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gale howls cheerless amid the naked branches of its rifled compeers. And at this dreary period of the year, when external scenes and mental impressions would alike depress the heart, we are fitly called on to commemorate the festivity with which early association has identified the holly. Gladly does the Christian obey the summons to contemplate in the manger of Bethlehem, "wrapped in swaddling clothes," the wondrous babe, whom he knows to be the almighty Ruler of earth and heaven, the only-begotten Son of God, given "for us men and for our salvation,” the messenger of mercy to him, the ground of his hope, and the source of his peace, at a season when the revolution of time has placed him in circumstances of solemn and peculiar interest. He stands, as it were, on the confines of an old and a new period of time; he reviews the shortcomings of the past with sorrow and repentance, and anticipates the "untried future," with a natural anxiety and fear. Bygone failures and shortcomings, as contrasted with bygone mercies and opportunities, arise with uncontrollable power to depress the conscience, and the gloom of uncertainty overspreads the path that lies before him. How could he respond to the glad salutation of the season, had not his spirits been cheered, and his faith invigorated in the contemplation of Immanuel the Saviour given to sinful men? Yet thus, even his fearful heart is made strong; and having experienced the blessings of Christmas, he enters on the new year with humble, yet assured peace and hope. He fears not the "due reward" of sin, for though he acknowledges himself as "the chief of sinners," he believes the "faithful saying, worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners." He goes forward in the journey of life, though not knowing what may befall him, assured that he shall be guided by the counsel, and upheld by the power of him who "spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all," and will, therefore, "with him also freely give us all things" that are needful for us. And he enters with simple, though sincere confidence on a way by which he has not "passed heretofore," knowing that the Lord is and ever will be with him, and is pledged by his sure word of promise, to "lead him forth by a right way," for the sake of Him who is the way, the truth, and the life; and who is even now preparing

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for him a mansion in the skies. But inasmuch as he who receives this Saviour as his hope and reconciliation, a Priest to atone, and a Prophet to instruct, must also, with willing obedience, hail Him as a Sovereign to rule over his every act, and thought, and word; so while the Christian receives from the holly tree as the emblem of his Redeemer's birth, comfort and encouragement, he is also willing to derive from this mute page in the book of creation some lesson of reproof or instruction in righteousness. And powerful, indeed, is the monition it thus affords him in the hour of care and doubt; and could he but more and more realize and imbibe it, how blessed, how elevating would be the result!

With berry red, and leaf ne'er sere,
The holly greets the fading year;
A friend, when summer friends do flee,
"A brother for adversity."

But not to fond and faithful breast
Alone, does it sweet thoughts suggest;
Oh, no! To thee whom cares perplex,
Whom troubles fright, whom crosses vex,
To thee it speaks in loftier tone,
And breathes a moral all its own.
Come, then, and from the holly tree,
Learn what thou art, and what may'st be,
Mark how upon each earthward bough,
Edged with sharp thorns the leaves do grow ;
While those the higher stems that grace,
Bear of the prickly curse no trace;
As if to teach thee it designed,
With earth we leave the thorn behind.

Say, thou upon whose brow is set
Care's thorn-entwisted coronet,
Oh, would'st thou tear it thence, arise
And seek communion with the skies;
The nearer heaven thou soar'st, the less
Shall that keen wreath thy temples press;
If once before thy raptured view,
Faith open heaven, how faint and few
Will seem all earthly griefs and cares,
Until, at last, each disappears,
Like thorns from off the leaves which grow
Upon the holly's topmost bough.
L. TWAMLEY.

OLD HUMPHREY ON UNPROMISING
SCENES.

THOUGH nature, to a lover of nature, is ever fair to look upon, yet are there moods of mind when the heart yearns with more than common desire for mountains and moors, green fields and woods and waters. It was when in a mood of this kind that I found myself, the other day, in a spot which had very few attractions.

Had the prospect around me been a lovely one, which was far from the case, the dull, thick, heavy atmosphere would have prevented me from revelling in its beauties. I stood, as it were, cooped up

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between two low banks of earth, each of them having a ditch on the far side, and a flat field beyond; one of these ditches was dry. Thus circumstanced, being weary, I sat me down on the brow of one of the banks, and having no distant object interesting to gaze on, I seemed of necessity constrained to look down into the dry ditch for a subject of speculation. You will readily admit that this presented me with only an unpromising scene.

