finding the king becoming impatient, he at last stammered out with great confusion, "I receive the taxes from the people, and as I am exposed to many temptations, how can I be perfectly honest? I, therefore, O king, give it to the priest." The priest, with great trembling, pleaded some remembered delinquencies in connection with his conduct in receiving the sacrifices. At length the thief exclaimed, "In justice, O king, we should all four be hanged, since not one of us is honest." The king was so pleased with his ingenuity that he granted him a pardon. The application is very simple. We are all sinners; the language applies to each of us, "Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation?" We cannot pardon the souls of our outcast brethren, but we can instruct and direct them to the Fountain opened for sin and uncleanness, and bid them regard with faith "the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world," John i. 29. This is wisdom; not indeed the speculative philosophy of a past age, nor the dreamings of learned indolence, but true wisdom, true knowledge, which, in the words of Lord Bacon, "is not a couch whereon to rest a searching and restless spirit-or a terrace for a wandering and variable mind to walk up and down with a fair prospect or a tower of state for a proud mind to raise itself upon-or a fort or commanding ground for strife and contention-but a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator, and the relief of man's estate.” And the days, dear reader, in which we may do good on earth are numbered : "Oh let our souls their slumbers break, Arouse their senses and awake, To see how soon Life with its glories glides away, And the stern footsteps of decay Come stealing on. "Our lives-like hasting streams they be, Press on to fall: The sea of DEATH, whose waves roll on O'er king and kingdom, crown and throne, "Sweet Christ of God,' our thoughts arise To Thee,-eternal, good, and wise, To Thee-we cry ; Gird us a useful life to run, And grant that we at last sit down, With Thee on high." CHAPTER VIII. MISCELLANEOUS. The cholera-Statements of the Board of Health-Filth, intemperance, and cholera-Extraordinary statistics-Characteristic notice of the writer's district in Board of Health's Reports-Death of a Missionary after visiting with the writer-Hopeful case of a fowler who died of cholera-A peculiarly awful death from cholera-The writer attacked-Comforts of the Divine presence-Hopeful case of a drover-Hopeful conversion of a life-guards man. THE cholera months of 1849 formed a period of much additional anxiety to the Missionaries of the City Mission, especially to those located on certain districts.* The Commissioners of the Board of Health, in a very valuable volume entitled "A Report on a General Scheme of Extramural Sepulture," dated February 15th, 1850, stated "the epi *See London City Mission Magazine, October, 1849, which is entirely devoted to an account of the operations of the Mission in connection with the cholera. demic of the last year (1849) to have been the severest that has affected the country in modern times, having destroyed in the Metropolis alone no fewer than 16,000 persons." Large, however, as was the mortality in England, it bears but a very small proportion to the mortality experienced in some parts of our IndoBritish possessions. At Kurrachee, the Report of the Board of Health on "Epidemic Cholera," states that "out of 15,000 inhabitants, 1,500, or one in ten, died in the closest portion of the town. And at Hydrabad, in forty-eight hours, it carried off ninety-six out of four hundred prisoners in the jail." The connection between filth and cholera appears to have been clearly made out. "When," says this very valuable Report, "an atmosphere, contaminated by the emanations that arise from filth accumulated in and about dwellings, is respired, the noxious matters dissolved or suspended in the air are carried directly into the blood. The extent to which such matters may poison the blood, may be understood when it is considered that in the space of every twenty-four hours an adult person breathes thirty-six hogsheads of air; that there pass at the same time through the lungs, to be brought into contact with the bulk of air, twenty-four hogsheads of blood; and that the velocity of the circulation is so great that the whole mass of the blood is carried round the body in one minute." "Those subtle, invisible, but all-powerful effluvia," says Mr. Grainger, "proceeding from decomposing organic matter, whether animal or vegetable, in a multitude of different and, by the general public, little suspected ways, lay the foundation for those diseases which so frequently debilitate or destroy numbers of the labouring classes." Abundant evidence is also furnished in this highly practical treatise of the connection between intemperance and cholera : "Abundant evidence," says Mr. Grainger, "was afforded during the late epidemic, that habitual drunkards were highly predisposed to cholera, and of them a large number perished. Occasional excesses also led to a vast number of attacks; thus at Hamburgh it was observed that there was among the numerous sailors in that great port a regular accession of cholera every Monday and Tuesday, owing to the men going ashore and getting drunk on the preceding Sunday. London, also, several medical men informed me that they had noticed the same thing; excess, either in eating or drinking, being followed by attacks, which thus became more frequent on Sunday night and Monday." In In Edinburgh, in Glasgow, and in the neighbouring manufacturing towns in general, it was observed that periodic augmentations of the disease were coincident with the earlier |