freely part with friends, happiness, health, and wealth, if it were necessary, to show your love to Him? Are you willing to make an open avowal of your love to the Saviour?

8. Do you find pleasure in the frequent study of the Bible?

9. Do you make many opportunities of being alone with God; do you love prayer; and how do you feel while at prayer?

It is a solemn thought-THESE QUESTIONS will be remembered by you in the Judgment Day!-Shall it be to make the anguish of a lost soul more acute, or to deepen the joy of a justified believer?

S. C. M.

[Should any of our youthful friends desire to correspond with us respecting these Questions, we shall be happy to afford them our affectionate counsels.-ED.]

THE SHEPHERD-WANDERERS.

It is asserted that the Hebrews were a rude, nomadic, or wandering people.

Upon this, as a supposed fact, one modern objector bases an attack on the account of the Tabernacle in the Pentateuch, in these words:-"A stock of gold and silver is too valuable for a nomadic people; the working of metal is too great an advance in the arts; simply the materials that were to be employed for this purpose could not even be collected in so short a time from the travelling merchants."

Another objector asserts that the Mosaic legislation supposes Agriculture and a settled life; that such a social condition did not exist; therefore, as the Mosaic laws are plainly too complicated for an untaught horde of wanderers, they must be spurious.

And other enemies of Inspiration, believing that these rude nomads could not possibly have known

Writing, fancy they have found another weak point in the Scripture citadel.

But were they really so uncivilized, these rambling shepherds, who poured forth with their flocks and herds across the Desert towards Canaan? Were they actually wild barbarians, and is all that is asserted of them and their leader, either a mythical story, or a false history?

Now I cannot find any trace of nomadic rudeness among them. In point of real intelligence and manners I question if we now surpass them. Look at the patriarchs, the founders of this people. Why, Judah graced his fingers with a signet ring. Joseph was civilized enough to wear a richly adorned garment. Abraham, in his interview with the children of Heth, acquitted himself with the grace of a courtier. When desirous of securing a family cemetery, he did not make his purchase in any way of rude barter, but paid for his land with money. So did Jacob's sons, when they went to buy corn in Egypt. When Eleazar, of Damascus, presented Rebecca with a gold ring and bracelets, he acted with as much polished acquaintance with refined usages as any modern marriage-negociator now could do.

Besides, they were not particularly fond of a wandering life; they were never nomads when they could help it. Some people speak of the patriarchs and their descendants as if they preferred dwelling in tents; but their conduct exhibits quite a contrary taste. It is true their relation to those around them compelled them to a frequent change of residence. They were in a country which was not yet their own, so that the New Testament reference to them-as "dwelling in tabernacles," and "confessing that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth"-is perfectly justified by their usual mode of life.

But when it was possible, they settled down into a quiet, stationary life;-and not a stationary life in tents,

be it remarked. The servants probably always resided in tents, for the more convenient tending of the flocks; but their masters, whenever they could, abandoned the inconvenient tabernacle for the more comfortable house. Some of them, as, for instance, Lot, not only dwelt in a city, but were too much attached to a city life. Abraham, when a famine forced him into Egypt, took up his residence near the king's palace-a strange taste for one supposed to have the habits and feelings of a wandering tribe. Subsequently, Abraham settled at Hebron, and was designated, as he stood at the city gate, "a mighty prince."

Nor was Isaac at all unduly attached to a gipsying life. We read of his residing at Gerar, the chief Philistine city. Here he certainly followed his father's example in choosing a house close to the king's, for the Scripture narrative informs us that Abimelech, long after Isaac had become his neighbour, looking one day from his window, saw him "sporting with Rebecca his wife." Here also Isaac cultivated land, and was very prosperous, not only as a sheep-master, but also as a farmer.

His son, Jacob, we also learn, on his return from Mesopotamia, erected a house, although in a locality where he did not long remain.

These facts are clear evidences that the Hebrew fathers were not pilgrims by choice, but by necessity; and that necessity did not always compel them to adopt an unsettled life. In an earthly, as well as in a spiritual sense, even when they had no continuing city, they still sought one to come.

They practically found this city, so far as they and their immediate descendants were concerned, in Egypt. Transplanted into the country of the Pharaohs, they passed rapidly from a wandering to a fixed mode of life. The powerful influence of Joseph obtained for his brethren large tracts of land, allotted in the best and most productive part of the country. These grants

were in perpetuity; not a mere loan gained for a season by a royal favorite, and liable to be recalled in a moment of royal caprice. The narrative in the book of Genesis states these facts incontestably. The word rendered "possession" ("And Joseph gave them a possession," Gen. xlvii. 11) must be regarded as equal in force to our term "freehold." The land of Goshen was surrendered by Pharoah's bounty, as the freehold of the Hebrew people. They looked upon themselves as now changing their manner of life for a fixed, permanent occupancy of a definite locality. We know that they built themselves houses; for it was upon the door-posts and lintels of these houses that the paschal blood was afterwards sprinkled.

Now if such was their condition in Egypt, if they had permanent dwellings in the most fertile spots, we are certain that their companionship with the most civilized people of the old world would influence them to a high degree. The Hebrew character was susceptible, highly flexible, pre-eminently capable of culture is it not so still?-and therefore especially open to impressions derived from Egyptian life. Would they be slow to avail themselves of the good opportunity they now had for cultivating agricultural pursuits?

Were this irksome to them-as to a wandering tribe it might be supposed to be-it was less so in Egypt than elsewhere. The transition from the shepherd's contemplative life to the husbandman's toil, could scarcely be difficult in a country where field labour demanded very slight exertion, and where little more was necessary in order to produce a harvest than just to scatter the seed. Even, now-a-days, the Bedouin Arabs, abandoning their native character, have been known to pursue agriculture in Egypt.

But we not only believe it probable that the Hebrews undertook the labours of agriculture; we are in a position to prove that they did so. How is the Hebrew nation addressed in Deut. xi. 10?-"For the land

whither thou goest in to possess it, is not as the land of Egypt, from whence ye came out, where thou sowedst thy seed, and wateredst it with thy foot, as a garden of herbs." Here-while pointing out the difference between Egypt and Canaan, that in the former their own labour was needed to irrigate the soil, and that in the latter the ground would receive fertilizing showers of rain-the force of the passage implies that the Hebrews had devoted themselves to agriculture while inhabiting the fruitful banks of the Nile and its canals.

What meant these murmurings in the wilderness? "We remember the fish which we did eat in Egypt freely, the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlick," Num. xi. 5. Doubtless that they had fully shared with the Egyptians the advantages which the Nile afforded. What kind of people are they who angrily ask Moses, "Wherefore have ye made us come out of Egypt, to bring us unto this evil place? It is no place of seed, or of figs, or vines, or of pomegranate.' Why, they speak as if they were farmers, vine-dressers, orchard-keepers.

We may also expect to find these strangers in the land of the Pyramids becoming skilled not merely in the details of husbandry, but also in the various arts which distinguished the country of their adoption. We shall be prepared for the accounts, in the Pentateuch, of great skill attained by these desert wanderers in various branches of the arts; for example, they possess the finest Egyptian stuffs; they have various kind of skins, artificially prepared; they know how to cast metals, how to work them with hammers; they can polish and engrave precious stones, &c.

They really must have learned many things of their Egyptian masters, besides the curious accomplishment of making bricks without straw.

These statements of their skill are confirmed by the independent and indirect testimony of the prophet