also called Navy Island, flings itself at once over a precipice of 150 feet. There are deeper falls than Niagara, but none that contain so great a volume of water. The deafening voice of the cataract is he sits upright, folding his arms, and awaiting his doom! bark Shacópay, as he draws near the fearful gulf, sees a man on Goat Island. In an instant he starts to his feet, fastens the other end of it firmly to one of his padrope round his body, and ties the dles, making signs to the man on the island. On goes the canoe with increas heard from afar, and the vaporous cloud formed by the rising spray, which in the sunshine is adorned with an appearance like the rainbow, has an arresting influence on the spectator. Shacópay is at the foot of the cataract, awful, wonderful, and sublime! He sees the descend-ing speed. Shacópay, thy life trembles ing flood, hears the thunder, and feels the earthquake of the Falls of Niagara. Shacópay is above the rapids, and more than a league from the Great Fall. Dangerous as these rapids are, the Indians and others sometimes navigate them. The point is, to keep out of the great current, which once entered, cannot be overcome, for it inevitably bears on all it contains to plunge it into the boiling gulf below the Falls. Shacópay is expert in the use of the paddle, and he is now in his canoe, risking the rapids. Quick, skilful, self-possessed, and courageous, he guides the prow of his canoe with unerring dexterity, alternately darting down a rapid and, gliding through the smoother water. Calm, intrepid, and confident, he smiles at danger; but, for all this, danger is at hand. Shacópay, after shooting the rapids, and fastening his canoe to the bank of the river by a rope of bark, is indulging in a fatal slumber. The stream presses on the boat, and the rope by degrees becomes loosened from the shore. What if the canoe should be borne on to the Falls! Awake, Shacópay, or thou wilt awake in an eternal world! The thought of being carried over the Falls is hardly to be endured. The very fish that are borne down are frequently dashed on the rocks, or rendered helpless; so that, flung on the shores below, they supply food for the ospreys that frequent the place. Sometimes, a deer, a bear, or a cow is carried over the fall; but for a human being to be plunged headlong into the boiling abyss, oh, it is dreadful! Shacópay is awake, and at work with his paddles; he struggles hard, but all in vain the current has caught the canoe. Seeing that his destruction is certain, he is singing his death-song, and commending himself to the "Great Spirit." Now in the balance; this is the moment of thy The deliverance, or thy destruction. man on Goat Island sees him, and stands on the extreme edge of the land. The canoe darts on! Red man, thy life, under Him who gave it, depends on thy See! the canoe is hurrying to the Fall. firmness in this season of extremity. It is within a few yards of the island. Now, Shacópay, is the moment! he throws the paddle; it is dexterously caught by the man on the island, and the canoe is swept over the fearful fall. What sudden dangers come upon the sons of men, and what unexpected deliverances preserve them! Both civilized and savage may truly say to their great Creator, "Thou redeemest my life from destruction, and loving-kindness and tender mercies.” There are seen from the shore two men standing together on Goat Island, one of them is a Canadian settler, and the other Shacópay the Chippeway. crownest me with THE RELIGION OF THE CROSS. ONE characteristic of the religion of the cross is, it is full of Christ. Christ is associated with all its duties and all its hopes. Christ is its centre. Christ is its living head, and it lives not, any more than an amputated limb, when severed from Christ. Only as its roots strike downward, and clasp this Tree of Life, does it bear fruit. "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature.' The Christian is nothing, has nothing, can do nothing, without Christ. It is a bastard Christianity that owns not Christ as its parent. It is an ignorant Christianity that looks not to Christ as its teacher, and that follows not his teaching. It is an unpardoned Christianity that looks not to Christ as its priest. It is an impure Christianity that is not washed in the blood of the Lamb. It is a disloyal by making you holy. Make the trial of everything else if you will, but there is a voice within your own bosoms that dispels the delusion. And I hear your own response to it: No, I cannot be happy without the religion of the cross! I may well afford to forego anything, everything, rather than the religion of the cross!-Spring's Attraction of the Cross. NATURE.-No. II. Christianity that does not recognise Jesus | ing creature, and would make you happy Christ as its king, and that hesitates to obey where he commands. It is a wayward Christianity that looks not to Christ as its example, and that does not follow where he leads the way. The knowledge of the Christian is the "knowledge of Christ." The love of the Christian is "the love of Christ." All his graces find their element at the cross. Christ crucified is his glory and joy. Christ in his uncreated gloryChrist in his humanity-Christ in his obedience and temptations-Christ in his death and resurrection Christ in his kingdom and on his throne-Christ in his weakness and his power, in his reproach and in his honour, in his past history and his coming triumphs-is the mighty magnet that attracts his heart, that moves and fixes it, that fills it with grateful astonishment and devotion. Christ, in the word and ordinances, is meat indeed to him, when he is hungry, and when he is thirsty, it is drink. In the storm and tempest, Christ is his hiding-place; in the parched desert, he is as rivers of water; under the noonday sun, he is as "the shadow of a great rock | in a weary land." Christ near him is his consolation in sorrow; in joy, his triumph. Christ in him is the hope of glory. He seeks supplies only from the fulness of Christ. In death, Christ is his life, and his resurrection in the grave. When he stands in the judgment, Christ is his Judge; and, through interminable ages, Christ is his heaven. The religion of the cross is full of Christ; and this renders it so peaceful and so happy a religion, and imparts to it, not indeed the paroxysms of ecstasy, but "the peace of God, which passeth all understanding." It begins and takes root in the soul, not until it has first felt