OF CHRIST.

THERE was a remarkable fulfilment of the prophecies and types in our Saviour's death, and the very individual circumstances that attended it; and all to confirm our faith, that this was indeed the Messiah, and that he was thus delivered over to death by the most certain and predeterminate counsel of God. The time of his death, so exactly predicted by Daniel, chap. ix. 25, 26: the parallel circumstances with the paschal lamb, in the nature of him, a Lamb without spot, Exod. xii. 5; Isa. liii. 7: in the time of his delivery over to death, at the feast of the passover, and the very evening wherein the passover was to be eaten; and in the manner of his oblation, not a bone to be broken, Exod. xii. 46. Again, the manner of his death, by piercing his hands and his feet, Psa. xxii. 16: the very words used by him, Psa. xxii. 1, Matt. xxvii. 46: the words used of him, Psalm xxii. 8, Matthew xxvii. 43: the crucifying of him between malefactors, Isaiah liii. 12: the whippings, Isaiah liii. 5: the dividing of his garments, and casting lots upon his vesture, Psa. xxii. 18: the thirst of our Saviour upon the cross, and the giving him vinegar and gall, Psa. lxix. 21. A strange and miraculous concussion of nature, giving testimony to the wonderful and unheard of dissolution of our Saviour's body and soul; darkness from the sixth hour until the ninth hour. It is observable, that in the night wherein he was born, by a miraculous light, the night became as day, Luke ii. 9; but at his death, a miraculous darkness turned the day into night, for three hours, Matt. xxvii. 45. At his birth a new star was created to be the lamp and guide unto the place of his birth, Matt. ii. 9; but at his death the sun in the firmament was masked with darkness, and yielded not his light while the Lord of Life was passing into the vale of death.

Again, another prodigy that accompanied the death of Christ, was an earthquake, that rent the rocks, and opened the graves, and struck amazement and conviction into the centurion that was watching him, Matthew xxvii. 51-54. When our Saviour was entering into the earth by death, the earth trembled, and so it did when he was coming out of it by his resurrection, Matt. xxviii. 2. Again, the graves were opened, and the

52. As the touch of the bones of Elisha caused a kind of resurrection, 2 Kings xiii. 21, so our Saviour's body, new fallen to the earth, did give a kind of particular resurrection to the saints' bodies, to testify that by his death he had healed the deadliness of the grave, and that the satisfaction of sin was accomplished, when death, the wages of sin, was thus conquered.-Sir M. Hale.

VICISSITUDES.

THOSE vicissitudes which are brought about by God's providence are undoubtedly real blessings; thus St. Paul could say, "I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound; every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need." But this happy frame of mind, cannot be possessed by those whose greediness of worldly gain, or unsettled dispositions, plunge them into continual difficulties.

William Elliot, a common beggar, aged ninety-seven, died in a garret in Old-street, London. In the early part of his life he was an eminent distiller, but having failed, he went to sea and was taken by pirates, from whom he escaped to an uninhabited island, where he lived solitary, for the space of five years, depending for subsistence on the fowls he found there. He then, after a series of adventures, got back to his native country, and became a strolling player. Too unsettled to remain in any one calling long, he afterwards kept a lottery-office, and then entered on the profession of a quack-doctor. A sober turn of mind would have been more valuable to him than all his contrivances to get a living. He became a horse-dealer, and acquired ten thousand pounds in the lottery; but money is of little value to those who are given to dissipation; he became extravagantly addicted to the vice of gaming, and reduced himself to such extreme indigence, that being arrested for debt, he was thrown into the Fleet prison, and remained there many years. The time that is spent in captivity, under any circumstances, must hang heavy enough, but the burden of selfreproach adds greatly to the load. Liberated from prison by the Insolvent Act, he worked as a porter for his living, until his strength failed him, when he commenccd the calling of a common beggar, and in

