moderate enjoyment and self-governing regulations are indispensable to lasting comfort and unrepented pleasure.* It is the great purpose of our Creator that we should acquire this spontaneous desire, and power, and habit of self-mastery; and he has made it also one of his universal laws, that whatever is the best for any one to do, and the most salutary for him to use, always becomes, by his adopting and persevering to practise it, as pleasurable as any other thing that would be gratifying, always most enduringly so, and free from the evil consequences by which temporary enjoyments, that bring future evils so often and so generally, sadden human life. It may not be unuseful to you to subjoin the experiments, which have been made as to the various digestibility of the different articles of our food.‡

their lying down, which the peasantry do in their clothes, in innumerable instances, the pipe is never out of their mouths. Yet the chief German physiologists declare that it shortens life. They compute that, out of twenty deaths of men between eighteen and thirty-five, ten originate in the waste of the constitution by smoking. The universal weakness of the eyes, which makes the Germans a spectacled nation, is attributed to this cause of nervous debility."-The German Year of Liberation, 1813.

* There seems reason to believe that tobacco may allay hunger, and, for a time, even answer the purposes of sustaining life when food is unattainable. Hearne, in his "Journey to the Polar Sea," mentions, that he frequently was without food for five or six days, in the most inclement weather, but supported the privation, without losing his health and spirits, by smoking tobacco, and by wetting his mouth with a little snow. The Turks never take it with malt liquor or spirituous mixtures, as we and the Germans do, but with their coffee; and Dr. Walsh has remarked, that on a journey, "when used with coffee and after the Turkish fashion, it is singularly grateful to the taste and refreshing to the spirits, counteracting the effects of fatigue and cold, and appeasing the cravings of hunger, as I have often experienced."-Doctor Walsh's Journey, p. 5. † Dr. Beaumont, of the United States, having the opportunity of introducing food into a young Canadian's stomach, and of withdrawing it as he wished, found that of the

"FARINACEA.-Rice, boiled soft, was perfectly converted into chyle in one hour. Sago, in an hour and three quarters. Tapioca and barley, in two hours. Bread, fresh, in three hours; stale, in two.

"OF VEGETABLES.-Potatoes, roasted, in two hours and a half; boiled, in three hours. Parsnips and beans, in two hours and a half. Turnips, in three hours and a half. Carrots, boiled, in three hours and a quarter. Cabbage, raw, in two hours and a half; boiled, in four hours; vinegar much assisted its digestion. Beet, three hours and three quarters.

"OF FRUITS.-Apples, sweet and ripe, one hour and a half; mellow, two hours; sour and hard, nearly three. A mellow peach, in one hour and a half.

"FISH AND SHELLFISH.-Trout, boiled or fried, one hour and a half. Codfish, cured and boiled, two hours. Oysters, undressed, nearly three hours; roasted, three hours and a quarter; stewed, three hours and a

LETTER XXXV.

The Supernatural History of the World a real Subject for human Study and Knowledge.-The Hebrew Scriptures are the written Records of so much of it as has been disclosed to us.-Their endless Value to us. -What was done in Judea by the Almighty was done for the Knowledge and Benefit of all.-The_Communications of the Deity to us must always be Miraculous.-The true Nature of Miracles.

MY DEAR SON,

It has already been intimated to you that the history of our world is divisible into two distinct compartments-the natural and the supernatural. Each of these is as real as the other, and they should alike be the subjects of our intellectual attention. No intelligent person would desire to remain in ignorance of either; for the absence of either will leave an unavoidable vacuity in his mental store by the deficiency of

half. Bass, boiled, three hours. Flounders, fried, three hours and a half. Salmon, salted and boiled, four hours.

"POULTRY.-Turkey, roasted, two hours and a half: boiled, five minutes more. Wild goose, roasted, two hours and a half. Chickens, fricassied, two hours and three quarters. Fowls, boiled or roasted, four hours. Roasted ducks, fours hours; and, if wild, half an hour more.

"BUTCHERS' MEAT.-Soused tripe, pigs' feet, boiled or fried, one hour. Venison steak, boiled, one hour and thirty-five minutes. Liver, calf's or lamb's, two hours. Sucking pig, two hours and a half. Mutton, broiled or boiled, three hours; roasted, a quarter more. Beef, fresh boiled or roasted, three hours; lightly salted and boiled, thirty-six minutes more; old hard, salted, four hours and a quarter. Pork steak, broiled, three hours and a quarter; stewed, three hours; lately salted and boiled, four hours and a half; roasted, five hours and a quarter Veal, broiled, four hours; fried, half an hour more.

"EGGS.-Raw, two hours; roasted, a quarter more, soft boiled, three hours; hard boiled or fried, half an hour longer.

"MILK. Two hours. Custard, haked, two hours and three quarters, Butter and cheese, three hours and a half. Apple dumplings, three hours. Suet, four hours and a half. Oil, somewhat longer, Calvesfoot jelly, half an hour."

