was fine to look at, but rotten at the core. I could dart my stick into him." At Bath some of the hearers complained of his grammatical mistakes. On his next visit to that city he preached from "He that believeth shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall be damned.' Having read the text and closed the Bible, as was his custom, he looked round on his small audience, and startled the fastidious by remarking, "There's grammar for yo Bath chaps."

At one place, speaking against a mere intellectual assent to the Gospel, he said, "Your religion is not in your hearts, but in your heads; and, if your heads were cut off, your religion would all be lost."

He had wit. A deaf man at Clutton called out during sermon, "Preach a little louder, Josiah !" when he replied, "Thou pray, Bob, and I'll preach."

Josiah was for many years a successful class-leader. He had two or three special excellences. He was a very holy man. He had ripe experience. He spoke to the point. One member mourned over his affliction and troubles, when Josiah asked, "Hast thou a clock at home ?"

Member: " Yes; a very good one."

Josiah: "Then go and take the weight off, and see how long he'll go."

Member: " 'Why, it wouldn't go at all."

Josiah: " No; and God sees thou wouldst not go without these weights."

At a class-meeting he said, "Coming up Long-ground to-day, I seed a limb of a tree broken off, as dead as my stick, but hanging on by a bit of bark. That's just like some of you, just hanging on, but spiritually dead."

One good man complained of the peevishness of his wife. He said, "She is such a vixen I have no comfort of my life, only one week in four, and then she is as good as a wife can be, and I have heaven on earth."

"Ah !" exclaimed Josiah, "why, how is that ?"

"Why," said the husband, "she regularly receives the sacrament once a month, and then she reads her Companion to the Altar,' and says her prayers, and everything is right, but the other three weeks she is a very devil."

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Well, don't you know what to do with her ?" asked Josiah. "Why, you foolish man," said he," make her receive the sacrament every week."

The Visitor's Note Book.

WESLEY'S POWER AS A PREACHER.

WESLEY'S own temperament was rather cold, and he had, probably from that calm and cold nature, and the great selfcontrol and presence of mind which he possessed, the power to awe, subdue, and thrill an audience. While Whitefield on

many occasions preached dissolved in tears, and so moved vast numbers, the strong and determined will of Wesley was almost electrical in its influence, and even frightful in its effects on the assemblages he preached before. Frequently, when he had concluded his discourse, the whole of his congregation appeared to be riveted to the ground, and not a person moved till he had retired. We have perhaps the best proof of Wesley's power over an audience, and the extraordinary effects of his preaching, in an incident he himself records in his journal. The account of it is rather comical to read. On one occasion a long wall, built of loose stones, on which many of his hearers were seated, suddenly gave way and fell down; it did not produce any interruption of his discourse, or divert the attention of his audience. "None of those who had fallen," he observes, "screamed; and none being hurt, they appeared sitting at the bottom just as they had sat at the top."

FOOTPRINTS OF THE CREATOR.

A FRENCH infidel, a man of some learning, was crossing a desert in Africa, called the "Great Sahara," in company with an Arab guide. He noticed, with a sneer, that at certain times the guide, whatever obstacles might arise, put them all aside, and, kneeling on the burning sands, called on his God. Day after day passed, and still the Arab never failed to do this; till at last, one evening, when he arose from his knees, the would-be philosopher asked him, with a contemptuous smile

"How do you know there is a God?"

The guide fixed his eye on the scoffer for a moment in wonder, and then said solemnly: "How do I know that a man, and not a camel, passed my hut last night in the darkness? Was it not by the print of his feet in the sand? Even so," said he, pointing to the sun, whose last rays were flashing over the lonely desert, "that footprint is not of man."

FALSE PEACE.

YOUR peace, sinner, is that terrible prophetic calm which the traveller occasionally perceives upon the higher Alps. Everything is still. The birds suspend their notes, fly low, and cower down with fear. The hum of bees among the flowers is hushed. A horrible stillness rules the hour, as if Death had silenced all things by stretching over them his awful sceptre. Perceive ye not what is surely at hand? The tempest is preparing the lightning will soon cast abroad its flames of fire. Earth will rock with the thunder-blast; granite peaks will be dissolved; all nature will tremble beneath the fury of the storm. Yours is that solemn calm to-day, sinner. Rejoice not in it, for the hurricane of wrath is coming, the whirlwind and the tribulation which shall sweep you away and utterly destroy you.

LITTLE TEMPTATIONS.

JOHN NEWTON says:- "Satan seldom comes to a Christian with great temptations, or with a temptation to commit a great sin. You bring a green log and a candle together and they are very safe neighbours; but bring a few shavings and set them alight, and then bring a few small sticks and let them take fire, and the log be in the midst of them, and you will soon get rid of your log. And so it is with little sins. You will be startled with the idea of committing a great sin, and so the devil brings you a little temptation, and leaves you to indulge yourself. There is no great harm in this,' no great peril in that;' and so by these little chips we are first easily lighted up, and at last, the green log is burned. Watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation."

