object at which they are to fire. The sides of this triangle then become the base lines for other triangles. Thus a kingdom is crossed at a few steps of 20 or 30 miles in length. With a telescope the elevation of the pole above the horizon is measured. You go northward until the pole appears a degree higher. Measure the distance from the one station to the other; it will average 69 miles. Thus it is found that 69 miles make a degree. As there are 360 degrees in a circle, the globe is thus found to be about 25,000 miles in circumference. As the circumference of a globe is rather more than three times its diameter, the diameter is found to be 7,900 miles. Having found the diameter, the surface is known to be 200 millions of miles, and the bulk or volume of 259,800 millions of cubic miles. The lecturer then explained the experiments made by Dr. Maskelyne and Henry Cavendish, for ascertaining the weight or mass of the earth. The result was, that each cubic foot was found to weigh 5.67 times as much as a cubic foot of water, which is 354 lb. 6 oz. Any one can thus calculate in pounds the weight of our globe. Passing on to the moon, it was remarked that the distance, which is 238,000 miles, is found in the same way as the surveyor measures the distance of any signal. The diameter of the earth serves as the base line. When the distance of a visible object is known, its magnitude may be easily caclulated by comparing with any other object whose magnitude and distance are known. In illustration of this it was found by means of a halfpenny placed between the eye and the moon, at the distance of 120 inches from the eye, the halfpenny being one inch in diameter, that the moon's diameter must be about 2,000 miles. Having dwelt upon the peculiarities of the moon's physical constitution, referring especially to its immense caverns and stupendous mountains, he passed on to the sun, which all, except the disciples of Romanism, are agreed is the centre and fountain of life and light to the planetary system of which this world is a member. means of the triangle the distance of the sun was found; and by comparing it with the moon, its diameter must be 400 times greater, being 400 times more distant, while appearing the same size. Knowing that the bulks of globes are By to each other as the cubes of their diameters, and that the diameter of the sun is 112 times greater than that of the earth, it would require 1,400,000 globes such as our earth to make one as large as the sun. And for the weight of its stupendous mass the astronomer has a balance of the most unerring certainty, in which he can weigh the heavenly bodies with as great relative precision as that with which the chemist weighs the most delicate bodies that pass under his hands. When a body, as a stone in a sling, revolves in a circle, it has a tendency to fly from the centre. This tendency increases with the velocity of the body and its distance from the centre. A fixed law is soon discovered which tells how much the string will be stretched, provided the time and distance of the revolving body are known. The law of gravitation is to the moon what the string is to the sling, and by the law referred to it is known what is the amount of attractive force which the earth exercises upon the moon to keep it from flying off in a straight line. The earth is thus found to draw the moon through about one-twentieth of an inch in every second, or very nearly eleven miles in every hour. In the same way the sun is found to draw the earth through about 244 miles in the hour. Comparing the one with the other, the moon must be one eightieth the weight of the earth, and the sun's weight 352,280 times as great as the earth's. By combining these numbers with those already given for the earth, the weight of the moon and sun will be found in pounds. The same principles are used for measuring the distances and weighing the masses of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. With regard to the spots on the sun's disc, some degree of resemblance may be traced between the phenomena and those of the great ocean and atmospheric hurricanes on our own globe. Astronomers generally regard the sun as a habitable globe, probably peopled by intelligent beings, though of a differently organised race to ourselves. The sun has, three atmo spheres-one similar to our own; then the luminous envelope, being in fact a great electric light, seven times hotter than the strongest blast furnace; then beyond this luminous atmosphere there is a third, of a transparent gaseous sketched, pointing out how, in minute detail, Adams and Leverrier had given its distance, weight, rate, and period of revolution, before it had yet been seen or even looked for. The lecturer then referred to the wondrous accession to the sisterhood of planets from the space between Mars and Jupiter, 73 having been discovered since the commencement of this century. It was suspected that there had formerly been a large planet about the size of Mars revolving in an orbit between Mars and Jupiter, but which, through some violent convulsion, had been broken up into small fragments, and that these asteroids were neither more nor less than a number of the petty independent disunited states. Another ring of asteroids is found to revolve between the sun and Mercury, the aggregate of which constitutes a mass equal to that of Mercury. At the distance of the earth from the sun there is a third ring of asteroids, the mass of which is equal to one-tenth of the mass of the earth. In the course of our annual journey round the sun, we pass through this ring on the 12th and 13th of November, and these tiny planets, coming within the sphere of the earth's attraction, are precipitated as meteoric stones upon its surface; as weary and forlorn birds of passage, far out at sea, are entangled in the rigging of vessels and fall helpless on the deck, or like the angels, whom earthly loves induced to forfeit for ever their places in the heavens. The volume of some of these meteors is very large, one being estimated at 75 miles in diameter. Some of these have become minute moons, revolving round our earth. One has been identified at a height of 3,000 miles from the earth's surface, revolving round our globe, having a period of three hours and twenty minutes. We regret that our limits will not allow us to follow the lecturer through the deeply-interesting field through which he conducted his audience. He closed by observing, that when a man first directs his mind to the study of the stars, no indications of order attract his notice, and no proofs of design call forth his admiration. He sees no bodies of stupendous RELIGIOUS LIFE.