the voluminous writings he presented to the world. But now, my good friends, we are engaged in another town, and another part of the country, in inaugurating a statue to another man of equal fame and equal services, a man of unrivalled excellence, and one who lives, like Dr. Watts, in the heart of every thinking man and woman, and every child who has attained the faculty of reason-we are now inaugurating a statue to the memory of the great John Bunyan, in Bedford. Well may we put these men in juxtaposition. They give rise to reflection how they both surpassed in talent and knowledge for doing good or evil. Observe the different fate that befel these individuals. See John Bunyan amidst trial, sorrow, and difficulty, in bonds and imprisonment-separated from the earthly object to which he was most attached-separated from his dear and cherished little girl; but nevertheless, amidst suffering, disappointment, and what to others would have been despair, full of faith and the assurance of joy, writing that work which has given wisdom and consolation to hundreds of thousands and millions of millions of the human race. (Loud cheers.) In that town it was that he wrote the "Pilgrim's Progress," and amidst all his trials endured as "seeing Him who is invisible." Observe the contrary destiny allotted to Dr. Watts: he passed his later days in comparative ease and comfort, under the cherishing roof of his friends the Abneys, and there, in peace and quietness, he produced those delightful treatises with which we rejoice and enrich our souls. Observe what lessons they both present. John Bunyan, in the order and wisdom of providence, was intended to exhibit the power of faith, patience, and resignation under suffering; Dr. Watts, to show how a man filled with the Spirit of God, caring for nothing but the honour of his Saviour and the welfare of mankind, can resist the temptations of affluence and luxury, and, undisturbed and undiverted from his great and noble course, work as though every line he drew, and almost every word he uttered, were essential to his own welfare. So it is that God produces His saints to show the way they may be led, and the manner in which we are called to advance His present honour and final purpose. One word only in respect of the statue and the motives with which, I hope, it is erected, and, I trust, will in future be regarded. To erect statues for no other purpose than to be gazed on, is idle and prejudicial. Let every statue and work of that kind recall to those who pass by the memory of something great and good; and let those who look on it strive to see if they cannot go and do likewise. Men and women of Southampton! You may convert this, not only into an

honour to your town, but a mighty benefit to yourselves and your children. Bring them here; make them look at the statue; and when they shall say to you, "What mean ye by this service?" say that is the resemblance of a great and good man who, from his earliest years to his latest breath, thought of nothing but the honour of God, and, through God, the welfare of the human race.

A SABBATH SONG TO THE UNSEEN SAVIOUR.

"Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." (John xx. 29.)

WE saw Thee not, when Thou didst tread,

O Saviour, this our sinful earth;
Nor heard Thy voice restore the dead,
And waken them to second birth:
Yet we believe that Thou didst come,
And quit for us Thy glorious home.

We were not with the faithful few

Who stood Thy bitter cross around;
Nor heard Thy prayer for those who slew,

Nor felt that earthquake rock the ground;
We saw no rude spear wound Thy side;
But we believe that Thou hast died.

No angels' message meets our ear,

When now we gather on thy day;
"The Lord is risen, He is not here;

Come see the place where Jesus lay:"
But we believe that Thou didst quell
The banded powers of death and hell.

We saw Thee not return on high;

And now, our longing sight to bless,
No ray of glory from the sky

Shines down upon our wilderness :
But we believe that thou art there,

And seek Thee, Lord, in praise and prayer.

THE few remaining ruins of this once renowned city remind us of that couplet of the poet

"The works of man inherit, as is just,

Their maker's frailty, and return to dust."

Sir John Malcolm says:-" Among the traces of a great nation's former glory, there is none upon which the mind dwells with more serious thought than on the magnificent ruins of its ancient palaces. How forcibly are we reminded of our condition when told that an edifice, in the erection of which a nation's wealth had been exhausted, which was adorned with every ornament that the art of the world could supply, and whose history was engraven on the imperishable rocks on which it was constructed, was not only fallen to decay, but that its founder was unknown, and the language in which its history was inscribed was no longer numbered among the tongues of man!" These observations are peculiarly applicable to the present state of Heliopolis.

