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The pulpit will seem altogether too tame, the sanctuary too quiet, in the midst of the excitement that shall be; and all such as are not firmly settled in their religious habits will be caught away as dry leaves by an autumnal storm. Much, O, how much, which christianity has gained in quiet times will be torn, overturned, and carried away to be gathered no more !

Christians have reason to dread what is coming. They have reason not only to deprecate the general evil influence which the excitement will effect, but also to dread the effect it will have upon themselves. They have reason to fortify themselves, and to clothe their principles as with a coat of mail, lest the insidious power get the mastery over them. For young men especially the danger is great. Ardent, and full of life, their feelings will be easily enlisted. They will be called upon to spend their evenings in club rooms; they will be brought into contact with such as are not kindred either by sensitive consciences or religious vows from indulging in scenes of dissipation. In many ways will their principles be sorely tried; and if the evil is not prudently foreseen and wisely guarded against, many christian young men will sustain deep, perhaps lasting injury.

Let christian young men be calm and considerate. No duty to your country, no duty to political leaders, requires a sacrifice at your hards such as these wild political campaigns will demand. The more you become excited yourself, the more you aid in exciting others, the less will both you and they be in a condition to discharge wisely the duty required of you at the ballot box. With whatever party your sympathies go, you will find that a few central principles are all that have any merits in the contest. These you can best know from reliable official acts and documents. On these plant yourself. All beyond these is mere vapor and noise-a mere bewildering of the ignorant for the advantage of interested leaders-a mere war of sounds, that far more confuses than enlightens.

Who has a right to demand of you to scorch yourself in the burning sun, and cover yourself with dust, by marching in noisy processions, and to shout approbation to the flippant and often foolish declamations of stump orators? Such a demand is a reflection on your intelligence. It would hang you on itself as a mere appendage to swell its own importance, as empty funeral carriages are made to follow the corpse of such as seek an honor, in death which they failed to deserve in life. Suffer not yourself to be "as dumb cattle driven." Let your own intelligence guide you, and not the noise of numbers, among which there is always more frothing than thinking.

Take an interest in the great questions of the land, as it is meet and right, and the bounden duty of every good citizen to do; but do it rationally and soberly, never forgetting that you are a christian as well as a citizen, and that you are pledged by your vows, first to render unto God the things that are God's, and then subordinately to this first duty, to render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's. Neither in thoughts or acts suffer yourself to be drawn away from your duties as a christian. As in position, so in truth, stand above popular tumults, and look calmly down on the empty passing noise.

The simple believe all that is spoken and printed in political contests.

You, we are sure, know better, and will act more wisely. You will hold firmly to the central principles of governmental policy which you have adopted after mature deliberation, and will treat all gotten up issues as they deserve. Falsehoods innumerable are created for effect, by all parties, but it is for the thoughtful, and calm, and the wise, to distinguish the chaff from the wheat. The calmer you remain, the better will you be qualified for this duty.

Again we say, be calm. Shun the excitement; and surrender not yourself to its blind power. Pursue your business, attend to your religious duties as before, and let the rage go by you as the idle wind. When the time

of voting comes express your calm judgment at the ballot box, and you will not only have deposited your vote with more intelligence than others, but you will neither lose your innocence nor sacrifice your peace.

THE PARTING.

Tas moca is up and I have come to bid forwell to thee,

And by its colo, pala light, to speak 1772 word that sets thee free;
Then set as jom

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nd wander by the tide Where the a 1 I shall it no more flodship side by side.

The eve is tair and beautiful, and not a cloud is nigh,

Save that which darkens on thy brow, a d shades thy glorious eye;
The moon lights up our trysting place as sweetly as of old,

Ere yet hy heart had learned to doubt, or its warm love grown cold.

I know not way this darksome change has come across thy heart,
I only know, and only feel, that thou and I must part;

I ask not if a firer form has met thin earnest eye

I only know thy love's estranged, and that my own must die.

I came not forth to tell thee all this breaking heart must bear,
Aiready bowed beneath a weight of more than mortal care,)
In parting thus from all that made this cold life dear to me
For thou wast all I had to love-and now farewell to thee!
But if thy glowing dreams of life should be as mine have been,
If disappointmt's blight should com to change the blissful scene,
Come to the heart thon scornest now, and thou wilt find its truth
As pure as when I pledged to the the first vows of my youth.
The wares are appling sweetly by, the summer moon is bright,
And we have mot as we shall meet no more beneath its light;
Our whispered words will steel no more along the starlit dell,
For we are here this night to speak the fatal word. farewell!
Here, take my Lond and speak to me in kid and gentle tone,
And tell me thou hast loved me well, a d, until now, alone:
Say, though thy love is lost to me, thy faith no longer mine,
A inmory of the past shall still around thy spirit twine!
Forgive these tears and let me weep upon thy breast once more,
And fold me in one last embrace, as warmly as of yore;
Now take thy love to one more blest than I can ever be--
A bleeding sacrifice, oh, God! this heart I bring to Thee!

HATEM TAI, AND THE POOR WOODMAN.

BY THE EDITOR.

IN ancient times, as legends say,
There lived in bright Arabia,

A nobleman of honor high,

Know by the name of Hatem Tai.

Great was his wealth, but greater still
His open heart and generous will;
And his chief joy was to allure
To his full board the hungry poor.

