Commissioners for Foreign Missions, to which he gave a donation of $500.

Mr. Boudinot reached the advanced age of eighty-two, and died in 1821, a devout follower of the world's Redeemer. The death-bed of the aged pilgrim was cheered by the faith and the promises of the blessed book which had guided and supported him through so long a life, and the circulation of which had been an object of his devout ambition. He was prepared to meet his end, and was sensible to the last. He closed the work of life with the prayer, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit."

Mr. Boudinot early married the daughter of Richard Stockton. He left an only daughter, and, suitably providing for her, bequeathed the most of his large estate to those objects which had been dearest to his heart through life. These were the promotion of literature and the diffusion of religion. He devoted four thousand acres of land to the Society for the Conversion of the Jews, five thousand to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, four thousand and eighty to the theological students at Princeton, four thousand to establish fellowships in the College of New-Jersey, three thousand and seventy to the Philadelphia Hospital, and thirteen thousand to the corporation of that city for the supply of fuel to the poor on low terms. To these might be added many other legacies to charitable and religious purposes.

Mr. Boudinot wrote several publications, the principal of which was, the "Star in the West," or an attempt to discover the long-lost tribes of Israel. At the time it is said the work was read with much interest, but incredulity. It exhibits very benevolent feelings for our Indian population, with skill and extensive research. The work is now out of print, and the fifty years since it was written have developed many circumstances which, to say the least, do not weaken the theory of Mr. Boudinot. Without adopting or rejecting it, we will refer to some reasons which favor his views.

About six hundred years before Christ the land of Israel was swept by powerful invaders, who carried off the people into captivity. Nine and a half tribes went from Samaria-two and a half, embracing Judah and Benjamin, with half of Manasseh, remained in Judea beyond Jordan,

who constitute the eight millions of the existing nation.

From the Second of Esdras we learn all that is known of the route of the captives. This is an apocryphal book, but one of great antiquity, and worthy of respect. The account reads thus :—

"Whereas thou sawest that he gathered another peaceable multitude unto him; these are the ten tribes which were carried away prisoners out of their land, in the time of Osea the king, whom Salmanaser, King of Assyria, led away captive, and he carried them away over the waters, and so they came into another land.

"But they took this counsel among themselves, that they would leave the multitude of the heathen, and go forth into a farther coun

try, wherein never mankind dwelt, that they might there keep their statutes which they never kept in their own land, (Assyria;) and there was a great way to go, namely, a year and a half."

These tribes marched toward the north-east coast of Asia, some abiding in Tartary, while many went to China, where they have been sixteen hundred years, and remain numerous to this day. The advocates of Mr. Boudinot's hypothesis believe that the main body crossed over Behring's Straits to this continent. the most adventurous keeping to the North-Hudson's Bay and Greenland. The more cultivated followed the shores of the Pacific through California to Mexico, Central America, and Peru. Here it is imagined they encountered their old foe, the Phoenicians, (Canaanites,) who had advanced and colonized the country five hundred years before. The Phonicians, it is supposed, also built the cities of Palenque, and the pyramids at Cholula, Paxaca, Mitland, and Flascola, resembling those of Egypt, with hieroglyphics, planispheres, zodiacs, temples, military roads, aqueducts, bridges of great grandeur, still existing, and all seeming to prove that they were built by the same people who created Tyre, Babylon, and Carthage.

When Columbus discovered this continent he found various nations of Indians, whose origin was unknown. These, it is believed, were the descendants of the missing tribes of Israel; and it is worthy of note that Heckwelda, Chaleveaux, McKenzie, Bartram, Smith, William Penn, the Earl of Crawford, Major Long, Catlin, and Boudinot adopt this opinion, and were all either eminent writers or travelers.

William Penn, who had no idea of their origin, says :

"I found them with countenances like to the Hebrew race. I consider these people under a dark night, yet they believe in God and immortality, without the aid of metaphysics. They reckon by moons-they offer their first ripe fruits-they have a kind of feast of tabernacles-they are said to lay their altars with twelve stones-they mourn a year."

Mr. Catlin, who lived some years among the North-Western Indians, states that all the Mosaic laws, only traditionary with them, were strictly enforced.* John M. Payne, Esq., who long resided with the Cherokees, collected valuable information of their historical and religious traditions, and he states the remarkable fact that the oldest Cherokees used the term Yeho-waah for the Great Invisible Spirit. It is well known that the late Major M. M. Noah, who devoted much time to the investigation of this subject, ably advocated the sentiment that his Hebrew brethren were the progenitors of the North American Indians, the descendants of those tribes which Esdras relates "went into a farther country."

