isolated witness of his looking up to an eternal grace, that brings salvation to sinners. "To God's love and mercy we look up from this coffin! He who has ever loved our deceased brother, and has been dealing with him in his silent work, may now beam as the Sun of righteousness through the blue sky of his human affection. May he have received never-failing charity as Divine mercy! With us may there abide grateful remembrance; in us may there grow the charity which believeth all things, hopeth all things; and may earthly charity be hallowed by the eternal love wherewith we are loved; and, in the fading away and ceasing of what is most beautiful and noble on earth, let us hold fast the consoling watchword, Charity never faileth." In the night the remains of Alexander von Humboldt were conducted to Tegel, and there buried, on the following morning, in the park of the castle, at the foot of a granite column, bearing a victory, and erected by Wilhelm von Humboldt over the tomb of his wife. The graves of daughters and grand-daughters surround the resting-place of Wilhelm; and now Alexander has entered the narrow railing. After the usual prayers, singing, and Scripture passages, the same minister (Dr Hoffmann) gave a short address to the mourners, of which we quote only a few fragments. "It was here," he said, "that, five years ago, we saw the last glimpse of a youthful figure vanishing in the earth-when he, whom we are now laying into this grave, said to me, Where you are now standing, I shall soon lie.' He could not guess that he should be spared to conduct another dear member of his family on the last journey. Of all the mental gifts, the strength, the charms, and sweetness, that adorned these departed in life -of all their glory and brilliant lustre-to-day we see only the graves, and remember the mourning and tears under which they were closed."-" Our dear departed brother, too, though his life on earth has been so great, and though the Lord bestowed many years on him, will take with him into the world of light only what in him was from God, and will gladly see sunk into that tomb whatever was of this world. To lay down all the wreaths of honour which earth has offered at the feet of the Lamb of God is real happiness."-" And earthly names! alas! they vanish soon away-a few only are outlasting the coming of a thousand years; and, amidst an abundant world of new appearances, they will be as sounds half understood as dim marks of long-vanished things and generations. And even the most radiant ones, which history preserves longest, what are they, if compared with the only name in heaven and on earth by which we are to be saved? When once, in His glory, our Chief Shepherd, Jesus Christ, will appear, and when only one name the one saving name-will sound through all souls of all generations either to salvation or judgment, then how will great human names be covered and extinguished! and none will desire to be called by another name than the new one given by the Lord himself." We finish this article, wishing it to be an appeal to readers to study Humboldt's works, and to bring the contents of them into the light of the eternal REMINISCENCES OF MISSION-WORK IN IRELAND. BY AN IRISH RECTOR. NO. I.-MARY M'DONNELL'S FUNERAL. blessed it, not only in introducing civilisation, improved habits, and education into many a desolate place, neglected by all others, but also in bringing many of the population to the light of life. John M'Donnell was an intelligent young man, who taught a Roman Catholic school on one of these wild I Do not defend the strong and harsh language which western islands, and who, by intercourse with one of many injudicious Protestants have sometimes used this society's Scripture-readers, was brought to the in writing on the Roman Catholic controversy, or in knowledge of the truth; and he again was instrudealing with Roman Catholics themselves. Yet in mental in teaching it to his wife and family, who beone, who for thirty years has had the Best opportuni- came true Christians. They suffered very much from ties of knowing thoroughly the practical working of persecution, and the privations consequent upon imRomanism among the peasantry of Ireland, and mediate loss of employment, so that, with his young the depth of ignorance, and gross, miserable super- family, he had to leave his native home; but having stition by which a warm-hearted and most lovable | been well tried and proved, and being found duly people have been enslaved, it is not easy to keep qualified, he was subsequently employed as Protestwithout the limits of that wrath which assuredly ant schoolmaster in a distant post. After four years, worketh not the righteousness of God. The fact is, his wife, the companion of his toil and troubles, the the people of England and Scotland know little of the joint-partaker of his precious faith, was taken very real spirit of Romanism as it manifests itself in the ill, and, through the kindness of a Christian lady, more remote parts of Ireland, which for centuries removed to Dublin, where a physician pronounced her have been wholly given up to the influence of the in the last stage of consumption, from which he could priesthood. They know less of Ireland than of most hold out no hope of recovery. On discovering this, countries on the continent of Europe. What many she expressed the greatest wish to return to her naknow of Romanism is only from books written for tive island; she would be laid in the grave of her sentimental and ignorant Protestants. And thus the fathers, and mingle with the dust of her kindred. language used by the most truthful and devoted mis- This is a