and gifts and graces of the Holy Ghost to render Christianity beneficial to men, and quite another thing to have a deep and practical persuasion of it, and to regulate all our feelings and expectations on the momentous subject of converting the world, by a continual reference to this most interesting truth.-Robert Hall.

NO VIRTUE BUT IN RELIGION.

Solid virtue can be grafted upon no stock but that of religion; universal righteousness can be raised on none but Gospel principles. "Who is he that overcometh the world but he that believeth that Jesus is the Christ ?"—Lucas.

Grace never appears grace till appears to be sin. The deeper the sense of the evil of sin is, the deeper our apprehensions of the free grace of God in Christ will be.Flavel.

A PARSEE PRAYER.

A singular circumstance attended the thanksgiving at Bombay desired by the Governor-General for our successes in the Crimea. On the 2nd of December, the day fixed upon, the Parsees of their own accord met in the Townhall to listen to a lecture on the freedom and blessings of the British Government, contrasted with the tyranny and oppression of Russia, drawn up and delivered by one of their countrymen-Dossabhoy Framjee. The lecture being concluded, the service of the day was wound up by the following prayer, not only remarkable for its own excellence and appropriateness, but doubly so as one of the first ever delivered by a layman in public, and in the ordinary conversational language of the hearers, the Parsee worship being conducted, and their sacred books being written, wholly in an unknown tongue, unintelligible to the worshippers, and very imperfectly understood by the great body of the priesthood themselves :-"O Almighty God, let Thy shadow always fall wherever the British rule exists. Grant it, O God, success in all its undertakings. Vanquish by the aid of Thy powerful hands all its enemies, and grant that its greatness may still rise and its moral effects be spread over a still greater portion of the world.

Receive our humble acknowledgments, O Lord, for having placed us under such a beneficent rule, and we pray to Thee to preserve us under it. Grant, O Heaven, that the Government over our head be actuated in ruling over us with still greater kindness, and its effects be spread still wider. O Almighty protector, preserve for ever secure our lives and properties, as they now are-and grant that the security may be still more strengthened. Bestow, O Lord, a still more merciful heart to the Queen who reigns over us. We pray to Thee, O Almighty God, to bless her armies with success in the great war in which they are now engaged, and bring to a speedy end the great strife, by granting victory to those who have gone to shed their blood in the right cause. Grant, O gracious God, that we may continue to live as we now do, with perfect security to ourselves, under the Government in which we now are, and that we may ever be impressed, with a grateful sense of the advantages which we may enjoy under this benign reign. Amen."

MONTGOMERY'S LAST HYMN. The following hymn was written by the venerable James Montgomery for a friend, on the very day before his death. The manuscript (says the "Sheffield Times,") betrayed no indication of trembling or old age, and might be taken to be the work of a person in middle life, instead of that of an octogenarian who was just about to lay down his pen for

ever:

Oh come, all ye weary,

And ye heavy laden,

Lend a glad ear to your Saviour's call;

Fearing or grieving,

Yet humbly believing,

Rest, rest for your souls He offers to all.

Oh, then sing Hosanna

With jubilant voices,

And follow His train with willing accord;
Like Him, meek and lowly,

In heart and life, holy,

Own Christ, as good servants, your Master and Lord.

THE JUVENILE COMPANION.

How easy His yoke is!
How light is His burden!

But what He suffered no language can tell;
His grief in the garden

To purchase our pardon,

His pangs on the cross to save us from hell.
Hence loud Hallelujah

Shall sound without ceasing;

And till they all meet in the kingdom above,
The living, the living,

Prayer, praise, and thanksgiving,

Shall joyfully render their love.

THE DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB.
THE Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of his spears were like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls mighty on deep Galilee.
Like the leaves of the forest when summer is
That host with their banner at sunset were seen;
green,
Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.

For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breath'd in the face of the foe as he pass'd;
And the eyes of the sleeper waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!

And there lay the steed with his nostrils all wide,
But through it there roll'd not the breath of his pride;
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.

And there lay the rider distorted and pale,
With the dew on his brow and the rust on his mail;
And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
The lances unlifted, the trumpets unblown.

And the widows of ASHUR are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temples of BAAL;
And the might of the GENTILE, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the LORD!

Byron.

ACCUSTOMED as we are to the remarkable economy of many of our British gregarious insects, the white ants of America and Africa form a striking contrast in regard to their number, their depredations, and their social organization, to the limited development of these qualities and tendencies in the ant, the bee, and the wasp. The white ants, or termites, belong to the order Neuroptera, of the class insects, and are characterised by naturalists as terrestrial insects, carnivorous or omnivorous, and living in societies like the bees, the wasps, and the ants of this country. Allied to the insects just mentioned, they nevertheless differ from them in many points of structure, the requisite illustration of which would be of too abstruse a nature for

the object of this publication. Our object (at present) is to select whatever, in the economy of nature or the achievements of art, partakes of the wonderful; and therefore we pass over the details of scientific classification, and make direct for whatever in the history of the termites may be deemed elements of the wonderful. Fortunately, there is no lack of wonder here, for the entire history and habits of these creatures is of the most extraordinary kind. In the first place, the members of the white ant communities are divided into four separate orders, namely, workers, soldiers, kings, and queens. Smeathman, who first furnished a complete account of these creatures, denominated the two latter classes the nobility, because they neither labour nor fight. The workers are the imperfect insects or larvæ; grubs, or maggots in fact, which have to go through another metamorphosis before they become perfect insects. The soldiers are the perfect insects, corresponding to the working classes of our ants and bees, and are destitute of sex; while the kings and queens are the perfect males and females which propagate the race. It is worth mentioning here, that it has recently been discovered that the neuter, or working insects, in all bee and ant communities, are females, in whom the organs of generation are undeveloped, and that strictly they are not sexless but sterile. The workers abound in countless numbers, and by their united exertions the conical hills of earth are raised in which the community reside. The workers are about a quarter of an inch in length, and differ but slightly in shape and appearance from those more advanced in life. The soldiers are about half an inch in length, and in general bulk equal to about fifteen labourers. In the larva state the mouth was evidently formed for gnawing, or for holding bodies; but in the soldier condition they are fully armed and equipped for war, being shaped like two sharp awls, a little jagged, and destined exclusively for piercing and wounding. They are as hard as crab's claws, and fixed in a strong horny head, which is larger than the rest of the body, so that in this stage of existence the white ant is prohibited, by his own