-The whole life of a religious man falls into two grand divisions, and all his actions belong to one or the other. The one is the region of piety, the other the region of morality. They ought not to be, and cannot be separated in any man's life; but they can be distinguished though not separated. Piety cannot exist without morality, nor morality magnitude, and no distances of immeasurable space. The sun and moon appear vastly inferior to many objects he sees around him. No system, in fact, appears. No general law seems to guide their motions. But by the labour of astronomers a regular system has been recognised in this chaos of moving bodies, and the magnitude, distance, revolution, and weight of these bodies has been determined with unerring accuracy. Design and beauty have been discovered, where thousands of persons, many of them highly educated, are incapable of understanding such glorious revelations. To millions this great Book of Nature is sealed, though it is in the power of all to unfold its pages, and read those glowing passages, which proclaim the eternal wisdom and power of its Author. The Book of Revelation exhibits the same peculiarities as the Book of Nature. To the ordinary eye, the Bible presents no immediate indication of its divine origin; apparently insignificant events, and supernatural interpositions, and unintelligible prophecies, and strange doctrines occupy its pages. It is to the Jew a stumblingblock, and to the Greek foolishness. There is no profound science, no apparent evidence of an Almighty hand. Yet, as in the system of nature, the labours of holy men have developed, in all its order and beauty, God's glorious plan of raising a lost world to glory, honour, and immortality. The authenticity and genuineness of the books of the Bible have been demonstrated to all who are capable of appreciating historical evidence. There have been false systems of geology, and false systems of astronomy, and false systems of Christianity. What then? Because some men have read the rocks erroneously, are we to give up the rocks and their wondrous teachings? Because some men have read the stars erroneously, are we to give up the stars? And because some men have read the Bible erroneously, shall we give up the Bible? Nay, we won't give up a page of the Bible. It is more precious than gold, yea, than much fine gold. without piety, yet they are not the same thing. United they make up religion, or the whole life of a Christian. The religion of morality is under the law; it is the stern and rugged clime, a land of restraint, of effort, of struggle, of battle. The performances of duty, the doing the work of the Lord, this is the problem of morality. Hints and Helps to Village Preachers. COMPARATIVE CHARACTER OF THE AMERICAN PULPIT. IN discussing, some time since, the question whether the Methodist pulpit has declined under our present methods of ministerial training, we dissented from the conclusions of some of our papers, that our ministry shows less preaching ability than it did in the last generation. Changes in the condition of the church, we contended, have required modifications of our pulpit instructions; and the present Methodist ministry will compare favourably with that of any other denomination in the general pulpit qualifications demanded by the times. The poorest preaching now in the United States we believe to be that of the Romish Church. Here and there a man like Hughes, or Cummings, can be found, to relieve the general mediocrity, or rather inferiority, of its homiletic ministrations, but such men are few and far between; and even they appear in its pulpits to decided advantage only on special occasions. The tedious length of the ritual leaves but a few minutes for the ordinary sermon, and cramps it into a commonplace, hurried exhortation. The Protestant Episcopal pulpit, though occupied by as cultivated men as the American ministry presents, is hardly more effective than that of the Papal church. Men of genius, or at least of originality, like Tyng, can be effective in it; an excellent elocutionist, like Hawks, can secure it some interest after the wearisome length of the liturgy; but very seldom does it array itself in the legitimate power of preaching. Scarcely more than twenty minutes is allowed it in the service; no man can handle any great subject, with mastery and power, in such limits. Protestant Episcopal clergymen, so far as we have conversed with them, admit the fact, and look to their liturgy as the chief power of their public worship. Most of their pulpit discourses are brief prelections, practically hortative in form, but seldom hortative in spirit or effectiveness. For intellectually able sermonising— the elaborate, instructive, convincing discussion of the great theses of religion, practical and dogmatic-we are inclined to yield the palm to the Presbyterian pulpit, adding, also, that of the Calvinistic Congregationalists. The