Thro' faith the heavenly gate
To all now open lies;
Nor more can Satan's hate
Shut out from Paradise.

Over these cherished bones Shall violets sweetly blow; And myrtles grace the stones That tell who lies below.

A PICTURE FROM A NORWEGIAN FISHERMAN'S HOME.

OT very many years ago Norway used to be almost an unknown country for us. English travellers, supposed to know very much of "places abroad," might have visited France, Belgium, the Rhine, Switzerland, and Italy, or made the traditional "grand tour," but never gave a thought to Scandinavia. Things are very different now. Crowds of English tourists have taken to visiting the northern countries of Europe; and Norway especially, with its wild mountains, its grand fiords, and its interesting people, is a favourite place of summer resort.

The Norwegians hold a similar place in the north of Europe to what the Swiss do in the centre. Their land is mountainous, their soil rocky and barren, and incapable of supporting a large population. In superficial area Norway is equal to Great Britain and Ireland combined; but while the United Kingdom has over 32,000,000 inhabitants, Norway has not more than 1,700,000; less than half the population in the British metropolis. An English gentleman speaking at a public dinner in Scotland was loudly cheered when he told his hearers that he had but one fault to find with the Scotch, and this was that there were too few of them. The remark applies with even greater force to the Norwegians. What they lack in number they make up by their sterling qualities. All the good things that modern civilisation has brought forth they have made their own, and yet they have clung with firm tenacity to their old primitive ways, and with them the training of the mind has in no way tended to corrupt the heart.

Like the Swiss, the Scotch, the Tyrolese, and other mountain-people, the Norwegians have always loved their freedom, and they have a history full of romantic episodes. It is their love of freedom that has always made them so loyal to their rulers. Previous to the year 1319, Norway had native sovereigns. From that year until 1814 it was, with brief intervals, under the rule of the Kings of Denmark or Sweden, but as an independent kingdom; and when by the treaty of peace of Kiel it was assigned to Sweden, the representatives of the kingdom assembled and proclaimed a constitution by which its national autonomy was guaranteed. King Charles XIII. had no choice but to recognise the constitution or forego the possession of Norway; and when he had recognised it the Norwegians became as faithful subjects to him as the Swedes had been. Up to this day, all attempts of effecting a complete union between Norway and Sweden have failed, which is chiefly due to the fact that the Norwegians speak Danish, and the Swedes Swedish -so that they could not well understand each other in a joint parliament.

But love of freedom is not the only sterling

characteristic of the Norwegian people. What distinguishes some of them from many mountain people less favoured is the deep and intelligent religious feeling which they have preserved ever since the time when they were first converted to Christianity. They were among the first that joined the Reformed faith in the sixteenth century. At this day the grand old Church of Luther is to be found in its most primitive form in the three Scandinavian kingdoms, and more particularly in Norway. The scepticism which has passed as a blight over many parts of Germany has not yet extended its baneful influence to Norway, so far as the bulk of the people is concerned. The Norwegians adhere to the faith of their fathers, and so firmly do they adhere to it that they will not even practise toleration, a virtue, or rather a Christian grace, of later growth than the time of Luther. Thus, the second clause of the Norwegian constitution of 1814 says: of 1814 says: "The Evangelical Lutheran religion remains the public religion of the State. The inhabitants who profess it are obliged to bring up their children in it. Jesuits and monastic orders are not tolerated. Jews also are not admitted to the kingdom;" and the fourth clause says: "The king must at all times profess the Evangelical Lutheran religion: He must preserve it, and protect it."

The delegates who made that constitution were poor peasants and fishermen like their constituents, and the religious spirit that actuated them is still to be found intact both among representatives and constituents at the present day. Norway has greatly gained in material prosperity within the last fifty years, and, as far as education is concerned, no country stands higher. Every village has its school, and every child learns "the three R's," and most children a great deal besides. The people in general have preserved a childlike simplicity that makes religion a living reality, instead of a mere form to them. Let our readers but glance at the accompanying illustration, and they will see at once what spirit lives in the fisherman's cottage, as in many a rich man's mansion. Our engraving is from the famous work of the German painter Herr Grundmann, entitled "Saying Grace at Table."

The inside of the fisherman's cottage shows every sign of comfort, considerably beyond what we are in the habit of seeing in the homes of many farmlabourers and fishermen in this country. They all are well clothed and apparently well fed; but not a morsel will pass their lips before the blessing is asked, which the boy, standing up, is reading from a book before him. The usual Lutheran grace at table consists of those lines from the 145th Psalm, "The eyes of all wait upon Thee; and Thou givest them their meat in due season. Thou openest Thine hand, and satisfiest the desire of every living thing." But oftentimes some other text from the Bible is read before the Lord's Prayer is said. Everything in this interior looks orderly and peaceful, and truly does the habit of religious devotion seem to impress the whole household. The scene reminds us of the_Scottish homes so touchingly described by Robert Burns in his "Cottar's Saturday Night." In fact, there are many points of resemblance between the lowland Scotch and their kindred folk in Norway. Long may this primitive purity and childlike simplicity endure, by which the good people of Norway are enabled to lead a happy and contented life, with intelligent hope of a better life beyond.

