And never strong Necessity, nor Fate,
Trammels the soul that firmly says, I WILL!"
What a beautiful moral lesson In the following
lines, and with what power is it uttered!

"We all at some time have need to say, Forgive!
Far from the banished Eden though we be,
Some beautiful provision meets our need-
Slumber, and dreamy pillows, for the tired;
For labor, plenteous harvests, and for love
The crowning nuptial; for old age, repose;
And for the worn and weary, kindly death
To make the all-composing lullaby.

But nothing in this low and ruined world
Bears the meek impress of the Son of God
So surely as forgiveness."

One who can give existence to such conceptions as the following lines needs no argument to vindicate her claim to a place among the poets: ""Tis not the outward garniture of things

That through the senses makes creation fair,
But the out-flow of an indwelling light,
That gives its lovely aspect to the world."
So of these:

"Genius goes with melancholy steps

Searching the world for the selectest forms
Of high, and pure, and passionless excellence-
Large-browed, unmated Genius-yearning still
For the divinities which in its dreams

Brighten along the mountain-tops of thought."
So of these:

'Complainings ill befit the sunset time

That folds earth's shadow, like a poison flower,
And leaves life's last waves brokenly along
The unknown bowers of eternity.

'Tis an extremity that warns us back
From staggering on, alas! we know not what."
And so also these:

"For sometimes, keen, and cold, and pitiless truth, In spite of us, will press to open light

The naked angularities of things,

And from the steep ideal the soul drop

In wild and sorrowful beauty, like a star

From the blue hights of heaven into the sea." What power is condensed in the following! It would not dishonor Shakspeare:

May need more to be prayed for than the curse
Of a profane, unmeditative word."

But, says one, "Are nothing but gems to be found in Alice Cary's poems?" It would be strange were it not possible for the critic to ferret out some hidden defects. Let us try our hand. Here we have it:

"She could not pause, but birds pecked round her feet,
Fluttering and singing; if at eve she walked,
The clouds rained tender dews upon her head;
Meeting a hungry lion in the woods,

Grinding his tusks, he crouched and piteous whined,
Then turned his great sad face and fled away-

Love was her only armor, yet he fled.

Her wheel spun round itself; the trickiest goat
Stood patient for the milking; jubilant,

The smooth-stemmed corn its gray-green tassels shook,
As she went binding its broad blades to sheaves."

We have rarely ever seen so many blunders crowded into a single sentence. We should like to know whether those birds "pecked" and "sung" at the same time. Then, too, about the dew, whether the clouds actually "rained" it down, and whether it fell only upon the "Maiden of Tlascala?" But, still worse, we have a "lion" in Mexico; he had "tusks"-what a monster!he "whined," and, to crown the whole, he had a "great sad face!" We wonder if the race has become extinct! Nor must we overlook the mysterious wheel that "spun round itself." A glorious invention that! Both the lion and the wheel are a curiosity in their line.

Here is another furnished to our hand: "Once when we lingered, sorrow-proof, My gentle love and me."

Whatever we may say of the poetry in this couplet, we can not "stand up" for the grammar. Poetic license will not warrant putting me for I in order to make a rhyme.

"SCATTERING, YET INCREASING." "There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth.”—Proverbs xi, 24.

Were it not that the process is so familiar, we would see something very strange in the operations of the husbandman. Here, on the thrashing-floor, stands a heap of corn--so daintily sifted-so pure and so precious, like a little mountain of burnished gold or glistening pearls; and there, outside, is a piece of plowed earth, so black, and bare, and uninviting: and yet into that beautiful heap he plunges his sieve, and from the snug barn carries it abroad and ruthlessly consigns to the cold and dreary loam the bright relics of last summer, and leaves them in the rain to burst, and macerate, and waste away. You remonstrate, and he replies, "There is no other way to change that black loam into an expanse of waving verdure. And now that this barn is well-nigh empty, there is no other way to fill it with sheaves next autumn. Each of these grains I hope will grow into an ear, and for this bushel I hope to get back twenty. I scatter to increase."

