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The Jews fasted often they had four annual fasts, in commemoration of the capture of Jerusalem (Jer. lii. 6—13); of the burning of the temple (Zech. vii. 3); in memory of the death of Gedaliah (Jer. xli. 4); and in memory of the commencement of the attack on Jerusalem (Zech. viii. 19). In addition to these, they had a multitude of occasional fasts. It was customary also for the Pharisees to fast twice a week, Luke xviii. 12. Of a sad counte nance. That is, sour, morose, assumed expressions of unfelt sorrow. They disfigure their faces. That is, they do not anoint and wash themselves as usual; they are uncombed, filthy, squalid, and haggard. It is said that they were often in the habit of throwing ashes on their heads and faces; and this, mixing with their tears, seemed still farther to disfigure their faces. So much pains will men take, and so much suffering will they undergo, and so much that is ridiculous will they assume, to impose on God and men. But they deceive neither. God sees through the flimsy veil. Human eyes can pierce a disguise so thin. Hypocrites over-act their part. Not having the genuine principles of piety at heart, they know not its proper expression, and hence appear supremely contemptible and abominable. Never should men exhibit outwardly more than they feel; and never should they attempt to exhibit anything for the mere sake of ostentation.

"In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Cor. v. 4.

In the name, &c. By the authority, or in the behalf; or acting by his commission or power, 2 Cor. ii. 10. This does not refer to Paul alone, in declaring his opinion, but means that they were to be assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus, and that they were to proceed to exercise discipline by his authority. The idea is, that the authority to administer discipline is derived from the Lord Jesus Christ, and is to be exercised in his name, and to promote his honour. When ye are gathered together.— Or, "your being assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus." This is to be connected with the previous words, and means-1st. That they were to be assembled for the purpose of administering discipline; and 2nd. That this was to be done in the name and by the authority of the Lord Jesus. And my spirit, ver. 3. As if I were with you; that is, with my declared opinion, knowing what I would advise were I one of you; or,

I being virtually present with you, by having declared my opinion. It cannot mean that Paul's soul would be really present with them, but that, knowing his views and feelings, and what he would do, and knowing his love for them, they could act as if he were there. This passage proves that discipline belongs to the church itself; and so deep was Paul's conviction of this, that even he would not administer it without their concurrence and action. And if Paul would not do it, and in a case too where bodily pains were to be inflicted by miraculous agency, assuredly no other ministers have a right to assume the authority to administer discipline without the action and the concurrence of the church itself.

With the power, &c.--This phrase is to be connected with the following verse. "I have determined what ought to be done. The sentence which I have passed is this: You are to be assembled in the name and authority of Christ-I shall be virtually present. And you are to deliver such a one to Satan, by the power of our Lord Jesus Christ. That is, it is to be done by you; and the miraculous power which will be evinced in the case will proceed from the Lord Jesus. The word power is used commonly in the New Testament to denote some miraculous and extraordinary power; and here evidently means that the Lord Jesus would put forth such a power in the infliction of pain, and for the preservation of the purity of the church.

The exercise of discipline belongs to the church itself. The church at Corinth was to be assembled with reference to this of fence, and was to remove the offender. Even Paul, an apostle, and the spiritual father of the church, did not claim the authority to remove an offender, except through the church. The church was to take up the case; to act on it; to pass sentence; to excommunicate the man. There could scarcely be a stronger proof that the power of discipline is in the church, and is not to be exercised by any independent individual, or body of men, foreign to the church, or claiming an independent right of discipline. If Paul would not presume to exercise such discipline, independently of the church, assuredly no minister, and no body of ministers, have any such right now. Either by themselves, in a collective congregational capacity, or through their representatives in a body of elders, or in a committee appointed by them; every church is itself to originate and execute all the acts of Christian discipline over its members.

Natural Bistory and Philosophy.

THE LOCALITIES OF ANIMALS AN ARRANGEMENT OF PROVIDENCE.

