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Farmer Nokes had one of the richest and best farms in our parish. His ancestors, for many generations, had lived upon the fruits thereof. To such a high state of cultivation had they brought it, that when the subject of this sketch came into possession of it, it was generally termed "a garden." Scarcely a weed or a thistle was to be seen, and the corn sown sprung up and grew most luxuriantly. Beautiful were the walks through the Lea Farm on a summer evening. Often as I have walked through the corn as it waved gracefully in the gentle wind of a summer's eve, and appeared as a moving wall on each hand, I have involuntarily adopted the language of the psalmist, and have exclaimed:

"Thou waterest the ridges thereof abundantly;
Thou settlest the furrows thereof:
Thou makest it soft with showers:
Thou blessest the springing thereof.
Thou crownest the year with thy goodness,
And thy paths drop fatness.

with it; but he will rebuke it, and count | Had farmer Nokes acted in the spirit of it his enemy. Having been delivered this maxim, he would have been spared from the snare and the pit, by the infinite many sorrows. mercy of Him who died to redeem him, his life will be devoted to the glory of his Redeemer. His language will be, "How shall we that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?" Indeed, the name of Jesus is significant in proportion to the Scriptural clearness of one's view of the dreadful nature of sin. The former becomes emphatic on the heart, written there by the finger of the Holy Ghost, as the essential vileness and fearful deceitfulness of the latter become visible to the eye of the mind: "To whom much is forgiven, the same loveth much.” This is analogous to ordinary experience. The greater the evil from which we are delivered, the more we prize our deliverance. A small act of kindness will produce thankfulness in a generous breast,-but, like the trifling occasion which called it forth, it will speedily be forgotten amidst the stirring scenes and perpetual changes of human life; but he who saves a man from a moral danger which threatened the destruction of his character, or from a pecuniary difficulty which threatened the ruin of his family, or from a physical danger which threatened the continuance of his life, cannot be forgotten by any well-regulated mind. But Jesus has done much more than this for his people. To save them from death, he gave himself to die: "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us." His own inimitable statement sheds a glorious light upon the whole subject, and must for ever endear the name of Jesus to every believer: "I am the good Shepherd: the good Shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth and the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep. The hireling fleeth, because he is an hireling, and careth not for the sheep. I am the good Shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine. As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep."

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FARMER NOKES.

W. L.

THERE is a wise maxim on record, that "He who will thrive, must rise at five."

They drop upon the pastures of the wilderness:
And the little hills rejoice on every side.
The pastures are clothed with flocks;
The valleys also are covered over with corn:
They shout for joy, they also sing,"

Psa. lxv. 10-13.

One could hardly have imagined that would ever have such fruitful fields assumed the barren aspect which they did in after years. Yet so it was. Short time only had elapsed when the weeds and the thistles sprung up abundantly, and choked the corn. It still grew, but the stalk was stunted and the ear shrivelled in comparison with the stalks and the ears seen on the same ground in the days when farmer Nokes's ancestors tilled it.

Ill weeds grow apace. If they are not quickly eradicated when they appear, they soon gather strength, and drop their ripe seeds for another and a more abundant crop. So it was with the weeds which sprung up on the farm of farmer Nokes. Within a few years after he succeeded to the farm, I have seen the thistle-down, blown by the wind thick as flakes of snow, spread over his ground, and as I have watched their progress, I have foreseen a more abundant crop of thistles would be its results in the coming

season.

"I cannot imagine," remarked farmer Nokes to a neighbour, "how it is that the weeds grow so rapidly on my

ground; they really seem to spring up in a night."

"Use the harrow, Nokes," was the laconic and pertinent reply.

Nokes had plenty of harrows, and plenty of men and horses, whereby they might have operated beneficially to his land; but though they might be seen trailing over it, it was not with effect. "While the cat is away, the mice are at play," says an old proverb. Thus it was with Nokes and his dependants. Instead of actively superintending them, he was generally to be found in his parlour, taking his ease; and his men, left to themselves, began work at what hour they pleased, and did just as much as they pleased when they commenced. There was not a more slow-going set of men and horses in all the country, if there was in all England, or in the world. And even when Nokes was with them, they moved as they listed. Sometimes, indeed, they might be seen gathered round him, to hear some wonderful tale which their master had to relate.