So with the merchantman. How can you let go those sovereigns, so fresh and true, so radiant with the regal visage, so rich in multifarious promise? How can you bring yourself to part with all this solid joy and concentrated happiness? "I intend that they shall come back to me, and before they return I hope each messenger will find his fellow. By trading I hope that my ten pounds will grow to ten pounds more. I scatter to increase."

But it is not in husbandry and merchandise only that the principle obtains. You read a new publication; and when you close the book, the story or the argument is bright in your remembrance. But having no society, or having that silent humor which even in society makes the man solitary, you keep your acquisition to yourself: you never speak of it, and six months hereafter a rusty reminiscence, a dim notion or an ambiguous fact, is the entire remainder: whereas your affable companion, who shared his intellectual feast with friends and neighbors, retains his treasure unimpaired. Or a young scholar is making his first trial of composition; and he fears that this essay will exhaust the sum-total of his literary property. He thinks he has a few good ideas, and one or two rather striking illustrations. But if he puts the whole into the present speech or poem, what is to become of him? There will be no assets left: he will be reduced to intellectual bankruptcy. But you say, No fear. An earnest mind is not a bucket but a fountain; and as good thoughts flow out, better thoughts flow in. Good thoughts are gregarious; the bright image or sparkling aphorismfear not to give it wing; for lured by its decoy, thoughts of sublimer range and sunnier pinion will be sure to descend and gather round it. As you scatter you'll increase. And it is in this way that while many a thought which might have enriched the world has lain buried in a sullen or monastic spirit, like a crock of gold in a coffin-the good idea of a frank and forth-spoken man gets currency, and after being improved to the

VOL. XV.-36

advantage of thousands, has returned to its originator with usury. It has been lent, and so it has not been lost. It has been communicated, and so it has been preserved. It has circulated, and so it has increased.

Again: it is the Christian's duty to scatter kind looks and gracious words, good gifts and friendly deeds; and although not the prompting motive in so doing, God has so arranged the moral husbandry that he who thus scatters will increase. Not only will he make the world the better, but a recompense will come back into his own bosom.

The Gospel is the expression of God's love, and the believer is a man who, filled with Heaven's emanating kindness, becomes in his turn a living Gospel. There is an ecclesiastical Christianity, and there is a dogmatic Christianity. The former regards it as the main thing to belong to a particular Church; the latter lays all the stress on maintaining certain doctrines. The true Christian of the one is a sort of kerb-stone, warning off trespassers; and the true Christian of the other is a denominational flag-staff displaying a specific testimony, or a theological lantern holding on high a certain light or doctrine. But the Christian of the Bible, if he be all this, is also a great deal more. By believing what God reveals, he becomes what God desires-a holy, devout, beneficent presence in society; a sick world's healer; a sad world's comforter; a sympathizer and a fellow-worker with the supreme Beneficence. Remembering

"That, throned above all hight, He condescends
To call the few that trust in him his friends;
That, in the heaven of heavens, its space he deems
Too scanty for the exertion of his beams,
And shines as if impatient to bestow
Life and a kingdom upon worms below;
Like him the soul, thus kindled from above,
Spreads wide her arms of universal love;
And, still enlarged as she receives the grace,
Includes creation in her close embrace."

In other words, important as are soundness in the faith and steadfastness of principle, these are but the roots and stem from which spring love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness; and it is hardly uncharitable to doubt if that religion be Divine which does not visit the fatherless and afflicted, as well as keep itself unspotted from the world. Not that we disparage Church order or systematic theology, but that we deem vital Christianity a great deal more than either. It is the life of God in the soul; it is a transfusion into the disciple of the mind of the Master; it is a ray of Divine gladness kindling a human heart, converting it into a living sacrifice, and filling all the circle with such a fragrance, glow, and brightness, as can only be created by fire from heaven.

