of a cure, to be effected by the aid of Him whe himself opened the eyes of the blind. He led her to a darkened room, and, with exceeding gentleness, removed a film, quite imperceptible to the naked eye, but which had yet effectually locked up the power of sight. The little maiden would fain have looked on that dear face, with every lineament of which her touch was so familiar, but her kind friend had veiled the tender and newborn sense so carefully, that every gleam of light was excluded. Gradually, and one by one, those folds of crape were to be removed, as the sight strengthened; till at length the child gazed, as one entranced, on a world which was to her a sudden and glorious creation.

Many years have passed since Katie first looked forth on the sunlight and cloud, on bird, and tree, and flower. She is now a noble and gifted woman, whose meridian of life and beauty has some time passed away. Her thoughts have thrilled through many hearts. "Fame, like sunlight," has been about her path; but she has often confessed, that no after-day dream of her poet life has ever possessed the charm of those bright imaginings vouchsafed to the shut-up vision of the blind girl.

Dear christian, will it seem too fanciful if I trace in the history of Katie some similitude to thine? More years than those which were dark to her the eyes of thy understanding were darkened, so that thou couldst discern no beauty nor fitness in that which is now the gladness and life of thy soul. Yet, amid the darkness and gloom of thy natural state, were there no aspirations for the true and the pure, no unutterable longings, which yet thy failing purposes and feeble endeavours failed to realize? And on that memorable day when thine eyes were opened, were they not gently veiled by the heavenly Operator, lest thy sense of the spiritual should become too vivid, lest the clear vision of thy moral deformity should wither up thy soul with sudden blight? or, on the other hand, lest a foresight of heavenly glory should unfit thee for earthly duty? It was a gracious hand that interposed a veil betwixt thee and Himself; and it was a gentle voice that, guiding the blind one by a way he knew not, whispered, "Fear not, I am with thee." But here the parallel ends. The world portrayed by the imagination of Katie was a fairer and happier one than that opened to her actual vision. But with

thy heaven, oh, christian, the reality will far exceed thy fondest anticipations. Why, then, should that home of thy spirit appear so dim and far away? Why art thou for ever engrossed by things that perish in the using?

"His hand the christian fastens on the skies Nor sees earth move, nor feels her idle wheel."

THE REST DAY.

FROM THE GERMAN.

"Wherefore," said the youthful Samma to his teacher, "does the Eternal need the service of men? Why do we celebrate the Sabbath-day? It was only intended for man in his rude state, that he might be educated thereby. Is not one day like another? Every day is blessed with the

light of the sun!"

The Rabbi answered, and said :—" When the children of Israel returned from exile to the land of promise, there lived on the borders of Mesopotamia, with his wife and children, an Israelite, named Boni; he was a wise man and a Levite.

"And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in the likeness of a messenger from King Arthasasta, and said, ' Get thee forth, thou, and thy wife, and thy children, and thy maidservant, and go into the land of your fathers, and help thy people, and give them counsel, that they may order the city and the land wisely.'

"Then answered Boni, and said, 'Let the king, my lord, graciously accept my thanks; but how can I wander through the desert with my wife and children? besides, I know not the way!' But the messenger said, ' Get thee forth, and learn to trust the king.'

"Therefore Boni rose up early, and went forth as the angel of the Lord had commanded him. But Boni doubted, and said, 'What shall the end of this be?' And they were passing through the desert towards evening. When they had journeyed six parasangs, and were very weary, behold, there stood in the way a tent, and a man came out and said to Boni and his household, Rest here.' Then they rested and refreshed their souls. And Boni said, 'The goodness of the Lord refreshes us here; but who will lead us the rest of the way?'

"Then the man came near and showed him both the way and the bye-ways; he

also gave him a map for six parasangs further, and then said, Go in peace!'

"Then Boni and his household went forward in the path which had been showed them, and bore with patience the difficulties of the way; for they remembered the comfort they had received. And when they had travelled six parasangs more, they saw another tent. In this also they found a servant of the king, who entertained them, and again pointed out the way, and warned them against the bye-ways.

"And so it always happened for eighty years, at the end of which time Boni and all his house arrived at the land of promise.

And he perceived that the angel of the Lord had led him, and, with Ezra and Nehemiah, he was concerned that the Sabbath should be sanctified, for the people had become dissolute.

