Plucks from their jaws the stricken whale, in vain O'er China's garden-fields and peopled floods, Round Andes' heights, where Winter, from his throno By the gay borders of Bermuda's isles, Where Spring with everlasting verdure smiles ;. 44. NATURE A HARD CREDITOR.— Thomas Carlyle. NATURE admits no lie. Most men profess to be aware of this, but few in any measure lay it to heart. Except in the departments of mere material manipulation, it seems to be taken practically as if this grand truth were merely a polite flourish of rhetoric. Nature keeps silently a most exact Savings-bank and official register, correct to the most evanescent item, Debtor and Creditor, in respect to one and all of us; silently marks down, Creditor by such and such an unseen act of veracity and heroism; Debtor to such a loud, blustery blunder, twenty-seven million strong or one unit strong, and to all acts and words and thoughts executed in consequence of that,-Debtor, Debtor, Debtor, day after day, rigorously as Fate (for this is Fate that is writing); and at the end of the account you will have it all to pay, my friend; there is the rub! Not the infinitesimallest fraction of a farthing but will be found marked there, for you and against you; and with the due rate of interest you will have to pay it, neatly, completely. as sure as you are alive. You will have to pay it even in money, if you live and, poor slave, do you think there is no payment but in money? There is a payment which Nature rigorously exacts of men and also of Nations, and this I think when her wrath is sternest, in the shape of dooming you to possess money :-to possess it; to have your bloated vanities fostered into monstrosity by it; your foul passions blown into explosion by it; your heart, and, perhaps, your very stomach, ruined with intoxication by it; your poor life, and all its manful activities, stunned into frenzy and comatose sleep by it;-in one word, as the old Prophets said, your soul forever lost by it: your soul, so that, through the Eternities, you shall have no soul, or manful trace of ever having had a soul; but only, for certain fleeting moments, shall have had a money-bag, and have given soul and heart, and (frightfuller still) stomach itself, in fatal exchange for the same. You wretched mortal, stumbling about in a God's Temple, and thinking it a brutal Cookeryshop! Nature, when her scorn of a slave is divinest, and blazes like the blinding lightning against his slavehood, often enough flings him a bag of money, silently saying: "That! Away; thy doom is that!' 45. TIME'S MIDNIGHT VOICE.— Edward Young. Born, 1681; died, 1706 CREATION sleeps. 'Tis as the general pulse Of life stood still, and Nature made a pause, The bell strikes one. We take no note of time, I feel the solemn sound. If heard aright, It is the knell of my departed hours. Where are they? With the years beyond the flood' How much is to be done! My hopes and fears How poor, how rich, how abject, how augus. Though sullied, and dishonored, still divine A worm! a god! - I tremble at myself, Triumphantly distressed! What joy, what dread What can preserve my life, or what destroy? The rolling seasons, day and night, To him exist in vain. The clouds and sunbeams, o'er his eye That once their shades and glory threw. No vestige where they flew The annals of the human race, Their ruins, since the world began, Than this, - THERE LIVED A MAN' 47. THE TRUE SOURCE OF REFORM.-. - Rev. E. H. Chapin. Thx great element of Reform is not born of human wisdom, it does ot draw its life from human organizations. I find it only in CHRISIANITY. "Thy kingdom come!" There is a sublime and pregnant ourden in this Prayer. It is the aspiration of every soul that goes forth in the spirit of Reform. For what is the significance of this Prayer? It is a petition that all holy influences would penetrate and subdue and dwell in the heart of man, until he shall think, and speak, and do good, from the very necessity of his being. So would the institutions of error and wrong crumble and pass away. So would sin die out from the earth; and the human soul living in harmony with the Divine Will, this earth would become like Heaven. It is too late for the Reformers to sneer at Christianity, it is foolishness for them to reject it. In it are enshrined our faith in human progress, confidence in Reform. It is indissolubly connected with all that is hopeful, spiritual, capable, in man. That men have misunderstood it, and perverted it, is true. But it is also true that the noblest efforts for human melioration have come out of it, — have been based upon it. Is it not so? Come, ye remembered ones, who sleep the sleep of the Just, who took your conduct from the line of Christian Philosophy, come from your tombs, and answer! our Come, Howard, from the gloom of the prison and the taint of the lazar-house, and show us what Philanthropy can do when imbued with the spirit of Jesus. Come, Eliot, from the thick forest where the red man listens to the Word of Life; come, Penn, from thy sweet coun Bel and weaponless victory, and show us what Christian Zeal and Christian Love can accomplish with the rudest barbarians or the fiercest hearts. Come, Raikes, from thy labors with the ignorant and the poor, and show us with what an eye this Faith regards the lowest and Icast of our race; and how diligently it labors, not for the body, not for the rank, but for the plastic soul that is to course the ages of immor. tality. And ye, who are a great number, - ye nameless ones, - who have done good in your narrow spheres, content to forego renown on arth, and seeking your Reward in the Record on High,— come and tel us how kindly a spirit, how lofty a purpose, or how strong a courage the Religion ye professed can breathe into the poor, the humble, and the weak. Go forth, then, Spirit of Christianity, to thy great work of REFORM! The Past bears witness to thee in the blood of thy mar tyrs, and the ashes of thy saints and heroes; the Present is hopeful because of thee: the Future shall acknowledge thy omnipotence. 18. THE BEACON LIGHT.-Miss Pardoe. - DARKNESS was deepening o'er the seas, and still the hulk drove on; 49. "CLEON AND I."-Charles Mackay. CLEON hath a million acres, - ne'er a one have I; Cleon, true, possesseth acres, but the landscape, I; Cleon is a slave to grandeur, Cleon fees a score of doctors, - free as thought am I; Wealth-surrounded care-environed, Cleon fears to die; Death may come, — he'll find me ready, — happier man am L. Cleon sees no charms in Nature, in a daisy, I; Cleon hears no anthems ringing in the sea and sky. State for state, with all attendants, who would change? Not I |