There is nothing, however, like an inclination to turn "all Occurrences to the best advantage." An enterprizing spirit and a grateful heart will seize upon some favourable point in the most forbidding landscape, and gild the gloomiest prospect under heaven. I soon discovered an abundant source of reflection in the following objects that lay scattered in the dry ditch before me, within the space of a few yards: an old hat, a broken flower pot, the bowl of a tobacco pipe half full of tobacco, an oyster shell, a dead cat, a piece of a letter on which was plainly written the word "Farewell!" a Dutch tile, a corroded tin kettle, the neck of a wine bottle, and a large bone. You shall have, as correctly as I can give them, my musings on the curious catalogue I have laid before you.

the football of the idler and the truant, and is kicked into the muddy ditch, the inglorious receptacle of all that is valueless and vile.

"It may be that the old worn-out beaver there in its better days adorned a banker's brows, and in its decline covered the uncombed locks of the bricklayer and the beggar. Now, if it could tell only one half of the worldly schemes and vain desires which dwelt in the heads of its several owners, a book might be written of it, though, perhaps, not of the most edifying character. There it lies, and there it is likely to lie, till its separated atoms are scattered abroad as manure to fertilize the ground.

"The broken flower pot brings before me some pleasant pictures. It may have contained mignionette; and the setting of the seed, the watching, the watering, and the springing up of the sweet-scented plant, may all have afforded pleasure to one who had no other garden. Or it may have held a rose tree, a geranium, or a myrtle, the gift of a friend; and I can imagine the bright eyes of the young, and the furrowed brows of the old, bending over it with interest. Oh, what an amount of quiet joy and peaceful delight has the Giver of all good conferred upon the human race in the green leaves of plants and the painted petals of flowers!

"The tobacco-pipe bowl, half full of tobacco, at once sets the smoker before me. I see his unwashed face and uncombed hair, his dirty and ragged attire, and his hat on his head, set on one side. I hear, too, his immoral jest and infidel laugh, as he pursues his sabbath-breaking course, with an ugly cur yelping before him. And now, am I not ashamed to have drawn such a picture as this? How do I know but the pipe may have belonged to some honest and diligent workman in the habit of indulging himself in a few whiffs at the close of his labour? How do I know but that, while the curling fume ascended towards heaven, his thoughts may have ascended too, in gratitude and praise to the Father of mercies, for the ease and tranquillity he enjoyed? Shame! shame! for my want of that charity which 'hopeth all things,' and which should have influenced me even in drawing the sketch of an un

"It would not be an easy thing to trace that well-worn, crownless, and almost brimless old hat to its original owner; nor should I be able to make out without much trouble whether it was sold by Christie, or bought at a slop shop in Leadenhall-street, Aldgate, or Houndsditch; but as it matters not two pins who was the buyer or who was the seller of it, I am content to leave the point unascertained. The history of a hat inay be soon given from the moment it has passed through the necessary battening, hardening, working, blocking, napping, dyeing, stiffening, finishing, lining, and binding, and been exposed for sale in the window, till it lies, like the useless remnant there in the ditch, too tattered to defend, and too worthless to cover the brow of the meanest mendicant. It is for a time worn with pride and preserved with care, and not discarded, perhaps, till after its first renovation. It then has a second proprietor, loses grade, and passes rapidly on its downward career. The old clothesman, the coachman, cabman, and pot-known smoker. boy, in their turns, become its possessors, till worn, drenched, crushed, and cuffed out of its propriety, it becomes at last

"I might content myself, when looking on the discarded oyster shell, in alluding to the too common practice among us of

sticking close to those who have wherewith to serve us, and of flinging them away, or deserting them, when they no longer answer our purpose; and, indeed, though the reflection may be, as the adage has it, as old fashioned as Clent Hills,' I hardly know one of the kind on which we could muse more profitably. Policy may say, 'Where is the use of having aught to do with those who can be of no use to us?' but Christian principle should bind us together with the band of brotherhood to all mankind, to the rich and the strong, but especially to poor and the helpless. The history of that oyster shell faithfully related would not be without its interest, including as it should do all the scenes in which it has acted a part, from the season when it was first wrenched away from its dwellingplace on the ocean-rock, to the moment when, flung into the air by the holidayloving urchin, it was borne by the winds to its present place of degradation.

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"The dead cat will hardly bear a reflection; for the ruffled fur, the projecting eye and lacerated limb, tell too plainly a tale of cruelty. A recent worry has taken place, and tabby, whose silky skin has so often been stroked with tenderness by the soft hand of her kindhearted mistress, has at last, I fear, been set upon by cruel tormentors, and torn and mangled by their infuriated dogs. It would go hard with many if they were treated as they treat the brute creation!

"What a volume is comprised in that scrap of a note or letter, bearing the word Farewell!' The word is written far from freely, but the writer may have been an indifferent scribe, or have sat down under circumstances of haste or emotion. The word may have been written by a parent to a child, or by a son or daughter to a parent; by some soldier, about to pack up his knapsack for the march; or by some sailor, whose ship was soon to spread her sails for a foreign shore. It may have been written with the lightheartedness of one bidding adieu for a day,

Farewell! come sunshine, wind, or rain,
To-morrow we shall meet again!

