both those occasions, that he returned home perfectly satisfied that God had called him to the work of the ministry.

But this satisfaction was shortly after succeeded by great discouragement which arose from a sight and sense of his weakness and ignorance. He reasoned with himself and the grand adversary, until he was ready to conclude that God required impossibilities. He concluded that they were very happy, who were called to do no more than act in a private capacity, and were not burdened with the care of the souls of others. "I gave way (saith he) to this kind of reasoning for a month; till at times I made myself almost as miserable as a demon. Then the Lord laid his chastening rod upon me, and afflicted me for a scason; and shewed me the worth of poor souls perishing in the broad way to destruction." After this, he was so encouraged, that he was willing to go to any part of the world, to which God might open his way. About this time, a more than ordinary degree of divine power accompanied his ministry; and, to use his own words, God's "word was like the flaming sword which turned every way, to every heart; for, sinners fell and trembled before it, and were convinced and converted to God." The condescension of God to him excited his astonishment. As soon as his labours were blessed to the awakening of some sinners, in any place, he formed a Society, which he took the first opportunity of putting under the care of the travelling preachers.

But by loud and long preaching, (two faults which ministers ought carefully to avoid,) and by walking more than his strength could bear, together with his praying and reading many times all night, he was soon so worn down as to appear in a swift decline. In the course of some time, he fell into a severe fever, which continued seven weeks; a complaint from which he had little hopes of recovery. In this affliction he was graciously and powerfully supported; so that he was so far from desiring to remain on earth, that he desired to depart, and to be with Christ. In the midst of this affliction, after some divine impressions had been made upon his mind, one day he opened his bible on these words, "I shall not die, but live, and declare the work of the Lord." He then believed that he should recover. From this time he began to be restored to his wonted health and vigour.

(To be continued.)

SCRIPTURE ILLUSTRATED.

REMARKS ON ACTS XXIII. 2-5.

From Michaelis.

1. "WHO was this Ananias? 2. How can it be reconciled with chronology, that Ananias was called, at that time, HighPriest, when it is certain, from Josephus, that the time of his holding that office was much earlier? 3. How comes it to pass that St. Paul says, 'I wist not, brethren, that he was the HighPriest;' since the external marks of office must have determined whether he were or not; a jest would have ill suited the gravity of a tribunal, and a falsehood still less the character of St. Paul. -The questions are thus answered. Ananias, the son of Nèbedæus, was High-Priest at the time that Helena, queen of Adiabene supplied the Jews with corn from Egypt, during the famine which took place in the fourth year of Claudius, mentioned in the eleventh chapter of the Acts.

"St. Paul, therefore, who took a journey to Jerusalem at that period, could not have been ignorant of the elevation of Ananias to that dignity.Soon after the holding of the first council, as it is called, at Jerusalem, Ananias was dispossessed of his office, in consequence of certain acts of violence between the Samaritans and the Jews, and sent prisoner to Rome, whence he was afterwards released and returned to Jerusalem.-Now from that period he could not be called the High-Priest, in the proper sense of the word, though Josephus has sometimes given him the title of agus taken in the more extensive meaning of a priest, αρχιερευς who had a seat and voice in the Sanhedrim; and Jonathan, though we are not acquainted with the circumstances of his elevation, had been raised in the mean time to the supreme dignity in the Jewish Church.

"Between the death of Jonathan, who was murdered by order of Felix, and the High-Priesthood of Ishmael, who was invested with that office by Agrippa, elapsed an interval, in which this dignity continued vacant. Now it happened precisely in this interval, that St. Paul was apprehended in Jerusalem: and the Sanhedrim being destitute of a president, he (Ananias) un

dertook, of his own authority, the discharge of that office, which he executed with the greatest tyranny.It is possible, therefore, that St. Paul, who had been only a few days in Jerusalem, might be ignorant that Ananias, who had been dispossessed of the High-Priesthood, had taken upon him a trust to which he was not entitled; he might therefore, very naturally exclaim, 'I wist not brethren that he was the High-Priest!' Admitting him, on the other hand, to have been acquainted with the fact, the expression must be considered as an indirect reproof, and a tacit refusal to recognize usurped authority.—A passage then, which has hitherto been involved in obscurity, is brought into the clearest light; and the whole history of St. Paul's impris onment, and conspiracy of the fifty Jews with the consent of the Sanhedrim, their petition to Festus to send him from Cesarea, with an intent to murder him on the road, are facts which correspond with the character of the times, as described by Josephus, who mentions the principal persons recorded in the Acts, and paints their profligacy in colours, even stronger than those of St. Luke.

