MYSTERY, REASON, FAITH.

231

to him, is Mystery. He bows down in the submission of utter ignorance.

But men of science have read the laws of the sky. And the next day this passenger beholds the captain looking at a clock and taking note of the place of the sun, and with the aid of a couple of books, composed of rules and mathematical tables, making calculations. And when he has completed them, he is able to point almost within a hand's breath to the place at which, after unnumbered windings, he has arrived in the midst of the seas. Storms may have beat and currents drifted, but he knows where they are, and the precise point where, a hundred leagues over the waters, lies his native shore. Here is Reason appreciating and making use of the revelations (if we may so call them) of science.

Night again shuts down over the waste of waves, and the passenger beholds a single seaman stand at the wheel and watch, hour after hour, as it vibrates beneath a lamp, a little needle, which points ever, as if it were a living finger, to the steady pole.

This man knows nothing of the rules of navigation, nothing of the courses of the sky. But reason and experience have given him Faith in the commanding officer of the ship faith in the laws that control her course faith in the unerring integrity of the little guide before him. And so without a single doubt he steers his ship on, according to a prescribed direction, through night and the waves. And that faith is not disappointed. With the morning sun, he beholds far away the summits of the gray and misty highlands, rising like a cloud on the horizon; and as he nears them, the hills appear, and the lighthouse at the entrance of the harbor, and, sight of joy! the spires of the churches and the shining roofs among which he strives to detect his own.

Mystery Reason - Faith; - mystery is the lowest, faith is the highest of the three. Reason has done but half its office till it has resulted in faith. Reason looks before and after. It not only ponders the past, but becomes prophetic of the future.

THE ARMY OF THE CROSS.

The story of thy knightly faith,
As ages roll along,

Shall lighten o'er the poet's page,
And wake the minstrel's song.
Ayto the tale of high emprize,
The daring deed and bold,
The spirit wakes as wildly now
As in those days of old!

20*

233

THE TREASURED HARP.

BY JAMES T.

FIELD S.

ALL the splendid furniture of his late residence had been sold except his wife's harp. That, he said, was too closely associated with the idea of herself; it belonged to the little story of their loves; for some of the sweetest moments of their courtship were those when he had leaned over that instrument and listened to the melting tones of her voice. - IRVING'S SKETCH Book.

Go, leave that harp! twined round its strings
There's many a magic spell;

Leave that untouched, the strain it brings
This heart remembers well.

Let that remain! all else beside

Go scatter to the wind!

The chords that won my home a bride
No other home shall find.

It hath a power, though all unstrung
It lies neglected now,

And from her hands 't will ne'er be wrung,
Till death these limbs shall bow!

It hath no price since that sweet hour
She tuned it first, and played
Love's evening hymn within the bower,
Her youthful fingers made.

A spirit like a summer's night
Hangs o'er that cherished lyre,
And whispers of the calm moonlight
Are trembling from the wire.

Still on my ear her young voice falls,
Still floats that melody:

On each loved haunt its music calls:
Go! leave that harp and me.

LOVEWELL'S FIGHT.

BY JOHN FARMER.

IN May, 1725, Capt. John Lovewell, with thirty-four men, while pursuing their march to the northward, with the design of attacking the Indian villages of Pigwacket, on the upper part of Saco River, came to a pond situated in the township of Fryeburg, Me., fifty miles from any English settlement, and twenty-two from the fort on Ossipee Pond, where they encamped. Early the next morning, while at their devotions, they heard the report of a gun, and discovered a single Indian, standing on a point of land which runs into the pond, more than a mile distant. They had been alarmed the preceding night by noises round their camp, which they imagined were made by Indians, and this opinion was now strengthened. They suspected that the Indian was placed there to decoy them, and that a body of the enemy was in their front. A consultation being held, they determined to march forward, and by encompassing the pond, to gain the point where the Indian stood; and that they might be ready for action, they disencumbered themselves of their packs, and left them without a guard, at the north-east end of the pond, in a pitch-pine plain, where the trees were thin, and the brakes, at that time of the year, small. It happened that Lovewell's march had crossed a carrying place, by which two parties of Indians, consisting of forty-one men, commanded by Paugus and Wahwa, who had been scouting down Saco River, were returning to the lower village of Pigwacket, distant about a mile and a half from this pond. Having fallen on his track,