"Thou seest, Samma," said the teacher, "that the life of man is a pilgrimage; six parasangs are six days; but the seventh is a day of rest, on which stands open to men the tabernacle of the Lord, that they may think of the way, and put their trust in God. The wicked regard it not, and, therefore, lose themselves in the desert; but the wise find refreshment, and reach the promised land."

VISITING THE INIQUITY OF THE
FATHERS UPON THE CHILDREN.

Exodus xx. 5; xxxiv. 7. Num. xiv. 18.
FROM THE FRENCH OF J. H. GRANDPIERRE, D.D.

The opponents of revelation have always cried out against those declarations of Scripture which threaten the chastisements of God upon the sons of the ungodly. They see in the passages which affirm the doctrine of the visiting of the sins of the fathers upon the children, an outrage inflicted upon the first principles of justice, and hence conclude that a book which contains such declarations, cannot have God for its author. This objection has been answered by many writers; and to =relieve it, they have had recourse to many hypotheses; but unhappily the defenders of the Word of God have not always agreed in the methods they have employed for removing the difficulty.

Thus, Grotius (De jure belli et pacis, vol. ii., p. 593,) does not hesitate to say = that in menacing the Hebrews with the punishment of their impious deeds in the persons of their descendants, God exercised his right as master. The power of God is unlimited, His sovereignty absolute; beings rational and irrational, bodies and souls, property and lives, all belong to Him, and He disposes of them as seems good to Him; consequently He can punish whom He pleases, when He pleases, and how He pleases, without our ever having the right to question His dealings. Thus reasons the Dutch theologian. But the reader ha already perceived that Grotius has hers confounded two very distinct things; God's

independence in respect to human laws and His liberty as to the very laws of His being. That God is free, who can doubt ? That He is independent of our ideas of justice, and the decisions of our judgment, who would deny? But, from the fact that He has no need of our advice in order to act, that He recognizes no authority but His own, that He is dependent only on Himself, does it follow that He is able, or has the right, to act without binding Himself by any rule, and in obedience to no law but that of whim or caprice? That He owes us nothing is self-evident; but, on the other hand He owes very much to Himself. Now, He owes it to Himself, that He should always conform the acts of his government to the eternal principles of justice; that He should punish the guilty, and the guilty only, and never permit to fall upon the innocent that suffering which is due alone to him who has incurred and deserved it. The highest degree of liberty consists in the strictest attachment, the most complete submission, to the laws of truth and order.

Warburton, who has enlarged at length upon this question (Divine Legation of Moses, iii., p. 135), proposes a different solution of it, although in its principles it amounts to the same thing with that which we have just been opposing. According to him, it is unjust to punish the children for the sins of their parents; but this act, which in itself would be an injustice, loses its obnoxious character by the fact that it rests upon a law which forms an integral part of the covenant entered into by the Lord with the Hebrew people, and accepted

by them. Thus it is the covenant which has sanctioned or sanctified a measure which in itself is not justifiable. Besides, adds Warburton, this law was never permanent, but temporary, transitory; it was designed to supply provisionally the place of the doctrine of a future life. In refuting Grotius, we have answered Warburton, for that which in itself is unjust, can never become just by any treaty or covenant; the circumstances, the place, the opportunity, have never been able to make evil good, nor cause injustice to become justice.

Dr. Hengstenberg, following on this point the footsteps of the Chaldaic paraphrast, Onkelos, as well as Jonathan, Gerhard, Steudel, and others, thinks that the threatenings which we read in Exodus are conditional, and that it is necessary to understand or supply these words, If the children persevere in the sins of their parents.

This explanation is natural, very natural; we may add that it is too much so; that it fails by an excess of simplicity. If it were received, it would produce a tautology without parallel, the sense of which amounts to this: God punishes the fathers and the children; the fathers if they are disobedient to his laws, the children if they are no more obedient than their parents. And how long does he cause the rebellious children to feel the effects of his just displeasure? Until the third and fourth generation, that is to say, during a certain length of time, but this period limited. But when men rebel against Jehovah, and set at naught his laws, does God punish them only to the third and fourth generation? Would not his justice follow and reach them unto the twentieth or the hundredth generation, even to the end of the world, everywhere and always? Can we suppose that in order to lead parents to a life of obedience, there was presented as a motive the consideration that their children would be punished if they trod in their steps. But this is too evident, and would not be, in any case, a reason fitted to turn parents from the path of impiety; for it does not strictly depend upon their conduct whether their children shall be vicious or virtuous, We may add that it is never, in a certain sense, in their capacity as men, that the children are represented in this threatening as liable to suffer the consequences of the sins of their parents; but in the capacity of descendants, successors, inheritors. Now it is precisely this considera