THERE

HERE are greater men in the Old Testament history than Joseph; but none more truly amiable and good. He shines like a sunbeam with a pure and benignant lustre, from his earliest day to his last, and hardly a shade mingles with his brightness or a cloud obscures his light. There is not wrought into the history of his connection with Egypt the stern and terrible element which gives such grandeur to that of Moses, who thunders over it in blackness and darkness and tempest, a minister of God, an avenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil. The image of Joseph is rather the refreshing breeze, the cooling fountain, the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. He is the saviour and not the destroyer, and affords in his life and labours a pleasing and picturesque representation of the work of Him who opens his stores to the needy and feeds a famishing world with the bread of life. Nevertheless, amidst the great and radical difference of natural character and public service which runs through the lives of Moses and of Joseph, and more especially the part of both spent in Egypt, we can discern perfect identity of religious faith, and a certain peculiar family likeness by which they may be at once recognised as spiritual brethren. We cannot doubt that Moses in his inmost soul revered Joseph and felt his influence; and we can as little doubt that had Joseph foreseen the rising up of his great countryman, and traced beforehand his spiritual features, he would have been bound to him in the closest fellowship, and hailed him as a man of aims and aspirations most congenial to his own. The apostle has here set them down together as examples of true faith; and though the case of Moses be stated at greater length, that of Joseph, which precedes, brings out the same principles, and shows us the same Hebrew of the Hebrews-the same child of God-turning away from all besides, and, in death as in life, casting in his lot with those who were called by God's name. "By faith Joseph, when he died, made mention of the departing of the children of Israel; and gave commandment concerning his

bones."

This dying exercise of Joseph's faith is full of instruction to us, not only in dying but in living; and I shall now, in dependence on Divine grace, call your attention to some of its lessons.

And I observe, first, that we have here faith choosing. Joseph in his death chose to be a Hebrew, and not an Egyptian. He might have been buried in the chief of the sepulchres of Egypt. He might have enjoyed the honours of a regal funeral and had his monument pointed out to a distant posterity, as that of the man who had saved the people with a great deliverance. Instead of all this he casts in his lot with the Hebrews. He is embalmed and put

into a coffin by their hands; and amongst this foreign people his remains lie buried and out of view till they are at length conveyed out of the country to the sepulchres of his fathers. This was not mere peculiarity or eccentricity of disposition. It was not blind national feeling. It was piety. It was faith, using this language: "God is my God, and I will be on His side in death as in life. I have chosen the good part, and I will stand to it. My heart is with Israel, and not with Egypt. I look for a salvation and a country which can only be mine by leaving Egypt behind and turning my face towards Canaan.' Who can doubt that the language of Joseph was that of his father Jacob: "I have waited for Thy salvation, O God! Let me be with my pious fathers, and not with the Pharaohs, or great of this world! Let me go to the God they loved and served, and who is my God not less than theirs! Let me be remembered with their favour and visited with their salvation!" What an example is this to all of us! Here is a man who was capable of exercising a sound judgment. He had seen much of the world and of the ways of men. He had wielded unbounded power, and had all the resources of luxury at his feet. He had not despised the world in ignorance, or because it was beyond his grasp, for it was cast into his lap. Yet on his dyingbed he proclaims that it is not his portion, and that the true treasure of bis soul is God, and his salvation. Are we prepared then to imitate this faith, which chooses the good part and holds it fast-which accounts even the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt? Perhaps we wish to die the death of Joseph, and to have our last end like his. But this is not sufficient, if we do not live his life. It would have ill-beseemed Joseph to have spoken in this pious strain on his death-bed had his career been marked by worldliness and ambition; had he vied with the princes of Egypt in ostentation and display; had he amassed great treasures for his family, and trained them up in the fashions and ways of Egypt. A death-bed cannot repair the total worldliness of the sinner and the partial worldliness of the saint. It can only confirm the choice which has been made beforehand; and in vain do we postpone our preparation to it, for this is at once to mock God and to delude our own souls. There can be no choice between God and the world when the world is no longer in our power. We can give up nothing when death is tearing away all. Religion in such a case becomes a miserable necessity, instead of being a free and voluntary principle; and when we seek God merely as an escape from dangers which we cannot otherwise avoid, we shall not find Him. How different the death-scene of the true believer! He feels within

himself that he has loved and served the Father of his spirit amidst the seductions of health and prosperity; that he has forsaken all for Christ, and followed Him, when the world was most tempting and fair; that he has said to the wicked one when he pointed to the wealth, the honours, and the pleasures of Egypt, Get thee behind me, Satan! and that now death only lends a final consecration to the choice of his life-time, and that he is going to the country where his heart has always been! Oh my readers, if you would die like Joseph, learn through grace to live like him. Walk by faith beforehand, and then the last step of the journey will be smooth and easy. Die daily to the world and to sin; and then it will be easy and natural for you to let them go out of your dying hand and to fasten it upon heaven and eternity. It is a dreadful venture to hope to die in faith after you have lived in unbelief; for it is certain that the vast majority die as they lived, and that the tree falls as it was bent; and, having fallen, must lie for ever.