Baptist ministry is too varied, too mixed, to admit of exact estimation or comparison; it includes almost every possible gradation of talent. The Methodist, with as much range of talent, has a decidedly more homogeneous character than the Baptist. Methodist preaching has cer tain attributes which are quite characteristic and peculiar; and it is generally admitted that these peculiarities are decided advantages; if even obviously defective, still it is almost universally conceded that they are defective excellencies. But aside, or at least somewhat aside, from this question of manuer, of intellectual ability and adaptation, is an immeasurably more important question, namely, whether our ministry has declined in moral character, and, by con sequence, in spiritual effectiveness? It would be grateful could we take the negative of this question, but we are compelled to hesitate, at least, before it. Unquestionably, there are, in this respect, very obvious adverse tendencies among us. We do not believe they arise from our methods of ministerial training, however; but that the latter tend to correct them. We do not admit that they must be permanent; we think they are mostly attributable to temporary causes, or at least to causes that need be but temporary.-The Methodist. THE OLD PATHS. INSTEAD of coming right out in the strength of God, with the naked sword of the Spirit, to do battle with sin and error, it is too common for the preachers of our day to study to be ingenious, original, eloquent; to make literary sermons, popular sermons, as one says. To this end, instead of confining itself within its proper commission, that of delivering God's message in God's way, it ranges abroad over creation to find novel and strange subjects; and then it seeks to handle them in a new and original way, decking them out in tropes and figures, and all fine things; just suited to make the whole exhibition elegant and popular, it may be, but utterly ineffective and powerless as to all spiritual impressions. Preaching, it seems to me, often fails of its effect, because it does not aim at effect. It stops in itself, or is satisfied with doing its task, with making a sermon and delivering it, without aiming so to construct, to point and push it home, as to make it felt by the hearer. It is not enough addressed to man as man, to man in his everyday walks and wants, as related to God and eternity. It has not enough of the lawyerlike element in it, which, having stated its case to the jury, bends all its energies to get it. It is too abstract, too much in the form of an essay or dissertation, stopping with the proof, but not applying what has been proved. This is like preparing a medicine without administering it, or like planting a battery and fixing the guns, and then spiking them, lest by letting them off they should do execution in the ranks of the enemy.-Dr. Hawes. PUBLIC PRAYER. THE most common fault in public prayer is carelessness. A well-meaning brother commences to pray without that careful weighing of thoughts and words which he would feel to be proper if he were about to commence a speech. He utters words which may be expressive of his feelings, but which seem to fail to arouse that sympathy and unity of feeling which should be manifest in a praying congregation. The congregation may realise that he is leading in prayer, but they cannot realise it to such an extent as to follow him. His carelessness leads him into the utterance of a succession of stereotyped common-place sayings, which a few moments of careful thought before prayer might cause him to avoid; not that these stereotyped sayings may not in themselves be good and desirable petitions, but that they have fallen so often on the ears of those who are being led in prayer, as to lose all that life and earnestness which should be the characteristics of every prayer offered to God. -Observer. Family Reading. TALES OF ADVENTURE. ESCAPE FROM It was in vain that the mahout exerted all his skill to make her face the tigress, which instantly sprang upon her back, and seizing the gentleman by the thigh, speedily brought him to the ground; then throwing him (quite stunned by the fali) over her shoulder, just in the same manner as a fox carries a goose, she started off into the jungle. Every rifle was pointed at her, but no one dared to fire, because of the position in which the captive lay. She went through the jungle grass much faster than the elephants could do, and they soon lost sight of the tigress and her prev; yet they were enabled to trace her by the blood in her track. As a forlorn hope, they resolved still to A TIGER (INDIA). follow on, to see if it were possible to save the remains of their friend from being devoured by the ferocious brute. As they proceeded, the traces grew fainter and fainter, until at length, bewildered in the heart of the jungle, they were about to give up the pursuit in dismay, when all at once they came most unexpectedly upon the objects of their pursuit, and beheld the tigress lying dead upon the long jungle grass, still griping the thigh of their associate in her tremendous jaws, whilst he, though still sensible, was unable, from loss of blood, to reply to the questions proposed. To extricate his leg was impossible, without first cutting off the head of the tigress, which was immediately done, and the jaws being severed, the fangs were drawn out of the wounds. As one of the party providentially happened to be a surgeon, the patient was properly attended to, and the party had the great happiness of returning with their friend, rescued from the most perilous situation, and with hopes of his recovery. He was taken to the nearest bungalowe, and, by the aid thus afforded, he was in a short time able to see his friends, and to explain how it was that the animal was