tion, that in becoming estranged from God, the fathers would not only bring evil upon themselves, but would, in addition, entail an unhappy lot upon their children, which the Lord wished to set before the former, to excite them to watchfulness over themselves and families, lest they should bring upon them the most terrible judgments. We say, in fine, that there is no authority for introducing into the text of the passages at the head of this article, and others analogous to them, the clause and restriction cited above. The threatening, in fact, is general, often repeated, and Moses nowhere makes mention of the exception which some wish to introduce. Now it would be strange, if the lawgiver had intended to announce that children would be punished only in case they should follow the example of their fathers, that he had not indicated it in any of these declarations, nor in others which are of a like nature. From which we conclude that the proposed explanation is inadmissible, and that it is in direct opposition to the context, which clearly teaches that it is in the capacity of children, and not of men, that the descendants of unbelievers are said to suffer.

There is, in our opinion, a more rational, and at the same time more Scriptural method of solving the difficulty; it is to confine the chastisements denounced upon the children of the ungodly to temporal evils, to the natural consequences of sin, to national punishments, and to moral disorders, in so far as they have their source in an irreligious education, or in demoralising examples. What was, in fact, the object of the threatening? It was to cause the heads of families properly to estimate of what importance, not only to themselves, but also to their offspring, were the principles which they professed, and the lives which they led. Pious, they might call down upon their posterity the blessing of heaven; impious, they would be likely, even after their death, to involve their families in the most dreadful evils. But what are these evils? Is it the loss of the soul? Is it endless perdition? By no means; in respect to this, the Word of God is positive. "The soul that sinneth it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son; the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him" (Ezek. xviii. 20). Is it, then,

of positive penalties that he here treats? of chastisements expressly inflicted? Not at all; but of natural pains, the ordinary consequences of the laws of nature, and which, without a miracle, Providence could not avert. Is it, in fine, a question of personal sufferings, deserved and endured by the individual? Not absolutely; but principally of national calamities, chastisements inflicted upon the people as people, upon society as society. It has reference to certain vices, excesses, which have power to overwhelm entire familes in misery throughout the existence of many generations. Such as the diseases, the fruit of licentiousness, the misery resulting from misconduct, intemperance, the effect of bad example. There had occurred with the Israelites circumstances in which their irreligion, their rebellions, their iniquities, had drawn down upon them fearful scourges. The Lord had warned them of it beforehand, and had been faithful to his threatening. At his command the enemy had appeared; it had pounced upon the Jewish nation like a vulture on its prey; it had wasted, pillaged, burned; it had massacred young and old, confounded in its fury the innocent and the guilty; it had reduced to slavery numerous captives; and long after the death of the guilty fathers were the innocent children subject to the sad consequences of the impiety of those to whom they owed their existence.

We might even go still farther and say, that often, too often, worldly parents make worldly children, ungodly parents train up ungodly children, vicious parents produce vicious children; and when these last die in impenitence, free, and consequently responsible, it is, nevertheless, permitted for them to impute a good part of their miseries to the authors of their lives, who, as a secondary cause, have contributed to their destruction. But, in this case, the children are not punished on account, but in consequence, of the sins of their fathers.

After all, there is here a mystery from which the veil can never be fully removed in this life. The simple fact which history

teaches, which the whole experience of the Hebrew people confirms, to which that of the entire human race adds its testimony, is that the sins of parents often bring the gravest consequences upon the future existence of their children; that the happiness of the children in this world, and their salvation in eternity, are intimately connected with the piety and fidelity of their parents; as in like manner their temporal miseries and their sufferings, under another economy, with the thoughtlessness or the irreligion of those to whom God has entrusted the care of their education. Think solemnly what can replace the most lively and heartfelt solicitude of every father and every mother! It is this, we need not doubt, which Jehovah desired to impress and perpetuate in his Word, when he wrote there with his own finger this terrible threatening, "I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me."

