The subject then, must regulate his conduct by a declaration, in whatever way imparted, of his sovereign's will. If there be a God; and if man, as a moral and responsible agent, has to do with him, we can return but one answer to the question--What is that rule by which he is to guide his wandering foot-steps, that standard to which he must refer every thing? That answer must be-The will of God.

The power of God is uncontrollably absolute, there is no will superior to his. None, then, of his subjects can determine the laws to which they are subjected. His will, must be the law, or rule of duty, to dependent and accountable creatures. The virtue, or moral rectitude of the subject, consists in conformity of heart and life of principle and conduct, to the will of that great Being to whom he owes the most devoted allegiance, according to the dictates of an infallible and an unimpeachable law.

How then do men become acquainted with the law by which their conduct is to be regulated and tried? Has any full and infallible discovery of it been vouchsafed to man? This law is to be found in the volume of Divine Revelation alone.

You, my reader, are in possession of this record of God's revealed will. You must not then read it with cold indifference, as you would do any human work ; you must read it carefully, and attentively, and prayerfully; you must meditate frequently upon its truths and doctrines, you must in short make it "the man of your counsel." Your responsibility will be awful, if you suffer this most valuable of all treasures to lie by you unopened, or if you read it merely as a task. Remember, that "the servant which knew his master's will, and did it not, shall be beaten with many stripes." We have said that your conduct ought to be conformed to its principles. You must disregard the world's merely conventional code of morality. You must not say "What will my acquaintances say of this conduct?" but "Is it what the Bible sanctions and approves?"

ONESIMUS.

MANASSEH BEYOND JORDAN.

(With a Map.)

THE decisive conquests gained by the Israelites over

"Sihon

king of the Amorites, and Og king of Bashan," made them masters

of the whole eastern bank of the Jordan and the lake of Chinnereth or Genesareth. After the subsequent war against Midian, in which Balaam fell, some of the Israelites began to think they had done enough, and after stipulating that their warriors, leaving their wives and flocks behind them, should assist in the conquest of Palestine, Moses assigned to Reuben, Gad, and the half tribe of Manasseh, the whole of the conquered territory. And "this was the possession of the half tribe of the children of Manasseh by their families; and their coast was from Mahanaim, all Bushan, all the kingdom of Og king of Bashan, and all the towns of Jair, which are in Bashan, threescore cities. And half Gilead, and Ashtaroth, and Edrei, cities of the kingdom of Og in Bashan, were pertaining unto the children of Machir, the son of Manasseh, even to the one half of the children of Machir by their families." (Josh. xiii. 29-31.)

RELIGION AND THE WORLD.

An Appeal to the Young.

"Were it left to my choice," says Mrs. Judson, "whether to follow the vanities of the world, and go to heaven at last, or to live a religious life, have trials with sin and temptation, and sometimes enjoy the light of God's reconciled countenance, I should not hesitate a moment in choosing the latter; for there is no real satisfaction in the enjoyments of time and sense. If the young in the midst of their diversions, could picture to themselves the Saviour hanging on the cross, and reflect that by their wicked lives they open his wounds afresh, they would be constrained to repent, and cry for mercy on their souls. O Lord, let me never more join with the wicked world, or take enjoyment in any thing short of conformity to thy holy will. May I ever keep in mind the solemn day when I shall appear before thee. May I ever flee to the bleeding Saviour as my only refuge, and renouncing my own righteousness, may I rely entirely on the righteousness of thy dear Son!"

She who wrote the above expressive lines has, we hope, long since realized the full enjoyments of the glory prepared for all who love God. Her life was devoted to His service on earth; to Him she consecrated her time and talents. O let her voice be heard B. V. by every reader of the Youths' Magazine.

SCRIPTURE ILLUSTRATIONS.

AMON-NO.

