LOVE DUE TO THE CREATOR.

AND ask ye why He claims our love?

O answer, all ye winds of even!

O answer, all ye lights above,

That watch in yonder darkening heaven! Thou Earth, in vernal radiance gay

As when His angels first arrayed thee, And thou, O deep tongued Ocean, say

Why man should love the Mind that made thee!

There's not a flower that decks the vale,

There's not a beam that lights the mountain,

There's not a shrub that scents the gale,

There's not a wind that stirs the fountain,
There's not a hue that paints the rose,
There's not a leaf around us lying,

But in its use or beauty shows
True love to us, and love undying.

There is an eye that never sleeps,
Beneath the wing of night;
There is an ear that never shuts,
When sink the beams of light.

There is an arm that never tires,
When human strength gives way;
There is a love that never fails,
When earthly loves decay.

That eye is fix'd on seraph throngs;
That ear is fill'd with angels' songs;
That arm upholds the world on high;
That love is throned beyond the sky.

But there's a power which man can wield,
When mortal aid is vain,

That eye, that arm, that love to reach,
That list'ning ear to gain.

That power is prayer, which soars on high,
And feeds on bliss beyond the sky!

Questions: When is mortal aid vain? What is the greatest power in man's possession? Name six instances in the Holy Bible, showing the power of prayer. What are "seraph throngs"? Explain the difference between "throng" and "crowd." What spirits are higher than seraphs? Give three texts of holy writ showing Christ's valuation of prayer. What is "the wing of night"? Give fourth stanza in your own words.

I

MAJESTY AND SUPREMACY OF THE SCRIPTURES.

CONFESSED BY A SCEPTIC.

WILL confess that the majesty of the Scriptures strikes me with admiration, as the purity of the Gospel hath its influence on my heart. Peruse the works of our philosophers with all their pomp of diction. How mean, how contemptible are they, compared with the Scriptures! Is it possible that a book, at once so simple and sublime, should be merely the work of man? Is it possible that the sacred personage, whose history it contains, should be himself a mere man? Do we find that he assumed the tone of an enthusiast or ambitious sectary?

What sweetness, what purity in his manner! What an affecting gracefulness in his delivery! What sublimity in his maxims! What profound wisdom in his discourses! What presence of mind, what subtlety, what truth in his replies! How great the command over his passions! Where is the man, where the

philosopher, who could so live, and so die, without weakness and without ostentation? When Plato described his imaginary good man, loaded with all the shame of guilt, yet meriting the highest rewards of virtue, he describes exactly the character of JESUS CHRIST.

What prepossession, what blindness must it be, to compare the son of SOPHRONISCUS to the son of MARY! What an infinite disproportion there is between them! SOCRATES, dying without pain or ignominy, easily supported his character to the last; and if his death, however easy, had not crowned his life, it might have been doubted whether SOCRATES, with all his wisdom, was anything more than a vain sophist. He invented, it is said, the theory of morals. Others, however, had before put them in practice; he had only to say, therefore, what they had done, and reduce their examples to precepts.

ARISTIDES had been just before Socrates defined justice; LEONIDAS had given up his life for his country, before Socrates declared patriotism to be a duty; the Spartans were a sober people, before Socrates recommended sobriety; before he had even defined virtue, Greece abounded in virtuous men. But where did JESUS learn, among his competitors, that pure and sublime morality, of which he only hath given us both precept and example? The greatest wisdom was made known among the most bigoted fanaticism, and the simplicity of the most heroic virtues did honor to the vilest people on earth.

The death of Socrates, peaceably philosophizing with his friends, appears the most agreeable that could be wished for; that of JESUS, expiring in the midst of agonizing pains, abused, insulted, and accused by a

whole nation, is the most horrible that could be feared. Socrates, in receiving the cup of poison, blessed indeed the weeping executioner who administered it; but JESUS, in the midst of excruciating torments, prayed for his merciless tormentors. Yes, if the life and death of Socrates were those of a sage, the life and death of JESUS are those of a GOD.

Shall we suppose the evangelic history a mere fiction? Indeed, it bears not the marks of fiction; on the contrary, the history of Socrates, which nobody presumes to doubt, is not so well attested as that of JESUS CHRIST. Such a supposition, in fact, only shifts the difficulty without obviating it;-it is more inconceivable that a number of persons should agree to write such a history, than that one only should furnish the subject of it. The Jewish authors were incapable of the diction, and strangers to the morality contained in the Gospel, the marks of whose truth are so striking and inimitable, that the inventor would be a more astonishing character than the hero.

COMPOSITION.

Copy the first paragraph, and write each of the following sentences in three ways:

(a) How mean, how contemptible are the works of our philosophers, when compared with the Scriptures. (b) Is it possible that a book (the Bible), at once so simple and sublime, should be merely the work of a man? (c) Yes, if the life and death of Socrates were those of a sage, the life and death of Jesus are those of a God.

POLONIUS' ADVICE TO HIS SON.

Shakespeare, "the myriad-minded,” is said to have been born about 1564. He died in 1616. Very little is known concerning his personal history. He is without doubt the greatest poet mankind has ever seen. His plays are a world in themselves; in his own words they "hold the mirror up to nature," and exhibit humanity in its countless phases. Like humanity too, the good in them is mingled with the bad; the pure with the licentious; the noble and elevating with the degrading and vile. And as youth should be restrained from too early an intercourse with the mixed characters of the world, so should the acquaintance with these plays be deferred to maturer years. Some of the historical dramas, Roman and English, are free from the above mentioned defects, and, though sometimes false and inaccurate in fact, are useful to the student of history, as they serve to impress the characters of their time more vividly upon the mind.

GIVE thy thoughts no tongue,

Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatched, unfledged comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in,

Bear it, that the opposer may beware of thee.
Give
every man thine ear, but few thy voice:
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.

Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,

But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy;

For the apparel oft proclaims the man;

And they in France, of the best rank and station,
Are most select and generous, chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;

For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all, - to thine own self be true;
And it must follow, as the night the day,