did not take him, but preserved him in the world when all else perished, and made him the second father of mankind. This, therefore, is surely a high privilege, being visited with such distinguished honour. Who is there among us that will not covet it, strive after it and mourn for it, if it should prove to be among the honours of a past condition? But let us not mourn. This privilege is indeed ours-is as open to us as it was to the fathers before the flood-and is at this day as highly considered by God as it was in times of old. And do not our hearts burn within us to know this? Do we not instantly resolve to gird our pilgrim loins, and walk with God for the rest of our life's rough and troubled way? Alas! too many of us have small care about it. Too many of us hear with but languid interest, with but half-concealed indifference, that it may be our privilege to walk with God as truly as Enoch walked, as truly as Noah walked, with Him. And is it an easy matter to walk with God? Alas! nothing of the spiritual life is easy to the proud natural heart of man; but when the spirit of God has made that heart soft, to walk with God is an easy and a pleasant thing; and to tread the rough paths of the world by his side, and under his protection and upholding grace, becomes the highest and most cherished privilege of our pilgrim state. And what, then, is it to walk with God? If thou art a father, take thy little son by the hand and walk forth with him upon the breezy hills. As that little child walks with thee, so do thou walk with God. That child loves thee now. The world-the cold and cruel world-has not yet come between his heart and thine, and it may be hoped that it never will. His love now is the purest and most beautiful he will ever feel, or thou wilt ever receive. Cherish it well; and as that child walks lovingly with thee, so do thou walk lovingly with God. But he walks humbly also. He looks up to thee as the greatest and the wisest man in the world-and in his world thou art such. He has not seen thee subject to the proud man's contumely-he has not witnessed thy visage become pale before "the cold charities of man to man;" he comprehendeth not the foolishness of thy wisest things. He only knows thee in thy strength, where thou art lawgiver and king, and where thy master is far away. Thus conscious of thy greatness, and unconscious of thy littleness, he walks humbly with thee; and thus humbly as he walks, do thou walk with Him whose strength is real, for it can bear even the burden of thy sins; whose wisdom is real, for even thy foolishness cannot perplex it. And thy little son has faith in thee-he walks confidingly with thee. The way may be long, and rough and trying-but he knows that if he wearies, his father can carry him through in his arms. The way may to his thought be dangerous; he deems that there may be evil beasts in the wood, or evil men by the road. But he fears not. He feels that his father's strong arm is between him and all danger, and he believes that no harm can befal him by his father's side. How happy is he, how free, how joyous, in his trust in thee! The trials that perplex thy life are unfelt by him. The griefs that rend thy heart touch him but lightly. Thou bearest all his burden. His life's welfare rests upon thy going in and thy coming out; and he knoweth it not. He needs not know it. He feels with unmisgiving faith, that thou art his shield, and rests in gleeful peace behind that broad protection which shuts out all care and thought of the rough world from his view. Thus confidingly as thy son walks with thee, walk thou with God. Believe that "Thou art as much his care, as if, beside, No man nor angel lived in heaven or earth." Believe of Christ that "On thee and thine, thy warfare and thy end, Even in his hour of agony he thought." And believe that if thou walkest trustingly, lovingly, and humbly with God-even as thy son walketh with thee-thou walkest with Him as Enoch walked, and shalt not fail of as high a recompense. There is no way of walking with God but as a little child. To the world we may offer a bold and resolute front, for there is much to try us, much to battle with, there. But to God we can only turn with childlike trust and love, crying to him in the certainty of his love, in reliance upon his power, and in the humbleness of our hearts— "My Father, thou art the guide of my youth!" Furthermore, to walk with God as Enoch walked, is under all circumstances to realize his presence with us. When Moses asked of the Lord, "Show me thy way"-meaning the way the Lord would have him to go through the toilsome wilderness-what was the answer? Did he describe the way to him? No: but he told him something far better-" My Presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest." What needed Moses to know more of the way than that? In all his walk and travel, God would be ever present with him, to guide all his steps -the light before him, the shade at his right hand. This was enough for Moses; and it is enough for us in our no less perilous journey through the waste howling wilderness. If we walk with God, if we enjoy his presence in all our way, it is well with us we are safe, we have rest. men walk not alike with God. Some "Leap exulting like the bounding roe," All in the joy of their hearts and the fulness of their grace. Others move on with strong, but staid and steady pace; and some walk lamely, and struggle on with pain and labour; but they all walk-and if they keep God's presence with them, they are all safe -for all walk with God. Is not this in fact the test of one's walk with God? To walk with God, is to walk as THE PILLAR OF ONE of the most remarkable incidents in the history of the destruction of the Cities of the Plain, is, that the wife of Lot, looking, and probably lingering behind, "became a