WARFARE. "BUT I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin," Rom. vii. 23-25. conjecture from its diminution, and its by | THE DANGER FELT IN THE CHRISTIAN no means increasing so fast as fæcal matter would do, from such perpetually feeding creatures. I have not, in any instance, observed the young to proceed from these globular bodies, though they are found of various ages, at all times during the season. This lanigerous vestiture seems to serve likewise as a vehicle for dispersing the animal; for though most of our species of aphides are furnished with wings, I have never seen any individual of this American blight so provided; but the winds, wafting about the small tufts of this downy matter, convey the creature with it, from tree to tree, throughout the whole orchard. In the autumn, when this substance is generally long, the winds and rains of the season effectually disperse these insects, and we observe them endeavouring to secrete themselves in the crannies of any neighbouring substance. Should the savoy cabbage be near the trees whence they have been dislodged, the cavities of the under-sides of its leaves are commonly favourite asylums for them. Multitudes perish by these rough removals, but numbers yet remain, and we may find them in the nodes and crevices, on the other sides of the branches, at any period of the year, the long cottony vesture being removed; but still they are enveloped in a fine, short, downy clothing, to be seen by a magnifier, proceeding, apparently, from every suture, or pore, of their bodies, and protecting them, in their domestic state, from the moisture and frosts of our climate. This aphis, in a natural state, usually awakens and commences its labours very early in the month of March; and the hoariness on its body may be observed increasing daily; but if an infected branch be cut in winter, and kept in a warm room, these aphides will awaken speedily, spin their cottony nests, and feed as they are accustomed to do in the genial season." Insects, it should be observed, are not confined to vegetables in their recent or unmanufactured state. A beam of oak, after supporting the roof of a castle for five hundred years, is as much to the taste of some, as the same tree was in its growing state to that of others. Another class (tinea, termites) appears, as to whom it may be said that a dish of tea would appear like a "river or a sea." These little creatures would prefer some old musty volumes, to the freshest rind of the flax-plant, or to the most costly and beautiful modern volume. Brethren, you see the conflict. You behold the scales of victory inclining in favour of the law of sin. The case is one of real danger. The inward man is yielding; your soul, which had tasted that the Lord is gracious, is returning to folly; some fleshly lust is revived; some sinful temper is again indulged; and, although God's promises are true, faithful, immutable, yet, in that position of things, your interest in them is obscured: your soul is, to all human appearances, becoming once again the soul in danger. If I could tell you that there is then no danger, I should be unfaithful to your soul. No danger, when a believer is returning to sin! It was not thus that Nathan comforted David. This was not the meaning of Christ looking upon Peter. Such was not the language of God by Ezekiel: "When a righteous man turneth away from his righteousness, and committeth iniquity, and dieth in them; for his iniquity that he hath done shall he die," Ezek. xviii. 26. No danger in backsliding from God! Oh, whence do men get this antinomian notion? Not surely from our text. Hear the anxious cry for deliverance: "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death ?" I hardly know a more sorrowful cry than that. The Saviour's cry seems, indeed, more sorrowful: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ?" Matt. xxvii. 46. And yet I hardly know. " My God, my God," expresses some sense of sonship, some confidence of filial love, even in that hour of darkness and desertion. But the apostle's words seem all sorrow; the language of a heart quite full of lamentation, and mourning, and woe. Only hear them again, and judge: "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" This last expression is most remarkable. The allusion is almost too painful for explanation. Yet, if its explanation may lead us to loathe and abhor sin, we must not yield | to a false delicacy. It is said that ancient tyrants, in their inhuman cruelty, sometimes condemned offenders to have a dead body tied to them, and to carry this loathsome object about with them. Can any thing more horrible be imagined? Yet such is sin working in our members! It is a vile and disgusting thing to us; if we are believers, it has received its deathblow: "knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Christ, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin," Rom. vi. 6. Thus the body of sin, mortified by the Spirit of God and the cross of Christ, is henceforth a body of death, vile, loathsome, abominable; and yet it cleaves to us, hangs about us, impedes our progress, mars our comfort, torments, harasses, and grieves. Again and again we are forced to cry out, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" It is very desirable that we should pass through the world in peace with one another; let us, therefore, be considerate in our words and our deeds. The following illustration of these remarks may be found useful. Let us suppose, that at a coffee-house near London-bridge, a stranger, just arrived from Jamaica, sits sipping his tea in one of the side boxes; his feet are buried in a pair of brown slippers, and every now and then, in a musing fit, he balances his tea-spoon on the edge of his tea-cup. In a short time a conversation is begun between him and a gentleman in an adjoining box : "A fine river this Thames of yours; and a noble city, though I have seen but little of it at present." "You are a stranger, then, sir ?" "Yes, I have not been ashore above an hour, and am right glad to set my foot again on land.” "From America, perhaps, or from the East Indies ?" "No, from the West: I left Kingston, in Jamaica, just as