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of the widow, in which her meal was held, (1 Kings xvii. 12, 14) was not, probably, very large; but those four in which the water was brought up from the sea, at the bottom of mount Carmel, to pour upon Elijah's sacrifice and altar, must have been large, 1 Kings xviii. 33. We read also of the water-jugs, or jars of stone, of considerable size, into which our Lord caused the water to be converted into wine, John ii. 6.

Grapes were also dried into raisins. A part of Abigail's present to David, was 100 clusters of raisins (1 Sam. xxv. 18); and when Ziba met David, his present contained the same quantity, 2 Sam. xvi. 1; 1 Sam. xxx. 12; 1 Chron. xii. 40.

SECTION II.

AROMATIC TREES.

6

THE CEDAR.

The forest of cedars' on the famed mountain of Lebanon, which once furnished the sacred writers with so many beautiful images, has now almost wholly disappeared. Some few trees remain, to remind us of their former glory, (Isa. lx. 13.) and to teach us the mutability of all sublunary things.

Burckhardt, the celebrated traveller, describes these ancient inhabitants of the forest, which are among the chief objects of the traveller's curiosity, in the following terms: They stand on uneven ground, and form a small wood. Of the oldest and best looking trees, I counted eleven or twelve: twenty-five very large ones; about fifty of middling size; and more than three hundred smaller and younger ones. The older trees are distinguished, by having the foliage and small branches at the top only, and by four, five, or even seven trunks springing from one base; the branches and foliage of the others were lower, but I saw none whose leaves touched the ground, like those in Kew Gardens. The trunks of the old trees are covered with the names of travellers and other persons who have visited them: I saw a date of the seventeenth century. The trunks of the oldest trees seem to be quite dead: the wood is of a grey tint.

The cedar is a large majestic tree, rising to the height of thirty or forty yards; and some of them are from thirty-five to forty feet in girth. It is a beautiful evergreen, possessing leaves something like those of the rosemary, and distils a kind of gum, to which various qualities are attributed. Le Bruyn says, the leaves of the tree point upward, and the fruit hangs downward: it grows like cones of the pine tree, but is longer, harder, and fuller, and not easily separated from the stalk. It contains a seed, like that of the cypress tree.

The wood of the cedar is very valuable; it possesses a strong aromatic smell, and is reputed to be incorruptible.--The ark of the covenant, and many parts of Solomon's temple, were constructed of it.

The cedar of Lebanon, says Paxton, is one of the natural images which frequently occur in the poetical style of the prophets; and is appropriated to denote kings, princes, and potentates of the highest rank. Thus, the prophet Isaiah, in denouncing the judginent

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of God upon the proud and arrogant, declares that 'the day of the Lord of Hosts shall be upon all the cedars of Lebanon that are high and lifted up, and upon all the oaks of Bashan,' ch. ii. 13. The king of Israel used the same figure in his reply to the challenge of the king of Judah: 'The thistle that was in Lebanon, sent to the cedar that was in Lebanon, saying, Give thy daughter to my son to wife; and there passed by a wild beast that was in Lebanon, and trod down the thistle,' 2 Kings, xiv. 9. The spiritual prosperity of the righteous man is compared, by the Psalmist, to the same noble plant: "The righteous shall flourish as the palm tree; he shall grow as the cedar in Lebanon.' To break the cedars, and to shake the enormous mass on which they grow, are the figures that David selects to express the awful majesty and infinite power of Jehovah: The voice of the Lord is powerful: the voice of the Lord is full of majesty: the voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars; yea, the Lord breaketh the cedars of Lebanon. He makes them also to skip like a calf; Lebanon and Sirion like a young unicorn,' Ps. xxix. 4. This description of the Divine majesty and power, possesses a character of awful sublimity, which is almost unequalled, even in the page of inspiration. Jehovah has only to speak, and the cedar, which braves the fierce winds of heaven, is broken,-even the cedar of Lebanon, every arm of which rivals the size of a tree: he has only to speak, and the enormous mass of matter on which it grows shakes to its foundation, till, extensive, and lofty, and ponderous as it is, it leaps like the young of the herd in their joyous frolics, and skips like the young unicorn, the swiftest of the four-footed race. The countless number of these trees in the days of Solomon, and their prodigious bulk, must be recollected, in order to feel the force of that sublime declaration of the prophet: 'Lebanon is not sufficient to burn, nor the beasts thereof sufficient for a burnt-offering,' Isa. xl. 16. Though the trembling sinner were to make choice of Lebanon for the altar, and were to cut down all its forests to form the fuel; though the fragance of this fuel, with all its odoriferous gums, were the incense; the wine of Lebanon pressed from all its vineyards, the libation; and all its beasts, the propitiatory sacrifice; all would prove insufficient to make atonement for the sins of men; would be regarded as nothing in the eyes of the Supreme Judge, for the expiation, of even one transgression. The just and holy law of God requires a nobler altar, a costlier sacrifice, and a sweeter perfume,-the obedience and death of a Divine Person to atone for our sins, and the incense of his continual intercession, to secure our acceptance with the Father of mercies, and admission into the mansions of eternal rest.