pillar of salt.' The explanation of this now usually current, is that of Bishop Patrick. The reader has, no doubt, seen it in many varied forms of phraseology, and we may therefore present it in the words of the author. The Bishop thinks, then, "that some of that storm which overwhelmed her country, overtook her; and falling upon her, as she stood staring about, and minded not her way or guide, suddenly wrapped her body in a sheet of nitro-sulphureous matter; which, congealing into a crust as hard as stone, made her appear, they say, as a pillar of salt, her body being, as it were, candied in it." This explanation is, however, older than Patrick, though he may be regarded as having made it current in this country; for this view of the subject had been before entertained by many Jewish and Christian writers. We have no explanation to offer that seems to us better suited to meet the recorded circumstances. From the nature of the case, and from the peculiarly bituminous and saline character of the locality, through which this phenomenon was produced, we must not expect to discover many parallel instances which might be quoted in illustration. Accordingly, we find that the illustrative parallels which have been diligently sought out by old commentators, have rarely any real bearing on the subject; being, for the most part, accounts of persons frozen to death, and long preserved in that condition uncorrupted, in the boreal regions; or else of persons first suffocated, and then petrified, by the mineral vapours of the cave in which they were hid; or otherwise, of persons "turned to stone," and found, generations after, standing in the posture wherein they met their death. The only instance that we have met with that seems appropriate, and to rest on the authority of a contemporary of fair credit, is related by Aventinus, who states that, in his time, about fifty country people, with their cows and calves, were, in Carinthia, destroyed by in God's presence. If, therefore, the feeling that he is ever present with thee, that his eye is always upon thy heart, be a trouble and not a joy to thee, a terror and not a hope-there is ground for fear that thou hast not yet attained to the blessedness of walking with God as Enoch walked, and as the saints in all ages have walked with him. SALT.-GEN. xix, 26. strong and suffocating saline exhalations which arose out of the earth, immediately upon the earthquake of 1348. They were by this reduced to saline statues or pillars, like Lot's wife, and the historian tells us, that they had been seen by himself and the chancellor of Austria. It is to be noticed, that the word translated a "pillar," does not express any particular form, but denotes any fixed standing object. The probability seems to be, however, that by the rapid cooling of the nitro-sulphureous crust which enveloped the woman, she became fixed in a standing position, which might become a nucleus for more of the same materials, leaving an object of considerable bulk, widest at the base, but probably of no considerable height. It would scarcely seem that such a saline body was likely to be of long duration, in a very humid climate, subject in winter to heavy rains, and the action of watercourses. If God designed that it should be preserved as a monument of the transaction, there is no difficulty in supposing that it was so. But this does not appear to have been the case. There is no allusion to any such monument, as still subsisting, in the whole Scripture; and the usual formula, "unto this day," by which the sacred writers in the history of great transactions usually indicate the continuance, to their own time, of ancient monuments and names, is in this instance omitted. Besides, the whole appearance of the district, and of the lake which now covers the vale of Sidon, is, to this day, a most grand and standing monument of the whole of that dreadful judgment of which the death of Lot's wife was one incident; and of the woman herself, the record in the book of Genesis is itself the most striking and ineffaceable memorial. Nevertheless, when men, acquainted with this history, found in the neighbourhood something like a pillar, or some erect figure composed of salt, they immediately concluded that they had found the pillar into which Lot's wife was turned. Some necessity was felt to account for its preservation for so many ages; and while, on the one hand, it was alleged that it was preserved by the miraculous reproduction of the wasted parts; on the other, it has been held sufficient to suppose, that all waste was naturally repaired by the deposits of the dense exhalations with which the air was impregnated. The first notice of its existence-supposed existence is in the apocryphal Book of Wisdom, written in the first or second century before Christ. Speaking of the destruction of the Cities of the Plain, the writer says: "Of whose wickedness even to this day the waste land that smoketh is a testimony, and plants bearing fruit that never come to ripeness: and a standing pillar of salt is a monument of an unbelieving soul." Wisd. x. 7. This shows clearly enough the opinion prevailing among the Jews in the time of the writer of the Book of Wisdom. Josephus declares that it was standing in his time, and that he had seen it with his own eyes. This is conclusive that he had seen a pillar of salt by the Dead Sea, and that he believed it to be the one into which Lot's wife was changed; but we have no evidence which can satisfy us that his impression was correct. Any actually transmitted knowledge of such a monument, must have been broken during their sojourn in Egypt for some generations; and ever afterwards, and indeed always, the monument, if it still existed, lay in a quarter away from all travelled routes, and but rarely visited by Jews, even when Palestine