had been attending very patiently, ventured to interrupt my romance and quotations, exclaiming,

"Beautiful, my dear sir, truly beautiful; I seem to see Siloam. Pray, did you anywhere on the damp wall observe a new species of the centipede ?" Leisurlie smiled.

"For in our life alone does nature live",

said he, as he took his candle.

X.

ON THE HOUSE-TOP.

THE mosque of Omar is the most beautiful object in Jerusalem, and the church of the Sepulchre is the most unpleasant.

The solemnity of the landscape around the city, its silence and desolation, impress the mind strongly with the spiritualism of Christianity, and to a degree that almost reaches severity. You feel that not only the sanctity of the city, but the austerity of the landscape, fostered the asceticism of the early hermits here.

The image of Christ in your mind perpetually rebukes whatever is not lofty and sincere in your thoughts, and sternly requires reality of all feeling exhibited in Jerusalem. In Rome, you can tolerate tinsel, because the history of the Faith there, and its ritual, are a kind of romance. But it is intolerable in Jerusalem, where, in the presence of the same landscape and within the same walls, you have a profound personal feeling and reverence for Jesus.

As you meditate the features of his character, and the beauty of holiness penetrates your mind more deeply-as you recognize the directness of his teaching and the simplicity of his life-as you feel how constantly he appealed to the natural affections of the heart-you are lost in sorrow and dismay before the melancholy abuses of the institution which has aimed to perpetuate his spirit among

men.

Were the Scribes and Pharisees alone, you ask, guilty of giving stones for fish?

Turning the pages of ecclesiastical history-of that church which especially has hitherto represented Christianity-or of the various sects whose differences so fiercely clash-does it seem to you that you contemplate the career of an institution with which Jesus promised to be, until the end of the world?

-Or glancing from books to life, and regarding the aspect of any community professing Christianity—as Paris, London, or New York-would you notice eager selfishness as its characteristic, or forbearance, forgiveness, and self-denial?

If now, Jesus were sitting where he once sat, upon the Mount of Olives, which we can yonder plainly discern in the full moonlight, and perceived the worship which we shall see this Good Friday even

ing-scarcely less idolatrous than that of wild Africans to a Fetish-should we not hear his voice wailing again over the city

"Oh Jerusalem! Jerusalem! thou that stonest the Prophets."

XI.

IDOLATRY.

"Thy silver is become dross, thy wine is mixed with water."

THE REV. Dr. Duck declined to go to the church of the Holy Sepulchre, this Good Friday evening, to see the Romish mummeries." He had been attending evening prayer at the English chapel upon Mount Zion, and had been kneeling and praying, "From pride, envy, malice, and all uncharitableness, Good Lord deliver us!" Between the courses at dinner, he blandly exposed the "absurd Romish traditions of the sacred spots in and around Jerusalem."

Among other doubts, he had disputed the authen ticity of the tomb at Bethany, called the tomb of Lazarus. "I have been to-day to Bethany,' said the Rev. Dr. Duck, "and I saw there the cave which the Romanists called the tomb of Lazarus. It is an excavation in the rock, and we descended several steps before we reached the spot where Lazarus is said to have lain. But, my dear sir, how