Queries and Answers.

DEAR SIR,-The 12th verse of the 2nd chapter of Exodus reads thus: "And he looked this way and that way, and when he saw that there was no man, he slew the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand." Your opinion as to whether Moses was justified in so doing or not will greatly oblige,-J. WRIGHT.

ANSWER.-Moses did wrong by this act. Nevertheless it may have had its palliations. The Hebrews, the brethren of Moses, were at this time slaves in Egypt. The Egyptians afflicted them, ch. i. 12; they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, and they served with rigour (v. 14.) Laws of extermination were enacted against them (v. 15-23.) It is likely that this Egyptian that smote the Hebrew was one of the taskmasters mentioned in ch. i. 10; that at this time he was "afflicting him with his burden,” bitterly oppressing his helpless victim, like a modern Legree would. Moses saw the oppression and cruelty, and in his ire he slew the moral monster, and hid him in the sand. We repeat, the act was wrong, but these circumstances greatly relieve turpitude.

No. II.

Dear Editor,—Having read with much pleasure some of the explanations you have so ably given in our Juvenile to Bible questions put to you, I take the liberty to trouble you for an explanation of the following verse, Acts ii. 23, “ Him being delivered by the determinate council and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain." Does not the above verse seem to be reprimanding the Jews for something that they were destined by God to do, and which must, according to the word of God, be done by some one? You will oblige by inserting an answer to the above in your interesting and edifying Magazine.-JOHN BELL, Jun.

ANSWER: The foreknowledge of God is a confessedly difficult subject. Some divines go so far in their disquisitions on this subject as, indeed, to make God the author of all the wickedness and

villanies perpetrated in this world. The cause of the blunder arises from the fact that they confound preordination with foreknowledge; two very distinct things. Foreordination is a decree, and is an exercise of the divine will, Foreknowledge is an exercise of the divine intelligence. Omniscience sees all the events of the future without determining them or decreeing them to come to pass. Jonathan Edwards himself says, "I freely allow that foreknowledge does not prove a thing to be necessary any more than afterknowledge." In our text we have a decree-the determinate counsel; and foresight-the foreknowledge, That God determined that Christ should suffer, we cordially believe. All the prophecies about his sufferings and death prove this, "Thus it is written and thus it behoved Christ to suffer." In a review of the divine "determinate counsel," as seen in the many predictions of the Old Testament, we inquire, "Ought not Christ to suffer these things?" Thus God "delivered him up for us all," Rom. viii. 32; "He gave his only-begotten Son," John iii. 16; He sent him," John iii. 17. He was not taken by surprise in what the Jews did. He foreknew the machinations and cruelties of the Jews. But though he saw that in given circumstances the Jews would thus act, he withheld not his Son, he delivered him up. The foresight did not determine the bent of the Jewish mind on this transaction, only to deliver up His Son. In all his murderers did they were perfectly free; for when Peter said, “ye have murdered the Prince of Life and Glory," they felt the justness of the charge and were pricked in their hearts. Two things are certain :

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1. God foresees all future events; though his foreknowledge, as we have shown time after time in our Connexional Magazines, does not decree those events.

2. Man is perfectly free in all his moral actions. This must be admitted, or you destroy the foundations of responsibility.

THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA

BY COLUMBUS.

AT the time Martin Luther was in the Erfurth Monastery, a very distinguished man was putting off the robes of mortality at Valladolid, in Spain. This great and good man was a Spanish veteran, recently returned from the last voyage he ever is to make; with his health broken and his spirits enervated by years of suffering and indefatigable toil. Entering the chamber where this great man is meeting his fate, we find him surrounded by his sons and several of his sincere friends and admirers. The room in which he lies presents a

On its wally strange and peculiar appearance, throughout.

we see old charts and maps, pictures of countries and vessels, and many ordinary naval things; dried plants and skins of animals; living birds, and lumps of gold; a torn flag of Spain: a thorn-branch, withered and thickly covered with berries; a piece of rotten board; while over the place where the suffering veteran lies is suspended a long iron chain. Such is the peculiar aspect of the room. And the man himself is no ordinary looking man; his face is storm-beaten and swarthy; he is much debilitated by disease and complicated infirmities, but as he throws back those long silvery locks, you see fire flashing from his eyes, and a natural nobility about him more than common; a God-given dignity of soul; an instinct of greatness and incompatibility with littleness of any kind. His appearance shows that he is the performer of noble deeds; his rough coarse face, hard hands and sinewy limbs, all declare him to be a man of great and transcendent doings. Out of the abundance of his heart the old veteran is speaking. Let us listen to what he is saying: he speaks with enthusiasm and fervour of the past, and then, like one of the ancient prophets, he descants on the bright and golden visions of the future, the whole of which, both past and future, relates to a

new world.

Not the new and invisible world, where the river of life rolls and the tree of life blooms under cloudless skies, and where strains of celestial music stream from harps of gold struck by seraph hands; but a new world down here, where the magnificent Amazon sweeps along its majestic. course, and on whose banks bloom the splendid Victoria regia, Queen of flowers,-a world he had been first to discover, and with which his name would be honourably associated for ever, and which would open, for ages to come, expansive and inexhaustible flelds of enterprise, benevolence, and wealth. This great and wonderful man was Christopher Columbus. The new world was America.

Columbus was born at Genoa, 1437, and is said to have been of very humble descent. We know nothing definitely of his early life and education. His thirst for geographical knowledge, his love of adventure and for a seafaring life, were early developed. Like most children he was passionately fond of the romantic and courageous. A sea voyage was to him full of charm and interest, and when a boy it absorbed the whole of his young mind so completely that he even then determined to be a sailor. This feeling continued to increase with his years, for in the thirty-sixth year of his age we find him in the service of the King of Naples, commander of a ship of war; which shows at once his advanced knowledge and signal courage. He made a number of voyages on the Mediterranean to the east and west of Genoa; after which he went to Lisbon, at a period when Portugal had gained a distinguished pre-eminence for her maritime discoveries. There a brother of his had settled, and Columbus blending his sympathies with the spirit of enterprise then so prevalent, made a voyage one hundred leagues beyond Thule, the southern part of which is a distance of 73 degrees from the Equator, and then thought to have bordered the shores of Iceland. After that he made a voyage to England, to Guinea, and the Islands studding the Western Ocean which belong to Spain and Portugal. In each voyage Columbus made the most minute observations, drawing comparisons between