When a man is thus possessed and animated, it becomes his propensity-a necessity of the divine and diffusive nature within him to "scatter." To do good and to communicate are his purest delight, his favorite

and familiar employment. To the hungry he draws forth his soul, and from his relaxing grasp his abundance drops in alms deeds on the indigent and in alleviations on the surrounding misery. His pleasant words are a healing elixir to the chafed ear of mortified hope or disappointed affection; and even in a case where grief is so great that, like Job's friends, he is constrained to be silent, there is a soothing charm in his presence, and, refracted through his glistening eye, there steals a ray of comfort into the very soul of sorrow. Moved with compassion for the multitude, he performs a good shepherd's part to some of those sheep he finds in the wilderness; and with loving contrivance, through the alluring book, or the affectionate letter, or the fervid outpouring of some solemn interview, he longs and labors to lead souls to the Savior. And betwixt his radiant smiles and cordial recognitions, his obliging services and friendly offices, his gifts and intercessions, his provident care for his own house, and his far-stretching care for the heathen, it would be hard to tell how much he does to augment the sum of human happiness, and diminish human misery. Losing none of its stateliness or strength, in such a man the religion of Jesus puts forth its beauty. No mere sectarian kerb-stone, he rather resembles a tree in an avenue, whose soft shade and mellifluous murmur at once mark the path and refresh the passenger; while a Church composed of such members does not suggest lamp-posts all in a row, iron and coldly orthodox, but rather reminds you of an orchard on an autumnal evening fete, where tinted lights gleam forth from every leafy canopy, and mellow apples are handed down by every laden bough, where every trunk is a living pillar, and holy love the banner over all.

The believer in Jesus is the universal benefactor, and it is by such free giving of his free receivings that he not only enriches the world, but that he obtains grace for grace, and augments the strength, the beauty, and the happiness of his own soul. By such scattering he in

creases.

What we are about to state is not urged so much as a direct motive to Christian love and liberality. Even as a motive it is legitimate, but with a real Christian there are motives of stronger force, and more constant operation. We rather invite attention to that admirable law in the Divine economy which renders good done to the community a gain to the doer; and which, even when the actuating motive is altogether unselfish, makes the result so rich in personal blessing. And surely it is a striking testimony to the Divine benevolence, that God has so arranged the world that every generous impulse does as much for the giver as the receiver, while a man is never so happy as when wholly intent on the happiness of others.

Reading over the printed but unpublished memorial of a dear friend, whose face we never saw in the flesh, but who gave tens of thousands to colleges, hospitals, and various charities, we found several entries like the following: "January 1, 1849. I adopted the practice ten years ago of expending my income. My outgoes since the 1st of January, 1842, have been upward of four hundred thousand dollars; and my property on the first of this year is as great as on January 1, 1812. The more I give, the more I have." Again: "January 1, 1852. The outgoes for all objects since January 1, 1842-ten yearshave been six hundred and four thousand dollars, more than five-sixths of which have been applied in making other people happy." Here is an example of reproductive

profusion—“The more I give, the more I get;" scattering, yet increasing. And, along with the increase of substance, what is still rarer and more precious, the increase of personal felicity. Instead of scattering, had he concentrated all this outlay on himself, had he spent the half million on dainty viands and costly wines, on sumptuous furniture and glittering vehicles, he would have done no more than many do, on whose care worn, dissatisfied countenances God has inscribed the curse of self-idolatry; but by spending it in an effort to make other people happy, Amos Lawrence extended the sphere of his enjoyment as wide as the objects of his philanthropy, and in his shining face he habitually showed that God had given him the blessedness of a man for whom many prayed and whom he himself greatly loved. So essential to the truest enjoyment is a generous disposition, that we can not refrain from quoting the words of one whose kind deeds were almost as numerous as his brilliant sayings, and who gives the following "Receipt for making every day happy:" "When you rise in the morning form the resolution to make the day a happy one to a fellow-creature. It is easily done; a left-off garment to the man who needs it, a kind word to the sorrowful, an encouraging expression to the striving; trifles in themselves, light as air, will do it, at least for the twenty-four hours; and if you are young, depend upon it it will tell when you are old; and if you are old, rest assured it will send you gently and happily down the stream of time to eternity. By the most simple arithmetical sum look at the result; you send one person, only one, happily through the day; that is, three hundred and sixty-five in the course of the year; and supposing you live forty years only after you commence that course of medicine, you have made 14,600 human beings happy-at all events for a time. Now, worthy reader, is not this simple? It is too short for a sermon, too homely for ethics, and too easily accomplished for you to say, 'I would if I could.'"

