You may tell the boy or girl, as you will, that life is a disappointment; yet, however you may persuade them to adopt your tone, and catch the language of your sentiment, they are both looking forward to some bright distant hope-the rapture of the next vacation, or the unknown joys of the next season-and throwing into it an energy of expectation which a whole eternity is only worth. You may tell the man who has received the heart-shock, from which in this world he will not recover, that life has nothing left; yet the stubborn heart still hopes on, ever near the prize,-"wealthiest when most undone;" he has reaped the whirlwind, but he will go on still, till life is over, sowing the wind.

THE SOPHISTRY OF INFIDELS.

ROBERT HALL.

THE infidels of the present day are the first sophists who have presumed to innovate in the very substance of morals. The disputes on moral questions hitherto agitated among philosophers have respected the grounds of duty, not the nature of duty itself; or they have been merely metaphysical, and related to the history of moral sentiments in the mind, the sources and principles from which they were most easily deduced; they never turned on the quality of those dispositions and actions which were to be denominated virtuous. In the firm persuasion that the love and fear of the Supreme Being, the sacred observation of promises and oaths, reverence to magistrates, obedience to parents, gratitude to benefactors, conjugal fidelity, and parental tenderness were primary virtues, and the chief support of every commonwealth, they were unanimous. The curse denounced upon such as remove ancient landmarks, upon those who call good evil, and evil good, put light for darkness, and darkness for light, who employ their faculties to subvert the eternal distinctions of right and wrong, and thus to poison the streams of virtue at their source, falls with accumulated weight on the advocates of modern infidelity, and on them alone.

RIGHTEOUSNESS EXALTETH A NATION.

W. B. STEVENS, D. D.

YOUNG men, God has given you a good land, and has laid upon you responsibilities in connection with this land at once vast and solemn. The future of this land will be what the young men of this land shall make it.

The Psalmist, in one of his magnificent passages, calls upon the pious Israelite to "walk about Zion and go round about her, tell the towers thereof, mark ye well her bulwarks, consider her palaces, that

ye may tell it to the generation following, for this God is our God for ever and ever." So, young men, I call upon you to walk about our American Zion and go round about her, tell the towers of her strength, mark the bulwarks which support her freedom, consider the palaces of her glory and were I called upon, on this day of our nation's Independence, to indicate the towers, the bulwarks, the palaces which give to our land strength, beauty, glory, I should not point to our public buildings, magnificent as they are; nor to our army and navy, gallant and covered with laurels as they are; nor to our territorial vastness, embracing as it does almost a continent; nor to our commerce, our manufactures, our railroads, marvellous as these are, but I would point you to the open Bible, the open door of the church, the open door of the school-house, the sacred ministry, the ordinances of grace, the wonderful power of the religious press, the banded associations of religion and benevolence, the unfettered right of conscience, and the reverence which, as a people, we pay to the Christian Sabbath; these are the towers, the bulwarks, the palaces which confer on us a strength, a glory, and an influence such as God has given to no other nation under the whole heaven. Would you preserve and exalt this nation, send abroad the Bible, build up the church of the living God, infuse the principles of divine truth into every school, academy, and university, sustain the institution of the ministry, scatter the products of your religious press as so many leaves from the tree of life, conduct with vigor the great schemes of associated benevolence, preserve intact the rights of conscience, and keep holy the Sabbath day. Do these things, and our nation will have a righteous government, a righteous system of education, a righteous judiciary, a righteous literature, a righteous commerce, and in the individual man, the family group, the social circle, the civic community, the state, and the nation, there will prevail truth, to the exclusion of falsehood and error; peace, to the exclusion of revenge, bloodshed, and war; love, to the exclusion of personal and national animosities and strifes; holiness, to the exclusion of every sin; justice, to the exclusion of all oppression; the Christian graces, Faith, Hope, and Charity, more beautiful than the fabled graces of classic mythology; and the Christian virtues, more lovely than the muses of Grecian song, would adorn each heart, beautify each face, beam out from each eye, Paradise would almost be restored to earth, and God would again come down in the cool of the day to walk with redeemed and sanctified men.

From "The True Glory of a Nation."

THE GLORY OF CHRISTIANITY.

JOHN MCLAURIN.

CHRISTIANITY Communicates a glory to all other objects, according as they have any relation to it. It adorns the universe; it gives a lustre to nature, and to Providence; it is the greatest glory of this lower world, that its Creator was for awhile its inhabitant. A poor landlord thinks it a lasting honor to his cottage, that he has once lodged a prince or emperor. With how much more reason may our poor cottage, this earth, be proud of it, that the Lord of glory was its tenant from His birth to His death! yea, that He rejoiced in the habitable parts of it before it had a beginning, even from everlasting!

It is the glory of the world that He who formed it, dwelt on it; of the air, that He breathed in it; of the sun, that it shone on Him; of the ground, that it bore Him; of the sea, that He walked on it; of the elements, that they nourished Him; of the waters, that they refreshed Him; of us men, that He lived and died among us, yea, that He lived and died for us; that he assumed our flesh and blood, and carried it to the highest heavens, where it shines as the eternal ornament and wonder of the creation of God. It gives also a lustre to Providence. It is the chief event that adorns the records of time, and enlivens the history of the universe. It is the glory of the various great lines of Providence, that they point at this as their centre; that they prepared the way for its coming; that after its coming they are subservient to the ends of it, though in a way indeed to us at present mysterious and unsearchable. Thus we know that they either fulfil the promises of the crucified Jesus, or His threatenings; and show either the happiness of receiving Him, or the misery of rejecting Him.

