the force of example, under the blessing of heaven; that in the exercise of love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance, consisted the excellence of the Christian spirit.

At length, in the year 1803, a revival occurred in the Society under that faithful steward, the Rev. Mr. Ward. Many and precious were the drops of mercy which now distilled from heaven upon this dry and thirsty land. The season was arrived which developed the charities of the truly benevolent believer, and enabled him to demonstrate the sincerity of his profession. Mr. Tucker was an active and useful attendant at evening meetings. Seldom was his place vacant upon Wednesday and Saturday evenings in the village school-house, from the year '87 to the end of his life. But especially during that season of grace we are now speaking of, he would frequently collect a small number of pious people at his own house for devotion, encouraged with the accompanying promise, where two or three are gathered together, there I will be with them and bless them. Such was the sanguine nature of his temperament, that whatever he undertook he engaged in with warmth and vehemence. The concerns of immortality diminished none of his ardor. In his addresses to the throne of grace upon such occasions, he was peculiarly fervent, tender and pathetic. Overcome with his subject, the feelings of his heart often interrupted his utterance, and suffused his countenance with tears. Nor did the repetition of this duty diminish his sensibility. In the discharge of it he delighted to join with others, and in the efficacy of it had great confidence, when offered by spiritual minds. If his views and love of spirituality were more conspicuous at this time, they were yet uniformly the same. There was a never ending desire, impressed upon every avenue of his heart, resembling that of the Psalmist, as the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.

(To be concluded in the next number.)

Scripture Illustrated.

From the Christian Register.

SOCRATES AND ST. PAUL.

MR. EDITOR- Professor Everett, in his admirable Lecture on Athens, delivered 26th Sept. (to aid in the erection of a building for the reception of the Panorama of Athens, presented to Harvard University by Mr. Lyman) described Areopagus or Mars Hill. He said this eminence was now about fifteen feet high; that on it was formerly held the Court of Areopagites, which had cognizance of offences committed against the gods; that for this VOL. V.

3

reason St. Paul was carried before this tribunal. He said there was a platform on the brow of the hill, whereon the Judges sat, in the open air, the audience being on the ground below. He took occasion to say that Bishop Sherlock had finely contrasted the appearance of Socrates and St. Paul at that court of judicature, when arraigned for the same offence, showing the superiority of the apostle over the philosopher. I send you the extract so pertinently referred to. It is found in Vol. 1. Discourse 4, of Thomas Sherlock. D. D. Lord Bishop of London. The text is 1 Cor. i. 21- For, after that, in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.'

We have an account of the speculative opinions of many of the wise men of Greece preserved to us in authors of great credit; but of their practice and personal behaviour in life, little is said; which makes it hard to judge how far their own practice and conduct was influenced by their opinions, or how consistent they were in pursuing the consequences of their own doctrines. The case might have been the same with Socrates, had not a very particular circumstance put him under a necessity of explaining his conduct and practice with respect to the religion of his country. He had talked so freely of the heathen deities, and the ridiculous stories told of them, that he fell under a suspicion of despising the gods of his country, and of teaching the youth of Athens to despise their altars and their worship. Upon this occasion he is summoned before the great court of the Areopagites; and happily the apology he made for himself is preserved to us by two of the ablest of his scholars, and the best writers of antiquity, Plato and Xenophon; and from both their accounts it appears, that Socrates maintained and asserted before his Judges, that he worshipped the gods of his country, and that he sacrificed in private and in public upon the allowed altars, and according to the rites and customs. of the city. After this public confession, so authentically reported by two so able hands, there can be no doubt of his case. He was an idolater, and had not, by his knowledge and ability in reasoning, delivered himself from the practice of the superstition of his country. You see how far the wisdom of the world could go : give me leave to show you what the foolishness of preaching could do in the very same case.

'St. Paul was in the same case: he was accused in the same city of Athens of the same crime, that he was a setter forth of strange Gods; and before the same great court of Areopagites he made his apology, which is likewise preserved to us by St. Luke in the seventeenth chapter of the Acts. We have then the greatest and the ablest among the wise men of Greece, and an apostle of Christ, in the same circumstances. You have heard the philosopher's defence, that he worshipped the gods of his country, and as his country worshipped them. Hear now the apostle :

'Ye men of Athens,' says he,' I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious: for, as I passed by and beheld your devotions I found an altar with this inscription-TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you: God that made the world and all things therein-this God,' he tells them is not worshipped with men's hands, as though he needeth any thing. Nor was the Godhead like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device. He then calls upon them in the name of this great God, to repent of their superstition and idolatry, which, God would no longer bear; because he hath appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness, by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.'

Which of these two, now, was a preacher of true religion? Let those who value human reason at the highest rate determine the point.

The Attributes of God Displayed.

From the London Methodist Magazine.

ACCOUNT OF THE GEYSERS, OR BOILING SPRINGS, IN ICELAND,

"Smooth to the shelving brink a copious flood
Rolls fair and placid; where collected all
In one impetuous torrent, down the steep
It thundering shoots, and shakes the country round.
At first, an azure sheet, it rushes broad;

Then whit'ning by degrees, as prone it falls,
And from the loud-resounding rocks below,
Dash'd in a cloud of foam it sends aloft

A hoary mist, and forms a ceaseless shower."

