My sins the cause of my distress

I feel, and mournfully confess The punishment is just.

Wherefore with soft and silent pace

I measure out my suffering days, In view of joys to come,
In hope his plan to comprehend,

When Jesus shall with clouds descend, And call me from the tomb.
The life of Charles Wesley was a varied, and in the main,
a sad one.
He thoroughly understood the great lesson of

the book of Ecclesiastes, and of all earthly life:

Taught by long experience, Lord, By thy Spirit taught, I see,
True is thy severest word, All on earth is vanity:

Empty all our bliss below, Seeming bliss, but real woe.

He never forgot that this is not our rest. He expected persecution and opprobrium as the natural and necessary favors of the world towards living Christians:

Since first we heavenward turned our face,
Exposed and outraged all day long,

A helpless, poor, afflicted race,

For doing good, we suffer wrong:
We suffer shame, distress, and loss,

And wait for all thy glorious cross.

But the prospect did not frighten him. When he first undertook to follow Christ, he began to deny himself and take up his cross :

And did my Lord on earth endure

Sorrow and hardship and distress,

That I might sit me down secure,
And rest in self-indulgent ease?
His delicate disciple, I,

Like him might neither live, nor die ?

Thy holy will be done, not mine;

Be suffered all thy holy will:

I dare not, Lord, the cross decline;
I will not lose the slightest ill,
Or lay the heaviest burden down, -
The richest jewel of my crown.
Sorrow is solid joy, and pain

Is pure delight, endured for thee;
Reproach and loss are glorious gain,
And death is immortality;

And who for thee their all have given,

Have nobly bartered earth for heaven.

Some eminent pleasures, indeed, he enjoyed, in the consciousness of his Maker's favor, in communion with God's people, and in the exercise of his gifts for his Redeemer's glory:

How happy, gracious Lord, are we,
Divinely drawn to follow thee, Whose hours divided are

Betwixt the mount and multitude;

Our day is spent in doing good, Our night in praise and prayer.

With us, as melancholy void,

No moment lingers unemployed, Or unimproved below;
Our weariness of life is gone,

Who live to serve our God alone, And only thee to know.

And his impressible nature, susceptible of all extremes of emotion, sometimes rose to ecstasy in view of his spiritual privileges:

What a mercy is this, What a heaven of bliss,

How unspeakably happy am I!

Gathered into the fold, With thy people enrolled,
With thy people to live and to die!

In a rapture of joy My life I employ,

The God of my life to proclaim:

'Tis worth living for this, To administer bliss
And salvation in Jesus's name.

As often was he in the depths of despondency and gloom; but his depression, like his excitement, is always that of a Christian. His most mournful pieces are full of submission, humility, and faith; and thus, often his "sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought: "

A child of sorrow from the womb, By sad variety of pain
Weighed down, I sink into the tomb, Yet only of myself complain:
My sins the root of bitterness I must in life and death confess.

Always profoundly sensible that he was a pilgrim and stranger upon earth, worldly things seemed to him as a dream, and nothing real but the realities of eternity:

The angels are at home in heaven; The saints unsettled pilgrims here: Our days are as a shadow, driven From earth; so soon we disappear. We no abiding city have, No place of resting but the grave.

"On going to a new habitation," moving from Bristol to

London, he sings:

What then is change of place to me?

The end of sin and misery In every place is nigh:

No spot of earth but yields a grave;

Where'er He wills, if Jesus save, I lay me down and die.

And again:

No matter where or how I in this desert live,

If, when my dying head I bow, Jesus my soul receive :

Blest with thy precious love, Saviour, 'tis all my care

To reach the purchased house above, And find a mansion there.

His tender sympathies were often tried by the personal unkindness or spiritual faithlessness of his friends. Divisions were introduced into the Methodist societies; some of his followers became Calvinists or Moravians, and were taught to turn from their spiritual father as a false prophet; others embraced fatal errors, and abandoned the profession and practice of the common faith. On such occasions, the poet's wounded spirit soared to the healing fountain. In the volumes of 1739 are a number of hymns on the "Loss of his Friends:"

Take these broken reeds away! On the Rock of Ages I
Calmly now my spirit stay, Now on Christ alone rely;
Every other prop resign, Sure the sinner's Friend is mine.