CHRISTIAN men are glad to recognise as a fact that God has chosen their inheritance, and has fixed the bounds of their habitation. Persuaded that He "orders their steps," "directs their ways," and "guides them with His counsel," they see the hand of His providence in their settlements and in their removals, and endeavour to emulate the "faith of Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place, which he should afterwards receive for an inheritance, not knowing whither he went, and sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise." Nor let any one deem it a matter of too little consequence for the Divine will and power to interfere as to the locality or neighbourhood where a human being shall have his dwellingplace. Naaman, "captain of the host of the king of Syria, a great man with his master, and honourable, a mighty man in valour, was a leper;" and probably would have lived and died in this disgusting state of disease, had not "a little maid, brought away captive out of the land of Israel, waited on Naainan's wife." Cured of his leprosy, and converted from his idolatry, as the result of his intercourse with this little captive, her abode, for probably a very temporary period, in the house of this "great man," was an event in her history not unworthy of being considered in connection with the hand and will of God. The local habitations of the animal races is an interesting department of Divine Providence, and will furnish the naturalist, who desires his science to be the handmaid of his piety, with ever-recurring illustrations of the wisdom, and power, and goodness of God, calculated not only to fill his mind with wonder, but to draw out his heart in gratitude and trust.

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Locomotion characterises animal life. Plants, with very few exceptions indeed, are Nature's fixtures. Where the tree, the shrub, the flower, spring up, there they naturally remain, until having reached their maturity, and answered the end of their being, they resolve into their primitive elements, on the spot which gave them birth, and on which they have flourished in a glory exceeding that of Solomon in his kingly pomp. Far different is it with the animal races, furnished as they are with desires, gifted with will, and provided

accordingly with powers of locomotion. This ability to wander whither they please, as far as their power to move about at will is concerned, has its instructive phenomena, and will raise our estimation of the Divine skill

"That wisely orders all that is."

Animals, though always in motion, and not necessarily confined to one spot, do not roam at random. Their very motions and wanderings are subject to the control of general laws. Migratory as the swallow, arriving at regular periods to our shores as the herring, or confined to proscribed districts as the feline tribes, the career and the wanderings of animals are all heavendirected. Now here was a great problem to be solved. The motions of a moving world of animals are to be so distributed and regulated as to promote the good order and the well-being of creation. Without any appearance of restraint, force, or command, this is done, and that most effectually. Animal life is not confined in a managerie of dens,

"Cribbed, cabined, and confined;"

nor is it exhibited with a careful array of manifest fences and bars, as in the Regent'spark Zoological Gardens. Utmost freedom is combined with the greatest security. Keepers there are, but they are unseen; fences and bounds there are, but they strike not the senses. Apparent restraint on the animal will nowhere show itself; absolute control universally and constantly prevails.

Why does not the animal world rebel? What power restrains this multitude of wills, directing all to its own purposes, so that every individual is in his place, and performs his assigned functions, though all are really free to act as they please? The astronomer rightly admires the Almighty Power that regulates the motions of the starry worlds, keeping in their due bounds "those mighty orbs," revolving with velocities that smile at the motion of express trains on our railroads. But these orbs are masses of inert, senseless matter, whilst the animal world is a mass of individual wills, desires, appetites, and affections. To govern minds is, indeed, to govern with power. Shall not the naturalist, then, meet the astronomer in the devout wonder with which he views the dominion of the

Infinite over the multitudinous motions of the animal world? How is this effected?

The physical causes of the necessary restraint upon the wanderings of free animals, consist of the peculiarity of animal construction, in their deficiency of muscular force, in their brevity of life, and in the influence of climate upon their existence. The instinct of local attachment, the desire for breeding in some specific manner, the gregarious principle, a love of quiet, a preference of some peculiar kinds of food, are also important elements of the restraining power exercised by the Divine Ruler over the freely-moving subjects of His animal kingdom.

