offered, and no other bread but unleavened bread was eaten-the first and last days were days of holy assemblies and convocations. The unleavened bread shews the haste with which the Israelites were obliged to depart out of Egypt. Easter is the Christian feast, corresponding with the Jewish Passover. Christians are delivered by Christ, in a manner corresponding to the deliverance of the Jews from Egypt:-the Jews from their taskmasters,—the Christians from the bondage of sin. FEAST OF WEEKS. This feast was kept at the end of seven weeks after the Passover,-a week of weeks,-the Jews reckon the days inclusively, therefore this is fifty days; and accordingly is called the feast of Pentecost *. This is supposed to have been instituted in remembrance of the Law given at that time from Mount Sinai : Christians keep Whitsunday, in commemoration of the promulgation of the Gospel at the same season of the year, by the miraculous gifts then granted to the Apostles. The Jewish feast continued seven days. THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES. This was a feast of eight days' continuance. The people dwelt in booths or tabernacles made of the branches of trees,-in commemoration of their dwelling in tents in the wilderness. To this feast may be compared that which we celebrate in remembrance of our Saviour's nativity, when he came and "dwelt among us," or had his tabernacle among us. The above were the three principal feasts among the Jews. * From a Greek word signifying fifty, SIR, Lines on the Epistle of St. Jude. 305 A PERSON Occupied for eight hours each day, whether by labour of the body or mind, in the concerns of a large family, will not readily make pretensions to be a commentator upon abstruse parts of Scripture, or an expositor of prophecy. I do not, therefore, presume to say that the ultimate design of St. Jude's Epistle was to describe the state of Christendom at the present period: though this much I will venture to assert; that no one who reads the Bible with a fair understanding and honest heart, can fail to perceive that several passages in that epistle are applicable, in an awful degree, to the age in which we live. Upon such an application turn the following lines; which now, or at any future time, are quite at your service, if worth insertion. I remain, Sir, Your well-wisher, and former correspondent, Folkestone, May 18, 1831. LINES ON THE 11th VERSE OF THE EPISTLE GENERAL OF ST. JUDE. O for Ezekiel's voice, or Joel's strain, Ere threefold ills this hopeless earth defile! The miscreant genius, first of ruthless Cain, Whose scorn at promise high, the worldling's bane, * Look at the number for March, page 123. THE RESULTS OF MACHINERY. [From the Working Man's Companion.] ALL labourers in agriculture know full well the value of a tool; but some hate machinery. This is inconsistent. Unless the labourer made a plough (if he will consent even to a plough) out of two pieces of stick, and carried it upon his shoulder to the field, as the toil-worn and poor people of India do, he must have some iron about it. He cannot get iron without machinery. He hates machinery, and therefore he will have nothing to do with a plough! Will he have his hoe, then? He is not quite sure. Will he give up his knife? No; he must keep his knife. He has got every thing to do for himself, and his knife is his tool of all-work. Well, how does he get this same knife? People that have no machinery sharpen a stone, or bit of shell, or bone, and cut or saw with it in the best way they can; and after they have become very clever, they fasten it to a wooden handle with a cord of bark. An Englishman examines two or three dozens of knives, selects which he thinks the best, and pays a shilling for it, the seller thanking him for his custom. The man who has nothing but the bone or the shell, would gladly toil a month for that which does not cost an English labourer half a day's wages. And how does the Englishman obtain his knife upon such easy terms? From the use of machinery, either in the making the thing itself, or in procuring that without which it could not be made. Keeping this in mind, let us see how a knife could be obtained by a man who had nothing to depend upon but his hands. Ready-made without the labour of some other man, a knife does not exist; but the iron of which the knife is made, is to be had. Very little iron has ever The Results of Machinery. 307 been found in a native state, or fit for the blacksmith. Iron is, no doubt, very abundant in nature; but it is always mixed with some other substance, that not only renders it unfit for use, but hides its qualities. It is found in the state of what is called iron ore, a stone or earth of some kind or other. Sometimes it is mixed with clay, at other times with lime or flint; and there are cases in which it is so much mixed with sulphur, that it burns like a piece of coal, if put in the fire. In short, in the state in which iron is met with, it is a much more likely substance for paving a road, or building a wall, or making mortar, than for making a knife. But suppose that the man knows the particular ore or stone that contains the iron, how is he to get it out? Mere force will not do. There must be knowledge before any thing can be done in this case. We must know what is mixed with the iron, and how to separate it. We cannot do it by mere labour, and therefore we have recourse to fire. In the ordinary mode of using it, fire would make matters worse. If we put the ore into it as a stone, we should receive it back as a powder. We must, therefore, prepare our fuel. Our fire must be hot, very We must burn our wood hot, but it must not flame. The charcoal, or coke, answers for one purpose; but we have still the clay mixed with our iron, and how are we to get rid of that? Pure clay, or pure lime, remains stubborn in our hottest fires; but when they are mixed in a proper proportion, the one melts the other. So charcoal or coke, and iron ore, and limestone, are put into a furnace; the charcoal is lighted at the bottom, and wind is blown into the furnace, at the bottom also. If that wind is not sent in by machinery, and very powerful machinery too, the effect will be little, and the work of the man great; but still it can be done. In this furnace the lime and clay unite, and form a sort of glass, which floats upon the surface. At the same time, the carbon, or pure charcoal, of the coke and the limestone, mix with and melt the iron, which, being heavier than the other matters, runs down to the bottom of the furnace, and remains there till the workman lets it out by a hole made at the bottom of the furnace for that purpose, and plugged with sand. When the workman knows there is enough melted, which is a matter of accurate calculation, he drives out the plug with an iron rod, and the melted iron runs out like water, and is conveyed into furrows made in sand, where it cools; and the pieces are called " sows," or pigs," according to the sizes. Some furnaces will, in this way, make seventy-five tons of iron in a week, or as much-iron in the year, as will make about one hundred and forty millions of knives, at an ounce to each blade. 66 But great as is the advantage of this first step of the iron-making, the iron is not yet fit for a knife. It is cast-iron. It cannot be worked by the hammer, or sharpened to a cutting edge; and so it must be made into malleable iron-into a kind of iron which, instead of melting in the fire, will soften, and admit of being hammered into shape, or united by the process of welding. (To be continued.) NATURAL HISTORY. NOTABLE EXAMPLE OF MILDNESS OF DISPOSITION AND SOCIABILITY OF MANNERS IN BIRDS OF DIFFERENT KINDS. "AN accident in the woods," says Wilson, a writer on birds "put me in possession of a blue jay; I carried him home and put him into a cage already occupied by a golden-winged woodpecker, where he was saluted with such rudeness, and received such a drubbing, that, to save his life, I was obliged to take him out again. I then put him into another |