in the prolonged punishment, and final exclusion from Canaan, of all those men who had seen His glory and miracles, and ten times provoked Him by their ungrateful rebellion. Not one of them was to "see the land which He sware unto their fathers,"- "their carcases were to fall in the wilderness," and their unhappy children were to be visited for their fathers' sins, by forty years' delay in possessing their well nigh forfeited inheritance. Let this awful decree convince us, Mary, that "God is not mocked," nor his promises undervalued with impunity,-nor let the measure of temporal forbearance, or even prosperity enjoyed by despisers, ever blind us to their ultimate and infallible doom beyond the grave. As surely as no grown man who disbelieved God in the wilderness should go over Jordan, and taste of the plenty of Canaan-shall no scoffer who denies or neglects the Gospel, ever cross the "great gulf" which is "fixed" between them, who, by their sentiments and practices, have "made God a liar," and those, who, believing "the truth as it is in Jesus," have " a right to the water and tree of life."

Were there any exceptions to God's awful doom of exclusion?

MARY.

Yes, Caleb and Joshua. They were

to go into the promised land at the end of the forty years, and they "lived still" when God cut off by the plague the ten other spies.

MAMA. From which signal instance of vengeance on the chief offenders, we may learn how peculiar is the guilt of those, who, by word or example, lead others into sin. In the falsehood and cowardice of the spies lay the whole root of Israel's transgression, and justly were they made exceptions from the nation's reprieve. How long were these respited offenders to wander, a joint monument of God's anger and mercy, in the wilderness?

MARY. Forty years, Mama; a year for every day that they had searched the land.

MAMA. From this as well as many parts of Scripture we may gather a correspondence, to us as yet mysterious, between guilt and its measure of punishment; and though we know that the sufferings of eternity will bear to the sins of time a proportion frightfully exceeding that of years to days in the chastisement of Israel, yet the one may serve to remind us of the other, and make us hesitate to purchase even years of misery, by moments, at best, of sinful indulgence.

One circumstance more is recorded for our

edification in the chapters we have read. Did the Israelites humbly acquiesce in the mitigated sentence of their Divine lawgiver?

MARY. No, no; they wanted to go forward and fight now, when God had forbidden them. MAMA. And with what success did they insult Him by a mock semblance of obedience? MARY. Oh! they were beaten by the Amalekites and Canaanites, just as they had said they should be.

MARY. Because the ark of God, and Moses, never went out of the camp, and God was "not among them."

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MAMA. My dear Mary, this is not the least striking of those symbolical events which an apostle tells us are written unto us for ensamples!" As surely as the Israelites going forth in their own strength, and neglectful, nay forsaken of God, had their presumption rebuked by falling before their temporal enemies-shall we, for whom armour of proof is provided in the Gospel, and a banner set up there, which to follow is certain conquest, be utterly discomfited, in the unauthorized and unhallowed struggle which some vainly pretend to maintain with the corruptions of nature, and assaults of the powers of darkness!

Apart from God and his ark, the Israelites (like Samson when sin had robbed him of his symbolical strength) were powerless; and so is every Christian who has not said with St. Paul, “ I can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me;"" and the life I now lead in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me."

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MORNING THIRTEENTH.

LESSON.-Numbers, Chapters xv. (from verse 32), xvi. and xvii.

MAMA. Our reading to-day, my dear Mary, has been throughout of an unusually painful and appalling character, consisting almost wholly of the recorded judgments of God on offenders, obstinate and impenitent indeed, but "men of like passions with ourselves," and, as such, objects of unconscious and not unnatural sympathy. I knew from your grave countenance and pitying tone while reading, that thoughts were passing through your young mind, which, if they did not exactly dare to question, led you to wonder at the severity manifested in these Divine dispensations; and as the sure result of every careful examination of them is, (as our great poet says,) to "vindicate the ways of God to man,”—I shall be glad to hear how they struck you, before using