I observe, secondly, that we have here faith witnessing. The poet has said, "Men may live fools, but fools they cannot die." The testimony is too favourable, for men may die not only fools, but liars, assuming the appearance of a piety which they have not, and bearing a witness which their whole life has contradicted. Thus, how astonishing are the testamentary directions of men whose care of the Christian Church begins with their death-bed, and who give commandment concerning what they leave behind such as they would willingly revoke were their life to be prolonged. This mortuary religion is not to be celebrated as it too often is, nor are the benefactions even of the pious so precious, when deferred to the death-bed, as when bestowed while the donors yet live. This error was not chargeable upon Joseph. His dying witness respected a property which could not sooner be made the subject of bequest and disposition. "He gave commandment concerning his bones." His dying words are thus recorded: "I die: and God will surely visit you, and bring you out of this land unto the land which He sware to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. And Joseph took an oath of the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you, and ye shall carry up my bones from hence."

There was something truly striking in this testimony. It recalled to mind the exceeding great and precious promises of their covenant God-that Israel should be a separate nation; that Jehovah should dwell amongst them; that the Saviour should spring from them; and that in Him all the families of the earth should be blessed. It was a dying confession of faith, and a confession not made in words only, but embodied in act; for he who thus spake directed himself to be embalmed and put into a coffin in Egypt, ready any day for being carried up into Canaan; so that whenever the people were disposed to be at ease and quiet, and to say, "This is our rest; here will we stay," the bones of Joseph sent forth a protest, and perpetually reiterated the appeal, "Arise, and depart; for this is not your rest." They spoke both to Israelite and Egyptian, declaring that God's people were a separate people; that they must not be mingled or confounded; that salvation could only be obtained by keeping them separate; and that he who would seek it must come out, and follow the call of God. The bones of Joseph were a barrier

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between the Church and the world, and hindered their amalgamation. Much as he loved the Egyptians, he would not lower his testimony against them as not the people of God. He appealed to his countrymen to live as strangers and pilgrims in that land. He summoned them to have their loins girt and their lamps burning, and to be upon their watchtower waiting for the sign of departure. Nor was this a testimony first borne in death. He had treated thus the ashes of his father when in the full splendour of power; and, by carrying up his dust to Canaan, had said to Pharaoh and all his kingdom: "God is the God of Israel, and not of Egypt. With us is salvation, and not with you; unless our people become your people, and our God your God."

What practical lesson may we learn from this solemn, pathetic, consistent testimony of Joseph, borne in life and in death, and proceeding from his silent remains for several generations! Does it not inspire us so to live, and so to die, that the boundary between the Church and the world may be kept distinct and clear; that all men may understand that there is salvation in Christ, and in no other, and that those who are beginning to forget the difference between light and darkness, Christ and Belial, may be rebuked and recalled to a better mind? We cannot, indeed, give any such commandment respecting our bones as will supply a constant witness for Christ, such as was borne by the coffin of Joseph, whether it stood in Egypt, or at length marched through the Red Sea, and penetrated the wilderness, till at last it found rest in the land of promise. We cannot act like those kings who have commanded their bones to accompany their armies, and not to halt till victory was secured. But we can leave something behind us that shall be equally decisive in its influence-the witness of a consistent and uniform example. We can thus speak, though dead, and work when we are no more; and from the bones of every one of us, if I may so speak, there will thus exhale either a reviving fragrance or a pestilential odour, that will bless or injure the souls of others long after we are gone. Let our name be embalmed in works of faith and labours of love, and it will still witness for the Saviour. But let it mingle with the world; let it sink in the common mass of ungodliness and inconsistency; and then, from this burial-place in Egypt, it will corrupt the air, it will testify for darkness and not for light, and augment the fatal influences that make this world an abode of error, a prison-house of the soul, a city of destruction and of the shadow of death! Oh my readers, think of the effect of all you say and do from the first act of conscious existence to the hour of death. This cannot die in its influence upon children, friends, associates, the world at large. It must work for God or for Satan, even when you are in your graves. When a shot is fired, it is not arrested because the marksman falls. When a portrait is taken, it is not blotted out because the original is no more. So is it with all moral conduct and its influence. And if, living or dying, we have not pleaded for Christ and his truth, we may be met at the judgment by faces we have never seen, that will trace their ruin to our example, and to the long succession of evils which it has scattered all abroad. Each day we live we are giving commandment concerning our bones. are, as it were, making our wills before we are dead.