Or it may have been flung on the paper by the hurried hand and agitated energy of one bidding farewell till this mortal shall have put on immortality.'

Farewell, then! Farewell, then! though bitter it be,

I will drink of the cup, for thou gavest it me;

And I know that thou willingly wouldst not impart

A pang or a sorrow to trouble my heart. Farewell, though the word be denouncing a doom!

Farewell, though it sound as a voice from the tomb!

Till the crash of creation shall sever the spell,
Farewell! If for ever-for ever, Farewell!

"The Dutch tile, broken as it is largely at three of its corners, is still sufficiently entire to tell me that the blue picture on its surface is intended to represent the beheading of the giant Goliath. David is not exactly the fine stripling that I have always supposed he must have been, neither does Goliath quite come up to my beau ideal of a Philistine giant; but we ought not to expect perfection in a painted Dutch tile more than in other things. I dare say it has had, in its time, many admirers, nor will I, in its present low estate, visit it with my reproach. Before now I have been as much interested in the uncouth scriptural figures on a set of Dutch tiles, as if they had been drawn by Raffaelle and coloured by Titian.

"How many a mess of pottage has been boiled in that old tin kettle I cannot say; but it would by no means be a hazardous speculation to conclude that the utensil will never boil another. The handle is gone, its corroded sides are dented in, and that capacious hole at the bottom would puzzle a clever tinman to mend. But tin kettles were not intended to last for ever, and the one before me seems to have done its duty. Let us, then, learn a lesson from it, and do ours, and so long as we are fit for service render ourselves useful to mankind.

"Were I a toper, the neck of the wine bottle might furnish me with a subject on which to descant for an hour; and even as it is, some turbulent festive scenes are rising before my fancy. However, I can take my choice, and either set the bottle that belonged to the glassy fragment ou the sideboard of the intemperate, while the walls are ringing with the song of the drunkard; or place it, filled with good wine, by a patient in the sick chamber, languishing with disease, and pain, and poverty, to whom it has been sent by way of charity. I have now a scene like this latter one fresh in my remembrance, wherein

A good man broke his own repose,
To mitigate another's woes,

carrying with him a bottle of port wine to a poor afflicted neighbour, who was all but exhausted with weakness. "Blessed is he that considereth the poor; the Lord

will deliver him in time of trouble," Psa. xli. 1.

"And now I come to the large bone there, which, belonging, as no doubt it did, to some animal of the inferior creation, may yet well serve to remind me of my own mortality. It is a hard thing, while life is lustily beating in our hearts, and the warm blood healthfully rushing through our veins, to realize, even in imagination, that our frames will, indeed, be unstrung; our bones really disjointed, mingling with the earth that we now tread upon; and yet the time is hastening on when this must be the case. Oh for a hopeful looking forward to the end of our pilgrimage, a cheerful conviction that through mercy we shall be permitted to finish our course with joy, and find the end thereof eternal life. 'If,' says a writer, 'only one hour of joy be permitted me in time, let it be that which is nearest to eternity.'

"We do well to mingle with the solemnities of death the brighter prospect of eternal life, and to regard our afflictions as the means by which God conveys to us our mercies.

Sorrow, and tears, and woe are meant
To win the soul from sin and pain;
And death is oft the herald, sent
To bid us seek immortal gain."

On the other hand, prosperity is by no means the uniform lot of the wicked, nor adversity of the righteous.

But though the common bounties of Providence descend alike on all, (for "He maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust," Matt. v. 45; and though one event happeneth alike to all, Eccles. ii. 14,) there is a difference in the design and application of the dispensation. The affliction may be sent in love, as the rod or medicine is administered to the child; the prosperity may be bestowed, as the rich pasture is afforded to the bullock to fatten it for slaughter. And there is generally, more or less, an inward consciousness that this is the case; a consciousness which, while it embitters all the enjoyments of the sinner, enables the saint of God to say, even under the most severe and complicated trials,

"Although my cup seems fill'd with gall,

There's something secret sweetens all." This testimony is not always confined to a man's own conscience. It is sometimes rendered strikingly visible to those around, that a blessing rests upon the afflicted saint and a curse upon the prosperous sinner. A course of disobedience to the Divine commands is sometimes

course of conscientious obedience is sometimes made to result in unlookedfor prosperity. The fact is universal, that "the curse of the Lord is in the house of the wicked, but he blesseth the it is sometimes strikingly displayed, as habitation of the just," Prov. iii. 33; and if to keep alive the remembrance that a day of universal retribution is coming, and to establish the conviction that

You perceive that Old Humphrey has found enough to muse upon, even in the signally made to punish itself; and a unpromising scene already described, and that he has turned to some advantage the old hat, the broken flower pot, the tobacco pipe bowl, the oyster shell, the dead cat, the piece of a letter, the Dutch tile, the tin kettle, the neck of the winebottle, and the large bone! His observations may call forth yours; at all events, there is a moral in his musings; it is this, That you should never be cast down by the most hopeless case; but, on the contrary, make the best of the most unpromising scene.

