There is a God. The humble plants of the valley, and the tall and stately cedars of the heavenward mountain, bless him; the insect hums his praise; the birds chaunt of him amongst the foliage; the lightning proclaimeth his power; the immeasurable and ever-tuneful ocean-that vast of living waters glorifying His exalted name, pealing anthems of seaborn majesty and praise-declareth his unfathomable immensity. MAN alone hath said there is no God! Has he then, in "adversity," ever looked towards heaven? Has he, in prosperity, ever gazed upon the earth? Has nature been

so far from him that he has not been able to contemplate her works? or does he consider them the mere result of chance? ED. "My soul doth magnify the Lord; and my spirit doth ' rejoice' in God-my Saviour."-Psalms.

WOMAN.

FROM THE GREEK OF ST. BASIL.

THERE shines an all-pervading grace,
A charm, diffused through every part
Of perfect woman's form and face,
That steals, like light, into man's heart.

Her look is to his eyes a beam

Of loveliness that never sets;
Her voice is to his ear a dream
Of melody he ne'er forgets :

Alike in motion or repósè,

Awake or slumbering sure to win;
Her form, a vase transparent, shows
The spirit's light enshrined within.

Nor charming only when she talks,
Her very silence speaks and shines;
Love gilds her pathway when she walks,
And lights her couch when she reclines.

Let her, in short, do what she will,

'Tis something for which man must woo her;

So powerful is that magnet still

Which draws all souls and senses to her.

TIME. ITS DIVISIONS.

TIME is divided and subdivided into days, weeks, months, years, and centuries.

The subdivision of time into weeks, months, and years, may be dated from the invariable motion of our globular earth, together with the other celestial bodies:

"Teach me, by this stupendous scaffolding,

Creation's golden wing, to climb to Thee!"

The day is that quantity or division of time in which the earth makes one complete revolution on its axis; months, we are informed, were framed by the circuit of the moon round our planet; and years are computed by the course of the earth round the fixed, immovable, and everlasting sun! There is, however, no natural cause to be assigned for the division of time into weeks; consequently, we should not be able to recognise the "why and the wherefore," had we not the "Bible" for our guide and expositor; and the God of nature, and of the Bible, for our Divine Master and Saviour; to prove which alone induces me to touch this solemn subject in The Volume of the Affections.-ED.

“Thus the heavens and the earth were finished—and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work. And God "blessed" the seventh day, and sanctified it; because that in it he had rested from all his workwhich God created and made."- Gen. ii. 1—3.

THE FATE OF MAN AND WOMAN COMPARED.
FROM THE "IPHIGENIA" OF GOETHE.

MAN, by the battle's hour immortalized,
May fall, yet leaves his name a living song.
But of forsaken woman's countless tears,
What recks the after-world?-The poet's voice
Tells nought of all the slow, sad, weary days,

And long, long nights, through which the lonely soul
Poured itself forth, consumed itself away,

In passionate adjurings, vain desires,

And ceaseless weepings for the early lost,
The loved and vanished friend!

MRS. HEMANS.

OUR FIRST PARENTS.

ADAM and Eve were the first human beings created by the Father Supreme of Life,

They were brought forth in the beauty of holiness, redolent with innocence and love, and having no knowledge nor prescience of evil-much more of sin; nor were they subject to death! "Death had no dominion over them.' The scriptural record, or representation of the creation of man, in the image or likeness of his Omnipotent Maker, cannot fail to awaken the uncorrupted heart to an exalted sense of religious and Christian duty; and to kindle within the secret and hallowed sanctuary of its own tender bosom a spark of holy

fire, which shall serve to illuminate and guide the inquiring mind" towards a heavenly and eternal rest and inheritance. How "cheering" is the task I have, of my own free will, undertaken ;-to read the word of God-as it is written in the Scriptures; and to be enabled, by the divine light of God's sacred countenance, to select from them passages which sufficiently prove all that is necessary to confirm and illustrate.-ED.

"And God said let us make man in our own image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image; in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them."-Gen. i. 26, 27.