the bulrush, but, from the number and variety of species, by far more abundantly; there being scarcely a ditch or pool, if the surrounding soil has not been disturbed for some years, which does not furnish an example of the seg (carex.) They resemble the grasses in their appearance, as they have long grassy leaves, though the stem is more frequently three-cornered instead of being round. The flowers consist of several small spikes at the top of the stem. These spikes are generally of a brownish colour, and present a dry and parched appearance. A tuft of some kind of seg is often seen by the humid sides of a shady road, and may be recognised by its external resemblance to the grasses, but is generally of a stouter texture, in respect to the leaves, and with a stem that is flattened into three corners, instead of a wellturned roundness, as in that family. The larger kinds of seg used to be braided into collars for horses, to supply the place of those prepared with more cost and care by the harness-maker. Besides, a collar of seg was formerly no uncommon assistant for youthful novices in the art of swimming, though now superseded by the bark of the cork tree. The student would do well to compare the flowers of any species of seg with those of some grass. In the grasses we find each seed in the centre of a distinct flower, which is composed of at least two minute leaflets, in many instances with four, and may be separated from the rest, with its stamens, styles, and seed, as a little whole. But in the segs, each seed or seed-vessel is accompanied by a single scale, bearing three stamens in its bosom, fig. a. These scales have, as before noticed, a dry and parched appearance; but as they are ranged upon the spike sometimes in a manner peculiarly neat and elegant, they are not destitute of their appropriate beauty. The comparatively less complete nature of their conformation, however, induces the classifier of vegetable objects to place this family at a point lower in the scale of perfection than that assigned to the grasses. It is necessary to remark in this place, that in the segs, the flowers in one spike often produce seeds without stamens, while the flowers in another spike produce stamens without seeds; they are, for this reason, divided into fertile and barren. In some instances the barren and fertile flowers are borne upon different parts of the same spike. These variations, in respect of the flowers, afford help in discriminating the species, which amount in this country to upwards of fifty, and which, from their mutual re

semblance, are not easily distinguished from one another, even by the experienced botanist: we referred for examples of this family to the segs, because they are every where to be met with. We may next allude to the bulrush, which, if it is less common, since it is confined to marshy grounds, is much more familiar in story, as our ears are no strangers to its report, though our eyes may be with its outward form and bearing. The stem, unlike many of its relatives, is round, and bears at its top a tuft of small oval spikes. The essential character of the bulrush consists in the scales being placed all round the spike, like the tiles upon the roof of a building. We may take this occasion of guarding the reader against a mistake which the writers of Scripture botany sometimes fall into, who treat the rush and the bulrush as if they belonged to the same genus. If, however, the flowers of the bulrush (scirpus lacustris) be compared with those of the common hard rush, (juncus conglomeratus,) which the country women cut up in meadows for brooms, a very obvious difference will present itself, even to one uninitiated in these studies. The land of Judea is so lamentably defaced and altered since the reign of Hezekiah, that it would not be easy to say with certainty what plant is referred to in Isaiah lviii. 5, or in Job viii. 11; but of no plant could the question be asked with more propriety, "Can the rush grow up without mire?" than of our common bulrush; since it is confined to those spots where the particles of the soil are reduced and mingled with water in the highest state of disintegration.

Another specimen of this family is the cotton-grass, of which the figure at the beginning of this article is a representation.

The white silky flakes which follow the flowers constitute so curious and remarkable an object, upon morassy heaths and swampy soils, that their appearance must at some time or other have interested the eye of every one that is in the habit of noting any remarkable botanical object he may see. While the flower is young, these silky threads form a ruff round the base of the seed, fig. c, and thus constitute the essential and distinguishing feature of the eriophorum. These silky fibres, so pleasing to the eye, are available to no useful purpose; but, by adhering to moving objects, serve to convey the seeds to distant places, like the down of thistles, and thus subserve the interest of propagation. This family (cyperoidea) takes its name from cyperus, or rush-grass, which is rendered a matter of