feeling very strong in the breast of the Irish sionaries, who have literally hazarded their lives to peasantry; and, whatever philosophy may have to say deliver their countrymen from the bondage which about it, I believe it is a good nurse of kindly affections. once crushed themselves, has been considered by good I so thoroughly sympathise with it, that I once paid and just men on the other side of the channel as ex- the hire of an ass, when the parish vestry refused to aggerated, and the mere outbreak of fanaticism and do it, to take the body of a deceased pauper, at the sectarian bigotry, rather than the righteous expres- request of his pauper wife, thirty miles across the sion of those who mourn over the loss of the true country, to lay his bones beside the bones of his own and right when contemplating the false and the people. Mary M'Donnell anxiously desired to be wrong, and who, loving their neighbours as them- buried in the old churchyard, not only from love to selves, mourn over the poor travellers, wounded and her kindred, but also to testify, on her dying bed, to left half-dead. And thus a sympathy is often ex- her bright hope in the gospel, and the sincerity of her pressed towards Roman Catholic priests and their profession of the Protestant faith, so oft denied by violent adherents, as if they were ill-used men, while her friends and neighbours, and whose opinions she it is withheld from those who, amidst overwhelming could not disregard, though removed from their reach difficulties, have dared, in this land of Christian for evermore. The strength of this desire to die vinliberty, to read God's Word, to exercise their per- dicated from unjust reproach, on the part of persesonal responsibility as men, to become acquainted cuted converts, can only be estimated by those who with their Father and Saviour, and to enjoy peace know their feelings by having shared them. Their and spiritual freedom from seeing and knowing the friends and neighbours try to persuade themselves truth with their own spirits, disciplined by the living and others that they are hypocrites, and that at the Spirit of God. It is my intention to give a series of hour of death they will call for the priest to anoint sketches in Good Words, from pages in my old note them; for they hold the maxim true, that, however book, illustrative of Irish missionary labour; and I men may live, no man is willing to die a hypocrite. can assure my readers that not one fact will be stated There is nothing a sincere convert more anxiously which is not accurately correct, and characteristic of looks for at the hour of death, than the opportunity Irish life, and which, if necessary, I am not willing to witness to the truth in which he lived, and to wipe to defend against any who may call in question my out from his memory the odium attached to hypostatements in their most minute particulars. crisy. This feeling is right. But a serious difficulty here presented itself. She was very near her end, very feeble, and one hundred and seventy miles from home; but she undertook it, and her husband conducted her by canal and car. When she arrived within thirty miles of her journey's end, her strength was exhausted, and the time of her departure was evidently at hand. Her neighbours heard of her landing, and of the state of her health, and very many went, with a zeal worthy of a better cause, to meet her. They entreated her, up to the last moment, As illustrative of the treatment which some converts may receive from their bigoted countrymen, let me now tell you the story of Mary M'Donnell's Funeral. Among the many efforts for the spiritual benefit of my Romish countrymen, there is a society, called the Islands and Coasts Society, labouring very unobtrusively for many years. Its objects are the most uncivilised and benighted portions of the population, situated on the remote islands, and along the coasts; and I can bear personal testimony that God has they intimidated her, to have the priest sent for before she died. She told them in feeble accents, but unshaken fait, of her great High Priest over the house of God that He died for her iniquity, that His blood cleanses from all sin, that through Hin she could come boldly to the throne of grace, that He is able to save to the uttermost, that she needed and would have no other, and above all things, had sought, and thanked God for having found the opportunity of proving that this was the conviction in which she had lived, and was prepared to die. There was no doubt, then, of her sincerity, but it gave more deadly offence than her supposed hypocrisy. She had despised priestly absolution, oil, tow, candle-light, holy water, and the rest of it. The harbour was above a mile from the next friendly house; her neighbours and relatives refused her admission; the husband, after some time, found three honest Protestant men, and the four formed a sad procession, bearing the dying woman on their shoulders to the house of one of them, and, sad to tell, followed by a large crowd of men, women, and children shouting and execrating them the whole way. Her relatives had, however, free access to her, and visited her several times, hoping to work upon her fears and her weakness; but God sustained her, and she was firm and faithful. She yielded up her soul to Jesus very early the following Sabbath morning. On that very day, at the mass, the priest spoke in awful terms of her death, and of her intention to be buried in the graveyard which was esteemed holy, and where thousands of red rags tied on the bushes bear testimony to the multitudes of pilgrims who flock from all parts to "the saints' bed" for the