way of interpreting the Sacred Scripture? taking interpreting to mean understanding. I think the best way for understanding the Scripture, or the New Testament-for of that the question will here be in the first place-is to read it assiduously and diligently, and, if it can be, in the original. I do not mean to read every day some certain number of chapters, as is usual, but to read it so as to study and consider, and not leave till you are satisfied that you have got the true meaning.

To this purpose it will be necessary to take the assistance of interpreters and commentators, such as those called "The Critics," and Pool's "Synopsis Criticorum," Dr Hammond on the New Testament, and Dr Whitby, &c.

I should not think it convenient to multiply books of this kind, were there any one that I could direct you to that was infallible. But you will not think it strange if I tell you that, after all, you must make use of your own judgment, when you consider that it is, and always will be, impossible to find an expositor whom you can blindfold rely upon, and cannot be mistaken in following. Such a resignation as that is due to the Holy Scriptures alone, which were dictated by the infallible Spirit of God.

JOHN EVELYN.

One of the most delightful books which the seventeenth century has sent down to us, is "The Diary of John Evelyn," but which first saw the light in 1818. It brings us acquainted with a thorough English gentleman, remarkably intelligent and well-informed, a zealous member of the Church of England, opposed to the arbitrary measures of the Stuarts, but chivalrously loyal, exemplary in every relation, and earnestly and steadfastly pious. In his own day he published many books, the most celebrated of which was his "Sylva; or, Discourse of Forest Trees." The posthumous work from which our extract is taken is entitled "The History of Reli

gion." It was published for the first time in 1850. It gives a very favourable impression of the author's seriousness and good sense.

Evelyn was born at Wotton, in Surrey, October 31, 1620; and died February 27, 1706.*

The Style of the Holy Scriptures.

There are in Scripture depths in which the elephant may swim as well as the lamb may wade. Our blessed Saviour speaks in an easy, familiar style; His similes and parables are natural, and incomparably pertinent, to the reproof of forced expressions and criticisms, for which ostentatious wits value themselves. And, though not always according to the nicer rules of orators, yet is the sacred style no less majestical. Who amongst them all has reached the rapturous attitudes [altitudes?] of the prophet Isaiah, the first of St John's Gospel, the Psalms of David, the Songs of Moses and Deborah, Job, Canticles, and several of the sacred hymns; which, however they may seem in the vulgar translation, are, in their original, not only comparable to, but far transcending, the heathen poesies, and, as to the loftiness of style, breathing of so divine and majestical, that Longinus the sophist himself is in admiration at that imperious word, "God said, Let there be light, and there was light!"

The matter is not made tedious by formal argument; yet it is convincing and irresistible. Nor do the repetitions, as in other writings, leave a nausea, but still the same relish and veneration. What can move the affections more than the his

*There is a copious memoir of Evelyn in Chalmers's "Biographical Dicticnary." There is hardly any greater desideratum in our literature than an English equivalent to the "Biographie Universelle." After the lapse of nearly half-a-century, there is still no rival to the copious and painstaking work of Chalmers.

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tories of Joseph, the story of Ruth, the sacrifice of Jephthah's daughter, the friendship between Jonathan and David? What more passionate, and fuller set with rhetorical transitions, than the Lamentations of Jeremiah? What more moving and tender than the conduct of Mary Magdalene, the prayer of our departing Jesus, and the like?

As to variety of readings, transpositions, terms, synonyms, punctuations, they shew an unaffected richness without studied art. And such a magazine are the Scriptures upon all topics and subjects, as all the Platos, Ciceros, Senecas, historians, philosophers, and philologists furnish nothing more plentiful, more useful, and that fall into juster and more shining periods, upon all occasions whatever; adapted to convince, redargue, persuade, and instruct; not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in the demonstration of the Spirit, and in power; not in choice phrases and elaborate methods and structure of words, but with such light of conviction, depth of speculation, and, in the midst of all this plainness, such energy of operation, such sublimity of matter, as nothing can resist it.

There is in Holy Scriptures such access to the weak and feeble, comfort to the sorrowful, strong meat for men, milk for babes; such elevation and grandeur of mind, advancing the humanity of men to the height of bliss; in a word, it is what manna was to the Israelites-food delicious and accommodated to every man's taste. It is a deep well for depth, celestial for height. As it speaks of God, nothing is so sublime-as of men, nothing so humble; it is a bridle to restrain, a spur to incite, a sword to penetrate, salt to season, a lantern to our feet, and a light to our path. Critique and grammar have too often prejudiced the meaning of the true and genuine text. Men dare not cavil the laws and ordinances of princes, if they are so clear as to be understood, whilst the laws of God are a thousand times more perspicuous. And, were it otherwise, men could not be religious till they understood the

learned tongues. But since God has called all men to the knowledge of the truth, and, therefore, not many wise, not many learned, but the industriously humble, as well as the extraordinarily knowing.

THE WHOLE DUTY OF MAN."

From the middle of the seventeenth century until the accession of the Georges, with many good people, including Archbishop Tillotson, "the book next to the Bible" was "The Whole Duty of Man." It came out anonymously, but there is now little reason to doubt that it was the work of Lady Packington,* and it must therefore be added to the theological literature which we owe to the laity. It is a book deplorably awanting in all the more vital elements, but it is plain and unaffected, and full of those good advices which even those who have not taken them to themselves like to give to their sons and their servants.

On Temperance in Sleep.

1. The third part of temperance concerns sleep. And temperance in that also must be measured by the end for which sleep was ordained by God, which was only the refreshing and supporting of our frail bodies, which being of such a temper that continual labour and toil tires and wearies them out, sleep comes as a medicine to that weariness, as a repairer of that decay, that so we may be enabled to such labours as the duties of religion or works of our calling requires of us. Sleep was intended to make us more profitable, not more idle; as we give rest to our beasts, not that we are pleased with their doing nothing, but that they may do us the better service.

* See Pickering's edition of 1842, and "Notes and Queries," vol. ix. p. 292.

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2. By this, therefore, you may judge what is temperate sleeping; to wit, that which tends to the refreshing and making us more lively and fit for action, and to that end a moderate degree serves best. It will be impossible to set down just how many hours is that moderate degree, because, as in eating, so in sleep, some constitutions require more than others: every man's own experience must in this judge for him, but then let him judge uprightly, and not consult with his sloth in the case; for that will still, with Solomon's sluggard, cry, "A little more sleep, a little more slumber, a little more folding of the hands to sleep" (Prov. xxiv. 33); but take only so much as he really finds to tend to the end forementioned.

3. He that doth not thus limit himself falls into several sins under this general one of sloth: as first, he wastes his time, that precious talent which was committed to him by God to improve, which he that sleeps away, doth like him in the Gospel, "hides it in the earth" (Matt. xxv. 18), when he should be trading with it; and you know what was the doom of that unprofitable servant, "Cast ye him into outer darkness" (verse 30): he that gives himself to darkness of sleep here, shall there have darkness without sleep, but with "weeping and gnashing of teeth." Secondly, he injures his body: immoderate sleep fills that full of diseases, makes it a very sink of humours, as daily experience shews us. Thirdly, he injures his soul also, and that not only in robbing it of the service of the body, but in dulling its proper faculties, making them useless and unfit for those employments to which God hath designed them; of all which ill husbandry the poor soul must one day give account. Nay, lastly, he affronts and despises God himself in it, by crossing the very end of his creation, which was to serve God in an active obedience; but he that sleeps away his life directly thwarts and contradicts that, and when God saith, "Man is born to labour," his practice saith