tempter, and I must not allow even its lawful desires to bear sovereign sway. My meat and drink must be moderate. I must beware of sumptuous and indulgent fare. I must avoid that sloth, both of body and mind, which are apt to grow upon me unperceived. I must abstain from those needless recreations which an idle world has invented and multiplied. I must reject those plausible excuses which the false reasonings of irreligious men may suggest, for a life of relaxation. I must be fearful also lest I take credit for diligence, because I surpass those idle persons who live around me. I must beware of vacant thoughts, vacant time, vacant conversation, vacant crowds of company. I must beware of trifling employments, which take the appearance of industry, while they are mere contrivances by which I disguise from myself the indulgence of my sloth. I must fear lest I should neglect the proper business of the hour, deeming the present duty to be severe, and perpetually postponing it for the sake of doing some other thing which demands less diligence, and is more to my present taste. I must beware of slothful habits, and must not admit the vain excuse that they are too fixed to be broken. If I read, I must not do it with listlessness and inattention, nor must I prefer books of mere amusement to those which will add to my stock of useful knowledge, or improve my heart. I must beware even of unprofitable labour. I must suspect that earnestness and diligence, which is a mere following of my own fancy, which is directed to trifling and unworthy objects, which proceeds from a corrupt motive, and issues in no good or material end. I must be diligent, it is true, but my diligence must be for God. I must be active, but my activity must not be in the way of mere indulgence, it must be for the good of men. I must not presume that I have a right to intermit my work, because I am not obliged to it by human laws, or by positive claims which any persons can make on me. I must be active for the poor, the destitute, the ignorant, and the world at large, not excepting the wicked, in the same manner as the parent is active for the inte rest of his child, the covetous person for the increase of his wealth, or the aspiring man for the enlargement of his power or influence." These are some of the feelings of the true Christian, and in order to maintain this spirit he exercises much self-denial. When sloth intrudes, and prompts him to spare himself, he rejects its sugges-. tions. "I must deny myself," he will say, " or I cannot be Christ's disciple. Christ went about doing good, and I profess to be a follower of this master; I desire therefore to go and do likewise. Tell me not that I am to spare myself. Did Christ spare himself when he came to die for me? The spirit of self-indulgence is the spirit of antichrist; it is the spirit of the children of this world; it is that spirit which in my baptism I abjured, and which my profession requires that I should renounce day by day." One case in which an indolent slothful spirit is to be denied, has not yet been noticed; we mean the case of our religious duties. How idle is the manner in which many persons read the Scriptures! The want of self-denying attention is greater in perusing this book than any other. Reader! what pains have you taken in endeavouring to understand that volume which you profess to believe to be a revelation from God? Have you ever carefully examined and considered it? Have you bestowed any pains in comparing your manner of life with that of Christ and his apostles and followers, your faith with their faith, your temper with their tempers, and, in short, your whole turn of character with theirs? It requires much self-denying diligence to make this faithful practical application of the scriptures, and yet if this be not done, they can be of little use to us. Idleness is equally apt to prevail in respect to secret devotion. There is a way of running over our prayers with little thought or reflection, of which even those may be guilty who do not confine themselves to a form. Perhaps while you are in the very act of prayer, some engagement seems to be pressing upon you, some interesting circumstance is agitating your mind; and this is not surprising, for you were at no pains to reject those intruding thoughts; you have long given way to the custom of indulging them at those seasons. There has been no self-denial in this respect, and therefore the habit has increased, till it seems almost impossible to cast it off. A wide field for self-examination here opens upon us, for the wanderings of the mind, both during publick and private worship, may unquestionably be traced in part to the want of due diligence and self-denial, in respect to this very point. It may be proper here to remark, that