Nokes was what some people term, "full of anecdote ;" rude, indeed, sometimes, but often original. "I say," said he to a group of his dependants one day, "did you ever hear of the story of the boy who was set to keep birds off the

wheat?"

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"No maister," was the general reply. Well, it was this then," rejoined Nokes: the boy had been employed for several days, and one morning, about | eight o'clock, he came up to the farmhouse, to ask his master what he should do now."

"What shall you do now?" inquired his master; "why, I thought you were set to keep the birds off the wheat."

"No, master," replied the boy; "I was told to keep them,-and so I have, for they have now eaten all the wheat in the field."

A loud laugh was heard among the hearers of this anecdote; but some of the more shrewd felt that Nokes was in the same predicament; that the birds were having a rich treat from one end of Lea Farm to the other, unmolested. Nokes, however, did not dream for a moment that the tale he had related had any application to himself.

certain position, taught them how this big world moved round on its axis, in the abyss of space in which it is placed by the hands of eternal Wisdom. It was a scene worthy the touch of an artist, Every eye was fixed on the big round 5s.-piece, and there was a general wish that it should find its way into their pockets: the men, that they might have a "jolly carouse" at the King's Arms; the women, that they might buy more food, or some needful garment for their hungry and ill-clothed children; and the boys, that they might have a whole day's trial of skill at "tosspenny" on the next sabbath day. Nokes, however, when he had finished his lesson, put it again into his pocket; and the world went round, as usual, without his hearers having any clearer idea of its course than they had before Nokes endeavoured to enlighten their uninstructed minds.

It would have been well for Nokes had his father introduced into his will a clause to this effect: "As my son is fond of indulging in bed in a morning, and as I wish him to improve while he is young, 1 direct that he shall prove, to the satisfaction of my executors, that he has risen in the morning, from the 5th of April to the 10th of October, at four o'clock, and from the 10th of October to the 10th of April at six o'clock, in order that he may look after his dependants, and see that they properly cultivate his lands. This to be done for some two years during the first seven years, to the satisfaction of my executors, who may excuse him in case of illness; but his task must be made up when he is well; and if he does not do this, then the farm shall be sold, and the proceeds divided among the other surviving members of my family."

Had Nokes been thus stirred up to habits of industry in his earliest career, the weeds and the thistles had never sprung up so thickly over his grounds, and he would have been saved from the reproach of indolence, and the condemnation of penury; for such was the result of his career. Lea Farm, in the lapse of time, was sold by auction; and so much was the land deteriorated by the weeds and the thistles, that it did not produce sufficient to pay the debts which Nokes On another occasion, Nokes was surhad incurred. In vain did the auctioneer prised one day in giving his servants a set forth the richness of the land, and its lesson in astronomy. Standing bare- proximity to the "best corn-market in headed in the sun he took a 5s.-piece all England:" he was reminded of the from his pocket, and by placing it in a weeds and the thistles, and compelled to

knock it down at half the value it was once worth.

"He who will thrive, must rise at five." A moral writer well observes, that he who neglects time, will be neglected by time. The idler, like the idiot, stands in the lowest scale of humanity; | morally considered, even lower; for indolence wastes, but imbecility wants: the one abandons himself, the other is abandoned. The stream of time is fraught with golden sand; but it flings to the idler nothing but its froth, and he falls "like the fat weed in Lethe's stream," without ever having flourished. Reader! waste not the precious gift of time. Use it, not only for the providing for your bodily sustenance, and that of your family, but for your everlasting welfare. Next to your immortal soul, it is of all things most precious, because on the right use or abuse of it your eternal happiness depends. When a piece of money has been expended or lost, that expense or loss can be made up by a happy combination of circumstances, or by exertion; but when a fraction of the current coin of time, called a day, is lost, who can recover it? In the language of the poet, then,

"Live every day as though it were your last, And make each day a critic on the past."