cure of diseases, the removal of spells, for penances, and for pardons. I am ashamed to repeat the language used that day, reported to me by one of the congregation. Most of the congregation proceeded from the chapel direct, surrounded the house where the body lay, and spent the rest of the day in shouting, so that nothing could well be heard in the uproar. The Roman Catholic magistrate, himself present in the mass-house, sent a messenger to say he would attend the funeral next day with a police force, but that it could not take place in the burial-ground named without danger of bloodshed; so it was agreed to bury her in another graveyard, less sacred in their estimation, seven miles distant from her fathers' grave, for which she had travelled so far; thither she was borne on the shoulders of the few Protestants who dared to perform this last service, and escorted by the magistrate and police in front, and by the coast-guard officer and his men in the rear, to protect the living and the dead from the crowds of excited people; and she was buried at the point of the bayonet, amid shouting and yelling, in a little quiet sandy place near the harbour at which she had landed a few days before. Her body was not allowed to rest there till the morning of the resurrec. tion. On that very night it was torn up from the grave, and, with its coffin, rolled on the sand beyond the precincts of what was considered the consecrated ground. I have it from the lips of one of the most faithful I ever knew of God's people-Captain Forbes, since removed to his rest-that the priest, on being questioned afterwards, in his presence, as to his part in the transaction, avowed it before several, with expressions which I must not name. This fact-an aggravated, grievous, and I rejoice to add, in its enormity, an unusual one-exhibits the nature of the ordeal through which converts have to pass, and of which I shall have to give many other illustrations. It is not too much to ask that Christian men who read this statement will lift up their hearts in prayer to God that He would raise my countrymen from this low estate of cruel superstition. (To be continued.) THE DESTROYED CITIES OF THE PLAIN. GEN. XVIII. 16-33, XIX. 15-28. IN directing attention to those features of this appalling episode that can be illustrated by the researches of modern travellers, we shall consider,-First, The relative position of the cities. Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim, and Bela, or Zoar, "the ancient cities of the which comprised plain," and whose awfully sudden and overwhelming destruction, (with the exception of Bela, the smallest of them, spared for the sake of Lot,) is recorded in the passage quoted above, occupied tine-the spot which, according to ancient and a spacious valley in the south-eastern part of Palesvery general belief, is now covered by the whole through the midst of which the Jordan poured its or a portion of the Dead Sea. That ancient plain, copious stream, possessed the prime requisite for vegetation in all Oriental countries-an abundance of sweet and refreshing water; and both from that advantage, and the natural capabilities of the soil, together with the almost tropical atmosphere of this sunken valley, it was not only rich in pasture, but displayed in the greatest luxuriance every variety of vegetable and floral produce. So extraordinary was the fertility and beauty of this plain, that the sacred historian, in alluding to it, knew no better way of describing it than by comparing it to the Garden of Eden, when fresh from the hands of the Creator, or the rich corn-fields of Egypt, the granary of the ancient world: and if we suppose that-besides the many rivulets, the Amnon, the Engedi, the Callirrhoe, and others, which still flow, as they have always done, from the eastern and western mountains, as well as from the south of Arabah-on this part of Palestine, the ancient inhabitants practised artificial irrigation, by forming little canals through their fields, or by water-machines, like the Egyptians, Jordan, which was well watered everywhere, we can easily understand how "the plain of the before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah," should have equalled the rich productiveness of the Delta, after a favourable inundation of the Nile, the more especially if the Jordan annually overflowed the district, and the seed was sown on the yet moist ground, immediately on the water subsiding. The five towns in this plain were respectively governed by rulers, who, although honoured by the lofty title of kings, were evidently nothing more than sheiks of a numerous tribe, or as we should say, chieftains of their respective clans. Their dominions extended no further than the government of a single town; and as these towns doubtless exhibited the same features in common with all the ancient and many of the modern towns in the East, the houses would probably stand apart, with gardens and orchards interspersed between, and the ground in the outskirts would be laid out in cultivated fields, as traces of furrows are still distinctly discernible about Zoar, or would stretch out to a greater distance in extensive commons. Hence Lot, a pastoral chief, was a habitual resident in town, while his flocks and herds were scattered over the unoccupied links around. The cities were situated, as the sacred narrative informs us, in "the vale of Siddim," (fields,) which, there is good reason for believing, occupied the area which is now covered by the southern portion of the Dead Sea, and the boundary of which, on the north, is the peninsula of El Lisan: for the site of the ancient Bela, or