Guiana, having utterly failed, that may be worth looking at. The antecedents of such a people, their unrestrained developments, their unwritten literature of poetry or proverb, the glorious homes to which cupidity and violence have carried them, the exceptional cases of men of energy and purpose, who, like the granitic rocks that constitute the framework and crust of this great globe and all that it inherits,' have lifted themselves high up, in towering peaks of solitary greatness, above the dead levels of superincumbent strata; the leading features of the geology and natural history of these sunny isles, in which dwell so many who are guilty of a skin not coloured like our own,' and who require educating, and not petting, and training discipline rather than spiced wine. All these matters, and some others, come, we think, legitimately within the scope of the Christian spectator, who, at a long distance from conventionalism, exclaims, ' How manifold are thy works, in wisdom hast thou made them all.'

6

There need be nothing dry, nothing common-place in such a 'West Indian palaver,' if with genial mind we can but resuscitate past memories; if we can but recall images of delight daguerreotyped on our brain; if we can but see again the deep blue sky for weeks without a cloud, the gorgeous magnificence of virgin forests, the glory of mountain peaks gilded with sunshine that had not come to us dwellers in the vales, the varied and ever-varying facts of natural history picked up piecemeal, but now forming a tolerable collection; and if, in doing this, we can but preserve a spirit of homage to the one supreme and dominant Intelligence, of whom, and to whom are all things;' then these Glimpses' will not, we hope, be without usufruct.

་

Writing just these few lines seems to reclothe us with the perfervidum genus of the bright tropics; again we inhale the breath of the sea breeze; again we see the tall palm bowing its graceful head to the heavenly impulse; again life is restored to the panting creation, and the mocking bird trills its inimitable song, and the domestic poultry rise gasping to partake of the gale; again the woods become vocal with the melancholy coo of the peadove, or the double cadence of the mountain-witch; again the jabbering crow leaps rather than flies from one cedar to another, and the little humming-bird, with its metallic colours, dazzles the eye as it darts between the thick and thorny branches of the orange-trees, and flocks of parrots screaming in wild delight tell that day is really begun, for the breeze is fresh and cool from off the sea. There is no exaggeration in the vivid words of a recent writer, who combines in himself the avidity of the sportsman, the science of the naturalist, and the profound worship of God of the true Christian: As I now, several years afterwards, here in the suburbs of London, copy these notes for the press, the impressions then produced on my mind as one novelty after another presented itself-things that I had read of with eager desire to see, that had become encircled with halos of romance in my imagination-come gushing upon my memory in all their fulness and freshness, like some sweet tune, that * Called the doctor' in the West Indies.

one has not heard for years, unexpectedly played. But how shall I transfer these impressions to my readers? I can name some of the prominent objects that helped to make up the picture, and by some short description, or a few well-selected epithets, may communicate a certain definiteness to those objects; but the picture itself, the thousand things that cannot be enumerated, birds, insects, flowers, trees, the tone of the whole, the sunlight, the suffused sky, the balmy atmosphere, the variety of the foliage, the massive light and shadow, the dark green openings in the forest, all new, rich, and strange ;—not only new individually, but quite new and strange in character, quite unlike anything that I had seen before;-all this I cannot hope to convey. Nor can I hope to convey more than a very, very faint reflection of that delightful excitement with which I gazed around, bewildered and entranced, almost, with the variety of charming objects, all at once appealing for attention; the remembrance of which, protracted as it was through eighteen months' duration, with scarcely any abatement, has given in my habitual feelings, a kind of paradisaical association with lovely Jamaica."*

This glowing picture of the tropics reminds us of one written two hundred years ago, and which to most readers, we believe, will have at least the recommendation of novelty. At that time the population of Jamaica was about 5,000 whites and some 1,200 negroes, and it was the time of Cromwell's protectorate, when a band of emigrants, full of high hope and royalist sentiments, abandoning the cause of Charles when it could no longer be maintained, sought refuge in this the ' richest of his Majesty's settlements in America.' And thus worthily, and apart from all political bias, does Andrew Marvel, Milton's assistant Latin secretary, record their arrival in the then far-famed and distant island of Xaymaque,† and with this quotation we close our prologue.