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"verily there is a reward for the righteous: verily he is a God that judgeth in the earth," Psa. lviii. 11.

It is nearly half a century since the following facts occurred; but the impression they left has not yet worn out. There are yet living those who can testify not only to the fidelity of the narration, but to the effects produced, especially in promoting the observance of the Sabbath where it was before disregarded. Many in that neighbourhood were led to "hear, and fear, and do no more presumptuously," Deut. xvii. 13.

In a rising manufacturing district, resided Mr. R, the proprietor of one of the most extensive and prosperous concerns in the place, He had com

menced his career with an ample capital, by means of which he was enabled to avail himself of every advantage presented, either by the improvements of science or the conjunction of circumstances. His premises and buildings, for extent and completeness, far excelled any others in the neighbourhood. He had in his employ a much greater number of the most able and skilful workmen than any other of his competitors could command. He had access to the best markets, both for obtaining his materials and disposing of his merchandize. His returns were abundant, a full tide of prosperity continually flowed in upon him, and he had more than heart could wish. Nor did he obtain his wealth by grinding the faces of the poor, or by taking mean advantages of his mercantile connexions; he was universally respected as a kind and liberal master, and renowned for uprightness and honour in all his transactions. He was one of those who cause it to be said of modern Britain, as it was of ancient Tyre, "Her merchants are princes, her traffickers are the honourable of the earth."

Not far from the extensive works and splendid mansion of Mr. R-, lived R. F, an honest, industrious workman, who, in his humble sphere, experienced a somewhat similar degree of prosperity. R. F was the son of decent and pious parents, who gave him the best education in their power, which, however, probably extended little further than the rudiments of reading and writing; his reading being principally confined to the Bible and a few standard religious books. He was trained “in the nurture and admonition of the Lord," and was early distinguished by tenderness of conscience. Whatever might be the views of his parents as to the further education of their children, and as to placing them out in life, they were all frustrated by the death of the father, who left a numerous and unprovided young family to the charge of a widowed mother. R. F was but a boy; he, however, felt, not only the necessity of relinquishing the expectation of receiving any further as sistance from his mother, but also the obligation devolving upon him to support himself, and to assist her in providing for the younger members of the family. He engaged himself to a master manufacturer; soon became one of his best workmen, and continued in his employ several years. During this time,

as his mother's cares were gradually lightened by each of her children becoming successively able to do something for its own support, he saved sufficient money to purchase a spinning jenny. Shortly after this, he married a young woman, who, like himself, was industrious, prudent, and careful, as well as pious. She assisted him in his work, and they prospered exceedingly.

R. F- had established such a character for integrity and skill, that several of the principal manufacturers were desirous of engaging his services, and made him liberal offers. Among the rest, his wealthy neighbour Mr. R- repeatedly applied to him with inducements of every kind, but in vain. Being pressed to assign his reasons for declining proposals so advantageous, and invited to make proposals of his own, he respectfully but firmly declared that if the advantages offered were ten times greater, he dared not engage himself with an employer who disregarded the sabbath; and that he preferred his own little independent concern, chiefly as it left him at liberty to make arrangements congenial with his own principles and preferences in that respect.

In the course of a few years, R. F was enabled to purchase several more machines, and hire two large rooms, in which he employed a number of workpeople. His increasing prosperity, happily, did not render him forgetful of God. He "honoured the Lord with his substance, and with the first fruits of all his increase." Time was, when, by an effort of self-denial, he raised a few pence for the cause of religion; now he was one of its most munificent supporters. During the whole of his career, a lovely and blameless consistency marked his general conduct. He was peculiarly distinguished by a conscientious regard to the sabbath. When he and his wife worked by themselves, they uniformly laid aside their secular employment at an early hour on Saturday, that they might quietly prepare for the rest of the holy sabbath of the Lord their God; and when they had others many others in their employment, they grudged not to extend the same privilege to them.

The closing years of the last, and the commencement of the present centuries, witnessed rapid advances in machinery, and the introduction of steam power, as applied to the purposes of manufacture. By those who could promptly avail them

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