With the comparatively small exception of amphibious animals, the natural inhabitants of land and of water respectively cannot invade each other's quarters or take possession of each other's abodes. Birds have a wider range for their locomotive powers. Denizens for the most part of the air, not excluded from occupying the land, and in numerous species, to be found "at home" on the waters of the ocean, they have peculiar facilities for motion, that, however, only the more impressively serve to show the completeness of the Divine dominion, which, as in comets in the starry world, so over birds in the animal world proclaims, in the language of the Psalmist, "His kingdom ruleth over all."

By its construction the sloth is confined in its motion to a wandering from tree to tree, as is the rabbit to the sandy ground in which it can burrow. The mole, by its organization, quits the surface, and finds his happy home by burying himself alive. Camels and goats, roaming in wildest liberty, will never invade each other's territory, as the sand, so suitable a footing for the one, will never be quitted for the rocks, over which it is the happiness of the other to skip. The seal would soon find its mistake if it wandered far from the sea, while the structure of its congener, the inoffensive and even amiable manati, which, when one is struck with the harpoon, is said to be aided by the rest of the herd, attempting to draw the weapon from the wounded flesh, prevents its leaving the water at all. The organisation of the flat fish confines their abode to the bottom of the ocean; the Lumbricus terrestris, or common earthworm, makes its gallery home beneath the surface of the earth; and while one hundred and fifty millions of animalcule would have ample scope for their motions in a tumbler of water, the whale must have a deep sea to float in, as he finds to his cost, when roaming too near a dangerous shore, the tide has too far retreated before he discovers his error to allow him to reach the

depths of ocean which ought not to have been quitted. The sparrow never seeks to place its nest alongside of the rook, nor does the rook ever attempt to sit upon the crest of a wave with the gull. Shell-fish seldom move any distance from the spot where they are produced. The limpet is a proverb of steadfastness, for the tenacity with which it adheres to its native rock or stone. Every wanderer on the sea-shore must have observed how strongly the mussel is moored,--we might almost say rooted, to the spot that gives it birthplace. Vegetables are not more necessarily fixed to one spot by their very structure, than are corals in the animal kingdom. Medusa are free denizens of the ocean, but the feebleness and tardiness of their motions circumscribe within narrow limits the space over which their almost motionless forms float. The larva of insects are wisely prevented from wandering very widely, or they would destroy the food of others, as well as exhaust their own. Chameleons, sluggish of nature, are fortunately confined to their trees, since if possessed of greater powers of motion they might not only have left their means of support behind them, but have become the helpless victims of stronger animals.

The great Master and Steward of the universal family has not only made providential arrangements to prevent one animal from injuring those of another species, but He has taken care that it shall not injure itself, by providing security for food, and by placing a restriction on the power of animals to injure each other's interests. Moles must remain where worms multiply. Weasels, savage as they are, and fond of blood, never attack the horse, though sleeping near their lair. Migrations, and the occasional "breaking of bounds," do occur; but a check against the evil is provided, as when the migrating caterpillar journeys, its visible column is a tempting treat to many a winged epicure, whose nice taste diminishes the ravages of the insect wanderer.

The brief duration of insect life generally, does, as a natural consequence, limit the locality in which these tribes dwell. With life limited to a few weeks, and even hours, the animal cannot be a great and random traveller; it is hurried life. Its eggs must be deposited whereabouts the animal was born, and the progeny must succeed, as to an entailed estate, to the heirloom of the family.

Dread of man is a principal cause of limitation of the locality of animals. As man advances in the peaceful occupation of the earth, animals the wildest and most savage and powerful retreat before him, showing that ever since man was driven

from his glorious habitation in Eden, the original law impressed on the irrational creation is still in full force: "And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the face of the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered."