thus found dead. For some time after the beast had seized him, he had continued insensible, being stunned by the fall, as well as faint from the loss of blood and the excruciating pain which her fangs inflicted. When he came to himself, he discovered that he was lying on the back of the tigress, who was trotting along at a smart pace through the jungle, and every now and then his face and hands would receive the most violent scratches from the thorns and bushes through which she dragged him. He gave himself up as lost, considering that not the least glimpse of hope remained, and determined to lie quietly on her back, waiting the issue, when it struck his mind that he had a pair of pistols in his girdle with which he might yet destroy his captor. After several ineffectual attempts, from the weakness which the loss of blood had occasioned, he at length succeeded in drawing one from the belt, and directing it at the creature's head, he fired. But the only effect it seemed to produce was, that, after giving him an angry shake, by which she made her fangs meet more closely in his flesh, her pace was quickened. From the excruciating pain thus produced he fainted away, and remained totally unconscious of what was passing for some minutes, when, recovering a little, he determined to try the effect of another shot in a different place. So, getting the remaining pistol out of his girdle, he pointed the muzzle under the blade-bone of the shoulder, in the direction of the heart, and once more fired, when the tigress fell dead in a moment, and neither howled nor struggled after she fell. Neither had he power to call out for aid, though he heard his friends approaching, and was fearful that they might pass the spot without discovering where he lay. He recovered from his wounds, and was living when I left India, although he was quite lame; the sinews of his thigh having been dreadfully lacerated by the fangs of the tigress.-Tiger Hunting in India. A LION HUNT (AFRICA). One night a lion that had purloined a few sheep out of my kraal, came down and killed my riding horse, about a hundred yards from the door of my cabin. Knowing that the lion, when he does not carry off his prey, usually conceals himself in the vicinity, and is very apt to be dangerous by prowling about the place in search of more game, resolved to have him destroyed or dislodged without delay. I therefore sent a messenger round, to invite all who were willing to assist in the enterprise, to repair to the place of rendezvous as speedily as possible. In an hour every man of the party appeared ready mounted and armed. We were also reinforced by about a dozen of the "Bastuard" or Mulatto Hottentots, who resided at that time upon our territory as tenants or herdsmen,an active and enterprising, though rather an unsteady, race of men. Our friends the Tarkaboors, many of whom are excellent lion hunters, were all far too distant to assist us, our nearest neighbours residing at least twenty miles from the location. We were, therefore, on account of our own inexperience, obliged to make our Hottentots the leaders of the chase. The first point was to track the lion to his The next object was to drive him out of this retreat, in order to attack him in a close body, and with more safety and effect. The approved mode in such cases is to torment him with dogs till he abandons his covert, and stands at bay in the open plain. The whole band of hunters then march forward together, and fire deliberately one by one. If he does not speedily fall, but grows angry and turns upon his enemies, they must then stand close in a circle, and turn their horses rear outwards. The horses are held fast by the bridles, while the riflemen kneel to take a steady aim at the lion as he approaches. Sometimes he comes up to the very horses' heels, couching every now and then as if to measure the distance and strength of his enemies. This is the moment to shoot him fairly in the forehead, or some other mortal part. If they continue to wound him ineffectually, till he waxes furious and desperate, or if the horses, startled by his terrific roar, grow frantic with terror, and burst loose, the business becomes rather serious, and may end in mischief; especially if all the party are not men of courage, coolness, and experience. The frontier Boors are, however, generally such excellent marksmen, and withal so cool and deliberate, that they seldom fail to shoot him dead as soon as they get within a fair distance. In the present instance, we did not manage matters quite so deliberately. The Bastuards, after recounting to us all these and other sage laws of lion hunting, were themselves the first to depart from them. Finding that the few indifferent hounds which we had made little impression on the enemy, they divided themselves into two or three parties, and rode round the jungle, firing into the spot where the dogs were barking round him, but without effect. At length, after some hours spent in thus beating about the bush, the Scottish blood of some of my countrymen began to get impatient; and three of them announced their determination to march in and beard the lion in his den, provided three of the Bastuards (who were superior marksmen) would support them, and follow up their fire, should the enemy venture to give battle. Accordingly in they went (in spite of the warnings of some more prudent men among us), to within fifteen or twenty paces of the spot where the animal lay concealed. He was couched among the roots of a large evergreen bush, with a small space of open ground on one side of it: and they fancied, on approaching, that they saw him distinctly lying glaring at them from beneath the foliage. Charging the Bastuards to stand firm and level fair should they miss, the Scottish champions let fly together, and |