THE word Eden signifies the garden of delight, and, according to some writers, pleasure; I incline to the former interpretation.

Eden, the original habitation of man, so long as he continued to walk before God, in a state of blissful innocence, was, in all probability, an earthly elysium; for beauty and incomparable loveliness, it equalled all else upon the face of the earth.

The "Paradise," or Garden of Eden, is a spirit-stirring emblem of the Church of Christ: that sacred and reminiscent

piece of ground having been enclosed and separated from the rest of the world, as the Church of Christ is at present, as she has been in time past, chosen and kept apart from the nations, by the indestructible doctrine of the holy Gospel, to worship the true God in his immaculate Son. Agreeably to this prospect, the Church of the Almighty, or spouse of Christ, is thus beautifully and solemnly shaddowed forth, if not pourtrayed, in the Canticles:-ED.

"A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring shut up, a fountain sealed. Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates, with pleasant fruits; camphire, with spikenard and saffron; calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense; myrrh and aloes, with all the chief spices; a fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and streams from Lebanon." -Sol. Song, iv. 12, 15.

THE CORONATION OF THE LOVES.

THE merry loves, one holyday,
Were all at gambols madly,

But loves too long can seldom play
Without behaving sadly.

They laughed, they toyed, they romped about,
And then for change they al fell out.

Fie, fie! how can they quarrel so,
My Lesbia-ah, for shame, love!
Methinks 'tis scarce an hour ago

When we did just the same, love.
The loves, 'tis thought, were free till then,
They had no king, nor laws, dear;
But gods, like men, should subject be,
Say all the ancient saws, dear.
And so our crew resolved, for quiet,
To choose a king to curb their iot.

A kiss-ah! what a grievous thing
For both, methinks, 'twould be, child,
If I should take some prudish king,
And cease to be so free, child!

Among their toys a casque they found,
It was the helm of Ares ;

With horrent plumes the crest was crown'd,
It frightened all the Lares.

So fine a king was never known

They placed the helmet on the throne.

My g rl, since valour wins the world,
They choose a mighty master;
But thy sweet flag of smiles unfurl'd,
Would win the world much faster!
The casque soon found the loves too wild
A troop, for him to school them;
For warriors know how one such child
Has, aye, contrived to fool them.
They plagued him so, that in despair
He took a wife the plague to share.

If kings themselves thus find the strife
Of earth unshared, severe girl;
Why, just to halve the ills of life,
Come, take your partner here, girl.

C

Within that room the bird of love
The whole affair had eyed then ;
The monarch hailed the royal dove,
And placed her by his side, then :
What mirth amidst the love was seen,

"Long live," they cried," our king and queen!"
Ah! Lesbia, would that thrones were mine,
And crowns to deck that brow, love!
And yet I know that heart of thine
For me is thrown enow, love!

The urchins thought a milder mate
Their king could not have taken;
But when the queen in judgment sate,
They found themselves mistaken.
The art to reign she'd learn'd above,
And ne'er was despot like the dove.
In thee I find the same deceit;
Too late, alas! a learner!

For where a mien more gently sweet?
And where a tyrant sterner?

OF THE RIVERS OF PARADISE.

"AND a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; and the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone. And the name of the second river is Gihon the same is it that encompasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth towards the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates.” -Gen. ii. 10--14.

From the well-known names of Hiddekel, which is the Tigris, and of the Euphrates, it is supposed that the Garden of Eden was situated in or near Mesopotamia, or, perhaps, as far northward as Armenia, whose capital city is called Erzerum, which, in the oriental languages, means, The Land of the Garden. It is thought, that the Tigris and Euphrates united their streams in the Garden of Eden; and, that below it, the river parted again into two rivers, called Pison and G.hon.

These lovely streams, five in number, are emblematic of the abundant spiritual blessings which God poured upon man before his calamitous and maledictory fall; flowing waters being frequently used, in the figurative language of Scripture, to represent "influences of the Holy Spirit.'

"And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb," -Rev. xxii. 1.