Love of peace has been implanted generally in the animal world by the Creator. Wasps and hornets may wage war with bees, like human brutes, for the love of plunder, when they have discovered a rich store city of treasured sweets. Wolves and dogs may be found destroying more sheep than they can by any means devour. The peacock may kill all the chickens within its reach. These cases are the exceptions in Nature. Deficient strength, or courage, or ferocity, cannot be assigned as the cause of this general freedom from international feuds and destructive wars between the various tribes in the animal world. Rams are powerful animals. The stag, leading its formidable rank-and-file with all the precision of a highly-disciplined battalion of soldiers, would have no difficulty in driving all other animals from its pastures. When several kinds of birds inhabit one rock, each kind has its place and boundary, though no geographical division exists, and no holy alliance of the chief powers has assigned political limitations to the domains of each tribe. The guillemot does not disturb the penguin, nor will the puffin and the gull contend for each other's resting or brooding spots; while the terns, a numerous race, of many species, live in a state of mutual peace that cries shame to the rational races of man. To the lover of concord it is a pleasing sight to witness

"The assembled flocks of ocean throng;
Some native birds perennial; some
From inland moor or freshet come,
To winter on the fishy shore;
And some from far off regions frore,
Where reigns uncheered a dayless night,
Have hither sped their annual flight;'

but all, natives or foreigners, though living in separate but contiguous states, and though consisting of rival nations, each eager in the pursuit of one object, food, manifesting no enmity or jealousy, and offering no interference or intrusion upon each other's territories or with each other's pursuits. Unlike civilised Europeans, who have invaded the lands and thinned the numbers of weaker and distant tribes of men, among these sea-birds there is no attempt on the part of the strong to possess themselves of the lands of the weak or to deprive the feebler of the wealth which has been equally provided for all. Obeyed by the waves and the winds, which Jeho

vah holds in His hands, the irrational creation hears His voice, which fixes for each its habitation, and acquiesces in the providential arrangement.

Search for food appears to be the great inducement in animals to move. Oxen rest, except when compelled to eat. Carnivorous animals sleep as soon as they have been well supplied with food. A horse is not in a hurry to leave his stable. If the gannet and the frigate-bird are ever on the wing, it is because they live compulsory under the force of the law of society

"if a man will not work, neither shall he eat"-for these birds must labour or starve. All evil consequences of animal powers of motion are guarded against by an instinct that renders rest pleasurable to animals in general. Were the lion not more circumscribed in his locality than the fox, the earth would be a scene of confusion and terror to animals as well as to man. If animals have not a home love, they have what is equivalent to it. The hare does not quit her home, even after a succession of alarms; the stag,

"With all the world before it, and Providence to guide,"

holds to its accustomed range; the eagle's rock is the nest of centuries: many a feudal mansion is witness that the venerable trees surrounding it have been to the family of rooks "a city of generations;" and the heronry often outlives the ancient race that has occupied the ivy-covered walls, and dismantled turrets of the neighbouring baronial hall. If the gannet might wander to the utmost regions where fish can be found, it has, like the eagle, its home; nor will the annoyance of years drive it from the abode of its affections, that cold and cheerless rock. Food is not the motive,that is everywhere. Attachment to offspring cannot induce this: its parental attachment is of short duration. It cannot be necessity: it could find a thousand rocks equally convenient, and more free from intrusion. It is its heaven-appointed home. To the same Divine wisdom and power must be attributed the fact that the cod-bank is the perpetual habitation of a fish that often wanders far, and that could find its food in every part of the ocean; and that the long absent swallow and duck return to their accustomed homes.

The instinct to breed in particular spots is a source of localization, acting either as a cause of fixed attachment to a spot or as a centripetal force, recalling a wandering animal at stated and appropriate periods. It brings back the long lost salmon to its river, and thus provides food for thousands; as is also the case with the herring and the mackerel, whose shoals of countless num

bers, periodically led to quit the depths of the ocean, obey a law impressed on their nature by the wise Creator of the universe.

