IN COFFIN-LOVERS. N no other country than China, perhaps, could men be heard exchanging compliments on the subject of a coffin. People are mostly shy of mentioning the lugubrious objects destined to contain the mortal remains of a relation or friend; and when death does enter the house, the coffin is got in secrecy and silence, in order to spare the feelings of the mourning family. But it is quite otherwise in China; there a coffin is simply an article of the first necessity to the dead, and of luxury and fancy to the living. In the great towns you see them displayed in the shops, with all sorts of tasteful decorations, painted and varnished, and polished and trimmed up to attract the eyes of passengers, and give them the fancy to buy themselves one. People, in easy circumstances, who have money to spare for their pleasures, scarcely ever fail to provide themselves beforehand with a coffin to their own taste, and which they consider becoming; and till the moment arrives for lying down in it, it is kept in the house, not as an article of immediate necessity, but as one that can not fail to be consoling and pleasant to the eye in a nicely furnished apartment. For well-brought-up children, it is a favorable method of expressing the fervor of their filial piety toward the authors of their being-a sweet and tender consolation for the heart of a son, to be able to purchase a beautiful coffin for an aged father or mother, and come in state to present the gift at the moment when they least expect such an agreeable surprise. If one is not sufficiently favored by fortune to be able to afford the purchase of a coffin in advance, care is always taken that before "saluting the world," as the Chinese say, a sick person shall at least have the satisfaction of casting a glance at his last abode; and if he is surrounded by at all affectionate relations, they never fail to buy him a coffin, and place it by the side of his bed. In the country this is not always so easy, for coffins are not kept quite ready, and, besides, peasants have not such luxurious habits as townspeople. The only way, then, is to send for the carpenter of the place, who takes measure of the sick person, not forgetting to observe to him that it must be made a little longer than would seem necessary, because one always stretches out a little when one's dead. A bargain is then made concerning the length and the breadth, and especially the cost; wood is brought, and the workmen set about their task in the yard close to the chamber of the dying person, who is entertained with the music of the saw and the other tools while death is at work within him, preparing him to occupy the snug abode when it is ready. All this is done with the most perfect coolness, and without the slightest emotion, real or affected. We have ourselves witnessed such scenes more than once, and it has always been one of the things that most surprised us in the manners of this extraordinary country. A short time after our arrival at the mission in the north, we were walking one day in the country with a Chinese seminarist, who had the patience to reply to all our long and tedious questions about the men and things of the Celestial empire. While we were keeping up the dialogue as well as we could in a mixture of Latin and Chinese, using a word of one or the other, as we found occasion, we saw coming toward us a rather numerous crowd, who advanced in an orderly manner along a narrow path. It might have been called a procession. Our first impulse was to turn aside, and get into some safe corner behind a large hill; for not having as yet much experience in the manners and customs of the Chinese, we had some hesitation in producing ourselves, for fear of being recognized and thrown into prison-possibly even condemned and strangled. Our seminarist, however, reassured us, and declared we might continue our walk without any fear. The crowd had now come up with us, and we stood aside to let it pass. It was composed of a great number of villagers, who looked at us with smiling faces, and had the appearance of being uncommonly pleased. After them came a litter, on which was borne an empty coffin, and then another litter, upon which lay extended a dying man wrapped in blankets. His face was haggard and livid, and his expiring eyes were fixed upon the coffin that preceded him. When every one had passed, we hastened to ask the meaning of this strange procession. "It is some sick man," said the seminarist, "who has been taken ill in a neighboring village, and whom they are bringing home to his family. The Chinese do not like to die away from their own house." "That is very natural; but what is the coffin for?" "For the sick man, who probably has not many days to live. They seem to have made every thing ready for his funeral. I remarked by the side of the coffin a piece of white linen, that they mean to use for the mourning." These words threw us into the most profound astonishment, and we saw then that we had come into a new world-into the midst of a people whose ideas and feelings differed widely from those of Europeans.