was fully peopled. Clement of Rome, a christian contemporary of Josephus, also states, in one of his epistles, that the pillar of Lot's wife was still in existence; and Irenæus, in the next century, repeats the statement, with the addition of an hypothesis as to how it came to last so long with all its parts entire. The statement of Jewish rabbis and christian fathers is to, the same effect: but as they merely repeat these earlier statements, little is really added to the weight of testimony. At length travellers began to inquire after this remarkable monument. The success of their inquiries may enlighten us as to the source and origin of the earlier accounts and may well suggest that the natives of the region and neighbouring shepherds, have in all instances imposed upon the credulity of travellers, by following their usual practice of answering leading questions in accordance with the assumed wish of the inquirer, and even by pointing out any object that could be made to pass for what the traveller sought. We have been at some pains to make, for our own satisfaction, a collection of instances; and we find that hardly any two of them agree as to the locality in which the mysterious pillar was shown to them, or in which they were assured that it existed. Some find it on the east side of the lake, others on the west side; some near the northern extremity, others at the southern; some find it upon a rock, or cliff, or slope; others upon the beach, or in the water, or under the water. In proportion as inquiry has become more exact, our accounts of this pillar have been fewer, and most of the best travellers who have been in this quarter for the last two hundred years, have left the subject altogether unnoticed. The researches of the recent American expedition to the Dead Sea, have thrown new and interesting light upon the subject. The course of their survey could hardly fail to bring under notice every marked object upon either shore; and one they did find, an obviously natural formation, which -or others in former times like which might readily be taken by persons unaccustomed to weigh circumstances with the precision we are now accustomed to exact, for the pillar of Lot's wife. Among the salt mountains of Usdum, on the west side of the kind of bay which forms the southern extremity of the Dead Sea, the party beheld, while boating along the shore, to their great astonishment, a lofty round pillar, standing apparently detached from the general mass, at the head of a deep, narrow, and abrupt chasm. They landed, and proceeded towards this object, over a beach of soft, slimy mud, encrusted with salt; and at a short distance from the water, covered with saline fragments and flakes of bitumen; the pillar was found to be of solid salt, capped with carbonate of lime, cylindrical in front, and pyramidal behind. The upper or rounded part is about forty feet high, resting upon a kind of oval pedestal or mound, from forty to sixty feet above the level of the sea. It slightly decreases in size upwards, crumbles at the top, and is one entire mass of crystallisation. It is not isolated, though it appears so in front. A prop or buttress connects it with the mountain behind, and the whole is covered with debris of a light stone colour. It is added by the narrator of the expedition, that "its peculiar shape is, doubtless, owing to the action of the winter rains." It had previously been heard from the Arabs, that such a pillar was to be found somewhere upon the shores of the sea; but their reports in all other matters had proved so unsatisfactory, that little attention had been paid to them in this instance. Lieut. Lynch, the officer who was in command of the expedition, and who has written the account of its discoveries, does not suppose he has here found the pillar of Lot's wife, nor does it appear that even the Arabs had stated it to be such; but it is very properly pointed out, that it was probably a pillar of this sort, produced by the action of water upon one of the masses of rock salt which abound towards the south ern extremity of the Dead Sea, that the ancient writers had in view, and which they supposed to be that into which Lot's wife was turned. We now see the natural process by which such pillars are formed. It seems to us, that the pillar of Lot's wife must have been on the opposite side of the lake, for the fugitives were proceeding to Zoar, which lay in that direction. And it does not escape our notice, that the unhappy woman appears to have been overtaken by her death in the plain, whereas HOUDLEY this pillar stands upon a hill from forty to sixty feet above the beach, with loftier mountains immediately behind. The pillar itself, also, is forty feet high, which we should suppose to be considerably taller than either Lot or his wife. Yet all these circumstances would, in ages of less exact observation, have had no weight; and this very pillar would assuredly have been pronounced as being, beyond all doubt or question, "the monument of an unbelieving soul." Notices of New Publications, UNITED PRESBYTERIAN FATHERS.