THE PENNY POST BOX.

The Penny Post Box.

AN IMPORTANT QUESTION FOR THE NEW YEAR.

I WISH to give a hint to the readers of the Pioneer which may be of great benefit to them; and I give it on the principle that we ought to do good to one another if we can. The hint I would give is this -and it is very suitable for the new year-that every reader should ask himself, "When shall I die?" He may not be able to answer it, but thinking about it may do good. Let no one treat it as a question of pounds, shillings, and pence, but as one of vast importance. If to die were to cease to exist-to pass into nonentity-to die as the horse, cow, or sheep, then the question would lose its force: but it is not so, and we cannot for a moment entertain a thought of this sort? After this should follow other questions, each also of vast importance; such as, "When shall I die? How shall I die? Where shall I die?

When shall I die? Ah! what importance seems to gather round this question. It is said that there is an appointed time for us all; therefore for you. But when? Perhaps if you knew you would have to say, "There is but a step between me and death." How solemn the thought! That man only who knows Christ is his Saviour, can calmly meet death, come when he may, and ask, "Where is thy sting ?" He can, without fearful apprehensions and sad forebodings, look at the prospect of death coming. To die will be gain to him. He is certain that eternity finds where time leaves us; that if he dies in Christ, eternity will find him safe in the Saviour's hands. For Christ is the way to eternal life. But if, when we die, we are not found in Christ-what then? The very thought of this is fearful. May it never be the condition of one of us! I hope your readers, all of them, will think upon these things, for time is short-death is near-judgment approaches-the books will be opened and we must all be there to receive from the Holy Judge the stamp of our eternal destiny.

Awake, my soul, thy way prepare,
And lose in this each mortal care;

With steady feet that path be trod,

Which, through the grave, conducts to God.

JESUS, to thee my all I trust;

And if thou call me down to dust,

I know thy voice, I bless thy hand,

And die in smiles at thy command.

J. T.

FACTS, HINTS, AND GEMS.

Facts, Hints, and Gems.

Facts.

AN ENORMOUS APPLE was gathered last Autumn of the "New Hawthorn" class, which measured four teen inches round.

COST OF MAKING A PEER. The expences attending the creation of a British Peer amount to nearly five hundred pounds.

GUANO FOR MANURE has been found in large masses in Australia;

more accessible, and almost valuable as its gold.

A MACHINE FOR BORING ROCKS when making railways, and worked by steam power, has been invented in the United States.

FROST IN SIBERIA is so severe, that the dead, who have been buried for one hundred and fifty years, are taken up unchanged.

CURIOUS CUSTOM. When Chinese Emperor dies, all subjects, without exception, are required not to shave their heads for one hundred days, nor marry, nor play music,

nor offer sacrifices.

WEEPING WILLOWS.-All the trees in England or America, are said to have sprung from a twig which Pope the poet found in a basket of figs, sent from Turkey. He planted it and it grew into a fine tree.

CANDLES MADE FROM PEAT.-A large manufactory has been estab. lished in Ireland, near an extensive bog, where they are making beautiful candles from peat.

THE SOAP PLANT.-A singular wild plant has been discovered in California, which grows about a foot high, and when it fades in May, leaves a ball of natural soap, superior to any ever manufactured.

CAST IRON PAVEMENTS, consisting of square boxes, with a composition of asphaltum and gravel, are being laid down in Boston, United States.

For a Fit of Extravagance and Folly.-Go to the workhouse, or speak with the ragged inmates of a gaol, and you will be convinced-"Who makes his bed of briar and thorn, Must be content to be forlorn."

For a Fit of Ambition.-Go to the graveyard and read the gravestones, they will tell you the end of ambition. The grave will soon be your bedchamber, earth your pillow. corruption your father, and the worm your mother and sister.

about for the halt and the blind; For a Fit of Repining. -Look and visit the bedridden, afflicted,

and deranged, and they will make you ashamed of your lighter troubles.

