In the Redeemer's name baptized, yet had not sought

his grace,

Had never yet begun to run the Christian's arduous race.

I never rested from that hour till, through a Saviour's blood,

I felt that I was justified and reconciled to God,

I know that I am born again, each thought, each wish seems changed,

No more I wander from my God so wilfully estranged.

And yet I often tremble, lest amid earth's many cares, And the long years which I may spend beset with sins and snares,

I should forgetful of my Lord, and faithless to Him

prove

And never see his gladdening smile or reign with Him above.

But, Edith, this is wrong, I know,—I am in Jesus' hands,

My every danger He foreknows, my fears He understands,

I can trust Him for death, oh, why not trust Him then for life,

Soon the long years I dread so much will end in mortal strife:

And I be garnered, Edith, list the reapers' joyous songOh, far more rapturous the joy of heaven's unnumbered throng,

When a redeemed immortal one is added to their band, With them around the Saviour's throne triumphantly to stand.

Only a few sere yellow leaves remained upon the trees, And sad and mournful voices seemed to mingle with the breeze;

The distant sea was crested high with white and sparkling foam,

When once again I trod the path from Gertrude's cottage home.

And where was Gertrude? The last sheaf had scarce been gathered in,

Ere she was safely garnered too beyond the reach of sin, Beyond the reach of storm and blight, beyond the reach of woe,

Beyond the tyrant power of death, man's last, most dreaded foe.

Yes, she was safely garnered now-I did not, could not weep,

Why should we mourn for them who in a Saviour sleep, I only lifted up my heart in gratitude and love,

To Him who gave her faith and hope-then called her hence above.

Oh, Jesus, Saviour of a lost, and guilty ruined race, The soul that trusts thy righteousness, shares thy renewing grace,

Is blest beyond what heart can think, or mortal tongue can tell,

For whether life or death betide, all, every thing is

well.

J. T.

THE VALLEY OF SHECHEM.

We all know that three of the Evangelists reckoned the hours of the day after the manner of the ancient Jews, Greeks, and Romans; namely, by twelve unequal hours, varying according to the season of the year, from sunrise to sunset; but some distinguish, that St. John reckoned them as, when he wrote, they did in the Proconsular Asia, and as we do now, from midnight to noon. "It was about the sixth hour;" that is, the sixth after noon, the time that women went out to draw water, when Jesus of Nazareth sat beside Jacob's well : he sat alone, for his disciples were gone into the city to buy food.

Weary he seemed and was with his journey, for he is now thirty-four miles north of Jerusalem, from which he is retiring, after the Passover, in the first year of his public ministry, and has begun his first progress from Judea, through Samaria, into Galilee. The Samaritans are not, for the present, within his commission; to them he is not personally sent: yet there was certainly some exception in favour of this part of Samaria; was it for the beauty, or rather for the sanctity of the spot ?

Beautiful it was, and is. As you approach Shechem from Jerusalem, you enter a valley which extends above three miles in the direction north, north-west, but so narrow as in some parts not to exceed two, or

three hundred paces in width; for two rocky precipices rise on either side, steep from the valley, to the height of eight hundred feet and here and there a small ravine is sprinkled with fountains and olive-trees.

But how great was the sanctity of the spot! When Abraham entered Canaan, still not knowing whither he went, his first encampment he pitched here, in the vale, or by the oak of Moreh. Here the Lord appeared to him, and then, for the first time, indicated that this was the land of promise; here, therefore, he built his first altar to the Lord, and consecrated the land, at Shechem.

When Jacob his grandson returned from Padanaram, he also pitched his tent, and erected his first altar to God, the God of Israel, here at Shechem. The ground on which he pitched he purchased of Hamor, the father of Shechem, yet not long to enjoy it, for here Dinah fell; and, after the tragic event which ensued, and which the soul of the patriarch abhorred, at the command of God himself he removed thence, first burying the idols of his family there under the tree. As for the land which he had bought, that seems to have been taken possession of, for a time during his absence, by the Amorite; but he afterwards recovered it (unless he spake it prophetically)" by his sword and by his bow:" for so he spake of it when in Egypt, and even dying, he remembered the lovely spot, and left it for an heritage to his beloved Joseph. This was that very She~ chem, whither Joseph himself in his youth came seeking his brethren, who fed their flocks there; and, in generations to come, his bones at length found rest, buried in Shechem here. That northern rock on your right hand is Mount Ebal; the southern on your left, and somewhat the higher, is Mount Gerizim. Here it

was that Joshua, at the command of God by Moses, conducted that grand ceremonial of the whole nation, when an altar and a column inscribed with the law being reared upon Mount Ebal, all Israel, their elders, officers, and judges, with the women, the little ones, and the strangers that were among them, were stationed on either side of the ark, borne by the Levites; half of the tribes over against Mount Gerizim, Simeon and Levi, Judah and Issachar, Joseph and Benjamin, to bless the people; and half of them over against Mount Ebal, Reuben, Gad, and Asher, Zebulun, Dan, and Naphtali, to curse: then the Levites read the Law, with a loud voice, both the cursings and the blessings, and all the people answered and said, Amen! Mount Gerizim to Mount Ebal alternately echoed back, Amen!

At the foot of Mount Gerizim, that Nabulus is Shechem, one of the six cities of refuge, where the accidental homicide, Israelite or stranger, might find an asylum from the blood-avenger, a voluntary exile until the death of the high-priest. On the top of Mount Gerizim, Jotham stood, when he uttered the most ancient, if not the most beautiful, parable on record. And here, in this valley it was that, in the great political crisis of the nation, the golden sceptre of Judah became as brass in the hand of Rehoboam.

The schismatic temple which, after the captivity, in the age of Alexander the Great, had been built on Mount Gerizim, to the exasperation of the national enmity, was now no more, though the Samaritans still worshipped toward the spot; when He who was the substance of whatever was shadowed before by all for which Shechem had been famous-king, refuge, temple-there sat down; the maker of heaven and earth, even as some way-worn, every-day traveller, there by the well-side.