MAMA. Observe from this, how ancient and venerable is the provision, (in these days of innovation so rashly disputed), for the pastors of God's flock, and the poor among his people. The tithes being thus divinely allotted, what abuse or profanation of them did the devout Israelite solemnly disclaim?

MARY. 66 Eating them in his mourning," or giving them to unclean uses or to the dead. I don't quite know what all this means.

MAMA. The Egyptians offered their first fruits to Isis, not with rejoicings, like the grateful Jew, but with " doleful lamentations." They spent much of them in impure revellings, and sacrificed largely to dead kings and heroes; all which superstitions being here abjured and renounced, the pious Israelite could with confidence put up his concluding petition; "Look down from thy holy habitation from heaven, and bless thy people Israel, and the land thou hast given us, as thou swarest unto our fathers."

Such, my dear Mary, were the leading festivals (apart from the deeper and more mysterious rites typical of Christ's atonement, which will some time hence merit your most serious consideration) of the Jewish dispensation. Judge for yourself, for it is a point on which the youngest may feel and decide, whether they were not

admirably calculated to regulate the affections, interest the heart, and banish selfishness; and by cultivating true piety, viz. love to God and man, prepare the way for that still purer dispensation, which-springing from the same Divine Authorit can never either be honourable to Him, or safe for ourselves, to disjoin (as too many do) from its admirable Mosaic forerunner,

245

MORNING TWENTY-FIRST.

LESSON,-Deuteronomy, Chapters xv. and xxii. to verse 8; xxiv. from verse 14.

MAMA. The natural order of our reading, my dear Mary, has brought us to the part of the dying exhortation of Moses, more especially containing those kind and merciful provisions in the law of Jehovah, to which I have often referred, as sufficing to establish its Divine origin, and raise it immeasurably above every system of legislation devised by human wisdom and benevolence. To leave you ignorant of these, would be to deprive you of one of the most delightful branches of Scriptural knowledge; and of one of the most powerful arguments in favour of the genuineness and inspiration of those Old Testament writings in which they occur. But as a continued perusal of the chapters containing them would involve a departure from our plan of omitting for the present all notice of the pecu

liar institutions of the Jews,-apart from that mo. rality which is older than the Law, and will survive the Gospel-we must content ourselves with gleaning them as we go along, and corroborating them, as our memories serve, by the many similar injunctions with which our past reading, or the omitted portions of the previous books of Moses, also abound.

Let us begin with the beautiful provision against covetousness and hardness of heart contained in the first of our chapters. What was the meaning of the " year of release ?"

MARY, Every seventh year, creditors were to excuse their debtors from paying what they owed, because it was "the Lord's release." Mama, this would rather make them hard-hearted and afraid to lend, for fear of never getting it back.

MAMA, And it is precisely the gracious antidote to such natural perversity of feeling, which the Lord of the poor and needy condescends here to provide, when he says, "Beware that there be not a thought in thy wicked heart, saying, the year of release is at hand, and thine eye be evil against thy poor brother, and thou givest him nought, and he cry unto the Lord against thee, and it be sin unto thee."

"Thou shalt surely give him, and thine heart

shall not be grieved when thou givest unto him;"

and why, Mary?

MARY. "Because that for this thing the Lord thy God shall bless thee in all that thou puttest thine hand unto." This was a selfish reason, Mama; surely loving our neighbour was a better.

MAMA. You forget the temporal rewards on which the whole dealings of God with the Jews are, for wise reasons, founded. But I am glad you do not lose sight of the higher and purer motives in which Christian charity has its source, How long was the commanded liberality of the pious Israelite to endure?

MARY.

Till there were 66 no poor in the land;" and as God says afterwards that they should "never cease out of the land"-of course charity was to last for ever too.

MAMA. Have we any New Testament corroboration of the inequality of human conditions, as a permanent dispensation of Providence? What said our Lord when pretended regard for humanity brought censure on the pious work of Mary?

MARY. "The poor ye have always with you." MAMA. And so it will be to the end of time ; else charity, the fairest and most godlike of the Christian virtues, would lose much of its appro,