-Deum namque ire per omnes

Terrasque tractusque maris, coelumque profundom.

VIRG.

THE Geysers in Iceland are a natural curiosity, which cannot perhaps be equalled in any other country of the globe. These springs are situated on a mountain called Laugerfel, of no great elevation, rising only 310 feet above the current of a river that runs at its foot. It is entirely surrounded by a morass extending on every side. On certain mounds are the apertures of boiling springs, from some of which issue spouts of water from one to four feet in height; while in others the water rises no higher than the top of the basin, or gently flows over the margin. The fountain that is alone, by way of distinction denominated the Geyser, is situated at the farther extremity of this collection of springs, at the distance of half a quarter of a mile from those at

which you first arrive. "On reaching the top of this mound," says a certain traveller, "I looked into the perfectly circular basin, which gradully shelved down to the mouth of the pipe or crater whence the water issued. It was not possible now to enter the basin, for it was filled nearly to the edge with water the most pellucid I ever beheld. At eight o'clock I heard a hollow, subterraneous noise, which was thrice repeated in the course of a few moments. It exactly resembled the distant firing of cannon, and was accompanied each time with a perceptible, though very slight shaking of the earth; almost immediately after which the boiling of the water increased, together with the steam, and the whole was violently agitated. At first the water was rolled without much noise over the edge of the basin; but this was almost instantly followed by a jet, which did not rise above ten or twelve feet, and merely forced up the water in the centre of the basin, but was attended with a loud roaring explosion. Some one or other of the springs was continually boiling, but none was sufficiently remarkable to take my attention from the Geyser, by the side of which I remained nearly the whole night, in the anxious but vain expectation of witnessing more eruptions. It was not till eleven on the following morning that I was apprized of the approach of one by subterraneous noises and shocks of the ground, repeated several times, at uncertain, though quickly recurring intervals. I could only compare them to the distant firing of a fleet of ships on a rejoicing day, when the cannon are sometimes discharged singly, and sometimes two or three almost at the same moment. I was standing at the time on the brink of the basin, but was soon obliged to retire a few steps by the heaving of the water in the middle, and the consequent flowing of its agitated surface over the margin, which happened three separate times in about as many minutes. I had waited here but a few seconds when the first jet took place, and that had scarcely subsided before it was succeeded by a second, and then by a third, which last was by far the most magnificent, rising in a column that appeared to reach not less than ninety feet in height, and to be in its lower part as wide as the basin itself, which is fifty-one feet in diameter. The bottom of it was a prodigious body of white foam; higher up, amidst the vast clouds of steam that had burst from the pipe, the water was seen mounting in a compact column, which, at a still greater elevation, burst into innumerable long and narrow streamlets of spray, that was either shot to a vast height in the air in a perpendicular direction, or thrown out from the side diagonally to a prodigious distance. The excessive transparency of this body of water, and the brilliancy of the drops as the sun shone through them, considerably added to the beauty of the spectacle. It was my custom, during my stay at this place, to cook my provisions in one or other of these boiling springs. Accordingly, a quarter of a sheep was put into the

Geyser, and Jacob (our traveller's servant,) left to watch it, holding it fastened to a piece of cord, so that as often as it was thrown out by the force of the water, which very frequently happened, he might readily drag it in again. The poor fellow, unacquainted with the nature of these springs, was a good deal surprised when he thought the meat nearly cooked, to observe the water in an instant sink down and entirely disappear, not rising again till towards evening. We therefore were obliged to have recourse to another spring, and found that in all it required 20 minutes to perform the operation properly. The next eruption of the Geysers was a very magnificent one, and preceded by more numerous shocks of the ground, and subterraneous noises, than I had witnessed. The whole height to which the greatest jet reached, could not be so little as an hundred feet. The width of the steam is not easily determined by the eye, on account of the steam and spray that enveloped it. Previous to this eruption, Jacob and myself amused ourselves with throwing into the pipe a number of large pieces of rock and tufts of grass, with masses of earth about the roots, and we had the satisfaction to find them all cast out at the eruption. Standing sometimes with our backs to the sun, and looking into the mouth of the pipe, we enjoyed the sight of a most brilliant assemblage of all the colours of the rainbow, caused by the decomposition of the solar rays passing through the shower of drops that was falling between us and the

crater.

The Grace of God Manifested.

For the Methodist Magazine.

MEMOIR OF MISS LYDIA B. LEAVITT, OF PORTSMOUTH, N. H.

In writing the memoirs of those who have been brought to the knowledge and enjoyment of God, we have often to trace their steps through the giddy rounds of fashionable mirth and scenes of gaiety and folly, where the mind has been lost to a sense of religious principle and duty; and not unfrequently to record such instances of unrestrained indulgence of sinful propensity, as has laid the foundation of deep and lasting repentance in their own bosoms, and of regret and trouble in the hearts of their connections. But the subject of the following short memoir was of a different character. She was one who, like Obadiah, feared the Lord from her youth; and hence she was preserved from most of the snares and excesses of youthful folly and dissipation.

Miss Lydia B. Leavitt, was the daughter of Col. Gilman Lea vitt, Portsmouth, N. H. She was born in the year 1798, and died