ANSWER TO CHARADE XV.

Zaccheus was he, who ascended a tree,
Too small in a crowd the Redeemer to see;
Obadiah, the prophet, we next may behold,
Who Israel restored to her country foretold;
Next Anna enraptured with holy surprise,
As Jesus, the Saviour, appears to her eyes;
Rahab, too, we must notice, whose kindness and faith,
Herself and her kindred delivered from death;

In ZoAR, the "little one," refuge was found,

When God's judgments o'erwhelm'd the cities around.

R. O.

Poetry.

BIBLE PICTURES.

No. II.

THE DECREE. GEN. III. 21-23.

'Tis said! and humbled to the dust
The last decree they wait,
Bereft of peace, and joy and trust,
What worse can be their fate?

And death! they know not that dread thing,
They hear it is life's broken wing,
Existence' slumbʼring state,

They know not its reality,

They only know their doom to die.

Fear over every thought doth yearn,
When first the phantom's power
His fearful lesson bids them learn,
Ere they quit Eden's bower;

When at their very feet there lies
For the first sin a sacrifice,

And red blood stains the hour.
But e'en Remorse's mad'ning feud
Is nothing to their solitude.

To turn away from flower and bird,

From bright streams, where the tree

Droops, 'neath whose shade how oft they heard

The song of forest bee!

To gaze on Eden's last sunset,

And to recall how first they met;

Around them still to see

All as it there was; this would press
A weight of fearful loneliness.

Yet this, the dream of other days
Might, dream-like, be forgot,

But God's one frowning, angry gaze,
The soul forgetteth not:

It haunts each step, it haunts each thought,
Appeareth where it is not sought,

To all it doth allot

A meed of misery, shadowing

The brightest and the dearest thing.

A fearful consciousness of heaven

Athwart their soul doth dart,
The very word of love "forgiven,"
Strikes horror to their heart;
"Forgiven!" it holds a mental hell,
"Forgiven!" could death but break the spell;
They who with God had part
Forgiven! Oh is not life imbued
To them with a dread solitude!

ESTELLINA.

THE Talmud consists of the "Mishna," or text of the supposed oral law, and the "Gemara," or Commentary on the Text. These two parts of the Talmud are so highly thought of by the Jews, that there is a common saying current among them, that, "the Mishna is like wine, the Gemara like spiced wine, but the Bible is like water."

PURE from the source of heavenly light
Salvation's waters flow,

The child of God drinks with delight,
Feels strengthened in his soul with might,
And spurns earth's streams below.

But when God's fountain men forsake,
Oh! who their mind shall stay?
To earthly streams his thirst to slake
At broken cisterns, man will take
His weary, wandering way.

The Jew, whom grace doth not refine,
Distastes the stream so fair;

To him the Talmud seems divine,

The Mishna's page more sweet than wine;
Yet man, not God, is there.

Like Hagar, Lord, their eyes unseal

To see the stream divine,

The living fountain near reveal,

And make them know, and taste, and feel,
Thy truth more sweet than wine.

What though a veil now rests upon
Poor, blinded Israel's heart;
Like clouds o'er sainted Lebanon,
Dispers'd before the morning sun,
That veil shall yet depart.

H. J. M.

Printed at the Operative Jewish Converts' Institution,
Palestine Place, Bethnal Green.

The Jew spurned his daughter from his feet, and drove her free.

See page 31