the burden of sin and a sense of its condemnation; not until it has learned to cry for mercy at the foot of the throne; and not until it has found relief in believing in the Son of God, and receiving him as all its salvation and all its desire. Then its peace is as a river, and its joys are as the waves of the sea. It is the counterpart of heaven. It is the cup of joy from the river of life, which, clear as crystal, flows from the throne of God and the Lamb. Allow me affectionately to ask, Do you possess this religion of the cross? You may not be a favourite with the world if you do; but what is unutterably more important, you are the friend of God. This religion comes to you as a suffering, perish To reflecting minds the laws of vitality, as exhibited by organic beings in their structure and general conformation, and their adaptation for the circumstances under which they exist, must at once bring the most convincing proofs of design-therefore of a designer-and that designer wise and powerful, beneficent and foreseeing. A philosophical work has lately come under our perusal ; a work written by no ordinary man; it expatiates upon the formative power of matter-intrinsic laws necessarily associated with ultimate particles-progressive advancements in the grade of organization. It assumes, at least so we gather, though so much is not expressed, that matter is itself uncreated, therefore eternal, and of necessity endowed with certain qualities reciprocally acting upon each other, producing order and harmony, organic life, and its various phases. It enters moreover into other subjects involving a profundity of learning, with which we have no present concern. The bold and atheistical theory that, from monads, the simplest of animalcules, all the higher beings of creation, and man himself, sprung forth, was advocated most urgently by Lamarck; who, if not the first, was at least the ablest supporter of the system. He considered species as the result of circumstances, and not as original products of the creative fiat. He considered the higher animals, and also man, to have attained their present state by a gradual transition through an indefinite period of time, from the lowest form of life; each race as it advances in elevation, transferring its assumed characters to posterity, to be by descendant after descendant modified still further and further, until the conversion of a monad into man should be complete. "I have no doubt," he observes, "that all the mammalia have originally sprung from the ocean, and that the latter is the to which man cannot look back. "There true cradle of the whole animal kingdom. is good reason," says Lamarck, "why we We see, in fact, that the least perfect do not see these changes successively animals are not only the most numerous, performed, which have diversified the but that they either live solely in the known animals and brought them to their water, or in those very moist places present state. We see them only when where nature has performed and con- they are finished, and not when undertinues to perform, under favourable cir- going the change, and we naturally infer cumstances, her direct or spontaneous that they have always remained as we generations; and there, in the first place, see them. If the average duration of the she gives rise to the most simple animal- life of each generation of mankind were cules, from which have proceeded all the only a second, and if a pendulum were animal creation." mounted and in motion, then would each generation consider this pendulum to be really at rest, having never seen it change in the course of their lives; the observations of thirty generations would not demonstrate anything positive concerning the vibrations of this instrument. The revolutions of the myriads of ages are as the single vibration of an immense pendulum; the time through which man has occupied the globe is scarcely as thirty seconds; we have not seen the pendulum perform half of one vibration." We must, in short, suppose, according to this theory, that, some myriads of years since, certain animalcules or monads, swimming about by means of their vibratile appendages, or cilia, by degrees advanced to the shore, and being left there by the retiring tide, they ultimately became semi-aquatic beings of some form or other. Various were the transitions through which they went; finally some returned to the ocean again, and their descendants passing through a series of progressive changes, attained On the folly and impiety of such a the giant forms of grampuses or whales. theory we need scarcely comment. It Others, advancing from the shore, walked chanced to us, a few years since, to listen inland; by a progressive movement in to an argument between a literary man the grade of organization, air-inhaling inclined to Lamarck's views, and one of lungs developed themselves, and also the most scientific of British philosophers; numerous other structural modifications; after hearing all that could be advanced, to some of carnivorous propensities, teeth the philosopher thus spoke, or at least to of formidable size, and strong claws were the following effect: "Which is the first, given others were moulded for a vege- do you think, the bird or the egg?-if table diet-some preferring the grass or the egg, what laid it?-what hatched it? herbage of the hills and valleys-some-and how was the callow nestling reared? the twigs and soft shoots of trees or whence, too, came male and female?—brushwood-and in order for the attain- and on what basis do you place the great ment of these, gradually the neck of the principle of reproduction, each species giraffe became elongated, graceful and being in itself an isolated form?" To pliable, and the proboscis of the elephant this question no answer could be returned, shot forth, an improvement taking place and the subject dropped abruptly. generation after generation, until the need of further improvement in organization ceased. Again to some, wings were given-it might be that they wished to fly; in process of time wings were obtained; some for ages contented themselves with climbing trees and leaping from branch to branch, and by dint of striving to excel their first endeavours, the skin of their sides became extended into the form of a parachute. At length, in process of time, came the world tenanted with all living things, man being the ultimatum. To ask for proofs of this transition is useless to demand the period of their occurrence