it is not inconsistent with the fullest belief in the supreme agency of the holy Spirit, to suppose that the self-denying diligence which has been spoken of ought to extend to our prayers. We have, indeed, clear scriptural authority on this point; for are we not told, that we are to "wrestle" in prayer, to "pray always and not to faint;" to "pray without ceasing;" terms which evidently imply that we are not to give way to our own indisposition to the duty. We are likewise exhorted to "draw nigh to God and he will draw nigh to us," as well as " to ask, to seek, to knock," in order that we may obtain God's holy Spirit. To conclude; let us then remember that prayer must be joined to our diligence, and also that this very diligence is to be exerted by us in our prayer. Does it appear to us a hard thing to practise the self-denial which has been spoken of? " With man it may be impossible, but with God all things are possible." Let then the sense of the difficulty suggest to us the importance of imploring the Divine aid with earnestness. "I can do all things," said the Apostle," through Christ, which strengtheneth me." We ought not to account that we have either believed aright, or prayed aright, or learnt any part of our religion aright, unless we have, in some measure, been enabled to cast away that spirit of self-indulgence which is so natural to us; for our Saviour has said, that " except a man deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me, he cannot be my disciple." FROM THE SAME. TO THE EDITOR. HAVING mentioned some instances which I had not before seen noticed, of Scripture history receiving confirmation and illus tration from ancient remains and modern travels, I beg leave to add some further observations on the same subject. The word tattoo, and the custom of tattooing among many rude tribes or nations of the East, is certainly coeval with the Hebrew Scriptures. The word itself is Hebrew, and occurs in Ezekiel, chap. ix. ver. 4. both as a verb and a noun, which we translate, "Set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh:" but Grotius on the place, renders it, "Et signa Thau, &c. not," says he, ❝ any sign or mark, but the letter Thau is understood here by the Chaldee interpreter: and the letter T, he observes from Jerome, in his commentary on this place, according to the more ancient method of writing among the Hebrews and Samaritans, was of the form of a cross." Isaiah has a reference to a similar practice to that of tattooing, chap. xlix. ver. 16. "I have graven thee in the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me." Parkhurst observes on the word here used by the prophet (pn) that it is an allusion to the eastern custom of tracing out sketches on the hand, and then rubbing them with the powder of henna, or cyssus, and thereby making marks perpetual-See Michaelis on Lowth Prælection. p. 399; and Russel's Aleppo, pp. 103, 4. But what I wish chiefly to observe is, that the word expressive of this custom being strictly Hebrew, and as such used by Ezekiel, gives room for conjecture,* that the eastern isles, cut off from the rest of the world, may originally have been peopled by Jews of the first dispersion; and consequently, this shows the high antiquity of the Hebrew Scriptures, which, indeed, seems further probable from what is observed in Cook's Voyages, that what the people of Otaheite preserved with sacred care, and called "the house of God," exactly corresponded with the description of the ark of the covenant," in the first temple. It is very observable in the History of the Pelew Islands by Wilson, that there were no traces of idolatry among them; their manners were mild and humane, and their king had on his breast, (as appears in the print,) a St. Andrew's cross tattooed. As Christianity reached Indostan very early, and the Portuguese found some traces of it in Ceylon, it is not improbable it may, in a very early age, have reached the Pelew Islands, and some vestiges remain of its principles, though its doctrines may have been lost. To revert to Jewish antiquities-Broderick, who travelled into Italy half a century ago, has observed, that those ornaments of the * We think a very doubtful conjecture.-Ed. VOL. I.