-Huc's Travels in China. EDITOR'S REPOSITORY. Scripture Cabinet. Jews, which consisted in divers washings and in other elements of this world, let our service, our Ipnoxsa, take a nobler shape, let it consist in deeds of piety and love;" and it was this which our translators intended, when they used "religion" here and "religious" in the verse preceding. GLORY." For our light affliction, which is but for a mo ment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.”—2 Cor. iv, 17. CHANGED MEANING OF SCRIPTURE WORDS.-There are this kind: "instead of the ceremonial services of the several places in the authorized version of Scripture, where those who are not aware of the changes which have taken place during the last two hundred and fifty years in our language, can hardly fail of being, to a certain extent, misled as to the intention of our translators; or, if they are better acquainted with Greek than with early English, will be tempted to ascribe to these translators, though wrongly, an inexact rendering of the original. When, for instance, St. Paul teaches that if any widow hath children or "nephews," she is not to be chargeable to the Church, but these are to requite their parents, and to support them-1 Tim. v, 4-it must seem strange that "nephews" should be here brought in; while a reference to the original makes manifest that the difficulty is not there, but in our version. From this also it is removed, so soon as we know that "nephews," like the Latin "nepotes," meant, at the time when this version was made, grandchildren and other lineal descendants; being so employed by Hooker, by Shakspeare, and by the other writers of the Elizabethian period. In another place, in the Acts of the Apostles, St. Luke says, "We took up our carriages and went up to Jerusalem." Acts xxi, 15. How was this possible, exclaims a modern objector, when there is nothing but a mountain track, impassable for wheels, between Cæsarea, the place from which Paul and his company started, and Jerusalem? He would not have made this difficulty, if he had known that in our early English, "carriages" did not mean things which carried us, but things which we carried; and "we took up our carriages" implies no more than "we took up our baggage," or "we trussed up our fardels," as an earlier translation somewhat familiarly has it, and so "went up to Jerusalem." But a passage in which the altered meaning of a word involves sometimes a more serious misunderstanding is that well-known statement of St. James, "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction." "There," exclaims one who wishes to set up St. James against St. Paul, that so he may escape the necessity of obeying either, "listen to what St. James says; he does not speak of faith in Christ as the condition necessary to salvation; there is nothing mystical in what he requires; instead of harping on faith, he makes all religion to consist in practical deeds of kindness one to another." But let us pause a moment. Did "religion," when our translation was made, mean godliness? did it mean the sum total of our duties toward God? for of course no one would deny that deeds of kindness are a part of our Christian duty, an evidence of the faith which is in us. There is abundant evidence to show that "religion" did not mean this; that, like the Greek pontia, for which it here stands, like the Latin "religo," it meant the outward forms and embodiments in which the inward principle of piety arrayed itself, the external service of God: and St. James is urging upon those to whom he is writing something of Glory! It is a most profoundly mysterious word this. What is the precise amount of it? How shall we be able to fathom it? The original Greek word-doxa-means opinion, fame, renown, and this is very much the meaning of it with us. But this is a very superficial and trivial sense. The Hebrew word-cabod-signifies weight, literally. We like this grand old Hebrew word. It lets us into the heart of the thing. It intimates that there is much more in it than is generally imagined. It raises us above those paltry conceptions, those low, earthly, mean ideas we associate with it. It carries the mind upward to the God of glory, in whom alone all true glory resides, and from whom alone all true glory flows. Glory! It is truly a most weighty term this, bearing the burden, so to speak, of the Divine perfections-sustaining the honor of the Divine character! There is a deity wrapped up in that word glory! It is indeed a most sublime and sacred word, and it seems an act of desecration to apply it to aught that is human or earthly, except so far as it is the faint reflection of the uncreated source of moral excellence. Herein lies our true glory-our true blessedness-our true reward. All else is fleeting and fantastic. Give me not the doxa-the mere fame-the mere seeming-the mere display; such glory, if we must still call it so, is unsubstantial as a shadow, short-lived as a dream. But give me as my reward-give me the cabod the glory that has weight and substance in it-that bears the image and superscription of Deity, and that will be immortal as its source, even an eternal weight of glory-the glory that lies in the possession of the Divine image, the enjoyment of the Divine favor, and the performance of the Divine will.