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out culture, in its native country Azab, and all along the coast to Babelmandel. The trunk is about eight or ten inches in diameter; the wood light and open, gummy, and outwardly of a reddish color, incapable of receiving a polish, and covered with a smooth bark, like that of a young cherry tree. It flattens at top, like trees that are exposed to snow blasts, or sea air, which gives it a stunted appearance. It is remarkable for a penury of leaves. The flowers are like those of the acacia, small and white, only that three hang upon three filaments, or stalks, where the acacia has but one. Two of these flowers fall off, and leave a single fruit; the branches that bear these, are the shoots of the present year; they are of reddish color, and tougher than the old wood. After the blossoms, follow yellow, fine scented seed, enclosed in a reddish black pulpy_nut, very sweet, and containing a yellowish liquor, like honey. They are bitter, and a little tart upon the tongue; of the same shape and size of the turpentine tree, thick in the middle, and pointed at the ends.

There were three kinds of balsam extracted from this tree. The first was called opobalsamum, and was most highly esteemed. It was that which flowed spontaneously, or by means of incision, from the trunk or branches of the tree in summer time. The second was carpobalsamum, made by expressing the fruit when in maturity. The third, and least esteemed of all, was hylobalsamum, made by a decoction of the buds and small young twigs.

The great value set upon this drug in the east is traced to the earliest ages. The Ishmaelites, or Arabian carriers and merchants, trafficking with the Arabian commodities into Egypt, brought with them balm, as a part of their cargo, Gen. xxxviii. 25; ch. xliii. 11.

Strabo alone, of all the ancients, has given us the true account of the place of its origin. In that most happy land of the Sabæans,' says he, 'grow the frankincense, myrrh, and cinnamon; and in the coast that is about Saba, the balsam also.' Among the myrrh trees behind Azab, all along the coast, is its native country. We need not doubt that it was transplanted early into Arabia, that is, into the south part of Arabia Felix, immediately fronting Azab, where it is indigenous. The high country of Arabia was too cold to receive it; being all mountainous: water freezes there.

Notwithstanding the positive authority of Josephus, that Judea was indebted to Sheba for this tree, Mr. Bruce remarks, that we cannot put it in competition with what we have been told in scripture, as we have just now seen that the place where it grew, and was sold to merchants, was Gilead, in Judea, more than 1730 years before Christ, or 1000 before the queen of Saba; so that, in reading the verse, nothing can be plainer than that it had been transplanted into Judea, flourished, and had become an article of commerce in Gilead, long before the period he mentions. A company of Ishmaelites caine from Gilead with their camels, bearing spicery, and balın, and myrrh, going to carry it down to Egypt,' Gen. xxxvii. 25. Now the spicery, or pepper, he adds, was cer

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