-No. Ik 3 A temple of Jerusalem, which Titus brought from thence to Rome, the Table of Shew Bread, and the Golden Candlesticks, remain figured on the inside of Titus's triumphal arch; and that no other coeval representation of them exists. As they exactly correspond to the description in the books of Moses, by which they were ordered to be framed, they so far corroborate that history. These spoils of the Jewish temple were deposited in a magnificent temple built by Vespasian, and dedicated to Peace, immediately after the taking of Jerusalem. This temple of Peace was destroyed by lightning, in the reign of Commodus. Much of the Jewish treasure escaped the conflagration; yet it was doomed to another species of destruction. Genserick, the Vandal, carried it off; but the ship in which the greater part of it was embarked perished on the coast of Africa. A similar fate attended the French ship, l'Orient, at the battle of the Nile; where that ship, loaded with the spoils of Italian churches, perished. Herodotus relates, that it was written on Senacherib's tomb, Εις έμε τις οράων ευσεβης εστω. The fate of sacrilege teaches this lesson, but it is not remembered. It were to be wished, Sir, that some person of leisure, who has books for the purpose, would give a connected view of the history and tradition of the nations of the East, as far as they relate to scripture history and facts; beginning with the Exodus from Egypt, and ending where Sir William Jones and Mr. Maurice have ended their valuable labours, thus forming a chain of historical and Heathen evidence. The passage through the Red Sea by the Israelites, and their miraculous escape from the host of Pharaoh which was drowned, has been preserved in the tradition of the natives of the very coast, from the time of Diodorus to Mr. Bruce. Thevenot describes the rock out of which Moses brought water, as retaining the worn out vestiges of the stream, now no longer running. Le Brun observes the entire destruction of Capernaum, as threatened by our Lord; while Tiberias, and other villages of the Lake, have existence. That Capernaum should be brought down to hell, so ruined as to become invisible, is so truly fulfilled, that Le Brun assures us, " etiam perire ruina." The Seven Churches of Asia should not be forgotten; and all these with an abridged view of Sir William Jones and Maurice, would afford evidence in an unbroken geographical line. Ezekiel xxi. 27. which is badly rendered in the text, but better in the margin, may be beautifully illustrated from the turbans of antiquity. Those of independent sovereigns, (even to this day in Persia, see a copy of one in Chardin's Travels,) had their apex upright; inferiour and subordinate princes wore theirs bent backwards. To this the prophecy refers, declaring that the crown of Judea should thenceforward be dependent and subordinate, as it was under the Persians, Greeks, and Romans. As the text stands, the prophecy would not be true in our translation. Montfauçon exhibits several turbans or caps bent backward. Judea was sub ordinate to those powers, but not overthrown, till he, (Messiah,) came, whose right it was, which is also a completion of Micah V. 2, 3. FROM THE SAME. THOUGHTS ON THE SABBATH. WHEN we take up the Bible with the view of ascertaining its true meaning, and the extent of our duty, we ought to consider that God speaks to us as intelligent creatures, who are bound to make the best use of our understanding for the discovery of his will. We must not presume to limit the Almighty as to the manner in which he shall make known his will to us: in whatever way this is done, we are called to implicit obedience. Express command is not the only method by which our great Creator and Governour has pointed out our duty; he has also revealed his will by symbols, by prophetick and somewhat obscure declarations, by significant actions of men divinely inspired, and by parables; and in these the obscurity we sometimes meet with may be designed to excite us to diligent inquiries after the will of God, and to be a test of our humility and sincerity. Under the impression of these considerations, let us inquire, whether it be not the will of God that mankind, in all ages, should dedicate one day in seven to the more immediate worship of the Almighty, and other religious exercises; subject to certain limitations which the Bible has pointed out, and which our present condition in this world has rendered necessary. If, in our researches, we should meet with some passages of scripture, which at first sight appear contradictory; let us apply the following rules of interpretation. 1. Let us endeavour to find out some sense in which the apparently contradictory passages will agree, without doing violence to the expressions on either side. 2. Let us interpret obscure passages by those which are plain; instead of forcing the plain passages to bend to those which are obscure. 3. Let us, in all doubtful cases, choose that side which is practically the most safe, and agreeable to the general tenour of scripture. I shall consider the nature and extent of the command to sanc▾ tify the Sabbath, as it stood before the promulgation of the law on Mount Sinai; as it was explained and enforced during the Jewish dispensation; and as it continues obligatory upon the disciples of Christ to the end of the world, |