Food constitutes a cause of limitation as to the localities of animals. When a certain class of vegetables is the food of an animal, its abode must be within the range of that vegetable production. Thus while the reindeer, in a state of nature limits his movements within the region of the lichen rangiferinus, other deer, with goats and sheep, prefer shrubby lands and mountain pastures. The limitation occasioned by food confines the aphis to a single plant, limits the mite to a single cheese, imprisons the larva of the gall within a space no larger than its own body. Heat, cover, and ready access to water, unite with the neighbourhood of the buffalo and the antelope in determining the tiger to its Indian jungles. The crocodile, determined to rivers by its food, is also confined to the waters by its physical construction. The condor never quits the Andes. It need not all its wants have there an abundant supply. Were the mole to quit its worms, the light of day would compel it to return to the under-ground palace of its choice. The powers and food of the woodcock confine it to its bogs, as do those of the owl to its nocturnal life. Fishes and sea-birds are rivals in food; but the lungs of the one, and the gills of the other, mark the atmosphere and the water as the limits of their permanent dwelling. House-swallows and river-swallows pursue the same food, and possess similar powers. They, therefore, might reside together; but their local attachments and their breeding places are far asunder. God has separated them. It is His government of animal life. It is a complicated system of prohibitions and of permissions; yet all is free, for the checks are inclinations, and all concur to produce general good. Is this all chance? Let all these restraints be taken off the animal world, and who could describe the confusion, the ruin, that would ensue?

A CURIOUS INSTINCT. THERE is in the gardens at Regent's-park a plain-looking sombre bird, a native of New Holland, called the brush-turkey, whose habits of rearing its brood are among the most remarkable in the history of animal instincts. The bird is a thorough chemist, and constructs for itself a patent incubator, on chemical principles, by which it hatches its eggs in a scientific manner, without the tedious sitting to which other birds submit. This bird at present occupies part of the great aviary on the south side of the gardens, on the right, after entering the

gate from the road. It is not a very striking bird in its appearance. The upper surface of the adult male's wings and tail is of a blackish brown at the base, going into silver gray at the ends. The skin of the head and neck is of a deep pink, verging on red, and thinly sprinkled with short dingy hair. The wattle is of a bright yellow, shading off into red. In size it is nearly that of a turkey. In general habits, this bird is nothing remarkable- it is in the reproduction of the species that its anomalous proceedings are manifested. It is a believer in fermentation and co-operation; for when the breeding season arrives, a number of birds enter into partnership, and collect a huge heap of vegetable matter, which is allowed to ferment till it forms a hot-bed. Several weeks are patiently employed in forming this heap; but, when once formed, it does duty for several years, new matter being added at the top as that beneath rots away. In collecting, the birds use only the foot; the bill is not used at all. The surface of the ground surrounding the hot-bed is thus cleared of every leaf and blade of grass, every scrap of vegetation being added to assist in the fermentation. When this pyramidal mound of green stuff has had sufficient time to heat, and when it is just at the proper temperature for hatching, the large eggs are inserted, not side by side, but planted at regular intervals from each other, and stuck into the fusty, smoking heap perfectly upright, the large end downward, and at an arm's length below the surface. They are then covered up, and left till hatched. Whether the chickens have to fight their way through the warm "artificial mother," or whether, as Mr. Gould was informed, the females remain in the neighbourhood to assist them, is a question not yet settled.

SINGULAR GEOLOGICAL FACT.

AT Modena, in Italy, within a circle of four miles around the city, whenever the earth is dug and the workmen arrive at the distance of sixty-three feet, they come to a bed of chalk, which they bore with an auger, five feet deep. They then withdraw from the pit before the auger is removed, and upon its refraction the water bursts up with great violence, and quickly fills the well thus made, the supply of water being neither affected by rains or droughts. -At the depth of fourteen feet are found the ruins of an ancient city, houses, paved streets and masonic work. Below this again is a layer of earth, and at twenty-six feet walnut-trees are found entire, and with leaves and walnuts upon them. At twentyeight feet soft chalk is found,and below this vegetables and trees.

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