WHAT member is there of any Christian community who has not meditated, with feelings of reverential and grateful emotion, on the miraculous restoration to life of LAZARUS after he had been dead four days ? Who is there that has not pictured to him- self the pathetic interview between the two sisters and our saviour on that memorable occasion ? Who is there whose thoughts have not travelled backward through die long ages that have since passed away, and rejoiced with those favoured women on the return of one so dear to them, whom they had mourned over as for ever removed from their earthly view ? Such miraculous power is not deputed to mortal man! yet there are cases where the physician, by the skilful use of the means which GOD has placed in his hands, pro- duces effects of a strikingly analogous cha- racter ; where all the functions of life have ceased; where the heart is still, and the living fountain of the blood has become as it were a stagnate pool; where the vital principle itself has apparently fled, and the soul departed from its earthly tenement; yet all has been restored again, and the living man has once more inhaled the breath of life.

Perhaps the most striking and most interesting cases of this almost restoration to life after death are those of persons who have been apparently drowned. By the persevering use of certain means, the clay- cold and seemingly-lifeless corpse is again restored to warmth, and made to breathe, to feel, to see, to speak, to hear, to think—in fact, to live; and the tears of weeping relatives and friends are turned to joy.' It is, indeed, a privilege to be permitted to take any part in the promotion of so grand a work; proportionally anxious, how- ever, must those feel who are engaged in it to possess themselves with an accurate knowledge of the most certain means with which to effect their important under- taking.

The NATIONAL LIFE-BOAT INSTITUTION, although its more immediate function is the provision of means to rescue the ship- wrecked mariner and convey him safely to the land, is yet frequently, in its pursuit of that function, brought into contact with persons partially drowned. Accordingly, at its numerous life-boat stations, it has had posted up in the boat-houses those instruc- tions for the treatment of seemingly-drowned persons which have been supposed to be the most appropriate, which instructions are often the only guide of the persons called on' to assist, until medical aid can be ob- tained.

The instructions hitherto adopted by the Institution have been those promulgated by the Royal Humane Society of London, whose attention had been more especially devoted to the subject. So long as those rales were not impugned, the Committee of the Institution thought they were safe in adopting them; but as they have recently been disputed in some-parts by Dr. MAR- SHALL HALL, a gentleman of note in his profession, and as numerous other medical men have expressed a coincidence with his conclusions, the Committee of the NATIONAL LIFE-BOAT INSTITUTION have felt it to be their duty to obtain for themselves all the.