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the church, what have the five or six hundred done? Tongue cannot express, imagination cannot conceive. And can a society which has done so much for Zion, and which is calculated to do incomparably more, fail of support in a land of free institutions; in a land effulgent with the beams of gospel light and love—a land which is the glory of all lands? No, it cannot. If New England furnishes the West with some of her best ministers for the support of churches and your literary and theological institutions, surely she will not withhold pecuniary aid.

your

The time may come when the East will implore assistance from the West. While casting my eyes over this immense Valley, two thousand four hundred miles in length, and one thousand two hundred in breadth, and viewing the mighty Mississippi and its noble tributaries, the unparalleled richness of the soil, and the facilities for acquiring sustenance and property by land, water and steam, I am lost in admiration of this western world- - of its present and prospective extent, wealth and power-greatness and glory. As christianity dawned upon the East and spread her beams of effulgence to these goings down of the sun, and as rays of light and love are now from this goodly land reflected upon benighted portions of the eastern hemisphere; so the American Education Society commenced its operations in the East, and has extended its influence to the West; and when years shall have rolled away, the state of society may be reversed, and the eastern states may depend, at least in some degree, on the western for the light of life and salvation, which they may be permitted to enjoy.

THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH.

BY A SCHOOL-GIRL.

first discoverers of America believed that there was a fountain in Florida which had the miraculous power of restoring youth to the aged.

"WE are travelling on to the fountain of youth, yet brothers stay

awhile,

And dream once more of our sunny land where the laughing vineyards smile;

Then our steps we'll speed, though weary and faint, to the dim and distant shore,

Where we deem that the clouds of sorrow and grief will trouble our eyes no more.

For they tell us that there, in that radiant land, that beautiful land of dreams,

The summer and sunshine doth never pass from the blue and silvery streams,

And a dim and strange mysterious strength on the sparkling rills is lain, For the spirit of God has breathed on the waves and they bring us our youth again.

Then speed, let us speed, to the glorious strand, where the gems lie thick like dew,

And bathe in the fount and the murmuring rills that bring us our youth anew;

For our life is a cold and a weary thing, in this mansion-house of wo, But pain will flee on the emerald banks where the lulling waters flow."

But they never found the Fountain of Youth, on that lonely and lovely shore,

And their wasted joys and their rifled gems, came back on their souls

no more;

But they found a stream of enduring strength, whose beauty can never fade,

More bright than the rivers of light that flow in the wilderness gloom and shade.

For their faith grew firm and their trust more deep in the spirit of God above,

And their hearts were filled with a holier hope, a higher and purer love; Their strength was strong, for they knew that their tears had not been

given in vain,

And they found the Fountain of Youth on high, in the Eden Land again!

THE WATER OF LIFE.

BY REV. WILLIAM B. O.

PEABODY.

"The water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life."

OUR Saviour in conversing with the Samaritan woman, compared his religion to a living fountain within the breast. Because it is internal it shall not perish like outward and visible things. This is the emphatic part of the sentence, it shall be in him, and because it is in him it shall continue to flow for ever. We cannot be supposed to feel what the power of that illustration was in a climate where the broad rivers shrank to silver threads, and the earth was parched and blackened by the summer sun. But the truth which it conveys, and the promise which it contains within it, are clear to every eye, the promise that religion, being an internal principle, shall not share the fate of those things which perish with the using, and pass away. The same thing which makes it permanent in single hearts, insures its perpetual duration in the world; and in times when the moral aspect of the world indicates strong tendencies to infidelity, such a promise, based on a familiar truth, serves to encourage the hopes of believers.

But whence comes this confidence? Why are we so sure that the stream which our Saviour drew from the rock in the wilderness will never cease to flow? Do we think that the hope of heaven and the fear of hell will always make men christians? Do we suppose that many who reject christianity now, will be driven to it for consolation in their dark and troubled hours? Or do we take encouragement from beholding how it has grown out of small beginnings, and

overspread the civilized world? No doubt these things help our confidence. But the foundation of it is, that man wants christianity; there is a thirst in the soul which no other element will supply. He must turn to some invisible power above him; he cannot confine his aspirations to the beings about him, and the present world. Having these wants, he cannot give up christianity, the only religion which professes to supply them, or even acknowledges their existence. By the unquestionable testimony of works, which no one could do unless God were with him, Jesus assures him that he is divinely sent to the world, sent on purpose to supply this hunger and thirst of the soul for more than man and this earth can give.

This, then, is the truth, that the religious feeling lies deep in our nature, ready to welcome the disclosures of christianity as soon as it knows that God has sent them from above. You appeal to the moral sense and the religious feeling in others; and their moral sense and religious feeling start up from their death-like slumber. When you bring your children to reflect upon the subject, it is not an external process; the work is done within, for well does inspiration say, that the fountain of devotion must be in him, within the man, or When you go to some

it cannot flow unto everlasting life. poor hardened wretch, and try to touch his heart, you feel that your words are powerless, and that nothing you can say will make the least impression; yet at that very moment, perhaps, the religious feeling is waking; it is something within himself, which rises up and masters him; his fierce defiance sinks away, his tears begin to fall,—his own spirit is in action and will do the rest; for to wake him to a sense of his guilt and danger is all that you can do. A great and inspiring truth this! gion is born in the human breast. it may be, stifled and suppressed both in single hearts and great communities, under a crushing weight of meaner interests and passions. Still it is there; and had we a divining rod for the purpose, we could find the

that the thirst for reliStifled and suppressed indeed it is; buried deep

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living spring under all the worldliness that surrounds us. We are told that engineers are now sounding the Asiatic deserts with Artesian wells; and they are sure to find the element far down beneath the sands that are whitened by the suns of ages. And those who, in the name of Jesus Christ, have gone into moral deserts, into those howling wastes of abandoned men in which the world abounds, exploring the haunts of sensual excess, the caverns of the dungeon and the lanes of poverty, have found that if not weary in well doing, they could set springs of devotion flowing even there; all was not evil; the veriest rocks of the wilderness have melted under the touch of holy and gentle hands.

If these things are so, and they are so, who can have any fears for christianity? Infidelity has no sympathy with our nature. It makes no provision for the thirst of the soul. It knows no such wants; but such wants there are, and the faith which does not supply them is no religion for man. Such wants there are, and christianity, the only faith which satisfies them, cannot be lost. It may at times be overlooked, for it springs apart from the dusty wayside of life. It may be undervalued, for none can estimate it aright but those who have made trial of its power; but, like the element to which our Saviour likened it, it is essential and indispensable; man cannot do without it; and, therefore, it will continue to flow long after the sun has withdrawn his shining, and the stars are pale with age.

What are often regarded as indications of the decline of christianity, are signs rather of its progress; it is throwing off every weight, redeeming itself from human inventions, and preparing to extend and be glorified in the world as it never yet has been. So far from being lost, it will come into nearer intimacy with the human heart. In what forms it will manifest itself in coming time, it is not ours to say. It will not probably manifest itself in new forms, so much as an indifference to forms compared with realities, not such an indifference as is found and sometimes boasted among us