"Art thou better than populous No, that was situate among the rivers, that had the waters round about it, whose rampart was the sea, and her wall was from the sea? Ethiopia and Egypt were her strength; Put and Lubim were thy helpers. Yet was she carried away, she went into captivity; her young children also were dashed in pieces at the top of all the streets: and they cast lots for her honourable men, and all her great men were bound in chains." Nahum iii. 8-10.

Ir is singular that our best commentators should have made no distinction between the No-Amon here mentioned, and the city of the same name spoken of by Jeremiah and Ezekiel. For Nahum declares one of them to have been desolated in his time; and he wrote this prophecy at least 700 years before the Christian era, whilst the other prophets who lived afterwards, refer to the doom of No-Amon as still future.

The term employed to designate this city, signifies simply the dwelling of Ammon; and there were certainly two, if not three places in Egypt, called by the Greeks, Diospolis, which has the same meaning. It is therefore probable that the No-Amon of Nahum was old Thebes, and that Calmet and the majority of interpreters are right in applying the prophetic denouncements of Jeremiah and Ezekiel to a city of the same name in Lower Egypt. Some annotators have stumbled at the expressions, "her rampart was the sea, and her wall was from the sea," and have imagined that a city, bearing this name, existed upon the spot where Alexandria now stands; but all antiquity is silent upon this point; nor is there the slightest necessity for such a supposition; for the term "sea" is not unfrequently applied in scripture to any great collection of water, whether lake, pool, or river, and we know that the Nile was customarily so designated in former times. (See Diod. Sic. lib. i. § 1, c. 7 and 9.) The Arabs at this day bestow the appellation bahr on great rivers generally; and thus the old channel of the Nile, that branched off at Memphis, is called bahr be la ma, or sea without water. Savary's Letters on Egypt, vol. 1, let. 1.

The cities and towns occupying the lower parts of Egypt, are unquestionably of more recent origin than those which lie towards Ethiopia; and indeed Herodotus speaks of the soil itself, in the Delta, as of no very remote formation, and hence takes occasion to ridicule an experiment which the people of the country had resorted to in order to prove their great antiquity. (See his Euterpe.) VOL. IX. 3rd SERIES.

I

It is quite obvious that the seat of government had undergone successive removes from Thebes to Memphis, and thence to Alexandria; for at the time when Troy was besieged, about twelve centuries before Christ, Thebes was in the zenith of its glory, and as such is described by Homer; whilst Memphis, if indeed it then existed, receives no notice from him, but is mentioned, as in all its pomp and splendour, seven centuries and a half afterwards, by Herodotus. And with regard to Alexandria, its name sufficiently indicates the period of its foundation.

The recent discoveries in hieroglyphics, which have thrown much light upon those early times mentioned in the books of the Old Testament, have tended to identify the No-Amon, of Nahum, with Thebes of Egypt, for the latter name is written in these sacred characters, AMON-AI; and the Hebrew 1, is a mere dialectical form of 17, which signifies a dwelling or habitation, as does also, the very word used in the Egyptian hieroglyphic.

The No-Amon, of Nahum, appears, therefore, to be the ancient Thebes; and as such, how admirably has the pen of inspiration characterized it by the simple epithet "populous," for this expression concentrates the whole force of Homer's eulogium of its ancient grandeur. He describes it as having one hundred gates; a phrase which Diodorus supposes may refer to the repositories for those chariots and horses which it sent forth to the wars, two hundred of which, properly manned, mounted, and accoutred, issued from each of them on any emergency-" Yet was she carried away; she went into captivity."

We have something approaching towards a proof of fact. Herodotus, who wrote about 450 years before Christ, though he visited personally the regions lying beyond it, gives no description at all of this once splendid city—

"The world's great empress on th' Egyptian plains."

He is very diffuse in his account of Memphis, which seems at that time to have been the chief city of Egypt; but Thebes is passed over with an incidental notice, which would hardly have been the case, had it not already seen the climax of its power and glory. To say the least, his silence upon a subject which had fired the