Fly, my friends, with treacherous speed; Melt as snow before the sun;
Leave me at my greatest need, - Leave me to my God alone,
To my Help which cannot fail, To my Friend unchangeable.

While I thus my soul recline On my dear Redeemer's breast,
Need I for the creature pine, Fondly seek a farther rest,

Still for human friendship suc, Stoop, ye worms of earth, to you?

With such sublime consolations did the Christian soothe his own afflicted spirit and the spirits of as many as could rise with him to that altitude of faith. But for the enduring comfort, the perfect rest of life, he looked beyond the present state:

Come, Finisher of sin and woe, And let me die my God to sec; My God, as I am known, to know, Fathom the depths of Deity, And spend, contemplating thy face, A blest eternity in praise. VOL. XXI. No. 81.

21

The last poem ever written by his own hand, "a little before his death," possesses a peculiar interest. The fire of his youth is gone, but the grace and sweetness are still present; it is now the subdued language of one full of years and earthly experience, who only desires to fulfil his Maker's will and depart in peace:

How long, how often, shall I pray, Take all iniquity away;

And give the plenitude of good, The blessing bought by Jesus' blood;
Coucupiscence and pride remove, And fill me, Lord, with humble love.
Again I take the words to me Prescribed, and offer them to thee:
Thy kingdom come, to root out sin, And perfect holiness bring in ;
And swallow up my will in thine, And human change into divine.

So shall I render thee thine own, And tell the wonders thou hast done;
The power and faithfulness declare Of God, who hears and answers prayer;
Extol the riches of thy grace, And spend my latest breath in praise.

O that the joyful hour were come, Which calls thy ready servant home, Unites me to the church above, Where angels chant the song of love, And saints eternally proclaim The glories of the heavenly Lamb!

He died March 29th, 1788, in his eightieth year. The epitaph placed over his remains had been written by himself for another:

With poverty of spirit blest,

Rest, happy saint, in Jesus rest;

A sinner saved, through grace forgiven,
Redeemed from earth to reign in heaven!
Thy labors of unwearied love,

By thee forgot, are crowned above;
Crowned, through the mercy of thy Lord,
With a free, full, immense reward!

(To be continued.)

ARTICLE V.

THE SERPENT OF EDEN, FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF ADVANCED SCIENCE.

BY THE REV. JOHN DUNS, D.D., FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND,

TORPHICHEN.

And

"And the Serpent has been more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God hath made, and he saith unto the woman, 'Is it true that God hath said, " Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?" the woman saith to the serpent, Of the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat, but of the fruit of the tree which in midst of the garden God hath said, "Ye shall not eat of it, nor touch it, lest ye die?" And the serpent saith unto the woman, Ye do not surely die, for God doth know that, in the day of your eating thereof, your eyes have been opened, and ye have been as god, knowing good and evil. . . . . . And the Lord God saith to the woman,' What this thou hast done?' And the woman saith,' The serpent hath caused me to forget, and I do eat.' And the Lord God saith unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, cursed thou above all the cattle, and above every beast of the field; on thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat, all the days of thy life. And I put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: He shall bruise thee the head, and thou shalt bruise him the heel.”— Gen. iii. 1-4, 13, 14 (Literal Translation).

.....

RECENT interpreters have approached this passage with considerable hesitancy. They are not sure of their ground. Their remarks indicate a strong latent suspicion that, though it would not do to disturb popular impressions, the view of the serpent given here will not stand the test of modern science. We hope to show that they are mistaken. The subject is one of much importance. It has not, however, so far as we are aware, been hitherto set in lights which harmonize with other passages of scripture, or even with the demands of the popular Christianized intelligence. Critics and commentators satisfy themselves by repeating what those who have gone before them have said, and adding a few common-place remarks about alleged changes of structure in this "wisest of the beasts of the field." The truth