"Whoever reads the New Testament attentively, will continually find examples of this nature. And it is sufficient, in answer to the question, 'Is the New Testament ancient and genuine?' to reply, Compare it with the history of the times, and you cannot doubt of its authenticity."

THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD DISPLAYED.

EXTRACT FROM MR. HUNTER'S INTRODUCTORY LECTURE ON

ANATOMY.

(Concluded from page 61.)

"THE old materials which were become useless, and are swept off by the current of blood, must be separated and thrown out of the system. Therefore, glands, the organs of secretion, are given for straining whatever is redundant, vapid, or noxious, from the mass of blood; and when strained, they are thrown out by emunctories, called organs of excretion. But now, as the VOL. I.

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machine must be constantly wearing, the reparation must be carrying on without intermission, and the strainers must always be employed. Therefore, there is actually a perpetual circulation of the blood, and the secretions are always going on.

"Even all this provision, however, would not be sufficient; for that store of blood would soon be consumed, and the fabric would break down, if there were not a provision made for fresh supplies. These we observe, in fact, are profusely scattered round her in the animal and vegetable kingdoms; and she is furnished with hands, the fittest instruments that could have been contrived for gathering them, and for preparing them in a variety of ways, for the mouth. But these supplies, which we call food, must be considerably changed; they must be converted into blood. Therefore she is provided with teeth for cutting and bruising the food, and with a stomach for melting it down: in short, with all the organs subservient to digestion.-The finer parts of the aliments only can be useful in the constitution; these must be taken up and conveyed into the blood, and the dregs must be thrown off. With this view the intestinal canal is actually given. It separates the nutritious part, which we call chyle, to be conveyed into the blood by the system of absorbent vessels; and the feces pass downwards, to be conducted out of the body.

"Now we have got our animal not only furnished with what is wanted for its immediate existence, but also with the power of protracting that existence to an indefinite length of time. But its duration, we may presume, must be necessarily limited; for as it is nourished, grows, and is raised up to its full strength and utmost perfection; so it must in time, in common with all material beings, begin to decay, and then hurry on to final ruin. Hence we see the necessity of a scheme for renovation. Accordingly wise Providence, to perpetuate, as well as preserve his work, besides giving a strong appetite for life and self-preservation, has made animals male and female, in order to secure the propagation of the species to the end of time.

"Thus we see, that by the very imperfect survey which human reason is able to take of this subject, the animal must necessarily be complex in his corporeal system and in its operations. He must have one great and general system, the vascular, branching through the whole for circulation; another, the nervous, with its appendages, the organs of sense, for every kind

of feeling; and a third, for the union and connexion of all these parts. Besides these primary and general systems, he requires others, which may be more local or confined: one for strength, support, and protection, the bony compages; another for the requisite motions of the parts themselves, as well as for moving from place to place, the muscular part of the body; another to prepare nourishment for the daily recruit of the body, the digestive organs."

"Of all the different systems in the human body, the use and necessity are not more apparent, than the wisdom and contrivance which have been exerted in putting them all into the most compact and convenient form; in disposing them so that they may mutually receive and give helps to one another; and that all, or many of the parts, shall not only answer their principal end or purpose, but operate successfully and usefully in a variety of secondary ways. If we consider the whole animal machine in this light, and compare it with any machine in which human art has exerted its utmost; we shall be convinced, beyond the possibility of doubt, that there are intelligence and power far surpassing what humanity can boast of.

"One superiority in the natural machine is peculiarly striking. In machines of human contrivance or art, there is no internal power, no principle in the machine itself, by which it can alter and accommodate itself to an injury which it may suffer, or make up any injury which admits of repair. But in the natural machine, the animal body, this is most wonderfully provided for, by internal powers in the machine itself; many of which are not more certain and obvious in their effects, than they are above all human comprehension as to the manner and means of their operation. Thus, a wound heals up of itself; a broken bone is made firm again by a callus; a dead part is separated and thrown off; noxious juices are driven out by some of the emanctories; a redundancy is removed by some spontaneous bleeding; a bleeding naturally stops of itself; and a great loss of blood from any cause, is, in some measure, compensated by a contracting power in the vascular system, which accommodates the capacity of the vessels to the quantity contained. The stomach gives information when the supplies have been expended; represents with great exactness, the quantity and quality of what is wanted in the present state of the machine; and in proportion as she meets with neglect, rises in her demand, urges her