THE ANGELS.

E. F.

THE historical Scriptures relate to us, without any error, the mysterious intervention of angels in the affairs of this world, in those of the church, and those of heaven. These creatures, ardent and pure, humble and sublime, whose existence the Bible alone has revealed to us, -do they not differ from men as much as the heavens differ from the earth? Was anything like unto angels ever conceived by the minds of any race of men, their poets, or their sages? No; their imaginations have not even come near them. People at all times have taken pleasure in painting those invisible beings inhabitants of celestial regions, adorned with all those superior qualities that charm the heart of man. But how low, puerile, and vulgar are all their conceptions! Study the angels of the Scriptures; not only is everything there grand, holy, and worthy of God; not only is their character at once ardent and sublime, compassionate and majestic, con

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stantly brought before us there by their names, their attributes, their employments, their habitations, their songs, their contemplation of the depths of redemption, and the joys of their love; but what must strike us more than all, is the perfect harmony of the whole, that all these features agree, and are maintained in their justest proportions. In a word, this doctrine, sustained from one end of Scripture to the other, bears the most striking testimony to its inspiration from God. While all the mythologies tell us of the inhabitants of the moon and the planets, the Bible does not contain one word about them, it tells us nothing of the second heaven; but it depicts the inhabitants of the third heaven, or the heaven of heavens. scriptions of the angels are numerous, without wearying, and full of details. They are exhibited to us in every situation, in heaven and upon earth, before God and before men, ministers of mercy, and sometimes executors of vengeance; standing before God, adoring him day and night; but also employed in the service of the humblest believer. We are defiled, they are perfect; we are selfish, they melt with charity; we are haughty, they are gentle; we are vain and proud in bodies that worms will consume, they are humble in glory and immortality; we are disturbed by passions, they are fervent in spirit,-neither can they die. This uniformity, this purity, comes not from man-it is from God! We must recognise, here as elsewhere, the need that the Holy Spirit himself should watch over the writings of his historians, and become the guardian of their expressions.-Gaussen.

THE LAW AND THE GOSPEL.

THE doctrine of the gospel is the revelation of the Son of God. This is a doctrine quite contrary to the law, which revealeth not the Son of God, but showeth forth sin-it revealeth death, the wrath and judgment of God, and hell. The gospel, therefore, is such a doctrine as admitteth no law; yea, it must be as separate from the law as there is distance between heaven and earth. The gospel teacheth me, not what I ought to do, for that is the proper office of the law; but what Jesus Christ the Son of God hath done for me. Luther's Comment on Galatians, chap. i. 16, and ii. 4, 5.

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THE SKERRYVORE LIGHTHOUSE.

MANY of our readers, when spending a summer's holiday at Ramsgate, must have been struck by the picturesque appearance of the floating lights, which mark the boundaries of the perilous Goodwin Sands. On a partially moonlit evening, often have we watched with in terest the ruddy glow cast by the beacon from the shore, and seen it answered, as it were, by the vessels in the distance; their light now streaming with meteoric vividness, now waxing dim and faint, and then for a moment entirely disappearing. Still more interesting, however, was it upon one occasion, from the deck of a steamer, to see in the horizon a thin, wand-like object, and by the application of the telescope, to find it swell into proportions that showed it to be the well-known JULY, 1850.

Bell-Rock Lighthouse. As it stood, in all the brilliancy of a summer noon, reposing peacefully amid the watery wastes which encompassed it, the mind involuntarily reverted to its altered aspect on some stormy evening, in the depth of winter, when the waves rolled in fury against its slender fabric, and the foaming surge and howling wind threatened each moment its annihilation. It was impossible, as we gazed on the tapering structure, and contrasted its apparent fragility with the tremendous mechanical force slumbering around it, to avoid admiring the wondrous skill with which God had endowed his intelligent creatures, in enabling them to construct an edifice where nature had apparently imposed insuperable obstacles. A recent narrative of the erection of the Skerryvore Lighthouse illustrates in so remarkable a

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manner this observation, that we willingly draw our readers' attention to the subject, as a monument of perseverance, ingenuity, and social progress.