For a Fit of Selfishness. - Sit down and fancy yourself, for it may be so, left without any help; and then get up and see if you cannot find some one in that case, and help him as you would wish to be helped if you were in his place.

For a Fit of Despondency.-Look on the good things which God has given you in the world, and those which he has promised to his fol lowers in the next. He who goes into his garden to look for cobwebs no doubt will find them; while he who looks for a flower may return into his house with one blooming in his bosom.

FACTS, HINTS, AND GEMS.

ng refreshing showers to the Enter into my joy, and sit down on my

they should lay themselves flat along
the ice in a line, one behind another,
and each push forward the boy be-
fore him till they reached the hole,
where their playmate was still plung-
ing, nobly volunteering to be him-
self first in the chain.
The plan
was instantly adopted, and to the
great joy of the boys and their gal-
lant leader, they succeeded in re-
scuing their companion from a
watery grave, at a moment when,
overcome by terror and exertion, he
was unable to make another effort
to save himself.

IN the winter of 1790, as a number | he proposed to his companions that of boys were sliding on a lake in a remote part of Yorkshire, the ice happened to break at a considerable distance from the shore, and one of them unfortunately fell in. No house was near, where ropes, or the assistance of more aged hands, could be procured; and the boys were afraid to venture forward to save their struggling companion, from a natural dread that were the ice had given way, it might give way again, and involve more of them in jeopardy. In this alarming emergency, one of them, of more sagacity than the rest, suggested an expedient which, for its scientific conception, would have done honour to the boyhood of a Watt or an Archimedes; he might probably remember having seen, And another thing we must menthat while a plank placed upright tion, and it is, that winter never on thin ice will burst through, the comes but we hear of some boys same plank, if laid flat along the ice, being drowned by going on the ice will be firmly borne, and afford even on a sabbath-day. It is distressing a safe footing; and applying, with | for any one to meet with death in great ingenuity and presence of that way at any time, but it is more mind, the obvious principle of this awful to meet with death when difference to the danger before them, breaking the sabbath.

Yes: the lad who thought of this was a "Little Philosopher." But boys are very foolish who venture on the ice over deep waters.

WAR AND THE BIBLE.

THE BIBLE is to us custom must be tried.

an infallible guide; and by it every Many have already been brought to

this test; and it is high time for christians to look at war in the light of the revealed Word of God.

WHAT SAITH THE OLD LAW OF GOD?

War contra

"Thou shalt have no other gods before me." venes this solemn command. Its spring was from paganism; its spirit is pagan still; and its laws require obedience to man rather than God. Does it not thus dethrone Jehovah from the heart of man? Are not soldiers notorious for their neglect of God. Can war be anything else than a vast nursery of irreligion? Every man, whether a private, an officer, or even a chaplain, is bound by his oath to yield implicit obedience to orders. He is not permitted to follow his conscience. A British officer was once cashiered by Protestants for refusing to join in what he deemed the idolatries of Popery; nor must soldiers scruple, at the bidding of a superior, to commit the grossest outrages ever recorded in the annals of crime.

“Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain:" War is a school of impiety and profaneness; blasphemy is the well-known dialect of the army and navy; you can hardly enter a camp or a war-ship without meeting a volley of oaths, or find a warrior on land or sea who does not habitually blaspheme the name of God. An eye-witness tells of drunkenness and debauchery, and men striving to outvie each other in uttering | the most horrid imprecations and blasphemy, and ridiculing everything like religion.

"Remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy." War scorns to acknowledge any Sabbath. Its battles are fought, its marches continued, its fortifications constructed, all its labours exacted, all its recreations indulged, quite as much on this as on any other day of the week. It is the chosen time for special and splendid reviews; all the millions of soldiers in christendom are compelled to violate the sabbath; and, where the war spirit is rife, it will be found well nigh impossible to preserve, in any degree of vigour, this mainspring of God's moral government over our world. Waterloo was fought on the sabbath-day.

No. 92.

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