-Foote's Aspects of Christianity. "THE REFINER OF SILVER."-" He shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver."—Malachi iii, 3. Some years ago a few ladies, who met together in Dublin to read and study the Scriptures, were reading the third chapter of Malachi. One of the ladies gave it as her opinion that in the passage: "For he is like a refiner's fire, and like fuller's soap: and he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver," the fuller's soap and the refiner of silver were the same image, both intended to convey the same view of the sanctifying influences of the grace of Christ; while another observed, "There is something remarkable in the expression, 'he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver."" They agreed that possibly it might be so, and one of the ladies promised to call upon a silversmith, and report what might be said upon the subject. She went, accordingly, and without telling the object of her errand, begged to know from him the process of refining silver, which he fully described. "But, sir," said she, "do you sit while the work of refining is going on?" "O yes, madam," he replied, "I must sit with my eye steadily fixed on the surface, for if the time necessary for refining be exceeded in the slightest degree, the silver is sure to be injured." At once she saw the beauty, and the comfort, too, of the expression "he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver." When we are in the furnace of trial, affliction, and temptation, the Lord sits by the side of the furnace, with his eye steadily intent upon the work of purifying. Our trials do not come on at random; the very hairs of our head are all numbered." As the lady was leaving the shop, the silversmith called her back, and said he had still further to mention, that he only knew when the process of purifying was complete by seeing his own image reflected in the silver. Beautiful figure! when the Lord sees his own image reflected in us, his work of purifying is accomplished. "But we all with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord." "For we all with unvailed face, reflecting as mirrors the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image, from glory to glory, as from the Lord of the Spirit.”— Macknight's Version of the Epistles. LET YOUR LIGHT SHINE." Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill can not be hid.”—Matt. v, 14. I once read somewhere of a traveler at Calais going one dark and stormy night to the light-house there. While standing looking on, the keeper of the house boasted of its brilliancy and beauty, observing there were few such lights in the world beside. The traveler said-thoughtlessly it may be "What if one of these burners of yours should go out to-night?" "What!" said the keeper, "go out, sir? O, sir," said the light-house keeper, "look at that dark and stormy sea. You can not see them, but there are ships passing and repassing there to every point of the compass. Were the light to go out from my inattention, in six months news would arrive from every part of the coast, that such ships and crews were lost by my neglect! No, no! God forbid such a thing should ever occur. I feel every night as I look at my burner as if all the eyes of all the sailors of the world were looking at my lights, and watching me." He for an earthly, we for a heavenly. If such was his care of lights, the extinction of which could lead only to temporal catastrophes, O, what should be ours! "Far sadder sight than eye can know, Or prey bird's shriek or ocean's shroud, Are we watching the burner in the light-house on which God has placed us? He built the house, and placed us in it; it is ours to let the light so shine that the whitewinged doves of commerce, as they move from sea to sea and from shore to shore, or rather as the pilgrims of eternity wend their way to an everlasting haven, they may never have to criminate us for culpable neglect.—Cum ming's Daily Life. THE FATHER AND HIS PROFLIGATE SON.-Suppose the case of a profligate and undutiful son. He has often wounded the heart, and set at naught the authority of the tenderest of fathers. He advances in filial depravity, till he determines to break away from all domestic inspection and restraint. The day appointed for the carrying out of his purpose arrives. As the first gray beams of morning steal into his chamber, he rises and prepares for his journey. All within are asleep beside. His father is unconscious of his plans. With clandestine step, and a thousand mingled emotions, he bids adieu to his birthplace and his home. In a few hours he finds himself on board the vessel which is to bear him to a foreign land. Month after month, through storms and sunshine, he pursues his way. He reaches his destination, and exults in the thought, that now, without restriction, he can revel in all the pleasures his new home can afford. The thought of his lost son fills the father with distress. It disturbs him in his dreams at night. It scares him in the mornings. It spreads a sadness over him through the day. At length he is informed of the far-distant residence of his son, and of his