FLYING FOR REFUGE.

THERE was once a little bird chased by a hawk, and in its extremity it took refuge in the bosom of a tender-hearted man. There it lay, its wings and feathers quivering with fear, and its little heart throbbing against the bosom of the good man, whilst the hawk kept hovering overhead, as if saying, "Deliver up that bird, that I may devour it." Now will that gentle, kind-hearted man take the poor little creature that puts its trust in him, out of his bosom, and deliver it up to the hawk ? What think ye? Would you do it? No, never. Well, then, if you flee for refuge into the bosom of Jesus, who came to save the lost, do you think He will ever deliver you up to your deadly foe? Never! never! never!

THE OLDEST BOOK.

"THE Bible is the oldest book in the world." Of course, you will not understand me as saying that the entire Bible is more ancient than any other book. I know that some parts of it were written since the time of Hesiod and Homer, of Xenophon and Herodotus, of Demosthenes and Plato. But what I mean is, that some portions stretch far back beyond the records of classic literature, and before the dawn of well-authenticated profane history. He who sits down to read the book of Job, may do it with the moral certainty that he is perusing the most ancient written poem in the world; and he who reads the book of Genesis is certain that he is perusing a history that was penned long before any Grecian writer collected and recorded the deeds of ancient times. Take away the history of the past which we have in the Bible, and there are at least some two thousand years of the existence of our race, of which we know nothing; and that, too, the forming period, and, in many respects, the most interesting part of the history of the world. Begin, in your investigation of past events, where ancient profane history begins, and you are plunged into the midst of a state of affairs of whose origin you know nothing, and where the mind wanders in perfect night, and can find no rest. Kingdoms are seen, but no one can tell when or how they were founded; cities appear, of whose origin no one knows; heroes are playing their part in the great and mysterious drama, but no one knows whence they came, and what are their designs; a race of beings is seen whose origin is unknown, and the past period of whose existence on the earth no one can determine-a race formed, no one can tell for what purpose, or by what hand. Vast multitudes of beings are suffering and dying for causes which no one can explain; a generation, in their own journey to the grave, tread over the monuments of extinct generations, and with the memorials of fearful changes and convulsions in the past all around them, of which no one can give an account. Begin your knowledge of the past at the remotest period to which profane history would conduct you, and you are in the midst of chaos, and you cannot advance a step without going into deeper night -a night strikingly resembling that which the oldest poet in the world describes as the abode of the dead: "The land of darkness and the shadow of death; a land of darkness as darkness itself; and of the shadow of death, without any order, and where the light is as darkness." (Job x. 21, 22.) And thus, in reference to the darkness of the past, the history of our race in its

bygone periods-beyond the reach of all other guides-the Bible is "a lamp unto our feet, and a light unto our path."

Now there is some interest, at least, in the fact that we have in our possession the most ancient book which was ever written. We should feel some interest in seeing and conversing with a man who had lived on earth during all that time, and had looked on the sun, and stars, and earth, before the time of Hesiod and Homer; who had lived amidst all the revolutions of past kingdoms and empires; while proud Assyria spread its conquests and fell; while Babylon rose and declined; while Rome carried its arms around the world and sank; if he had lived on while seasons walked their rounds, and had seen fifty generations buried, and had come to us now, with the ancient costume and manners, to tell us what was in the days of Noah or Abraham. We contemplate with deep interest an "ancient river;" and no one ever looked upon the Mississippi or the Ganges for the first time without emotion. So of a venerable elm or oak that has stood while many a winter storm has howled through its branches, and while the trees that grew up with it have long since decayed. So with an ancient bulwark or castle; an ancient monument, or work of art. Whatever stands alone, and has lived on while others have decayed, excites our admiration. The pyramids of Egypt, and the tombs of the kings of Thebes, and the pillar of Pompey, thus attract attention. Any lonely memento of the past has a claim to our regard, and excites an interest which we feel for nothing when surrounded by the objects amidst which it rose. In the wastes of Arabia, between the Nile and Mount Sinai, there stand some half a dozen or more headstones in an ancient burying-place. is not a town, or city, or house, or tent, or fertile field near. They are the lonely memorials of a far distant generation. All else is gone the men that placed them there; the towns where they dwelt; the mouldering ashes, and the names of those whose last place of sleep they mark. So the Bible stands in the past. All is desolation around it. The books that were written when that was, if there were any, are gone. The generations that lived then are gone. The cities where they dwelt are gone. Their tombs and monuments are gone, and the Bible is all that we have to tell us who they were, why they lived, and what occurred in their times. Had the Bible to this day been unknown, or were it suddenly discovered in some venerable ruin, and authenticated, who would not hail such a monument of what occurred in the past periods of the world!

There

The circumstance here referred to of the antiquity of the Bible,