We

We are leaving to companions, friends, and children, piety, humility, kindness, Sabbath observance, temperance, habits of prayer and devotion, as their legacy; or we are leaving them profane swearing, lying, drunkenness, covetousness, and contempt of God and his Christ. We are answerable for these bequests and dispositions of our moral influence; and in the Great Day we shall receive according to what we have thus done in the body, and handed down as a disembodied power, according to that we have done, whether it be good or bad.

I observe, thirdly, and lastly, that we have here faith expecting. Faith in the soul of Joseph was the substance of things hoped for. "I die; but God shall surely visit you." Joseph expected to share the deliverance of his brethren-though dead, to move in the great procession out of Egypt-though senseless, to touch the sacred soil with the dust of his fathers. All this was granted. God made good his promise; and this holy man at last, as we read in the book of Joshua, was buried in Shechem, in the portion of ground which his father had bequeathed him on his dying bed.

But surely, this is not all that Joseph hoped for? We should calumniate these holy men of old, did we suppose that the last object on which their desire terminated was a resting-place for their bones in a country they loved, or with kindred dear to them, however amiable and natural such a sentiment might be.

No. These all died in faith; and the outward Canaan which they expected, living or dead, was only a pledge and an earnest of a better land. They that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country. And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned. But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly." On this the faith of Joseph terminated. His love of Canaan was but an image of his love of heaven. His care of his bones, but an image of his hope of the resurrection. To lie in Canaan was but an image and a symbol of being ultimately, soul and body, in heaven, gathered to his fathers and to their God. This is what is common to us with these Old Testament saints; this is what our hope pants after, even as theirs did. We look for an exodus with all the saints when they leave Egypt for ever behind, and rise to meet the Lord in the air. We expect to be for ever with the Lord, coming unto Mount Zion, the city of the living God and the heavenly Jerusalem. To this lively hope we are begotten by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead; and under its influence we confess that we are strangers and pilgrims on the earth, and wait for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.

This is the working of faith in all the saints. Let us then ask, Does it work thus in us? Do we, like Joseph in Egypt, regard nothing as fixed and settled till the resurrection have taken place? Do we account the whole present state of the world and of the Church as provisional, till Christ has come to fetch home his bride, and to bring in the year of his redeemed? Do we stand watching for the sound, and leave even our dust in a waiting attitude till the Lord descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and the trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise?. This is the exercise under the New Testament dispensation, analogous to that of Joseph under the Old; and if we

are not counting all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord, and seeking to attain unto the resurrection from the dead, the precious faith of God's elect is to us foreign and strange. Oh that we may all be affected in this manner, and look for this blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ! Oh that to us the note of his coming may be the most joyful of all intimations, and that in answer to his promise, Behold, I come quickly! our faith and love may respond, Amen, even so, come, Lord Jesus!

ours.

sors.

Let me notice, in conclusion, the difference between the working of faith in Joseph's case and in Joseph's was an exceptional case. It was not expected of all the Israelites that they should equally leave their bones to be carried up by their succesWhat was then, however, an eminent and singular act of faith is now the rule. Each of us must renounce the world; each of us must witness for Christ before it; each of us must wait for the resurrection; or we shall have no part or lot in it. The company of God's saints will ascend, and leave us behind. Our part shall be taken away out of the book of life, and from the holy city, and from the things written in this book. Oh my soul, what shall be the state of those from whom God's Israel have utterly gone forth, and who remain in Egypt, as in Sodom, a land of the doomed? Say, shalt thou be shut up in this dark company, hateful and hating one another, and pregnant with all the elements of mutual torment? Oh escape for thy life, and look not behind thee! Escape by faith ere the gate be barred-ere the ransomed of the Lord have quite gone over-ere the words are spoken that extinguish hope: "And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence."

Sabbath Thoughts.

NEW EVERY MORNING.

"It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness."-Lam. iii. 22, 23.

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HESE are not the words of Solomon in all his glory. Solomon's view of life was, "Vanity of vanities; all is vanity." He who in these verses sang of mercies new every morning," was the weeping prophet "-" the man that had seen affliction by the rod of his wrath "-the man who "out of the low dungeon" called upon the name of the Lord. Thus we are led to ask what were those mercies which inspired his song of praise, for surely they were not of a kind which the world values. first observe the deep sense of unworthiness of him who here praises God. He has suffered greatly, but he knows he has sinned greatly; and but for the Lord's mercies he might have been not chastened, but consumed. Remembering his "affliction and misery, the wormwood and the gall," his soul is not embittered but humbled. He is led to see himself a

And