wicked ways. He determines to restore him to a sense of filial obligation, and to his home. And what is the plan? He writes a letterall that is moving in parental love is thrown into that letter. Now, on what will its success depend? On its contents? On its being delivered? On its being read? All this is required; but something more is indispensable, to bring out its full force upon his wicked heart. He must reflect upon it, as the expression of a tender father, whose heart, which he had well nigh broken, still glows with warmest love for him. Young men, in this picture behold yourselves. You are prodigals. You have violated the love, and forsaken the home, of the INFINITE FATHER. Here is a letter which he has addressed to you. In it he says, "Come, now, and let us reason together." O what omnipotent reasonings of paternal love are here! Have you ever devoted one day to a concentrated reflection upon the contents of this document, in its relation to You? If not, you have never yet tried the only way to repentance. Go and think thus, and as you muse the fire will burn. God's complaint of the world is, its religious thoughtlessness. "The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib; but Israel doth not know, my people doth not CONSIDER."-Rev. D. Thomas, England. THE MYSTERY OF A CHRISTIAN.-1. He liveth in another. He is wise in another. He is righteous in another. He is strong in another. 2. He is very low in humility, but very high in hopes. He knows he is undeserving of the least mercy, yet he expects the greatest. 3. He is in the world, but not of the world-in the world as a pilgrim, but not as a citizen. His habitation is below, but his conversation above. 4. He is meek, but vehement; meek in his cause, yet vehement in the cause of God-as Moses, who was dead to affronts, deaf to reproaches, and blind to injuries. He will comply with any thing that is civil, but with nothing that is sinful. He will stoop to the necessities of the meanest, but will not yield to the sinful humors of the greatest. 5. He works out his salvation with fear and trembling. He works as if he was to live here always, yet worships as if he were to die to-morrow. 6. When he is weak, then he is strong. When he is most sensible of his own weakness, and most dependent on Christ's strength, then he stands the safest. 7. When he is most vile in his own eyes, he is most glorious in the eyes of God. When Job abhorred himself, then God raised him. When the centurion thought himself the most unworthy, Christ said, "I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel." 8. He is content in this world, yet longs and prays for a better. THE GREAT PROBLEM.-A young man who had graduated at one of the first colleges in America, and was celebrated for his literary attainments, particularly his knowledge of mathematics, settled in a village where a faithful minister of the Gospel was stationed. It was not long before the clergyman met with him in one of his evening walks, and after some conversation, as they were about to part, addressed him as follows: "I have heard you are celebrated for your mathematical skill; I have a problem which I wish you to solve." "What is it?" eagerly inquired the young man. The clergyman answered, with a solemn tone of voice, "What shall it profit a man, if he should gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" The youth returned home, and endeavored to shake off the impression fastened on him by the problem proposed to him, but in vain. In the giddy round of pleasure, in his business, and in his studies, the question still forcibly returned to him, "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" It finally resulted in his conversion, and he became an able advocate and preacher of that Gospel which he once rejected. THE MYSTERIOUS RESERVOIR.-A late writer gives a vivid illustration of the uncertainty of human life, in the picture of a prisoner shut up in a dungeon, with no possibility of escape, and with his sole supply of water drawn from a reservoir whose depth he can not probe, but which he knows is supplied by no fresh stream. He dips, and feels the surface of the water perceptibly sink. He dips again, and it sinks still farther. He knows that in time he must come to the bottom, but when that time will be he does not know. He can not say, "I have a fountain to go to, I am at ease." No; for his heart says, "I had water yesterday, and to-day; but my having had it yesterday, and my having it today, is the very cause why I shall not have it in some time now approaching." So, my soul, is it not the case with thyself? Enchained within a fortress indeed thou art, and time is the reservoir from which thou drawest? When it will come to an end thou canst not tell. Its very mouth is hidden. And yet there is a fountain opened, if from it thou wouldst but drink! And that fountain is Christ. THE HANDLE OF THE HATCHET.