What Sydney Smith recommends was the practice of Cotton Mather, two hundred years ago. Few men have ever condensed into the narrow limits of human existence so much substantial service to their fellow-creatures as that good man, whose name is still a household word in New England homes. And it would appear that it was his custom every morning when he awoke to consider these three things-What is there I can this day do for the welfare of my family? What is there I can do in the service of my neighbor? What is there I can do for the glory of God?

Reader, are you not so happy as you would like to be? Then learn to be unselfish. If your acquaintances, or even your relations, are not all you could wish them, make a little more effort to render yourself agreeable or useful to them, and you will be surprised to find how much they improve, and how remarkably you and they deepen into one another's affection. If you have hitherto been spending all your income on yourself, and are no whit the happier; if every stick and straw you carry home for the improvement of your own nest, and still do not find it comfortable, try the scattering system; go to the help of others, and you will make the delightful discovery that the wealth which was too small for one, ample when dispersed over many; that the best way to make your own lot delightful, is to labor for the good of your brother. You who complain that you can not find the consolations of religion-you read, you frequent the sanctuary, you come to the communion, and

yet you can not realize your own interest in the Savior, "why stand you all the day idle?" Go, work in the vineyard; and as you strive to reclaim the vicious, to instruct the ignorant, to guide inquirers to the cross, you will find your views of truth growing clearer, and your heart growing warmer, till at last you shall be unable to deny that Jesus is the Master, and that you are his servant. And you who complain that you have no enlargement in prayer-you try to confess your sins, to pray for your own salvation, to ask the Holy Spirit for yourself, and yet the aspiration will not ascend; the faint petition falls short of heaven. Try to intercede. Think of others. Think of our soldiers on the battlefield. Think of your afflicted neighbor. Think of the prisoners in Papal dungeons. Think of the perishing heathen. And as thus you think you may find that you have risen to that region where prayer is already answered, and that, after becoming inaccessible to habitual egotism, the door of the mercy-seat has been thrown open to brotherly kindness and charity.

No doubt, to render service to another needs selfdenial. We can not do at one and the same moment what is easiest for ourselves, and at the same time best for our neighbors; but by doing what is best for him, we do what is, in the long run, best for ourselves. That bushel of corn-the farmer knows very well that he can not use it as bread, and at the same time use it as seed. To eat it at once would be the easiest; but "man shall not live by, bread only," and for the sake of next harvest, and all the good things which that harvest may procure, he denies himself, and instead of baking and eating this bushel, hungry as he is, he consigns it to the faithful furrow. Perhaps before that harvest comes, he himself may be "sown" in the sepulcher; but no matter-the harvest will come, and when it arrives, the world, perhaps his own family, will be twenty bushels richer for the one which his forethought and self-denial scattered. This hour of time, you can not spend it at once in recreation and in beneficence. It looks more enjoyable to bestow it on an entertaining book or a country walk; but you might employ it in finding a situation for that poor, fatherless boy, or in visiting that bed-ridden neighbor. And those dollars you can not spend at once on yourself and on others. It would be most natural, and at the first blush it seems most desirable, to get the bust or the picture you so long have been coveting, or to spend them on a festive occasion which you have sometimes been imentally planning. But in that case you can not spend them in charity. You can not buy back his tools and his furniture for this hard-working artisan, who has been laid aside by a twelvemonths' affliction. You can not give the donation you would like to contribute to yonder school or home mission. You can not contribute to the establishing of a neighborhood or society library. But should God incline your heart aright-at the critical moment, should he lead you to think of the future more than of the present should he inspire you to take for your model the self-renouncing Savior, rather than the selfindulgent epicures around you-you will forego a momentary gratification for the sake of enduring usefulness. And although that may not be your motive, such is God's arrangement. What you have preferred to scatter rather than devour, he will take care that it shall yield increase. He will make it fruitful. The very effortthe self-sacrifice-the devout or philanthropic achieve ment, he will make a blessing to your own soul. And while he will see to it that those you love are no losers

for such merciful loans, he guarantees the harvest against that day when the salvation of another's soul, or a jewel added to the Redeemer's diadem, will, to the perfected spirit, be a satisfaction unspeakably more exquisite than the remembrance that it once dwelt in a cedar palace, and commanded the plaudits of Christendom.