the hurricane was over." "I have not heard of it; has it done much mischief?" "Very much, both in houses and ship. Yes; who indeed shall deliver us? we cannot deliver ourselves; for the enemy is part and portion of ourselves. Anselm, one of the fathers of the church, frames this excellent petition on this very text: Lord, deliver me from this wretched man, myself!" Neither can our fellowmen deliver us; the ungodly are all serv-ping; some of the plantations are nearly ing the law of sin, the very foe with destroyed. The number of lives that whom we have to fight. Every one of have been lost must be considerable.” the faithful has a similar body of death, wherewith to struggle for himself. He must first be the physician to heal himself. But, my fellow-soldiers in this warfare, you must find a deliverer, or perish. Your former believing will not serve, unless you still have one to believe in, whose power and love are equal to this emergency. Your former victories are lost, if you are vanquished now. That body of sin will revive to strength, and will rise and slay you, unless a deliverer can be found for you. Oh! is there one? who and where is he? who shall deliver me? It is the cry of one panting for breath, in the midst of conflict, almost overcome, looking this way and that for a deliverer. Christ is the deliverer to every one that believes.-Hambleton. MISAPPREHENSION. PERHAPS as many angry altercations among human beings take place from misapprehension as from ill-nature. The greater part of those would be prevented by the exercise of a little consideration. Away goes the gentleman to communicate the unwelcome intelligence to a friend of his, residing across the street, who has considerable interest in a cane plantation at Jamaica. During his absence, the West Indian leaves the coffeeroom, and another stranger, who has just entered the house, seats himself, and orders tea. While partaking of this refreshing beverage, he is joined by the one who has a share in the Jamaica plantation, anxious to ascertain further particulars. "You are from Kingston, sir, I understand ?” "I am, sir." "And lately arrived ?" run. "Just come ashore, never had a finer Do you know Kingston, sir ?" "No, but a friend of mine resides there; sad news about this hurricane." "Hurricane! where? I have not heard of it." "Not heard of it! I understood you got on board directly after the hurricane, and that very great damage had been done." "A hurricane at Kingston! not a bit of it, no more than there has been in London. I have lived there all my days, and never heard of such a thing as a hurricane of any account at Kingston." Just as these last words were pronounced, the West Indian, in his brown slippers, makes his appearance, and hearing the circumstance of the hurricane called in question, steps up and speaks. "Excuse me, sir, but I am direct from Kingston, and a more tremendous hurricane than that which took place just before I left, has not occurred in the memory of man, Not less than a score plantations must have been half destroyed." "Why, sir, you may as well try to persuade me that I am standing on my head instead of my heels. say that no hurricane has taken place at Kingston at all. I have lived there, man and boy, above forty years, and know every inhabitant of the place, and every plantation in the neighbourhood. Twenty plantations half destroyed! I do not know to whom they could belong. Neither mine nor those of my neighbours have felt any thing of a hurricane. Perhaps you may be indulging a joke, to make the good folks here gape and stare; but whether you are or not, there has been nothing like a hurricane at Kingston." "Sir, if I were joking, I would choose a more fit subject than a calamity that has been destructive of human life, and much property. Once for all, I again repeat, that a most fearful hurricane has taken place at Kingston, and that he who denies it is not speaking the truth." "And I say that he, let him be who he may, who says there has been any thing of the sort there, tells as big a bouncer as was ever told in the world." Symptoms of excited temper are now on the increase, and how the affair would end, it is difficult to say, if some coolheaded gentleman did not put the matter right, by asking the West Indian when he left Kingston? This produces the reply, "On the first of last month, by the Isabel WestIndiaman." On the same question being put to his opponent, the reply is, "I left Kingston in a wherry as the clock struck three this very day, and at Twickenham got on board the Diana steam-packet." Here a hearty laugh is indulged in by all; for the cause of the mistake is made clear: the one has come from Kingston in Jamaica; the other, from Kingston-on-Thames. A STRANGE INCONSISTENCY. THE persons who determine to shut their eyes on the day of judgment, are precisely those whom we should think the least likely of all mankind to do so. The ambitious man, for example, is necessarily addicted to reflection, he feels that he cannot succeed unless he lays his schemes on a very general survey. He habituates himself to see things before they come to pass, and to anticipate the effect of principles in their remotest consequences. Oh, how strange that such a person should not always have his mind running, in spite of himself, into the thought of the day when all which is mortal will come to its great result, when all schemes besides those which have been adopted for saving the soul will be destroyed, and when there can be no glory besides that of being owned by God. The covetous man has his mind occupied with schemes for avoiding poverty and amassing wealth; might it not be supposed that of all men such persons would have their minds carried to the day of Christ? Then the impenitent sinner will lose all, none of his possessions will remain to screen him from the most abject poverty; and the saint of God in an instant acquires a crown, a throne, a house not made with hands, a kingdom which cannot be moved. The man who loves pleasure, and shrinks at the slightest fatigue or the smallest pain, oh, how is he not terrified at the prospect of eternal fire, nor allured by the rest which remains for the people of God! How can he be so cruel to himself, as to leave a mind which is so susceptible, to the anguish of eternal death!