The subject is a curious one; but we refer to it only as an indication of the Biblical direction toward which the mind of this good man seemed continually inclined. His great distinction, next to his eminent personal virtues, is the honornow never to be impaired of being the first president of the American Bible Society. That splendid moral structurethe monument of the Protestant Christianity of the nation—is also, in a special sense, his monument. A nobler one can

no man have.

THE

THIRST IN THE ARCTIC REGIONS. THE use of snow when persons are thirsty does not by any means allay the insatiable desire for water; on the contrary, it appears to be increased in proportion to the quantity used, and the frequency with which it is put into the mouth. For example, a person walking along feels intensely thirsty, and he looks to his feet with coveting eyes; but his good sense and firm resolutions are not to be overcome so easily, and he withdraws the open hand that was to grasp the delicious morsel and convey it into his parching mouth. He has several miles of a journey to accomplish, and his thirst is every moment increasing; he is perspiring profusely, and feels quite hot and oppressed. At length his good resolutions stagger, and he partakes of the smallest particle, which produces a most exhilarating effect; in less than ten minutes he tastes again and again, always increasing the quantity; and in half an hour he has a gum-stick of condensed snow, which he masticates with avidity, and replaces with assiduity the moment that it has melted away. But his thirst is not allayed in the slightest degree; he is as hot as ever, and still perspires; his mouth is in flames, and he is driven to the necessity of quenching them with snow, which adds fuel to the fire. The melting snow ceases to please the palate, and it feels like red-hot coals, which, like a fireeater, he shifts about with his tongue, and swallows without the addition of saliva. He is in despair; but habit has taken the place of his reasoning faculties, and he moves on with languid steps, lamenting the severe fate which forces him to persist in a practice which in an unguarded moment he allowed to begin. . . . I be

1. Their belief in one God.

2. Their computation of time by their ceremonies of new moons.

3. The division of the year into four seasons. 4. Their erection of temples and altars. 5. The division of the natives into tribes, with a chief sachem at their head.

6. By their sacrifices, oblations, ceremonies, the affinity of the Indian to the Hebrew language, and circumcision—a custom relinquished only in modern times.

is the extreme dryness of the air when the temperature is low.-Sutherland's Journal.

SOULS may be rich in grace, and yet not know it, and yet not perceive it. The child is heir to a crown, to a great estate, but knows it not. Moses's face did shine, and others saw it; but he perceived it not: so many a precious soul is rich in grace, and others see it, and know it, and bless God for it; and yet the poor soul per

ceives it not.-Brooks.

LUTHER CONTINUES HIS TRANS

LATION OF THE BIBLE WITH
THE ASSISTANCE OF MEL-
ANOTHON, 1523-4.

TROM the confused

FROM

crowd of the iconoclasts, and their fanatical excesses, we enter once more Luther's silent cell, to witness the quiet progress of his translation of the Bible. At his side stands the younger friend and assistant of the reformer, Philip Melancthon, the distinguished teacher of the Greek language at the young university. According to Luther's description, he was "a mere youth in age, figure, and appearance; but a man when one considered the extent of his knowledge."

This was the beautiful period of their friendship, when each labored in the same spirit at their common task, full of admiration

of the higher gifts of

the other. "See how

Luther says in 1522, "No commentator has come nearer to the spirit of the Apostle Paul than my Philippus."

Luther's opinions of the Scriptures were somewhat curious. "I frankly own," he says, "that I know not whether or no I am master of the full meaning of the Psalms; although I have no doubts about my giving their correct sense. One man will be mistaken in some passages, another in others. I see things which Augustin overlooked; and others, I am aware, will see things which I miss. Who will dare to assert that he has completely understood a single Psalm? Our life is a beginning and a progress; not a consummation. He is the best, who comes nearest to the spirit. There are stages in life and action-why

that we proceed from knowledge to knowledge. The Gospel of St. John is the true and pure Gospel, the principal Gospel, because it contains more of Jesus Christ's own words than the rest. In like manner, the Epistles of St. Paul and St. Peter are far above (?) the Gospels of St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke. In fine, St. John's Gospel and his First Epistle, St. Paul's Epistles,-especially those to the Romans, Galatians, and Ephesians,-and St. Peter's First Epistle, are the books which show thee Jesus Christ, and which teach thee all that is necessary and useful for thee to know, though thou wert never to see any other book." He did not consider either the Epistle to the Hebrews or the Epistle of St. James of apostolic authority.