"RELIGION MAKES MEN GLOOMY."-Who told you so? "My own heart." Your own heart! But have you not read, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked?" And will you believe that heart? "My light-headed and trifling companions." Your companions! But what do they know about it? they never tasted any of its joys or sorrows, and arc in utter ignorance of both. Would you ask a blind man his opinion of colors, or a deaf man his opinion of sounds, and form your judgment by their decision? Go you to other sources for your information, ere you pronounce religion gloomy. Go ask those who have felt its power, who know all the joys of sin and many of the joys of religion, and ask them if such has been its influence. Go to Solomon, the wise king of Israel; ask him, "Does religion make men gloomy?" He had drank of every cup of earthly joy that wealth or influence could command. "I gathered me," he says, "also silver and gold, and the peculiar treasures of kings and of the provinces: I gat men-singers and women-singers, and the delights of the sons of men. I was great; and whatsoever mine eyes desired, I kept not from them. I withheld not my heart from joy," Ecclesiastes ii, 8-10.

But was he happy in consequence? "Behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit," verse 11. But when he turned to religion, and her sweet influence came upon his mind, he exclaimed, "Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace," Proverbs iii, 17.

Religion makes men gloomy! Did it make Paul and Silas gloomy, as they sang praises in the dungeon? Did it make the first martyr, Stephen, gloomy, as he breathed out his soul in peace, and his countenance shone as the face of an angel?

But go higher for your answers. Let heaven and hell be appealed to. Which is the happiest place in the universe-is not heaven? Which is the most miserable place in the universe-is not hell? Which is the most religious? Heaven is the most religious; it is all religion there. Which is the most irreligious? Hell is the most irreligious; there is no religion there. Let the joys of heaven and the agonies of hell, then, give the answer. No! religion never makes men gloomy; but, on the contrary, it has gilded the path of many a tried and afflicted soul through life, and proved the sweetest solace in the hour of death. And the more I feel its influence, and live beneath its power, the nearer I shall come to the joys of heaven, and the light, and love, and bliss that reign around God's throne.

HOW TO READ THE SCRIPTURES.- Pause at every verse of Scripture you choose, and shake as it were every bough of it, that if possible some fruit at least may drop down to you. Should no thought suggest itself immediately to the mind, capable of affording matter for a short ejaculation, yet persevere, and try another and another bough. If your soul really hungers, the Spirit of the Lord will not send you away empty. You shall at length find on one, and that, perhaps, a short verse in Scripture, such an abundance of delicious fruit, that you will gladly seat yourself under its shade, and abide there as under a tree laden with fruit. Will you thus, reader, try to read?

HAVE THE ANGELS A HISTORY?

BY CHARLES NORDHOFF.