"Dr. Beaumont's facts in many points confirm, in others differ from Dr. Paris, Dr. Prout, and Dr. Wilson Philips; but they all agree that venison is the most easily digested of meat; white fowls more so than brown; beef than veal; boiled meat more than meat dressed any other way; and that oily food is particularly indigestible,"-Athenæum, 1834, p. 280, 7.

what is omitted. Both must be acquired for the mind to be complete, and both must be obtained by adapted study. No knowledge walks of itself into the human mind; what is most obvious, indeed, is soon discerned, and the easiest and most generally attained. All natural objects of our sight and sense are of this description, so far as they excite sensations in our consciousness; and daily life gradually supplies us, without trouble, with all the information that is necessary to us of this description; but what is more recondite or distant, and to be known by reasoning and inference, or by superior communication, requires closer attention, further search, patient examination, external aids, careful discrimination, and enlightened judgment. The abstruse and the supernatural— whatever does not accrue from present sense, but demands investigation, or must be revealed before we can know-will always be of the latter character, and, therefore, always of the most intellectual species of human knowledge. We all can feel what touches us, or see what is in light before us; but what requires communication, thought, and penetration, will be always a later and less common attainment. The natural will, therefore, be the first stage of our mental education, and the most familiar as well as most universal. It will likewise be the foundation and preparation for all that is beyond it. But the inquiring mind will not be satisfied with what is only a portion of existing reality; it will always aspire to know whatever is additionally knowable. It will, therefore, seek and study the supernatural science of the world we live in, from every source that can impart it to us. The natural is comprised in the material and the human; the supernatural will be that which is beyond these and superior to them; and what is so will be whatever is Divine. The material agencies of nature and human agency produce what is natural, and exhibit this to us; but the Divine agency is alone the cause and origin of all that is supernatural, and from Divine sources we must seek our knowledge of it.

The preceding letters have endeavoured to explain to you the topics of our sacred history which were most connected with the natural branches of it. The system which our Creator has established for the continuance and multiplication of his human populations, the laws and course of their birth and death, the natural economy of their human life, the undying character of the soul; the provision made for our continual

subsistence, and for its enlargement as our numbers multiply; the varieties of our food, and the regulations which the healthful use of it requires, have been laid before you, with all their explanatory details. The plans and purposes of our Divine Sovereign, in these departments of his earthly administration, have been also deduced and stated, as the occasions arose for considering them. The principles which were inferred have been elucidated by such facts as would conduce to prove and illustrate them satisfactorily to you; and thus we have attempted to review the most important subjects of the natural division of our general theme. It remains for us now to advance to the other grand department of it to which we have alluded—the Divine or supernatural agencies and interpositions which have been acting in our world, concurrently with its natural causations and their sequences. The Divine topics of human thought can never cease to be interesting to it, from the infinite importance of the consequences which are attached to them; nor will it be possible for the mind to turn itself from them. However unwelcomed or undesired, they will obtrude themselves frequently into the recollection. The possibilities which may spring from them, no human indifference or dislike can destroy. They will come at their own time and in their own way. The future will be a future to us, and must arrive; and we cannot avoid glancing upon it, or extinguish always some anxiety about it. The more intellectual and reflective the general mind becomes, the more what connected with God and immortality, and with our next state of being and eventual destination, will be a subject of earnest inquiry and frequent meditation. Our common sense will take this direction in proportion as it is more enlightened by knowledge, and as the judgment becomes more expanded and sedate.

That there is and always has been a supernatural system and course of things in the world, seems to be one of the clearest deductions of our reason, from the time that we perceive and believe that our earth, and its living and thinking inhabitants, have been the designed and special creations of an intelligent Creator. Made on a specific plan, and with specific purposes always in view and always in a train of successive accomplishment, they must have a supernatural history belonging to them; for all designs, all plans, all purposes, are only such, according as they have some particular results or

ends in view; without these there can be no design, or plan, or purpose. Such things have always reference to some further thing which is to arise from them, for which they are formed, and to effectuate which they have been adopted and put into action. We know this to a certainty from our unvarying experience in our own and in all other human productions and transactions. If we design, we design something; if we plan, it is to make or do something which we conceive when we plan, and for which we plan. All our purposes have also future results in view, towards which they are directed, and have all a process for their execution. Mind, whether in our Creator or in ourselves, must act on these principles, and to the production and promotion of whatever it devises, intends, or resolves upon. But whatever the Divine power designs, means, or effectuates, must, as contrasted with what man so does, be superhuman-be what mankind do not and cannot do; and when the material structure of nature has been formed, whatever further or extra agencies or operations are introduced into it or effected in it, must be beyond what the established course of nature does or can occasion; that is, it must be supernatural. Therefore, whatever is done in our world after its first creation, and in human affairs after mankind were brought into existence, which neither man nor the material laws of nature could of themselves occasion, must be the results and consequences of a superhuman and supernatural agency, and therefore of that Being who only can exercise such. The description of it will be a description of what is of this character; and the history of its operations cannot but be a supernatural history, or a history of what is supernatural or superhuman. Such a history there must be in the world, if the actions of such agency be anywhere recorded; because, unless the Deity has done nothing at all in our globe or with his human race since the moment of their first Creation; unless from that time he has wholly withdrawn from them and entirely abandoned them, he must have acted, in some respect or other, in and with the natural and human world which he has created. All such actions must be supernatural agency, and all agency becomes the subject of narration or history as soon and as often as it occurs. There may be no historian to observe it and to put it into words and phrases of human language; but there must be a history of it capable of being recorded if it