-S. Young. CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF THE HEART. LET us see that our knowledge of Christ is not a powerless, barren, unpractical knowledge. Oh that, in its passage from our understanding to our lips, it might powerfully melt, sweeten, and delight our hearts! Remember, a holy calling never saved any man, without a holy heart: if our tongues only be sanctified, our whole man must be condemned.-Flavel. JOHN DAVIS, 56, Paternoster Row, London. Price d. each, or in Monthly Parts, containing Five Numbers in a Cover, 3d, W. TYLER, Printer, Bolt-court, Fleet-street. ON THE FLYING SQUIRRELS. THE general habits of the squirrels (sciurida) are so well known that we need not here dwell upon them. Active and vigorous, they live for the most part among the branches of the forest, where they build their nests, and find a refuge from their foes. One group, however, pre-eminently surpasses the rest in the distinguishing qualities of the race, is more exclusively arboreal, more quick and agile, more graceful and attractive,-we allude to the genus termed pteromys, VOL III. which includes the flying squirrels. Of all the mammalia, the bats are the only tribe which truly possess powers of flight which emulate the bird, and, upborne on "leathern wing," skim through the dominions of the air; still, in other families, we find an approximation to these powers, a modification of these means of flying in the air. Among the lemurs, for example, we meet the genus galeopithecus, characterized by a membranous expansion, not only connecting the fore and hind limbs together, but, as in the bats 3 L generally, enclosing the tail; so that the whole body is surrounded by this extent of skin. Were the muscles arranged to move this membrane, the flying lemur (G. variegatus) might strictly deserve its name; as it is, it serves as a parachute, enabling the animal to sweep from tree to tree. Again, among the opossums of New Holland we find in the genus petaurus a similar membranous expansion passing along the sides, from limb to limb, and by the action of these limbs capable of being stretched out so as to form an admirable parachute, by means of which the animals are enabled to take long leaps, and even to modify, while in the air, the direction of their course. Lastly, the family of squirrels presents us, as we have already stated, with the genus pteromys, the various species of which, like the flying opossums, (petaurus,) have an extensive lateral membrane, which assists them to skim, bird-like, from branch to branch, to precipitate themselves from the top of a tree to the ground, or to sweep from one tree to another. So lively, quick, and sudden are these elegant creatures in their movements, that they almost defy the eye to follow them; they are here, and gone, before the observer has time to mark them. The geographical distribution of this remarkable group is very extensive; its members being respectively spread through the north-eastern portions of Europe, the north of Asia, the north of America, and the islands of the Indian Archipelago; situations offering the widest contrast with respect to temperature. If we turn to Europe, we shall find the common flying squirrel (Pt. Sibiricus) among the dense and gloomy pine woods of Poland, Russia, and Siberia, where it leads a solitary life, its food consisting of uds and various roots, nuts, &c. This species is not, however, restricted to Europe; it follows in its habitat the range of the pine forests through the high latitudes of Asia, and has, till lately, been confounded with a nearly allied species from the northern regions of the American continent. In the new world, however, its place is abundantly supplied by three well-known species; first, the assepan, (le polatouche of Buffon) pteromys volucella, which is common in the United States and Canada, where it lives in small troops in the woods; secondly, the Severn river, or greater flying squirrel, (Pt. sabrinus, Shaw;) and thirdly, the rocky mountain flying squirrel, (Pt, alpinus, Richardson,) together with several varieties, which may hereafter prove to be distinct. In their habits these animals are to a great degree nocturnal; during the middle of the day they pass the hours in a state of repose, and rouse up to take food and gambol as the dusk approaches. The islands of the Indian Archipelago produce four or five species; of these we may particularize the arrow flying squirrel, pteromys sagitta, a little creature which inhabits the woods of Java, where one or two allied species (the Pt.genibarbis and lepidus, Horsfield) are also dwellers; and those large species, the taguan and splendid flying squirrels (Pt. petaurista and Pt. nitidus.) Of all the flying squirrels, the two latter are the finest in size they far exceed a cat. The specimen before us of the taguan, of which we give a figure, measures four feet one inch in total length, the tail being two feet three inches; the breadth, from point to point of the extended membrane, one foot nine inches. Of the habits of these species we have but little information; they are said to be nocturnal, and destructive to fruit trees. : Thus have we given a sketch of the species composing this singular and interesting group; creatures respecting which there is much information as yet to be desired. One thing, however, they manifest in their structure and adapted powers-the wisdom and resources of Him who, for some wise reason which we cannot fathom, has given to them intermediate organs, natural parachutes, enabling them, not indeed to fly, but to sweep along in a manner, and to an extent, which their less gifted relatives cannot aspire to imitate. M. A CRISIS-AND THE DANGER OF MISTAKE. BRETHREN, I know of no human philosophy, which can give effectual aid at such a crisis, as is described by the apostle: "For I delight in the law of God, after the inward man: but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin, which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin," Rom. vii. 22-25. Philosophers never understood this conflict. They talk, indeed, of |