AMONG the strongest and most universally experienced of all the various desires which animate the mind of man, we find a longing to penetrate the hidden mysteries of creation, and arrive at a clearer understanding of the motives and purposes of the Creator. Strongly as such a longing or desire may smack of that arrogance which assumes equality with the Creator, and little as such an ephemeral as weak man can reasonably expect to understand of the motives of action of an all-wise, all-foresee ing, and all-powerful Creator, the want was doubtless implanted in the heart of man for a wise and beneficent purpose-to impel the spirit, too apt to become absorbed in earthly cares and pleasures, to look upward, above and beyond the range of its selfish and terrestrial interests to move it to approach nearer to its God, its Creator, Preserver, and Hope. Savage and civilized man, the heathen as well as the Christian, has felt this irrepressible longing. The savage has been content to satisfy it with the traditions handed down from father to son, from generation to generation, in his nation or tribe. The heathen philosopher piled theory on theory, speculation on speculation, while the heathen priesthood exercised all their powers of invention, to produce mythical explanations satisfactory to the minds of their devotees. The Christian alone is blessed with an inspired, and, therefore, authentic, account of the creation, and of its purposes, so far as those purposes concern the human race. In the word of God, and there alone, can we find the facts upon which, as upon a sure foundation, we may rest the lever of our inquiries, in the endeavor to lift aside a portion of the vail which has been thrown about these mysteries in consequence of the fallen condition of our race. It is by the aid of the lights of revelation only that we can succeed in penetrating into the hidden things of the past, present, and future. And even here we can only go so far as those lights extend; and when the philosopher, having gathered a start in the book of revealed truth, attempts to advance alone, by the aid of his own light, he soon loses himself in a wilderness of speculative doubt, from which there is no path to extricate him, but the back track to Scripture truth.

The Bible, as the revealed will of the Creator, is entitled at our hands to implicit and unrestrained credit, which no Christian refuses it. Upon the account given us in different parts of its inspired pages of the grand work of creation, we must depend, as containing all the facts accessible to us on the subject. And while coming here for facts for our own purposes, we must bear in mind that whatever stands recorded there was placed there by our Maker for a purpose of his own-that of preparing us for and leading us on the way to salvation. We must ever bear in mind that in order to arrive at a correct understanding of its truths, it is requisite that we be especially careful to view them in their connection with the purposes for which they were intended. A statement made strictly with reference to a particular

object requires to be interpreted in its connection with that object. Taken independently of this connection it may acquire a very different or an entirely opposite meaning. For example, when we read of Joshua commanding the sun and moon to stand still, we may not infer therefrom that the Bible inculcates the doctrine that the sun moves about the earth, any more than we could argue from the particular expression used, that it requires us to believe that the sun actually stood upon Gibeon, or the moon in the valley of Ajalon. We must look to the context then, keeping in mind that the Bible teaches us, not astronomy, or geography, or geology, but true religion; and also that the inspired writers, in their communications of Divine truth, received no supernatural knowledge of purely scientific matters, and in their views of the various phenomena of nature were not at all likely to have advanced beyond their cotemporaries. And even had they been, they would still have been necessitated, by the nature and extent of their divine offices, which reach to the humblest and most ignorant, to clothe their inspired ideas in such language as would be intelligible to all. Paul says, "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect-thoroughly furnished unto all good works," 2 Timothy.

It is by following out this principle only, then, that the candid inquirer after truth can make the Scriptures available for the purposes of scientific research. As man is to gain from the soil "by the sweat of his brow" his physical nourishment, so, in like manner, is he to provide subsistence for the spirit by laborious investigation, ceaseless struggle and inquiry. When, therefore, the researches of the astronomer and geologist seem to contradict the words of Scripture, let him bear in mind that his discoveries relate to one portion of a subject, while the Bible touches on an entirely different part. And, farther, before he claims to have found a vital contradiction between his facts and the Bible, let him be very sure, not only that he interprets rightly the language of Scripture, but that his discoveries are genuine, unmistakable facts, and that he has reasoned correctly and logically from them, and not made up his theory first, and reconciled his discoveries to that. Having observed all these precautions, we apprehend that a candid inquirer, one unprepossessed in favor of any pet theory or speculation, will find but very little to contend with in reconciling the facts of geology and astronomy to the Biblical account of creation and general arrangement of the universe. And when difficulties do occur, a reference to the errors of his predecessors in the same field will make him hesitate ere setting up his wisdom in opposition to Divine truth.

It is on principles such as those laid down above that the author of the work, to the consideration of a portion of which we propose to devote a little space, attempts to reconcile the latest discoveries of geology and astronomy with the recorded word of God. Our author commences

The Bible and Astronomy-A Contribution to Biblical Cosmology. Bibel und Astronomie, ein Beitrag zur Biblischen Kosmologie, von Johann Heinrich Kurtz. Berlin. 1852.