T Comes to our bed, and breathes it in our ears. As one vast mystic' instrument, are touched The dying hear it; and, as sounds of earth VIII. 27. SELECTED EXTRACTS. HE man who carries a lantern in a dark night, can have friends all around him, walking safely by the help of its rays, and he be not defrauded. So he who has the God-given light of hope in his breast, can help on many others in this world's darkness, not to his own loss, but to his precious gain. 2. As a rose after a shower, bent down by tear-drops, waits for a passing breeze or a kindly hand to shake its branches, that, lightened, it may stand once more upon its stem, so one who is bowed down with affliction longs for a friend to lift him out of his sorrōw, and bid him once more rejoice. Happy is the man who has that in his soul which acts upon the dejected like April airs upon violet roots. 3. Have you ever seen a cactus growing? What a dry, ugly, spiny thing it is! But suppose your gardener takes it when just sprouting forth with buds, and lets it stand a week or two, and then brings it to you, and lo! it is a blaze of light, glorious above all flowers. So the poor and lowly, when God's time comes, and they begin to stand up and blossom, how beautiful they will be ! 4. The sun does not shine for a few trees and flowers, but for the wide world's joy. The lonely pine upon the mountain-top waves its somber boughs, and cries, "Thou art my sun." And the little meadow viölet lifts its cup of blue, and whispers with its perfumed breath, "Thou art my sun." And the grain in a thousand fields rustles in the wind, and makes answer, "Thou 'Mys' tic, obscure; involving fiftieth year, when the bondsmen some secret meaning. were all set free and lands restored 2 Jū' bi lee, among the Jews every to their former owners. art my sun." And so God sits effulgent in heaven, not for a favored few, but for the universe of life; and there is no creature so poor or so low that he may not look up with child-like confidence and say, "My Father! Thou art mine.” 5. I think the human heart is like an artist's studio. You can tell what the artist is doing, not so much by his completed pictures, for they are mostly scattered at once, but by the halffinished sketches and designs which are hanging on his wall. And so you can tell the course of a man's life, not so much by his well-defined purposes, as by the half-formed plans-the faint day-dreams, which are hung in all the chambers of his heart. 6. Men are like birds that build their nests in trees that hang over rivers. And the birds sing in the tree-top, and the river sings underneath, undermining and undermining, and in the moment when the bird thinks not, it comes crashing down, and the nest is scattered, and all goes floating down the flood. If we build to ambition, we are like men who build before the track of a volcano's eruption, sure to be overtaken and burnt up by its hot lāva. If we build to wealth, we are as those who build upon the ice. The spring will melt our foundations from under us. 7. Shall we build to earthly affections? If we can not transfigure' those whom we love-if we can not behold the eternal world shining through the faces of father and mother, of husband and wife-if we can not behold them all irradiated with the glory of the supernal' sphere, it were not best to build for love. Death erects his batteries right over against our homes, and in the hour when we think not, the missile flies and explodes, carrying destruction all around. 8. I think it is a sad sight to look at one of the receiving hulks at the Navy Yard. To think that that was the ship which once went so fearlessly across the ocean! It has come back to' be anchored in the quiet bay, and to roll this way and that with the tide. Yet that is what many men set before them as the end of life—that they may come to that pass where they may be able to cast out an anchor this way and an anchor that way, and never move again, but rock lazily with the tide-without a sail—without a voyage-waiting simply for decay to take their 1 Trans figure, change the outward form or appearance of, 2 Su per' nal, being in a higher region or place; heavenly. timbers apart. And this is what men call, "retiring from business"-to become simply an empty old hulk. 9. We are beleaguered by Time, and parallel after parallel is drawn around us, and then a change is made, and we see the enemy's flag waving on some outpost. And as the sense of hearing, and touch, and sight fails, and a man finds all these marks of time upon him, oh woe! if he has no Hereafter, as a final citadel into which to retreat. 