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I live, and breathe, and dwell; aspiring high,
Even to the throne of Thy Divinity.

I am, O God! and surely Thou must be!
8. Thou art directing, guiding all, Thou art!
Direct my understanding then to Thee;
Control my spirit, guide my wandering heart;
Though but an atom 'midst immensity,
Still I am something, fashioned by Thy hand!
I hold a middle rank 'twixt heaven and earth,
On the last verge of mortal being stand,

Close to the realms where angels have their birth,
Just on the boundaries of the spirit land! ·

9. The chain of being is complete in me;
In me is matter's last gradation lost,
And the next step is spirit-DEITY!

I can command the lightning, and am dust!
A monarch, and a slave; a worm, a God!

Whence came I here, and how? so marvelously
Constructed and conceived? Unknown! This clod
Lives surely through some higher energy,
For from itself alone it could not be.

10. Creator! Yes! Thy wisdom and Thy word
Created me! Thou source of life and good!
Thou Spirit of my spirit, and my Lord!
Thy light, Thy love, in their bright plenitude
Filled me with an immortal soul, to spring
Over the abyss of death, and bade it wear
The garments of eternal day, and wing

Its heavenly flight beyond this little sphere,
Even to its source-to Thee-its Author there.

11. O thought ineffable! O vision blest!

Though worthless our conceptions all of Thee,
Yet shall Thy shadowed image fill our breast,
And waft its image to the Deity.

God! thus above my lowly thoughts can soar;

Thus seek Thy presence-Being wise and good;

'Midst Thy vast works, admire, obey, adore
And when the tongue is eloquent no more,
The soul shall speak in tears of gratitude.

LESSON XLIV.

EXPLANATORY NOTES.-1. PLATO, a noted Athenian philosopher, was born 465 years before Christ. He was for eight years a pupil of SOCRATES, and wrote a faithful account of that great philosopher's acts and sayings. 2. SOCRATES, the most celebrated philosopher of antiquity, was a son of SOPHRONISCUs, a sculptor. He was born 470 years before Christ. The purity of his doctrines, and his independence of character, rendered him popular with the most enlightened Athenians, though they created him many enemies, by whom he was falsely accused, and was arraigned and condemned to drink hemlock, the juice of a poisonous plant. With cheerfulness he continued to instruct his pupils and his ardent friends who attended him, particularly urging the doctrine of the soul's immortality, till the moment of his death. When the hour to drink the poison had come, the executioner handed him the cup with tears in his eyes. SOCRATES received it with composure, drank it with an unaltered countenance, and in a few moments expired.

3. ARISTIDES was an Athenian, whose great temperance and virtue procured for him the title of Just.

MAJESTY AND SUPREMACY OF THE SCRIPTURES

CONFESSED BY A SKEPTIC.

ROUSSEAU.

1. I 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?

2. 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.

3. 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! SOCRates2, 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 any thing 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.

4. 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 could 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

LESSON XLV.

EXPLANATORY NOTE.-1. FRANCIS BACON was a great reformer of philosophy, by founding it on the observation of nature, after it had consisted, for many centuries, to a great extent, of scholastic subtilities. He was born in 1651.

ESTIMATION OF THE BIBLE BY THE WISEST PHI

LOSOPHERS AND STATESMEN.

PHILLIPS.

1. I AM willing to abide by the precepts, admire the beauty, revere the mysteries, and, as far as in me lies, practice the mandates of this sacred volume; and should the ridicule of earth assail me, I shall console myself by the contemplation of those blessed spirits, who, in the same holy cause, have toiled, and shone, and suffered.

2. If I err with the luminaries I have chosen for my guides, I confess myself captivated by the loveliness of their aberrations. If they err, it is in a heavenly region--if they wander, it is in fields of light-if they aspire, it is at all events a glorious daring; and rather than sink with infidelity into the dust, I am content to cheat myself with their vision of eternity. If, indeed, it be nothing but delusion, I err with the disciples of philosophy and virtue-with men who have drank deep at the fountain of human knowledge, but who dissolved not the pearl of their salvation in the draught.

3. I err with the great Bacon'—the great confident of nature, fraught with all the learning of the past, and almost prescient of the future; yet too wise not to know his weakness, and too philosophic not to feel his ignorance. I err with Milton, rising on an angel's wing to Heaven, and like the bird of morn, soaring out of sight, amid the music of his grateful piety.

4. I err with Locke, whose pure philosophy only taught him to adore its source, whose warm love of genuine liberty was never chilled into rebellion with its Author. I err with Newton, whose star-like spirit shot athwart the darkness of the spheres, too soon to re-ascend to the home of its nativity. With men like these, I shall ever remain in error.

LESSON XLVI.

CONDITION OF THE WORLD WITHOUT THE BIBLE. MELVILLE.

1. Or all the boons which God has bestowed on this apostate and orphaned creation, the Bible is the noblest and most precious. We bring not into comparison with this illustrious donation the glorious sun-light, nor the rich sustenance which is poured forth from the store-houses of the earth, nor that existence itself which allows us, though dust, to soar into companionship with angels. The Bible is the development of man's immortality, the guide which informs how he may pass off triumphantly from a contracted and temporary scene, and grasp destinies of unbounded splendor,-eternity his lifetime, and infinity his home.

2. It is the record which tells us that this rebellious section of God's unlimited empire, is not excluded from our Maker's compassions, but that the creatures who move upon its surface, though they have basely sepulchered in sinfulness and corruption the magnificence of their nature, are yet so dear in their ruin to Him who first formed them, that He hath bowed down the heavens in order to open their graves. Oh ! you have only to think what a change would pass on the aspect of

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