"Where the remote Bermudas ride,

In th' ocean's bosom unespied,
From a small boat that rowed along,
The listening winds received this song:
"What should we do but sing His praise,
Who led us through the watery maze,
And to an isle so long unknown,

But yet far kinder than our own!
Where he the huge sea monsters racks,
That lift the deep upon their backs.
He lands us on this grassy stage,

Safe from the storms, and prelate's rage;
gave us this eternal spring,

He

Which here enamels everything;
And sends to us the fowls in care,

In daily visits through the air.

He hangs in shade the orange bright,
Like lamps of gold in a green night;

A Naturalist's Sojourn in Jamaica,' by P. H. Gosse, A.L.S., &c., pp. 49, 50. Xaymaque was the Indian name for Jamaica, and signifies land of springs."

And in pomegranates does enclose,
Jewels more rich than Ormus shows.
He makes the figs our mouths to meet,
And throws the melons at our feet;
And apples, plants of such a price,
No tree could ever bear them twice.
With cedars chosen by his hand
From Lebanon he stores the land;
And makes the hollow seas that roar,
Proclaim there's ambergris on shore.
He cast-of this we ever boast-
The gospel's pearl upon our coast:
And in these rocks for us did frame
A temple where to sound His name.
Oh! let our voice His praise exalt,
Till it arrives at Heaven s blue vault,
Which thence perhaps rebounding, may
Echo beyond the Mexique bay."
Thus sung they in the English boat,
A holy and a cheerful note;

And all the way to guide the chime,
With falling oars they kept the time.'

W. G. B.

Biblical Illustrations.

NOTES ON THE BOOK OF JONAH.*

I. PROPHECY.

CICERO has a fine passage in the commencement of his treatise De Divinatione,' affirming the actual existence of such a power in the human race, at some periods of its history, and distinctly referring the first and most effective exercise of it to that region in which the men of the Bible had their origin; namely, the great plain of the upper Tigris and Euphrates, the country of the Assyrians and the Chaldeans, and the father-land of the Hebrew race, which, at length, became the only medium through which God communicated his will to men. It was to this region that the King of Moab, when the Hebrews were marching to Palestine under Moses, sent for a prophet of high character and great reputation, to counteract the Divine power which made Moab afraid. Num. xxii.

Though Balaam was a bad man, he was yet really a prophet, and, in his prophetic ecstasies, said just what God directed him to say. Num. xxiii. 7, 8, 12, 26; xxiv. 13, &c.

'It is an ancient opinion,' says Cicero, derived from the heroic ages, and confirmed by the consent of the Roman people and of all nations, that there exists among men a power of divination which the

* Condensed from a paper by Dr. C. E. Stowe, Professor at Andover, U.S., in the American Bibliotheca Sacra, 1853.

Greeks call party; that is, a presentiment and knowledge of future events. A magnificent and salutary thing, if indeed it exists, and one by which our mortal nature makes the nearest approach to the Divine power.

• Indeed, I know of no nation, however cultivated and learned, or however savage and barbarous, which has not supposed that future events can be signified, and by some understood and foretold. At first the Assyrians, that I may fetch authority from the most distant, by reason of the levelness and magnitude of the region which they inhabited, saw the heavens on every side open and manifest to them, and observed the shootings and motions of the stars; which being noted, they handed down what might be signified to each one. In this nation the Chaldeans, so called, not from their art, but as a national denomination, supposed that, by a constant observation of the stars, a science might be so found that it could be predicted what would happen to each one, and with what fate each one was born.'*

The idea of Cicero, that the gift of divination, or the spirit of prophecy, had its first and most perfect manifestation among the nations whom the Greeks and Romans rather loosely denominated Assyrians, is founded in truth; for there, in the ancient world, did God especially make himself known. Abraham, the progenitor of the Hebrew nation, was a Chaldean; in the Scriptures he is called Abraham the Hebrew, the first who bears that national name; and his native city is affirmed to have been Ur of the Chaldees. The same sacred records inform us that the garden of Eden-the very cradle of the human race, the place which God made the dwelling of the first pair, from whom all mankind are descended-was on the head waters of the Tigris and Euphrates.