Thus, physically and socially almost always, and sometimes morally, does Divine providence justify the language of the Decalogue; physically, by the hereditary transmission of shameful vices or disgusting maladies; socially, by terrible revolutions, the reaction of which falls upon future generations who have had no share in their causes, but who, nevertheless, suffer their effects; morally, by the fearful results of a neglected education, or of evil example, upon the moral character and condition of the children. Here is a divine order which God would not disarrange, a chain of cause and effect which he cannot sever, a law of his kingdom from which the Holy of Holies would not desire exemption, but of which he sometimes avails himself to display the wonders of his grace. The law reigns, justice has its course, but mercy hovers over them, and pardon often interposes where the offence has abounded. "Woe unto the world because of offences; for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh."

The happiest child I ever saw was a little girl whom I once met travelling in a railway carriage. We were both going on a journey to London, and we travelled a

great many miles together. She was only eight years old, and she was quite blind. She had never been able to see at all. She had never seen the sun, and the stars, and the sky, and the grass, and the flowers, and the trees, and the birds, and all those pleasant things which you see every day of your lives, but still she was quite happy.

She was by herself, poor little thing. She had no friend or relation to take care of her on the journey, and be good to her; but she was quite happy and content. She said when she got into the carriage, "Tell me how many people there are in the carriage? I am quite blind and can see nothing." A gentleman asked her if she was not afraid. "No," she said, "I am not frightend; I have travelled before, and I trust in God, and people are always very good to me."

But I soon found out the reason why she was so happy,-and what do you think it was?

She loved Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ loved her, she had sought Jesus Christ, and she had found him.

I began to talk to her about the Bible, and I soon saw she knew a great deal of it. She went to a school where the mistress used to read the Bible to her; and she was a good girl, and had remembered what her mistress had read.

Dear children, you cannot think how many things in the Bible this poor little blind girl knew. I only wish that every grown-up person in England knew as much as she did. But I must try and tell you some of them.

She talked to me about sin; how it first came into the world when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, and it was to be seen everywhere now. "Oh," she said, "there are no really good people. The very best in the world have many sins every day, and 1 am sure we all of us waste a great deal of time, if we do nothing else wrong. Oh, we are all such sinners! there is nobody who has not sinned a great many sins."

And then she talked about Jesus Christ. She told me about the agony in the garden of Gethsemane; about his sweating drops of blood; about the soldiers nailing him to the cross; about the spear piercing his side, and blood and water coming out. "Oh," she said, "how very good it was of him to die for us, and such a cruel death! how good he was to suffer so for our sins !"

And then she talked about wicked people. She told me she was afraid there were a great many in the world, and it made her very unhappy to see how many of her school-fellows and acquaintances went on. "But," she said, "I know the reason why they are so wicked; it is because they do not try to be good,—they do not wish to be good, they do not ask Jesus to make them good."

I asked her what part of the Bible she liked best. She told me she liked all the history of Jesus Christ, but the chapters she was most fond of were the three last chapters of the book of Revelation. I had got a Bible with me, and I took it out and read these chapters to her as we went along.

When I had done, she began to talk about heaven. "Think," she said, "how nice it will be to be there. There will be no more sorrow, nor crying, nor tears. And then Jesus Christ will be there, for it says, The Lamb is the light thereof,' and we shall always be with him; and besides this, there shall be no night there; they will need no candle nor light of the sun,"

Dear children, just think of this poor little blind girl. Think of her taking pleasure in talking of Jesus Christ. Think of her rejoicing in the account of heaven, where there shall be no sorrow nor night.

I have never seen her since. She went to her own home in London, and I do not know whether she is alive or not; but I hope she is, and I have no doubt Jesus Christ has taken good care of her.

Dear children, are you as happy and as cheerful as she was?

You are not blind, you have eyes and can run about and see everything, and go where you like, and read as much as you please to yourselves. But are you as happy as this poor little blind girl?

Oh, if you wish to be happy in this world, remember my advice to-day; do as the little blind girl did, - love Jesus Christ, and he will love you,-seek him early, and you shall find him.-Rev. J. C. Ryle.

LITTLE KINDNESSES. "Tis sweet to do something for those that we love, Though the favour be ever so small."

Brothers, sisters, did you ever try the effect which little acts of kindness produce upon that charming circle we call home? We love to receive little favours ourselves;