A few miles from the small island of Tyree, on the west of Scotland, in a track greatly frequented by vessels bound for Greenock or Glasgow, rise the formidable rock and reef of Skerryvore. Often in this spot, after an Atlantic gale, the shattered fragments of wreck and the floating articles of merchandise have told a tale of disaster. Even where no loss of life or property occurred, the mariner, when in the neighbourhood, navigated his vessel with trepidation, fearing lest, unconsciously, he should approach too near to Skerryvore. It was determined, accordingly, by the Scottish commissioners, to erect a lighthouse on the spot. Between the conception of the design, however, and its execution, many obstacles were interposed. In 1834, a survey of the rock was ordered, and it was found that difficulties of every kind presented themselves. Tyree, the nearest island, had almost no resources from which to draw assistance. It had neither vessels nor harbour; its natives were rude and unskilled; and it was soon found by Mr. Stevenson, the engineer, that if the structure were to be erected at all, the workmen and the materials for it would require to be brought from a distance. On threading the way to Skerryvore, over perilous shoals, where a submarine rock might easily have terminated the adventure, the architect found the reef itself an unpromising field for his operations. Of very limited extent, and surrounded by a sea in which no vessel could live in rough weather, it seemed to mock the effort to subjugate it to the dominion of man. The action of the waves had given it the appearance and the smoothness of dark-coloured glass, and the first workman who scrambled up its side compared the effort to climbing the neck of a bottle. The engineer having satisfied himself that the reef had strength to bear the weight of the structure he contemplated, commenced the preliminary works with vigour, on the island of Tyree, distant, we should observe, from Skerryvore, some eleven miles. There a harbour was constructed, stores collected, cottages for workmen erected, and stones for the building chiselled. So accurately were the proportions of the latter calculated, that when they were afterwards fitted together, they were found not to deviate

from the original plan more than onesixteenth of an inch in diameter. A vessel of sufficient strength was next built, to transport the materials and the labourers to the rock.

Let the reader, comfortably seated, perhaps, in his parlour, imagine the position of these men, perched on an eminence amidst a dreary expanse of water, their feet slipping as they trod the glassy surface, and their brain almost confused by the novelty and peril of their situation. He will then appreciate more fully the comforts by which he is surrounded. Let him next follow them in their preparations for excavating the rock, so as to lay the foundation of the lighthouse. For two hundred and seventeen days did twenty labourers toil at this work, blasting the hard material with gunpowder, a task requiring peculiar care and nicety: as at no time could they retreat more than thirty feet from the point of explosion. The vessel which brought them to Skerry vore had only served them as a shelter, during their erection upon it of a temporary wooden structure. After that was completed, it visited them occasionally; but was sometimes for days unable to approach the spot, if the weather happened to be at all boisterous. In the erection of this temporary barrack, almost as many difficulties presented themselves as in building the lighthouse itself. After laying its pedestal, on the 11th of September, the engineer was mortified, on returning to the rock on the 12th of November following, to find that the waves had swept it all away. With undaunted resolution, however, the work was recommenced, until at last a wooden building, raised above the reach of the waves, was completed. In this not very desirable marine villa the whole party took up their quarters. On one occasion, they were fourteen days without any communication with the shore, and their provisions were nearly exhausted. During that time, to use the words of Mr. Stevenson, they saw nothing but white fields of foam, and heard nothing but the whistling of the wind and the thunder of the waves, which was at times so loud as to make it almost impossible to hear any one speak.' On one occasion also, at the dead of night, the engineer and workmen were startled from their slumbers by the shock of a huge wave, which, bursting at the base of the rock, caused their dwelling to vibrate, their hammock to swing, and all

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