So certainly as counterfeit coins are proof that genuine coins exist, so certainly do these classical and oriental traditions of a power of divination among men, which had its origin and most effective exercise in the ancient Assyrian race, on the great plains of the Tigris and Euphrates to the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, afford proof that God did there communicate the gift of prophecy, as our sacred books declare.

Noah and Enoch were prophets; so were Abraham and Moses; and, from the earliest times to the days of Malachi, there was an unbroken succession of inspired men in the Hebrew race, most, if not all of whom, had, besides the power of foretelling future events, the gift of working miracles in attestation of their claims to supernatural authority.

II. THE OLDEST PROPHETIC BOOK IN THE BIBLE.

The earliest prophets wrote no books distinctly prophetic, which have come down to us, and we have no record of their predictions except what is found in the histories. According to the most generally received calculation, the most ancient prophet, who has given a prophetic book of his own to the biblical canon, is Jonah. The book is

* Ciceronis Opera, Ed. Bipont. XI. 174, 5.

but a fragment, and mostly occupied with what befel Jonah in the execution of a special mission from God to the city of Nineveh; and we have a brief notice, in one of the historical books, of another prediction by the same prophet. (2 Kings xiv. 25.) For several reasons, this singular and most ancient prophetic book is worthy of special notice. We shall take for granted the correctness of the unanimous verdict of both Jewish and Christian antiquity, that the book was written by Jonah, whose name it bears; and shall endeavour to give such information respecting it and its author as may vindicate its claims to the place which it has always held among the books of the Bible.

III. AGE OF THE PROPHET JONAH.

According to the Jewish Rabbins, Jonah was the son of the widow of Zarephath (1 Kings xvii.), whom the prophet Elijah restored to life, after he had expired and been carried by the prophet into the little upper chamber where he was himself wont to lodge. This would place his birth about the year 900 B.C. This dream of the Jews, however, rests on no historical foundation; and it is more probable that the birth of Jonah ought to be placed about a century later. If so, he was a child when the poet Homer was an old blind bard, singing his rhapsodies in the cities of Asia Minor, as the prophet afterwards sang in the great city of Nineveh. He was a contemporary of the Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus; he lived a century before Romulus laid the foundation of what has since been called the eternal city, and four centuries before Herodotus, the father of profane history, who also was an Asiatic. We mention these circumstances that we may bear it in mind, while contemplating the singular incidents in the life of Jonah, that he lived in a simple and rude, and what we should call, semi-barbarous age.

IV. REPUTATION OF THE BOOK OF JONAH.

This ancient book of the rude old prophet has been, during many generations, a favourite theme for the ridicule of the jesting unbeliever. The grinning pagan Lucian had his joke in regard to it; and Augustine, speaking of it in his day, says: Hoc enim genus quæstionis multo cachinno a paganisgra viterirrisum animadverti.' * Even serious Christians of our own time are generally rather shy of the story of Jonah, and are inclined to think that it is one of those things of which the less said the better.

Is there any real ground for this shyness of the believer and this ridicule of the unbeliever?

A careful attention to the subject, a little accurate knowledge of the age, the country, the persons, and the circumstances about which the narrative is employed, will show, we think, very clearly, that this ridicule and shyness are all misplaced. The preservation of Jonah's life by a fish, and the rapid growth and as rapid destruction of the vine which sheltered him from the heat of the sun, are regarded and treated,

* Scholz, Einleit. in heil. Schrift. III. 574. Augustin, Epist. CII.