principally schismatics, the latter heretics, in that they denied original or birth-sin (see Article ix.) And at councils and synods he took an active part. He effected several reforms in the African Church; and was revered and much esteemed.

He

In the year 430, Hippo was besieged by the Vandals. caught a fever in the third month of the siege, and finding his end approaching, he caused the seven penitential Psalms to be read to him, and ordered them to be fixed up before him, that if he had imitated their author in something of his fault, he might also imitate him in his repentance.

He calmly breathed his last in the presence of his lamenting friends, in the seventy-sixth year of his age, and departed to his inheritance among "the SAINTS IN LIGHT." R. E. B.

0

OBSERVATIONS ON THE MONTHS.

DECEMBER.

"Nor field nor garden now invites,
The rambling step to new delights:

Nature to man and bird and beast,

Proclaims a dull unwonted rest."-MANT.

THIS was the tenth month in the Roman year, and its name is derived from the Latin word decem, ten. By the Saxons it was named winter-monat, but after their conversion to Christianity, they called it halig-monat, or holy month, in commemoration of the birth of our Blessed Redeemer.

Among birds, the robin becomes the cottager's companion, for its sings amid the dreary snow, and helps to enliven the

cold and naked scene. Not a leaf appears upon the tall majestic trees, and the flowers have gone entirely from our view; still life freely and actively circulates through some parts of the vegetable world. Besides the evergreens, we find many kinds of mosses and lichen adorning the roots of trees and old walls with their velvet green; these are of great use, for they furnish us with fine purple and crimson dyes, and to the poor Laplander they are valuable food for the reindeer. The day now quickly draws to a close, and the weather brings us cold and often violent storms of wind and snow, which come patting against the closed shutter, and faster and thicker do the flakes fall, and deepen the pathway and roads, and we draw nearer to the cheerful fire, and endeavour to forget what is passing without.

This would indeed be a dreary season were it not for the pleasing thought that a happy and joyful Christmas is at hand, when the spells of home revive in their ancient weight within the breasts of many a household band, long sundered from the hearths round which they clustered in their early childhood, when

"Each room with ivy leaves is drest,

And every post with holly."

I must now draw these brief and imperfect observations to a close. We have, kind reader, been spared to see the closing month of the year, and let us not be unmindful of the past. Numberless are the subjects to which every month, nay, even every day, invites attention, and bids us learn some useful and lasting lesson; for nature in her revolutions is but a model of the existence of man, for there is no language which can speak more intelligibly to the thoughtful mind

than that of nature.

And it is repeated to us every year, to

teach us trust and confidence in God, and dependence on

His mercy and never-failing love.

"A Friend, Who guards us in the gloom of night,

And when all others fail doth still abide;
Who when Creation's wonders fade from sight,
Will still defend: Who scorned and oft denied,
Directs and shields His thankless flock with care,
And hears from heaven the contrite sinner's prayer."

THE HAPPINESS OF LIFE.

T. H.

"HAPPINESS must be something solid and permanent, withfear and without uncertainty!" These are the words of Rassalas, Prince of Abyssinia, to some young associates of spirit and gaiety, who spent life in idle pleasures and riotous excess, and he goes on to say, "My friends,—I have sincerely considered our manners and our prospects, and find that we have mistaken our own interest. The first years of man must make provision for the last. He that never thinks, never can be wise.' Perpetual levity, must end in ignorance; and intemperance, though it fires the spirits for an hour, will make life short or miserable. Let us consider that, youth is of no long duration, and that, in mature age, when the enchantments of fancy shall cease, and the phantoms of delight dance no more about us; we shall have no comforts but the esteem of wise men, and the means of doing good. Let us, therefore, stop, while to stop is in our power; let us live as men who are some time to grow old, and to whom it will be the most dreadful of all evils, to count their past years by follies, and to be reminded of their former

health and happiness only by the miseries and maladies which indulgence has produced."

Youthful friends, ponder over these words,-for believe me, they are the words of a truly wise, and of a truly good

man.

LIFE'S MISSION.

BY MRS. E. S. CRAVEN GREEN.

PRAY! 'mid the common things of life,

Thy daily household cares;

Lift up thy heart with holy thoughts,
Hallow thy path with prayers.

Pray for a humbler steadfast faith,
A contrite heart resigned,
To bear, unmurmuring at its weight,
The Cross to thee assigned.

Meekly receive, as gifts of love,

The thorns that strew thy way;
Offer thine heart in sacrifice,

Whate'er thy sorrow, pray!

Bless home with tenderest toils of love,

No duty there, resign,

But ever say in meekest faith,

"Lord, not my will, but Thine!"

Like Martha, order all things well,

For mortal nature meet,

But let thy soul, like Mary, sit

Low at thy Saviour's feet.

Leeds, 1850.

THE HOLY BIBLE.

(Continued from page 232, No. 10.)

THE REV. B. E. NICHOLLS, (the author of "A Help to Reading the Bible,") says, "The Bible contains the oldest books in the world; the first portions of it, which are the foundations of all the rest, having been written 3,300 years ago; that is to say, nearly 1000 years earlier than any other history which we have.

"Herodotus, and Thucydides, the oldest profane historians whose writings have reached our times, were contemporary* with Ezra, and Nehemiah, the last of the historians of the Old Testament. Between them and Moses, (the writer of the first five books of the Bible,) there is an interval of nearly 1000 years." Again, "The books of the Old Testament which we receive as canonical, are acknowledged by both Jews and Christians to be those which existed in our Saviour's time: and by the confession of both parties, they have been handed down to us uncorrupted and unchanged There are now extant nearly 1150 manuscripts+ of the Old Testament in the original language, and they have been proved by Dr. Kennicot, and other learned Hebrew scholars to agree with each other in all essential points."

Again, "As before the coming of our Lord, the enmity of the Jews and Samaritans was overruled to the preservation of the Old Testament unaltered, so since his Advent the enmity of Jews and Christians, and the divisions of Chris

* That is, lived at the same time.

+ That is written with the hand, not printed.