deck, and amid that crew, he became a missionary of glad tidings, awakening in their hearts the sweet music that had been startled in his own; and as the angel said to him, "Fear not," he, the messenger of Christ, says to them, "Be of good cheer, for not one of you shall perish." Has God planted in your hearts the peace that, as in Paul's case, passeth all understanding? Has He shown you your connexion with himself, indissoluble for ever and for ever? Are you the purchase of his blood? Are you the servants of Christ? Can you say from the very heart, "Whose with all my sins I am, and whom amid all my imperfections I yet desire and toil to serve." If so, you will tell others of your trust; you will point others to that Saviour; you will cheer the drooping hearts of all within the reach of your influence with the glad tidings of great joy-a Saviour, Christ the Lord!

:

We, too, are on a tempestuous sea; we, too, are voyagers, not to Rome, but to the heavenly Jerusalem; we, too, can testify many a cross wind, many a tempest fiercely beats against us. We, too, can feel we are in perils by sea, in perils also among false brethren; we, too, are apt often to lose heart, and fear that all will founder in a sea of wrath. But it cannot be if we are Christians, we are safe; if we are the purchase of his blood, nothing can take us from his hand, or separate us from his love. If we are not his, we are in jeopardy every hour. Candidates for glory,— travellers, voyagers to an eternal world,-are you in the right track? are you steering by the true chart? your eye upon the unsetting and the unclouded sun? If not, if you are guided by the meteor lights that dance in the sky, or the phosphorescent gleams that

is

sparkle from the water, then you perish. And what wreck !

"Far sadder sight than eye can know,
Than proud bark lost, or seaman's woe,
Or battle fire, or tempest cloud,

Or prey bird's shriek, or ocean's shroud,
The shipwreck of the soul.".

"What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole

world and lose his own soul?"

CHAPTER XXVIII.

MALTA, THE SCENE OF PAUL'S SHIPWRECK-BARBARIANS MEAN FOREIGNERS OR NATIVES-PAUL'S PREPARATION AGAINST COLDVIPER FASTENS ON PAUL'S HAND — REMARKS OF THE NATIVESEXTREMES-PAUL'S KINDNESS-THE HONOUR GIVEN HIM THE

JEWS AT ROME.

The

IN the 27th chapter we read the account of the memorable voyage and remarkable shipwreck of the apostle Paul upon the island of Malta. His course, as you may recollect, had been from Jerusalem, by land and by sea, until at last he reached Malta, as an intermediate stage,-driven to it rather than selecting it as a rest, on his way to imperial Rome. island is now called Melita; and though some have tried to show that this was a different place, yet I think the admirable work to which I referred, Mr. Smith's "Treatise upon the Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul"-one of the most scholarlike and accomplished treatises I know upon this or upon any other subject-clearly proves, from the delineation of the harbour, even from the soundings, and from innumerable incidental points, that it was none other than the island known now by the name of Malta. Melita is the Greek word for a bee; implying that there was in that island much honey, or that it was noted for producing that as an article of commerce or of merchandize. Then, it has been objected by some

that the expression, "barbarous people," is too strong to be applied to the inhabitants of an island so well known as Melita or Malta. But, perhaps, this arises from their forgetting that the Greeks called all those who were not their own colonists, and speaking their own tongue, barbarians—not meaning by it a savage people, as we understand, but rather, if we were to translate it into a phrase most intelligible to us, it would be," And the natives showed us no little kindness"-meaning that they were the inhabitants of a distant island, or an island not possessed by the Greeks, and called by them, therefore, barbarians according to their idiom, natives according to ours.

Well," the natives of the island received us with great hospitality; and they kindled a fire in order to warm us, because of the present rain "—or, literally translated, "because the rain just descending upon us," -the peculiar expression in the original denoting continuity; "and because also of the cold"-for you will recollect the season at which he had arrived at Malta must have been somewhere about the beginning of November or the end of October, when the cold season would begin to set in. Paul, an apostle and ambassador of Christ, was not ashamed because it was necessary to gather a few sticks from the woods -green fagots, probably-and to lay them on the fire. It seems that when he did so, or in the course of his doing so, "there came a viper out of the heat "-not a viper generated by the heat, which is nonsense; but a viper or venomous serpent that had attached itself to one of the green fagots, and was lurking amongst them; and when the gathered fagots were thrown upon the crackling flames, of course, to

save itself, it leaped from the fagot, unable to endure the heat, and fastened upon the object that was nearest, and that object was the hand of the apostle Paul.

Well, when the natives-or, as it is here called, the barbarians-saw this, they instantly leapt to a conclusion, rash and precipitate, but yet indicating in the conscience of the heathen an idea of righteousness, of temperance, and judgment to come; for they said, “ No doubt this man is a murderer, whom, though he hath escaped the sea, yet" justice visits in "vengeance" or retribution, Nemesis (as we should call her) "suffereth not to live." In this remark of theirs there was much that was true, and much that was precipitant. They were right in supposing that where there is sin, there is retribution; but wrong in supposing that the retribution is always in this life, in which the sin has been committed; and wrong in interpreting every affliction, however distressing, as a retribution for a present crime. The true judgment is given by our blessed Lord, who spake as never man spake: "Think ye that those eighteen upon whom the tower of Siloam fell were sinners above all men? I tell you, Nay; but except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish." We are all prone, when things go against us, instantly to reason, "We have taken a wrong course.' We should not do so. I hear people sometimes say on the Eastern war," Plague, pestilence, famine, war, hunger, nakedness, cold, frost and snow, and rain, have all combined to crush us." They have argued, “Can the cause be right, when all these things are providentially lighting upon us?" I answer, the true way is not to construe the justice of a course by the incidents that follow it, but to construe the incidents that follow by the