Zoar, whose ruins are still seen, has been established, by the concurrent testimony of many competent travellers, to have been at the mouth of Wadi Kerak; so that Sodom, which was not far from Zoar-little more than an hour's distance -must have stood in the middle of the valley of Siddim, the now submerged plain, and the other cities were closely adjoining it. That this was the style of town-building in ancient Palestine is not only proved by the numerous ruins of towns which have been recently discovered, and which appear to have been only about three or four miles distant from each other, but may be gathered from the fifteenth chapter of Joshua, where mention is made in half a dozen instances of large "towns with their villages" (Heb., daughters); and it is precisely in the same way that the sacred writers speak of Sodom and the associated cities of the plain"Sodom and her daughters." Indeed, in alluding to their overthrow, mention is frequently made of Sodom alone as the capital or chief city of the pentapolis, evidently implying that the other towns were at no great distance, and clustered around it-a view of their relative position which, we may remark still further, is placed beyond dispute by the word "ha-ciccar," "the circle," which is used in Scripture to describe this district, and waich can refer to nothing else than the arrangement of the cities in a round or circular group, Baggested by the natural character of the place, and of which Sodom was the centre. The area covered by the southern portion of the Dead Sea has been found to be, at its greatest length, fifteen miles in extent; and if we add the adjoining head of the El Arabah-which seems clearly to have formed a part of "the vale of Siddim"-we shall have a level and fertile valley, sufficiently large for the site of the five cities, even allowing some of them to have been considerable towns for that time,well as for all the conditions of the sacred story. "In this oasis, or collection of oases," as a learned traveller happily calls it, a Phoenician colony had settled at an early period of the patriarchal age; for at the time of Lot's removal to their neighbourhood, "the cities of the circle" of the Jordan formed a nucleus of civilised life before any city except Hebron had sprung up in central Palestine. But, unhappily, the great natural advantages of their situation were perverted, and became the -as occasion of the growing demoralisation of the people. The extraordinary fertility of the district led to general idleness; the possession of bitumen pits, with which some parts of the plain abounded, originated a lucrative trade with Egypt, where bitumen was much used for the purpose of embalment; indolence and wealth in a warm region were followed by wide-spreading indulgence in languor and voluptuousness; and these, conjoined with the Phoenician rites of Baal and Astarte-the gross licentiousness of which is unfit for description-gradually produced an unexampled dissoluteness and corruption amongst all classes of the inhabitants, that have stamped upon them a name of the deepest infamy. A holy and righteous God, justly offended at their enormous wickedness, determined to make this people, who were "sinners before the Lord exceedingly," a perpetual warning to mankind in all time coming, especially to the "peculiar" race who were to be located for ages in that very land; and in bringing a desolating judgment upon them, made use-as He has often done in other instances-of material agents, found amongst the characteristic properties of their country. Slime, or bitumen, is a liquid, and highly inflammable. The superficial ground on which the cities of the plain stood, covered an extensive mine of it; and it is supposed that the houses of the inhabitants were cemented by means of this bitumen-a practice which was adopted in building the tower of Babel, and which is still followed, even in the present day, in some cities of the East, as in Bagdad and others—so that, as "the Lord rained down fire from heaven," the lightning, pointed by the hand of Omnipotence, kindled the combustible mass; the conflagration would be both from above and below; the violent action of the slime-pits-the dense, pitchy colour of the smoke indicating the nature of what was burned-would pour torrents of the burning liquid all along the ground, and thus complete the work of havoc and destruction. "The Lord overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground." In the explanation now given, a physical agent is introduced as the means or instrument of the catastrophe; but there is nothing involved in such a supposition at variance with the spirit and style of the Scriptures, which frequently represent God as employing famine, pestilence, and earthquakes, as His agents in punishing the guilty nations, and particularly tell us that " 'flaming fire" is His minister. The true character of the catastrophe, and its being the direct infliction of Divine vengeance to punish the enormous wickedness of the inhabitants, is established beyond all controversy both by the simple and minutely-circumstantial narrative of Moses, and by other passages of Scripture, in which this memorable dispensation is alluded to. None were exempted from it, except Lot and his family, who, for Abraham's sake, were allowed to take refuge in the little city of Zoar. Secondly, We shall consider the situation and fate of the fugitives from the scene of the catastrophe. Lot, with his wife and two unmarried daughters, set out as fugitives from the perilous vicinity. Too long and too much did he procrastinate, lingering, it might be, from regret to lose all the property he |