-I observed a man who had the handle of a hatchet, but who was destitute of the instrument itself. I said, "Can you fell a tree with the handle only?" He negatived my question. "Just so," I said, "you can not get a new heart you can not expel your sin nor Satan from your heart, without the Spirit of Jesus Christ. I give you the handle to show you what you must do; but you must receive the power of God, which is the mighty hatchet to destroy every sinful matter that is within you. You must pray to God for that power. You must first feel that you are destitute of it, and that, for the lack of the divine power and Spirit, you can not overcome your sinful heart, but must follow the desires of the flesh and of the devil. Therefore, get soon and earnestly the hatchet of the Spirit and power of God, and handle it well by continual prayer and watchfulness over all your thoughts, words, and deeds: these you must try and test by the word of God and his Spirit; and so you will succeed in felling the old, rotten, unfruitful tree of your heathenish nature, life, and walk.”—Dr. Krapf to a Winika in Eastern Africa. THE EAGLE AND THE CHRISTIAN-How often do we see one apparently wrapped and absorbed in what is Christian, who yet has no Christian motive at all! I have seen the mountain eagle almost beating the blue firmament with his outspread wings, and I have thought, as I have gazed at his magnificent ascent, that he was soaring toward the sky and the realms of purer and of brighter day; but I had only to wait a little to find out, that, though he seemed to soar so high and aspire so purely, his bright eye was upon the quarry all the while, that was on the ground below. So it is with many a one, with loud pretensions, high-sounding professions, great Christian aims avowed and declared; while he seems to be soaring upward with his outspread wings, and seeking a loftier sphere and a nobler land, he is really looking down to what will bring the greatest profit to his purse, or the noblest credit to his name.- Church Before the Flood. RECOGNITION IN HEAVEN.-I must confess, as the experience of my own soul, that the expectation of loving my friends in heaven principally kindles my love to them while on earth. If I thought I should never know them, and, consequently, never love them after this life is ended, I should number them with temporal things, and love them as such; but I now delightfully converse with my pious friends in a firm persuasion that I shall converse with them forever, and I take comfort in those that are dead or absent, believing that I shall shortly meet them in heaven, and love them with a heavenly love.-Baxter. HOW TO VALUE SALVATION.-In order to value salvation, we must be aware of the dark billows among which we are plunged, and be sensible that the stars of our heavenly home look down on our misery from so great a distance, that though we may climb with toil and tears from one ledge of rocks to another in our attempts to reach them, yet, left to ourselves, it is only a pilgrimage through a dreary waste of misery; so that when we have gained the highest point, those celestial luminaries are at the same inaccessible elevation as before, and nothing seems left but to fall, in utter despair, into the abyss of perdition.-Tholuck. DEATH OF THE RIGHTEOUS.-"I met on the sea-shore," said the eastern poet Sadi, "a pious man who had been attacked by a tiger, and was horribly mutilated. He was dying, and suffering dreadful agonies. Nevertheless his features were calm and serene, and his physical pain seemed to be vanquished by the purity of his soul. 'Great God!' said he, 'I thank thee that I am only suffering from the pangs of this tiger, and not from the pangs of remorse.'" THE FINAL CENTER OF REPOSE.-Religion is the final center of repose; the goal to which all things tend, apart from which man is a shadow, his very existence a riddle, and stupendous scenes of nature which surround him as unmeaning as the leaves of the sibyl scattered in the wind.-Robert Hall. INTERCESSION.-I ought to study Christ as an intercessor. He prayed most for Peter, who was most to be tempted. I am on his breast-plate. If I could hear Christ praying for me in the next room, I would not fear a million of enemies. Yet distance makes no difference; he is praying for me. He is interceding for me always.—M' Cheyne. Editorial Disquisition. THE DOUBLE MEANING OF PROPHECY. prophetic picture appears a far-removed background towering high above it—not to distort the harmony and mar the beauty of the picture, but to give it grandeur and to highten its effect. Let us cite a few instances: 1. The very first prophecy on record relating to the Savior; namely, that embodied in the curse pronounced upon the serpent. (See Genesis iii, 15.) This is a continuous prophecy. It relates to the serpent, to his degradation among the beasts, to the enmity that exists between the serpent race and the human family. This literal or natural application is unquestionable. But does it not also embody another significance—one that is spiritual and ultimate? Is there not also a personification and a curse upon Satan, and, above all, is not the Messiah prefigured in the seed of the woman? It is alike impos divest it of its natural as well as spiritual meaning. THE question, whether each specific prophecy has only a single and precise application, or whether it may have a mystical as well as natural, a remote as well as near application, is often