is to learn that these marvellous changes took place in remote ages Buffon, and even Linnæus, seemed to deny the durability of species, and to regard the races of animals now extant as the diverging products of a given number of original stocks, the descendants of which intermingling together produced blended and degenerate races; and so on till at length the mixed intercourse of those races ceased to produce a fertile progeny. Buffon, indeed, who pushed this theory to its extreme, regarded all allied species as the descendants of a common stock, the type or model of the race; their subordinate characters became modified by the influence of climate, food, and other causes; and from the intermixture of these, fresh varieties again arose. Hence, at some remote period the primitive stock only existed; then sprung from those a race of degenerate descendants, and ultimately arose the products resulting from the mixture of these descendants. Time, according to this visionary theory, has to a great degree obliterated the primitive condition of the common type, to which the allied species are to be referred-yet still this type or stem is to be discerned as the source from which these off-sets have branched out. In fact, trusting to this philosopher, all allied species are mere varieties of one common stock. When a single species, as man, forms the sole example of the common genus, the stock has been continued in a direct line without collateral branches; as also in the case of the elephant (which he regarded as a single species), the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, the giraffe, camel, etc. But among the smaller and more prolific races, the offsets of the common stock were numerous in proportion to their fertility. According to these principles Buffon reduced all the mammalia to about thirty-eight families; each family consisting, originally, not of distinct species, but of varied or modified descendants of a common parentage. This theory, however specious it may be, is utterly untenable; climate, food, and other contingencies, may, and indeed do produce certain effects, they influence size, strength, beauty of proportion, length of ears or tail, or fulness of the fur; but they affect not the anatomical structure of species; they alter not the arrangement of the internal organs, or the characters of the teeth. But it may be asked, do not hybrids, or mules, the offspring of two distinct species, prove that Buffon's views regarding the subject have a degree of weight, which is little taken into the account by modern geologists? Amidst the general advance of zoological science, has not this point been overlooked? We answer, "Quite the contrary;" it is a subject which has exercised the minds of the first philosophic geologists of the day, and certain deductions of great importance have resulted from their investigations-deductions directly at variance with the theory of the "plastic powers of nature;" or, as Aristotle expresses it (and the expression is termed graceful by the author of "Cosmos"), "the formative activity, the source of being.' For ourselves, we do not understand the phrase just quoted; and another phrase in " Cosmos," "The process of development of organisms," is equally unintelligible. If by the term "formative activity," I am to understand God the Creator, then I will allow it to stand; but "formative activity," and " plastic powers of nature," appear to us to be expressions tending to lead the mind from the contemplation of God in his works, and to draw it into a cold stream, gliding into the mystical abyss of atheism. How beautifully clear, simple, and determinate is the work of animal creation set forth in the first chapter of the book of Genesis, from verse 20 to verse 28: it is a cosmical review of zoology graphically sketched by a few masterly touches it gives us the distinctions between aquatic and terrestrial beingsand then between all inferior creatures and man-man made in God's image to have "dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.' But to revert to the case of hybrids as proving Lamarck's theory of the nondistinction of species, and Buffon's idea that forms or families were first created, whence arose in process of time the varied species of air, water, and earth, it is a subject to which we shall revert in another paper-a subject replete with interest. As we continue our observations we shall enlarge on the domain of nature, and endeavour to show that God is the Creator of every living thing, which exists as he created it, in all specific, and structural characteristics. ERRORS RECTIFIED. W. M. IN reading the Scriptures, we are apt to think God further removed from us than from the persons to whom he spake therein; the knowledge of God will rectify this error; as if God could be further from us than from them. In reading the Old Testament especially, we are apt to think that the things spoken there, in the prophet Hosea, for instance, have little relation to us. The knowledge taught by Christian experience will rectify this error; as if religion were not always the same sort of transaction between God and the soul.-Cecil. LEWES. THE town of Lewes is situated on a declivity west of the Ouse, and on the level ground sheltered by the South Downs, that rise abruptly on the bank of the river. The streets are broad and well paved, and their general appearance indicates comfort and respectability. The population is estimated at about 10,000. The town-hall was erected in the year 1812, and is considered a great improvement to the general appearance of the place. The castle of Lewes is a chief attraction; and since the opening of the railway from Brighton to Hastings, many have availed themselves of the facilities thus afforded to visit the spot. It is remarkable for having had two keeps, raised on mounds within the inclosure of its walls; one, at the western extremity, is in a tolerably perfect condition, impending over the street of the town, and picturesquely adorned with ivy. This beautiful plant has been appropriately from the preserving care with which it designated "the antiquarian's friend,' holds together the fragments of many an ancient edifice, that would otherwise have been destroyed. In allusion to its universality, and to the comparative evanwith the productions of God in the escence of the works of man compared natural world, Mrs. Hemans has said: "The Roman, on his battle-plains, Where kings before his eagles bent, I |