This city stood in the road between Tyre and Palmyra; its history is, nevertheless, so lost in obscurity, that, considering the splendour and magnificence of its remains, we are astonished. Scarcely any.

thing of its history is known; and even its existence appears to have been unknown for many centuries to the Romans. Tradition states that it was built by Solomon; and for the truth of this the Jews quote the following passage from the book of Chronicles: "Also he (Solomon) built Beth-horon and Baal-ath." It is thought also that Baalbec is meant when Solomon says "the tower of Lebanon looking towards Damascus." The Arabs go even so far as to assert that this city was built by the king as a residence for the Queen of Sheba; and Sir William Ouseley quotes a Persian tradition that Solomon often passed the day at Baalbec, and the night at Istakr.

Heliopolis is also called Baalbec, both words having nearly the same signification. Heliopolis means the city of the sun; and the sun was worshipped by the ancient inhabitants of the country under the name of Baal. When we consider the extraordinary magnificence of the temple of Baalbec, we are surprised at the silence of the Greek and Roman writers in regard to it. The only mention of it is in a fragment of John of Antioch, who attributes the building of it to Antoninus Pius. His words are: "Alius Antoninus Pius built a great temple at Heliopolis, near Libanus, in Phoenicia, which was one of the wonders of the world." Gibbon thus speaks of Baalbec and Emesa: "Among the cities which are indicated by Greek and oriental names in the geography and conquest of Syria, we may distinguish Emesa and Heliopolis; the former as a metropolis of the plain, and the latter as a metropolis of the valley. Under the last of the Cæsars they were strong and populous; the turrets glittered from afar; an ample space was covered with public and private buildings; and the citizens were illustrious by their spirit, or at least by their pride-by their riches, or at least by their luxury. In the days of Paganism, both Emesa and Heliopolis were addicted to the worship of Baal, or the sun; but the decline of their superstition or splendour has been marked by a singular variety of fortune. Not a vestige remains of the temple of Emesa, which was equalled in poetic style to the summits of mount Libanus; while the ruins of Baalbec, unknown to the writers of antiquity, excite the curiosity and wonder of European travellers."

The ruins as they now exist are thus described by Lamartine : "On reaching the summit of the breach we knew not where to fix our eyes. On every side we beheld marble doors of prodigious dimensions, windows and niches bordered with exquisite sculpture, richly ornamented arches, fragments of cornices, entablatures, and

capitals. The master-works of art; the wrecks of ages, lay scattered as thickly as the grains of dust beneath our feet. All was mystery, confusion, inextricable wonder. No sooner had we cast an admiring glance on one side than some new prodigy attracted us on the other. Every attempt we made to interpret the religious meaning of the monuments was defeated by some newly-discerned object. We frequently groped about in this labyrinth of conjecture. One cannot fancy a people of whose religion or manners nothing certain can be known. Time carries his secrets away with him, and leaves his enigmas as sports for human knowledge. We speedily renounced all our attempts to build any system out of these ruins; we were content to gaze and admire, without comprehending anything beyond the colossal power of human genius, and the strength of religious feeling, which had moved such masses of stone, and wrought so many master-pieces."

The ruins of Baalbec do not present a crowd of fallen edifices, spread over a large extent, like those of Palmyra; they consist only of three distinct buildings, which stand not far from each other, in a plain at a short distance from the inhabited part of the town. The most remarkable of these is the great Temple of the Sun, which occupies a cireuit of more than half a mile.

"Here is another curiosity of this place (says Maundrell) which a man need be well assured of his credit before he ventures to relate, lest he should be thought to strain the privilege of his credit too far. That which I mean is, the large piece of an old wall which encompasses all these structures last described. A wall made of such monstrous great stones that the natives hereabouts (as is usual in works of this strange nature) ascribe it to the architecture of the devil. Three of the stones, which were larger than the rest, we took the pains to measure. We found them to extend sixty-one yards in length; one twenty-one, and the other two each twenty yards; and in the breadth of the same dimensions. These three stones lay in one and the same row to the end; the rest of the wall was made also of great stones, but none, I think, so great as these. That which added to the wonder was, that these stones were lifted up into the wall more than twenty feet from the ground!" The stone of which the temple is built was brought from a neighbouring quarry, at the bottom of which there is a single stone lying seventy feet in length, fourteen feet in breadth, and fourteen feet six inches in thickness! Its weight, according to these dimensions, must be above 1,130 tons. It would require, we believe, the united strength of 60,000 men of our time to raise this single stone!