean animal; for, though its name is not found among the prohibited animals declared to be unclean, yet its instinctive habits and physical structure shut it out of the class of clean animals. The law was very plain and rigid. It runs thus: "And for these ye shall be unclean: whosoever toucheth the carcase of them shall be unclean until the even," Lev. xi. 24. And hence there would arise a contradiction, if the Israelites had been compelled to prepare coverings for the ark and for the tabernacle of skins of animals they were forbidden to touch. It would involve a great inconsistency that the ark of the covenant, which was considered so holy that no human hand could touch it with impunity, except the hands of those who had been consecrated to God, that it should constantly be covered with the skins of unclean animals. The mixture of the clean with the unclean has been the occasion of an absurd allegory; viz., "that the rams' skins represented the Israelites and the badgers' skins the Gentiles, who were to participate in the blessings of the covenant of mercy." We do not question the conclusion, but we most decidedly object to this mode of arriving at it. We have to look at the subject before us as one relating to the ecclesiastical polity of the Israelites: and in this light all about the tabernacle and about the ark of the covenant must be ceremonially clean. Therefore the coverings of purple, or blue, which our translators have called "of badgers' skins," was of a material that was accounted pure, and could not impart any impurity to those who prepared them or to those whose office it was to adjust them amidst the vicissitudes of the camp of Israel. ton, Jahn says, is a difficult word, meaning, according to some, a sky-blue colour; according to others, a sea-animal." This is the word which our translators have translated "badger," but which, we think, is incorrectly rendered. Among other reasons for this opinion are the following: That the badger is not found throughout Arabia, and consequently the skins could not be obtained in sufficient number for the purposes of covering the tabernacle and the ark of the covenant; that the character of the animal now known by that name, classes it with the unclean, and therefore would not be allowed to be handled by the Israelites or used in the holy service of God, from which everything that was unclean was prohibited; and that both the translators of the Septuagint and of the Vulgate think that in should be translated "purple;" hence we have in the Septuagint the repetition of "dépμa vaкívbivov," a purple skin; and in the Vulgate, "velamine ianthinarum pellium," with a covering of purple skins. We attach great importance to the reading of the Septuagint, because it was translated 280 years before Christ, by men who had every facility for ascertaining the real meaning of the Hebrew text, and their work was honoured by the cordial approbation of the sanhedrim of Alexandria, at a time when Hebrew learning was at its highest state of perfection in that city. The inquirer may rest satisfied upon the authorities given, that the word 66 'badger" is an inaccurate rendering in our version, and that FLOWERS OF THE HOLY LAND. MAY, "sweet May," opens upon us Palestine flowers, and enrich their herbariums with not a few of their most showy ornaments. The "blushing Hawthorn" (Crataegus oxyacantha) is this month the glory of our gardens, hedge rows, and woods, and is hence in some places called by way of preeminence, "The May." Our forefathers greatly ad mired it, and on Old May-day it used to be hung over every door in England, as it is still to this day in Athens. Its use in this way was, however, discountenanced by the Reformers, because to them it savoured of an old superstition connected with the rites paid to the goddess Flora at the beginning of this month. The royal house of Tudor wore it as its badge, from the circumstance of the crown of England having been hid by a soldier in a hawthorn-bush, when the body of Richard III. was plundered of its ornaments on Red Moor-heath. "For hours together we travelled through fields of briers and thorns." Thus completely fulfilling Isaiah's prediction, "Upon the land of my people shall come up thorns and briers," Isa. xxxii. 