THE SAILOR AND HIS BIBLE.
LOUD blew the winds! the foaming billows roll'd,
When from St. Minver head we could descry
A ship that labour'd with the boist❜rous waves,
Now sunk in depths, now riding mountains high.
Hark! 'twas the signal of extreme distress,
And fancy heard heart-rending cries on board;
But ah! nor boat, nor man, could venture forth,
Nor to the call the least relief afford.

Broke was the cable, and the vessel bulg'd,
A perfect wreck she lay upon the wave;
And down we saw the screaming suff'rers sink,
Ingulf'd together in a wat'ry grave.

One yet surviv'd: to the mainmast he clung,
The dashing waves around the sailor pour;
Entangled in the cordage and the shrouds,
Half-naked, and half-drown'd, he reach'd the shore.
Around his waist a bandage strait was seen,
Which seem'd t' enclose a treasure highly priz'd;
Some said his wealth, his little all was there,

Or the ship's secret papers, some surmised.

But soon the sailor's hidden pearl appeared:
With mingled pleasure and surprize we found,
It was his Bible in a pocket clos'd,

Firmly secur'd and to his body bound. D. GRIFFITHS.

THE Course of the seasons has now brought us to Summer; a part of the year in which we may see abundant reason to admire and bless the divine hand which now unlocks all the treasures of creation, and displays its infinite resources of grandeur, beauty, and fertility. If Spring is the season of expectation, Summer is the season of enjoyment. Nature now brings rapidly to perfection the various productions of the earth upon which the sustenance of man and

H

the inferior animals depends. The Sun has reached his highest throne in the heavens, and, like the monarch of all he surveys, seems to look down with the full pomp and pride of his beams upon this lower world which lies basking in his smiles. Whatever are the other provisions which the Creator has made for man in his Providence, surely all these would be worth but little were it not for the animating presence of this great orb of light and life. At all seasons of the year we feel the benefits of this luminary, and hail his light as the first best blessing of the works of God: but Summer is the season when we are most fully sensible of our obligations to that degree of warmth and vitality which he sheds down upon the earth and its inhabitants. It is now that the sublime language of the Psalmist is especially verified: "He cometh forth as a Bridegroom out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a giant to run his course; his going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his cireuit unto the ends of it, and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof."

It is, perhaps, to the too abstract consideration of the unnumbered benefits derived from the Sun as the great and main agent to whom we are indebted for every blessing that Summer skies afford, that the Gentile nations have been so ready to fall into the awful and pernicious idolatry of paying their homage to this glorious specimen of the Creator's power, rather than to the Creator himself. Our privilege it is as Christians to thank God that we have been kept from this idolatry, and to shew that we are fully sensible to whom we owe our obligations, while we are thus permitted to behold his beams shining upon us,―

In looking at the Sun our thoughts should at this season more peculiarly resort to him who is the Father of Lights,

'Nature's immortal immaterial SUN'

who reveals himself in his word as the Sun as well as Shield of his people; who is Light, and dwelleth in Light; and who, though he will not give his glory to another, has expressly directed our thoughts to him who is the brightness of his Father's glory, and the express image of his person. The rising of this great spiritual luminary upon the world was reserved for the New Testament dispensation, and the present part of it may be considered as the Summer season of God's Church; and the realization of the famous prophecy of Malachi, "Unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of Righteousness arise with healing in his wings."

If, indeed, in contemplating this great mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh, we are struck with wonder and astonishment, our thoughts may naturally turn also to the mystery which envelopes the solar orb. Surely if we cannot comprehend the material image of the Creator and the Redeemer, how much less can we presume to know of that Great Being himself who is the cause of causes and the power of powers; by whose word it is that all the wheels of nature are kept in continual motion through the agency of the Sun as the main-spring, or central wheel, of the whole system. Let those who deny the doctrine of Christ's Godhead, because they cannot reason upon it, explain to us first the mysteries of the natural world. Let them tell us, what is Light? and whether it is a part of the Sun, or something wholly distinct from it. Philosophers have written much upon the laws of light;

but after all that has been said, its essence is as much unknown to us as the essence of God himself. This, therefore, may teach us caution in judging of divine things, "For who by searching can find out God?"

But the Christian Naturalist would not forget the earth, with its tribes of living beings all gay and full of animation, and its beautiful kingdoms of vegetable nature, all spread out like a splendid picture to feast the eye, to fill the mind, and to awaken the gratitude of man that was once crowned king and lord of all this lower creation. Wherever he looks at this season he sees innumerable beings animated with life, and apparently rejoicing in their existence. The Swallow, with the swiftness of an arrow, darts through the air, and reminds him, by the regularity of its return, of that law of instinct which so forcibly rebukes the inconstancy and carelessness of man towards his Maker. See Jeremiah viii. 7. The Bee buzzes from flower to flower to gather honey for its winter store, as if to give us a beautiful example of industry and prudent foresight. And even the little Ant, so laboriously working at this season, teaches a lesson to the sluggard which Solomon thought worth inculcating. Prov. vi. 6. So also the painted Butterfly, tricked out in all the hues of Summer, and fluttering to and fro continually amidst the sunshine, may remind the sons and daughters of pleasure, by the brevity and apparent inutility of its existence, of the vanity and shortness of that life of pleasure to which they devote themselves. But this lovely attendant upon a Summer's day may also teach us a nobler truth. The changes through which this and many other of the insect tribes pass, from the egg to the caterpillar, from the caterpillar to the chry