mooted among critics and commentators. Some contend that "every prophecy, were it rightly understood, would be found to carry a precise and single meaning, and that wherever the double sense appears, it is because the one true sense has not yet been detected.” They also object that if in the same prediction, and by the same class of images, are prefigured a variety of unconnected events, independent, to all appearance, of each other, and remote in both time and place, no evidence of divine Providence can arise from such predictions. The first is a question of fact; the last a matter of judgment. If the fact of a double sense were fully established, the question arises whether the rigid applicability of the pre-sible to strip this passage of its prophetic character, or to diction to the several objects embraced in its images, the near and remote, the natural and the spiritual, do not of itself add transcending weight to the evidence that the prophetic word was uttered by the all-comprehending prescience of the Holy Ghost. If a single application of the prophetic word demonstrate the prescience and providence of God, how much more convincing must be the demonstration when we find various applications, yet all precise, definite, real! Mr. Watson says that "the double sense of the Scripture prophecies springs from a foreknowledge of their accomplishment in both senses; whence the prediction is purposely so framed as to include both events, which, so far from being contrary to each other, are typical the one of the other, and are thus connected together by a mutual dependency of relation." Dr. Adam Clarke, no mean authority upon this subject, also says, "The same prophecies have frequently a double meaning, and refer to different events-the one near, the other remote; the one temporal, the other spirial, perhaps eternal." The question before us is one of fact. If we can show that there are predictions having a definite fulfillment in several, diverse, and widely removed particulars, we have ground for presuming that all these particulars came legitimately within the scope of that prophecy. Or, again, if prophecies uttered with reference to some definite event, where the character of the prophecy and the nature of the particulars are such as to leave no room to question its primary and natural application, and afterward the inspired writers of a subsequent age develop a final and spiritual significance of that prophecy-at the same time not questioning its original application-then, beyond all reasonable controversy, such a prophecy has a double sense, a natural and a spiritual application. Are there any instances of prophecies of this character in the Bible? Let us appeal to the law and to the testimony, and with their decision rest the case. Let us, however, premise that, for aught we know, there may be prophecies that relate exclusively to single events or particular individuals, and extend no farther. There may also be prophecies that have an exclusive reference to the Messiah, where nothing else appears upon the field of prophetic vision. But there are others which evidently contemplate both near and remote oljects in the perspective of coming ages; behind the foreground in the 2. Take again the paschal lamb, of which it is saidExodus xii, 46-"neither shall ye break a bone thereof.” The paschal lamb was commemorative; but it was also typical, and, therefore, prophetic. It had, then, a hidden significance, a mystical or spiritual meaning, which was fulfilled in Christ. Hence, when the soldiers "brake not his legs," the sacred biographer adds, "these things were done that the Scripture should be fulfilled. A bone of him shall not be broken." Or, again, if reference is here made to Psalm xxxiv, 20, where the inspired writer says of the righteous, that the Lord "keepeth all his bones: not one of them is broken;" then most obviously there was a primary application of the prophecy to the righteous, the chosen of the Lord in general. 3. When Isaiah was called to the prophetic office, lest he should faint, the blindness of the people and their stubborn obstinacy are foretold. Hear his language: "And he said, Go, and tell this people, hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not. Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed." Isaiah vi, 9, 10. That this prophecy was to have a literal fulfillment is evident, for when the prophet inquired, “How long?" the answer was, "Till the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the land be utterly desolate." And then again its literal fulfillment is declared: "The Lord hath poured out upon you the spirit of deep sleep, and hath closed your eyes; the prophets and your rulers, the seers hath he covered." Isaiah xxix, 10. The near or literal fulfillment of this prophecy was realized in that terrible blindness that had fallen upon the Jews in the days of Isaiah and Jeremiah, and especially just before the Babylonian captivity. But our Savior himself speaks of it as having a fulfillment in his own time: "And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive; for this people's heart has waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I |