13. As we have just said, one of these thorny shrubs is the Rest-harrow (Ononis orvensis), and which in Britain is often found on waste lands and commons. It is easily known by its generally pink and sometines white pea-like blossoms and long spikes, when growing on gravelly soil. The Rhododendrons are now in bloom, and form some of our finest Palestine flowers. Almost all the common kinds grown in our gardens are varieties of the species (Rho the coasts of the Black Sea, and from the range of the Caucasus, through Armenia and Georgia, and the western parts of Persia. There they grow in great luxuriance, in moist and shady places, adorning the There is not a more ornamental, and certainly not a more admired, shrub or tree than the Hawthorn. It is found from Barbary and Pales-dodendron ponticum) found wild on tine, in the East, as far as 60° north latitude, and Mexico in the West to a similar latitude, and is everywhere greatly prized. In our gardens and shrubberies, varieties from all parts of Europe and some parts of Asia and America may be found, pre-scenery, and affording large quantisenting varied beauties in foliage, ties of honey to myriads of bees flower, and fruit. In Palestine the crowding to them. Hawthorns form one class of the "thorns" so often spoken of in the scriptures and by travellers. Various other thorny shrubs, as the Acacia, the Thorny Zizyphus, or Christ's Thorn, and the Spiny Rest-harrow, are, however, included in the curse now covering the land. The immense number of these thorny shrubs is often referred to by travellers. Dr. Keith found the surface of the country over which he travelled so thickly set with them, as to find it difficult at times to make his way through them. McCheyne says, Of flowering trees and shrubs we may further name the Juniper and the Box, both of well-known Bible fame. With us the Juniper seldom reaches to the height and dimensions of a tree, but in warmer climes it attains them both; and in Syria forms a pleasant shade, under which the people sit in sultry days, delighting themselves with its refreshing fragrance. Dr. Kitto mentions three kinds of Juniper common in Palestine, and says that on Mount Hor it grows to the very summit. In 1 Kings xix. 4, we read of Elijah sleeping under a juniper tree, and have other mention of it in sacred writ. the flower as an illustration of Bible botany. Different species of wild Mustard are now in bloom, and the Treacle Mustard (Erysimum alliaria), and the Charlock or Wild Mustard (Sinapis arvensis), will be well known to our readers. The Mustards grow equally wild in Syria as here; and one kind, called the Eastern Mustard (Sinapis orientalis), very similar in appearance to Charlock, has been thought to be the plant referred to by Christ in Matt. xiii. 31, 32. The plant, however, is an annual, and though attaining a great height, and The Box is also in full flower now, and the Myrtle is beginning to open its pretty fragrant blossoms in many a cottage window. In some of our most southern counties, the Myrtle grows out of doors all the year round, but not in the northern ; while in France and Spain, Italy and Greece, the northern parts of Africa, and all through Syria, it grows wild. On the hills about Jerusalem, and throughout indeed the entire land, it grows in great luxuriance and beauty. The Lilacs, and other flow-growing very rapidly, seems scarcely ering shrubs named last month, are still in bloom. Of smaller flowers, we may notice the Mallows. Some of the species may be found wild at our road sides, and others only in our gardens, but all are beautiful in their way, and all have more or less the properties which render them so useful in medicine. The Egyptians, Chinese, Syrians, Hindoos, and other nations, use the Mallow as food, and amongst the ancient Romans it was served up at table as a vegetable. The fibre of the curled Mallow of Syria is well fitted for weaving into cloth, and is fully stronger than flax. By some, the Mallow of scripture has been thought to be a different plant to this, but we have not room to discuss the merits of the question here, and our young readers may safely collect to be the plant the Saviour meant. Dr. Kitto therefore prefers a shrub, having all the properties of mustard, called by the Jews a mustard-tree, and very common throughout Palestine. The Spring Adonis (Adonis vernalis), with its birchy yellow flowers, is now seen in many a garden, and is a flower growing in the north of Syria. The garden Persicaria (Persicaria orientale) flowers at the end of this month, and is a very beautiful plant, said to have been brought originally from the garden of the monks at Mount Ararat. Other Palestine flowers might be named, as the Spanish Broom, and to our list might be added all those mentioned in April, and from which our young readers may get a goodly addition to their collections. C. H. B. |