-Vol. III. Lives of E. Erskine, Wilson, and Gillespie. Vol. IV. Memorials of Moncrieff and Fisher. Edinburgh: A. Fullarton & Co. Ir is a complaint frequently, and not altogether unjustly, preferred against the present age, that its literature is chiefly of the kind called fugitive. Each fixed season, of shorter or longer recurrence, has its shower of periodicals, which it pours forth on the public mind, through the weekly sheet and monthly magazine, up to the quarterly review; while, near the time at which we write, the annuals make their appearance, short-lived like their namesakes, or shorter still, as if that shower of meteors which meets our earth about the 13th of November, had been, a little further in its orbit, transferred to the literary firmament. The feature remarked characterises, as much as any others, the works that address themselves to the christian public. We have not only our religious newspapers, but our religious annuals. This state of things has both its sunshine and its shadow. To the side of the former may be reckoned the profusion with which it scatters the leaves of knowledge over the entire community, so that the constant novelty, the ready accessibility, and the inviting form, tempt the most indolent to stretch forth the hand, and seize" one as it flutters by. On the dark side this disadvantage is not the least, that the quick revolution of the steam-press leaves scarcely an interval to digest its previous product. Each returning tide obliterates the impressions that were forming between the brief ebb and flow, and the mind remains like the shore of the ever-fluctuating, but, for that reason-according to the epithet of the old Greek-the unfruitful sea. Our fathers had fewer books, but they made them the subjects of deeper study. They did not read so much-at least, they did not read so many things-but they thought more and to better purpose. A good book was to them like a tried friend; and they passed their days and hours with it, till its pages were like the features of an old acquaintance, and its choice peculiarities of thought and feeling, were reflected by their own mind and heart. If their knowledge was not so extensive as ours, their wisdom had an eye of deeper insight; and, if their practice took a more narrow range in the field of public christian activity, their grasp of principles was stronger and more tenacious. We take it as a token for good, that there is a tendency in the popular religious literature to return to the reading of the past-a remembrance of the injunction-"thine own and thy father's friend forsake not." And even though it be at first in the form only of "Memorials" and "Remains," we have the hope that the revived taste for old divinity will go further ere it be satisfied. It will be better, in many respects, with our christian churches, when these venerable names become again household words, and their works an indispensable part of the household furniture. We need not diminish our activity by recalling their firm and solid principles, nor abate a tittle of our catholicity, by re-establishing their thorough regard for a consistent system of scriptural truth. Such a return becomes a strong necessity in the midst of these very tendencies towards unity. Never was there greater need than now that Christians should know and value fixed principles, lest catholicity pass over into barren and lawless latitudinarianism. The centripetal attraction must be strengthened as the circumference of our vision and movement widens, else we shall break away into unknown regions of disorder and darkness. For these, and other grounds, which it would be long to enumerate, we cannot help thinking the appearance and progress of such a series as that which heads this notice, peculiarly well-timed. Since our last notice of the series, two new volumes have appeared, and both of them answer all the expectations we were led to cherish. The first of these-the third of the series-contains the lives of Ebenezer Erskine, William Wilson, and Thomas Gillespie, by Drs Harper, Eadie, and Lindsay, respectively. Although the principal public events in the different lives are already known to the readers of the introductory volume, we are certain all the narratives will be perused with unabated interest. The judicious manage. ment of them has guarded against the repetition of previously-uttered sentiments, or the lengthened recital of familiar facts. Dr Harper has established a clear right of property to his life of Ebenezer Erskine, by his original remarks on the different turning-points of his public history, and by the view given of his christian character, in the relations of the family and of private friendship. The remarks on public events are distinguished by all the writer's keen and practised intellect, accustomed "rightly to divide," and by his nervous and piquant style. We direct attention, particularly, to his observations on the Marrow controversy, and the grounds on which the first Seceders took up their position. The view given of the private life of the man of God is refreshing, amidst the violence of Assemblies and Commissions. It repeats the impression we feel when, after reading some of the stormy events of David's life in the public Chronicles of Israel, we can turn to a psalm breathed apart, at that very season, in secret, and can discern, under the tempestuous surface of earthly conflict, the calm, deep, under-current of communion with God. The reality to the subject of it must have been more than refreshing-it was the hidden source of that strength which he manifested in outward trial. If we have, in the first father of the Secession, a tranquil dignity that rises above surrounding commotion, reminding us of the fine contrast of serenity and storm in the picture of the poet "Summâ placidum caput extulit undâ." that midway leaves the storm," we must seek it here, in the untroubled depths from which the man emerges to the scene of struggle. The same feature, we may observe, comes to view in the other narratives; and the incitement personally to realise it, forms one great benefit to be derived from the perusal of these Memoirs. The second narrative, that of the Life of William Wilson, presents us with the record of one whose merits have not in general been adequately acknowledged. No one can read Dr Eadie's able memoir of him without agreeing in his opinion, that the United Presbyterian Church owes to him a debt of gratitude not inferior to that which belongs to any other of its founders. The sage counsellor, the skilful |