THE lower classes, the peasantry, who had so long slumbered under the weight of feudal oppression, heard princes and the learned speak of liberty, of enfranchisement, and they applied to themselves that which was not spoken for them. The reclamation of the poor peasants of Suabia will remain, in its simple barbarism, a monument of courageous moderation. By degrees, the eternal hatred of the poor to the rich was aroused; less blind than in the jaquerie, but striving after a systematic form, which it was only to attain afterward, in the time of the English levelers, and complicated with all the forms of religious democracy, which were supposed to have been stifled in the middle age. Lollards, Beghards, and a crowd of apocalyptic visionaries were in motion. At a later moment, the rallying cry was the necessity for a second baptism: at

the beginning, the aim was a terrible war against the established order of things, against every kind of order a war on property, as being a robbery of the poor; a war on knowledge, as destructive of natural equality, and a tempting of God, who had revealed all to his saints. Books and pictures were inventions of the devil. The peasants first rose up in the Black Forest, and then around Heilbronn and Frankfort, and in the county of Baden and Spires; whence the flame extended into Alsace, and nowhere did it assume a more fearful character. It reached the Palatinate, Hesse, and Bavaria. The leader of the insurgents in Suabia was one of the petty nobles of the valley of the Necker, the celebrated Goetz of Berlichingen, Goetz with the Iron Hand, who pretended they had forced him to be their general against his will.

The reformation in the Church is in danger of being swallowed up by a political revolution; the internal freedom of the Christian is to justify rebellion against the state. This stormy flood Luther opposes with his whole being; shudderingly he seems to look into a bottomless abyss that opens before his people.

In May, 1525, he wrote to his brotherin-law from Seeburg, where he had warned the people against rebellious proceedings: "Though there were many more thousand peasants, they are all of them robbers and murderers, who take to the sword for the sake of their own gratification, and who want to make a new rule in the world, for which they have from God neither law, nor right, nor command; they likewise bring disgrace and dishonor upon the word of God and upon the gospel: yet I still hope that this will not continue nor last. Well, when I get home, I will prepare myself for death with God's help, and await my new masters, the robbers and murderers. But sooner than approve of and pronounce right their doings, I would lose a hundred necks, so God in his mercy help me!

"In this my conscience is secure, although I may lose my life. It endureth but a short time, until the right Judge cometh, who will find both them and us. Their doings and their victories cannot last long."

He had already warned the peasants, some time previously, in his "Admonition to Peace," and said: "Be ye in the right as much as ye may, yet it becometh no Christians to quarrel and to fight, but to suffer wrong and bear evil. Put away the name of Christians, I say, and make it not the cover for your impatient, quarrelsome, and unchristian intentions. That name I will grudge you, nor leave it you, but tear it away from you by writing and preaching, as long as a vein beats in my body."

LUTHER'S MARRIAGE.

can fit it, I mean to take my Kate to wife ere I die, in despite of the devil, although I hear that my enemies will continue. I hope they may not take from me my courage and my joy. A few weeks later, on June 13th, he was united to Katharina for life in the house of the town-clerk (Stadtschreiber) of Wittenberg: his friend Bugenhagen blessed the sacred union, in the presence of the lawyer Apel and of Lukas Kranach. "Beloved Heavenly Father," so did he pray, "as thou hast given me the honor of thy name and of thine office, and willest also that I should be called and be honored as a father, grant me grace, and bless me, that I may govern and nourish my dear wife, child, and servants in a divine and Christian manner.

. . I have

. I have not known how to refuse to my beloved Lord and Father this last act of obedience to his will which he claimed of me, in the good hope that God may grant me children. Also that I may confirm my doctrine by this my act and deed; seeing that I find still so many faint hearts, notwithstanding the shining light of the gospel. reaped such great discredit and contempt from this my marriage, that I hope the angels will rejoice and the devils weep. The world and her wiseacres know not nor understand this word, that it is divine and holy. If matrimony be the work of God, what wonder that the world should be offended thereat? Is it not also offended that its own God and Maker has taken upon himself our flesh and blood and given it for its salvation, as a redemption and as food? . . Matrimony drives, hunts, and forces man into the very innermost and highest moral condition; that is to say, into faith— since there is no higher internal condition than faith, which dependeth solely upon the word of God. .. Let the wife think thus: My husband is an image of the true high head of Christ. In the same manner the husband shall love his wife with his whole heart, for the sake of the perfect love which he seeth in Christ, who gave himself for us. Such will be a Christian and divine marriage, of which the heathens know nothing. It is the highest mercy of God when a married couple love each other with their whole hearts through their whole lives."