Page:Monthly scrap book, for June.pdf/13

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SCRAP BOOK.
13

hairs, and he was crouched for a spring, when I barst my eyelids open, and looked upon him with redoubled sternness. He appeared to be suddenly quelled, and uttering one short growl, slowly dropped his huge tail, turned about, and sneaked muttering away. I kept my eye upon him until he disappeared; and then, and not till then, felt the full sense of my danger; the sense of which so completely overpowered me that I fell lifeless upon the earth. Even now I shudder whilst I ponder on the event, and thank heaven that it was my fate to encounter the fierce animal when I was cooled and invigorated, both mentally and bodily, by the pure fare of Macleod, rather than on that fearful and well remembered night which succeeded my departure from the kind, but intemperate Hendrick Groning.


THE CHRISTIAN SABBATH.

The Sabbath was provided and appointed by divine wisdom—that wisdom which well knew what was in man, to be a place of seclusion and retreat, to which the soul might betake itself every seventh day, fot the purpose of recruiting its strength, and of repairing its wasted energies, after conflicting in unequal contest with the perturbations and disquietudes, the cares and interests, the pleasures and dissipations of the world. On this day, a truce has been imposed by the high authority of heaven, upon the more direct warfare which that, great enemy, in its various forms of business and pleasure, carries on against the soul. It is a holy league stipulated in our favour for the express purpose