10. Would that I could break this Gospel as a bread of life to all of you! My best presentations of it to you are so incomplete! Sometimes, when I am ǎlōne, I have such sweet and rapturous visions of the love of God and the truths of His word, that I think if I could speak to you then, I should move your hearts. I am like a child, who, walking forth some sunny summer's morning, sees grass and flowers all shining with drops of dew, that reflect every hue of the rainbow. "Oh!" he cries, "I'll carry these beautiful things to shakes them off into his little palm. they are no more water-pearls. my mother," and eagerly But the charm is gone 11. There are days when my blood flows like wine; when all is ease and prosperity; when the sky is blue, and the birds sing, and flowers blossom, and every thing speaks to me; and my life is an anthem, walking in time and tune; and then this world's joy and affection suffice. But when a change comes— when I am weary and disappointed-when the skies lower into the somber night-when there is no song of bird, and the per’fume of flowers is but their dying breath breathed away-when all is sunsetting and autumn, then I yearn for Him who sits with the summer of love in His soul, and know that all earthly affection is but a glow-worm light compared to that which blazes with such effulgence in the heart of God. 12. I think that in the life to come my heart will have feel ings like God's. The little bell that a babe can hold in its fin、 gers may strike the same note as the great bell of Mos'cow.' Its 'Mŏs' cōw, a famous city of Russia, formerly capital of the whole Russian Empire. It is situated four hundred miles S. E. of St. Petersburg, with which it is connected by a first-class railroad. The stupendous bell here alluded to, called Czar Kolo kol, or the Monarch, weighing near. ly one hundred and eighty tons, is about twenty-one and a-half feet in height, and twenty-two and a-half in diameter. A huge fragment was broken from it, more than a century ago, when the bell-tower was burned, note may be soft as a bird's whisper, and yet it is the same. And so God may have a feeling, and I, standing by him, shall have the same feeling. Where he loves, I shall love. All the processes of the Divine mind will be reflected in mine. And there will be this companionship with him to eternity. What else can be the meaning of those expressions that all we have is Christ's, and God is ours, and we are heirs of God? To inherit God-who can conceive of it? It is the growing marvel, and will be the growing wonder of eternity. 13. We are glad that there is a bosom of God to which we can go and find refuge. As prisoners in castles look out of their grated windows at the smiling landscape, where the sun comes and goes, so we from this life, as from dungeon bars, look fōrth to the heavenly land, and are refreshed with sweet visions of the home that shall be ours when we are free. HENRY WARD BEECHER. SECTION VI. I. 28. FULLER'S BIRD.1 HE wild-winged creature, clad in gōre Comes down to the water's brink: 2. "Have I till now," he sadly said, "Preyed on my brother's blood, and made Once more he glances in the brook, 1 Fuller's Bird, "I have read of a bird, which hath a face like, and yet will prey upon, a man; who, coming to the water to drink, and finding there by reflection that he had killed one like himself, pineth away by degrees, and never afterward enjoyeth itself."-Fuller's Worthies. 3. With such sharp pain as human hearts And there, midst briers and sheltering weeds, No more on blood. 4. And in that weedy brake he lies, And pines, and pines, until he dies; What follows?-Naught! his brothers slake 5. So fable flows!-But would you find Its tale made worse; Turn straight to Man, and in his fame And forehead read "The Harpy's”1 name; But no remorse! B. W. PROCTER. BRYAN WALTER PROCTER, better known by his assumed name of Barry Cornwall, is a graceful and accomplished writer, and a true poet. "If it be the province of poetry to give delight," says Lord Jeffery, "this author should rank very high among the poets." He is a genuine poet of love. There is an intense and passionate beauty, a depth of affection, in his little dramatic poems, which appear even in the affectionate triflings of his gentle characters. He is chiefly noted, however, as a song-writer. "The fair blosoms of his genius, though light and trembling as the breeze, spring from a wide, and deep, and robust stock, which will sustain far taller branches without being exhausted." T II. 29. THE BARBARITIES OF WAR. way HE first great obstacle to the extinction of war, is the in which the heart of man is carried off from its barbarities and its horrors by the splendor of its deceitful accompaniments. There is a feeling of the sublime in contem'plating the shock of armies, just as there is in contemplating the devouring energy of a tempèst; and this so elevates and engrosses the whōle man, Hăr py, in antiquity, the harpies were fabulous wingèd monsters, ravenous and filthy, having the face of a woman and the body of a vulture, with their feet and fingers armed with sharp claws. They were three in number, Aello, Ocypete, and Celeno. The name harpy is often applied to an extortioner, a plunderer, or ravenous animals. |