sets forth. Motives may be, yea, doubtless are, different in different cases, yet still it is not the less true that the world is a masquerade, wherein one character is always deceiving another. It was so of olden time, it is so now, and is likely to remain so. Oh for a hearty and unbounded confidence in Him who deceiveth not, but is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. Then, again, we are so shortsighted that we are continually taking evil for good, and good for evil. When Joseph was stripped out of his coat, his coat of many colours, when he was cast into the pit and sold to the Ishmeelites, it seemed, no doubt, a rugged path that he was treading, whereas it was the very highway to the favour of Pharaoh. When Haman erected a gallows fifty cubits high, he was mislead by appearances; he saw by anticipation Mordecai hanging thereon, but his gallows was the instrument of his own destruction.

Who would have thought that an armed giant, the weight of whose coat of mail was five thousand shekels of brass, and whose spear staff was like a weaver's beam, could have been brought to the ground with a pebble stone? Or that the waters of the brook Jordan would be more healing than those of Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus ? Yet these things were so, and stranger things than even these have happened.

Once more I say things are not what they seem : some things are underrated, while others are too highly prized. Samson the strong saw not in the fair face of his Delilah deceit, treachery, bondage, cruelty, and death; nor did the learned Rabbins of the Jews discern in the fleshly form of the "Man of sorrows" the Lord of life and glory. They were misled by outward appearances. Cain thought that because the presence of Abel was a trouble to him his absence would give him ease; but oh, what a mark was branded on his brow, and what a load of sorrow was laid on his heart by the violent deed he committed!

Things are not what they seem in common life. A conviction of this fact brought home to our hearts may be practically useful. The benighted traveller, weary with his wanderings and bewildered with the mists and darkness around him, hastens to the distant light, which he fondly dreams to emanate from some hospitable hearth. Already, in imagination, he partakes of the friendly glow. It is but one more effort that is necessary, and then his wants will be supplied, and his fears dispelled. Alas! when in the act of realizing all his hopes, he flounders in the mire into which the wandering wildfire of the marsh has allured him. Commonplace as this illustration may be, it is "faithful to a fault" in setting forth the mistakes of hundreds, when afflicted in mind, in body, or estate. The royal psalmist said, "When my heart is overwhelmed, lead me to the Rock that is higher than I;" but how many are there who, oppressed by the heat and burden of the day, see, or rather fancy that they see, a far better covert to fly to than Him, who is "as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land." How many wills-o'-the-wisp drew aside the trembling heart, the wounded conscience, promising much, and performing little! Things are not what they seem.

The pale-faced invalid, who has been made to possess days of darkness, and to whom wearisome nights have been appointed, hears of some famous mountebank, some medical charlatan, who, reckless of falsehood and dishonesty, unblushingly undertakes to cure all diseases. To him the sick man hies, sees in him a benefactor, and in his nostrum a healing balm, an infallible restorative to health and vigour. By and by the mountebank is unmasked, and the delusion is made clear; but it is too late-the invalid has been robbed of his remaining strength. Things are not what they seem!

The thoughtless spendthrift, who has involved himself in numberless embarrassments; who has mortgaged his means, and anticipated all his resources; whose way is hedged up with thorns, by accident casts his eye on a paragraph in some public journal. "Money on easy terms" seems like a sunbeam to his delighted vision, and with breathless haste he hurries off to the kind-hearted and generous lender. Gladly he puts his name to the proffered bills, and in another hour is to receive the seasonable supply. Things are not what they seem! When he returns, the lenders are vanished! His golden expectations are but a dream; but the responsibility he has incurred is a fearful reality.

One of the most striking instances of a deceitful outside show in the natural creation that I ever remember to have witnessed was in the trunk of an oak. To all appearance, there stood a goodly tree before me, and its giant branches were redundantly clad with verdure; but on a closer inspection I found the trunk to be a mere outside shell. The side opposite to that on which I had at first gazed had, with the heart of the tree, altogether decayed away. Much of a similar nature may sometimes be found among mankind—an outside flourishing appearance, without a heart. In a tree this is to be regretted, but in a human being it is a wretched spectacle.

I once conversed privately with a public jester, whose avocation was, dressed in gay apparel, to excite merriment in the multitude that gathered around him. What a world of comicality could he throw into his expressive face! What an exhaustless fund of drollery did he possess ! and what roars of irrepressible laughter did he call forth amid the crowd! He was, to all appearance, one of the most light-hearted and happy beings that ever wore a smile. But what did he tell me in private? That the colour in his cheek was painted, that the jests he uttered were hackneyed, that the mirth he manifested was feigned, and that he was one of the most miserable of mortals on the face of the earth. This may be no ordinary instance of the striking difference between the fiction and the fact, the shadow and the substance, the outside show and the inward feeling; but approaches to something like the same thing are to be seen around us every day of our lives.

Certain it is, that things are not what they seem; and the knowledge of this truth should lead us more and more to mistrust our own judgment, and to look above for wisdom and instruction.-Old Humphrey.

NATURE'S ACCUSATION.

SEE a man brought to the judgment-seat of Christ the accusation against him is, that he lived a long life in neglect and forgetfulness of God, enjoying many blessings, but never giving a thought to the source whence they came. Who are witnesses against him? Lo, the sun declares, Every day I wakened him by my glorious shinings, flooding the heavens with evidences of a God: but he rose without a prayer from his couch; and he made no use of the light but to prosecute his plans of pleasure or gain. The moon and the stars assert, that "nightly, to the listening earth," they repeated the story of their origin; but that, though they spangled the curtain which was drawn round his bed, he lay down, as he rose, with no word of supplication; and that often were the shadows of the night used only to conceal his guiltiness from man. Hills and valleys have a voice; forests and fountains have a voice; every feature of the variegated landscape testifies that it bore the impress of a God, but always failed to awaken any reverence for His name. There is not a herb, there is not a flower, which will be silent. The corn is asserting that its ripe ears were gathered without thankfulness; the spring is murmuring that its waters were drawn without gratitude; the vine is testifying that its rich juices were distilled to produce a false joy. The precious metals of the earth are all stamped with accusation, for they were sought with a guilty avidity; the winds of heaven breathe a stern charge, for they were never laden with praises; the waves of the great deep toss themselves into witnesses, for they were traversed by ships that luxuries might be gathered, but not that Christianity might be diffused. Take heed, man of the world, how thou dost arm all nature against thyself. Be warned by the voice which the inanimate creation is already uttering.-Sermons by Henry Melvill.

AIR IN WATER.-Aristotle relates, in his Meteorology, that the fishermen who cast their nets in the Pontine Lake, used to carry in close vessels boiled water, for the purpose of sprinkling the reeds, that these might quickly freeze together, and cease to disturb the fish by their rustling noise. The expulsion of air from water during the progress of congelation, was afterwards fully proved by Mariotte, one of the earliest members of the French Academy of Sciences. If two wine glasses filled, the one with water from the well, and the other with water recently boiled, be exposed to the frost, the ice of the latter will seem almost uniformly pellucid, while the ice of the former will appear charged with small air bubbles, crowding towards the centre of the mass to which they are drawn by the advance of the congelation.

WAITING HARVEST.

Music composed for Bible Class Magazine by THOMAS B. ANNELY. Words from "Singing Annual."

The Editor's Table.