THE HOUR AND THE EVENT AT ALL TIME.

HUGH BLAIR.

WHAT magnanimity in all His words and actions on this great occasion! The court of Herod, the judgment-hall of Pilate, the hill of Calvary, were so many theatres prepared for His displaying all the virtues of a constant and patient mind. When led forth to suffer, the first voice which we hear from Him is a generous lamentation over the fate of His unfortunate though guilty country; and to the last moment of His life we behold him in possession of the same gentle and benevolent spirit. No upbraiding, no complaining expression escaped from His lips during the long and painful approaches of a cruel death. He betrayed no symptom of a weak or a vulgar, of a discomposed or impatient mind. With the utmost attention of filial tenderness He committed His aged mother to the care of His beloved disciple. With all

the dignity of a sovereign, He conferred pardon on a penitent fellowsufferer. With a greatness of mind beyond example, He spent His last moments in apologies and prayers for those who were shedding His blood.

By wonders in heaven, and wonders on earth, was this hour distinguished. All nature seemed to feel it; and the dead and the living bore witness of its importance. The veil of the temple was rent in twain. The earth shook. There was darkness over all the land. The graves were opened, and "many who slept arose, and went into the holy city." Nor were these the only prodigies of this awful hour. The most hardened hearts were subdued and changed. The judge who, in order to gratify the multitude, passed sentence against Him, publicly attested His innocence. The Roman centurion who presided at the execution, "glorified God," and acknowledged the Sufferer to be more than man. "After he saw the things which had passed, he said, Certainly this was a righteous person: truly this was the Son of God." The Jewish malefactor who was crucified with Him addressed Him as a King, and implored His favor. Even the crowd of insensible spectators, who had come forth as to a common spectacle, and who began with clamors and insults, "returned home smiting their breasts." Look back on the heroes, the philosophers, the legislators of old. View them in their last moments. Recall every circumstance which distinguished their departure from the world. Where can you find such an assemblage of high virtues, and of great events, as concurred at the death of Christ? Where so many testimonials given to the dignity of the dying person by earth and by heaven?

THE EXPULSIVE POWER OF A NEW AFFECTION.

THOMAS CHALMERS.

CONCEIVE a man to be standing on the margin of this green world, and that, when he looked toward it, he saw abundance smiling upon every field, and all the blessings which earth can afford, scattered in profusion throughout every family, and the light of the sun sweetly resting upon all the pleasant habitations, and the joys of human companionship brightening many a happy circle of society-conceive this to be the general character of the scene upon one side of his contemplation, and that on the other, beyond the verge of the goodly planet on which he was situated, he could descry nothing but a dark and fathomless unknown. Think you that he would bid a voluntary adieu to all the brightness and all the beauty that were before him upon earth, and commit himself to the frightful solitude away from it? Would he leave its peopled dwelling-places, and become a solitary

wanderer through the fields of nonentity? If space offered him nothing but a wilderness, would he for it abandon the home-bred scenes of life and of cheerfulness that lay so near, and exerted such a power of urgency to detain him? Would not he cling to the regions of sense, and of life, and of society?—and shrinking away from the desolation that was beyond it, would not he be glad to keep his firm footing or the territory of this world, and to take shelter under the silver canopy that was stretched over it?

on

But if, during the time of his contemplation, some happy island of the blest had floated by, and there had burst upon his senses the light of its surpassing glories, and its sounds of sweeter melody, and he clearly saw that there a purer beauty rested upon every field, and a more heartfelt joy spread itself among all the families, and he could discern there a peace, and a piety, and a benevolence which put a moral gladness into every bosom, and united the whole society in one rejoicing sympathy with each other, and with the beneficent Father of them all. Could he further see that pain and mortality were there unknown, and above all, that signals of welcome were hung out, and an avenue of communication was made for him-perceive you not that what was before the wilderness, would become the land of invitation, and that now the world would be the wilderness? What unpeopled space could not do, can be done by space teeming with beatific scenes, and beatific society. And let the existing tendencies of the heart be what they may to the scene that is near and visible around us, still if another stood revealed to the prospect of man, either through the channel of faith, or through the channel of his senses-then, without violence done to the constitution of his moral nature, may he die unto the present world, and live to the lovelier world that stands in the distance away from it.

THE VOICE OF SCRIPTURE.

EDWARD IRVING.

OH! if books had but tongues to speak their wrongs, then might this Book well exclaim-Hear, O heavens! and give ear, O earth! I came from the love and embrace of God, and mute Nature, to whom I brought no boon, did me rightful homage. To men I come, and my words were to the children of men. I disclosed to you the mysteries of hereafter, and the secrets of the throne of God. I set open to you the gates of salvation, and the way of eternal life, hitherto unknown. Nothing in heaven did I withhold from your hope and ambition; and upon your earthly lot I poured the full horn of Divine providence and consolation. But ye requited me with no welcome, ye held no festivity