True to the customs of the East

He planned one day a sumptuous feast;
One hundred Camels slaughtered lie
To grace this feast of Hatem Tai!

He called of noble Lords a score,
Of Peasants full one hundred more,
And Traveler's poor, who came that way,
Were hailed, and kindly urged to stay.

Unsated still the kindly eye
Of wealthy, generous Hatem Tai;
Forth goes himself with heart inclined,
In paths remote, new guests to find.

Close by a wood good Hatem spied
An aged man, with faggots tied
Upon his back. The burden pressed
His snow white beard upon his breast.

"Cast down thy load," said Hatem Tai,
"And dine with me-my house is nigh;
No richer board in all the East-
An hundred Camels grace the feast."

"Kind is thy heart," the old man said,
"But sweet my work that earns my bread;
While mine own toil my bread can buy
Why should I live of Hatem Tai?"

His words were pleasant, and his face
Shone radiant of a hidden grace!
With wisdom sparkling in his eye
He further spake to Hatem Tai:

"Of Alla favored as thou art
With riches and a generous heart,
Be careful thou, and wisely spend
Thy wealth upon a worthy end.

"Sweet juices, set for faithful bees,
The lazy wasp with pleasure sees;

He brings his brood, he takes the sway,
And drives the useful bee away.

"If loosely free thy call extends,

Then come the straggling odds and ends;

And swarms of idle drones will ply,

Thy kindness sore, O, Hatem Tai.

MORE WORLDS THAN ONE.

BY SIR DAVID BREWSTER.

BEFORE Christianity shed its light upon the world, the philosopher who had no other guide but reason, looked beyond the grave for a resting-place from his labors, as well as for a solution of the mysteries which perplexed him. Minds, too, of an inferior order, destined for immortality, and conscious of their destination, instinctively pried into the future, cherishing visions of another world with all the interests of domestic affection, and with all the curiosity which the study of nature inspires. Interesting as has been the past history of our race,-engrossing as must ever be the present, the future, more exciting still, mingles itself with every thought and sentiment, and casts its beams of hope, or its shadows of fear, over the stage, both of active and contemplative life. In youth we scarcely descry it in the distance. To the stripling and the man it appears and disappears like a variable star, showing in painful succession its spots of light and of shade. In age it looms gigantic to the eye, full of chastened hope and glorious anticipation; and at the great transition when the outward eye is dim, the image of the future is the last picture which is effaced from the retina of the mind.

But however universal has been the anticipation of the future, and however powerful its influence over the mind, Reason did not venture to give a form and locality to its conceptions; and the imagination, even with its loosest reins, failed in the attempt. Before the birth of Astronomy, indeed, when our knowledge of space terminated with the ocean or the mountain range that bounded our view, the philosopher could but place his elysium in the sky; and even when revelation had unveiled the house of many mansions, the Christian sage could but place his future home in the new heavens and in the new earth of his creed. Thus vaguely shadowed forth; thus seen as through a glass darkly, the future even of the Christian, though a reality to his faith, was but a dream to his reason; and in vain did he inquire what this future was to be in its physical relations,-in what region of space it was to be spent,-what duties and pursuits were to occupy it, and what intellectual and spiritual gifts were to be its portion. But when Science taught us the past history of our earth, its form, and size, and motions,-when Astronomy surveyed the solar system, and measured its planets, and pronounced the earth to be but a tiny sphere, and to have no place of distinction among its gigantic compeers, and when the Telescope established new systems of worlds far beyond the boundaries of our own, the future of the sage claimed a place throughout the universe, and inspired him with an interest in worlds, and systems of worlds,-in life without limits, as well as in life without end. On eagle's wings he soared to the zenith, and sped his way to the horizon of space, without reaching its ever-retiring

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bourne; and in the infinity of worlds, and amid the infinity of life, he descried the home and the companions of the future

In advocating a plurality of worlds, we are fortunately in a more favored position than the geologist, whose researches into the ancient history of the earth stood in apparent opposition to the declarations of Scripture. Neither in the Old nor in the New Testament is there a single expression incompatible with the great truth, that there are other worlds than our own which are the seats of life and intelligence. Many passages of Scripture, on the contrary, are favorable to the doctrine, and there are some, we think, which are inexplicable, without admitting it to be true. The beautiful text* for example, in which the inspired Psalmist expresses his surprise that the Being who fashioned the heavens, and ordained the moon and the stars, should be mindful of so insignificant a being as man, is, we think, a positive argument for a plurality of worlds. We cannot concur in the idea of Dr. Chalmers, that a person wholly ignorant of the science of astronomy, and, consequently, to whom all the stars and planets are but specks of light in the sky, not more important than the ignis fatuus upon a marshy field, could express the surprise and deep emotion of the Hebrew poet We cannot doubt that inspiration revealed to him the magnitude, the distances, and the final cause of the glorious spheres which fixed his admiration. Two portions of creation are here placed in the strongest contrast,-Man in his comparative insignificance, and the Heavens, the Moon and the Stars in their absolute grandeur. He whom God made a little lower than the angels, whom He crowned with glory and with honor, and for whose redemption He sent His only Son to suffer and to die, could not, in the Psalmist's estimation, be an object of insignificance, and measured, therefore, by his high estimate of man, his idea of the heavens, the moon, and the stars must have been of the most transcendent kind. Had he been ignorant of astronomy, he never could have given utterance to the sentiment in the text. Man, made after God's image, was a nobler creation than twinkling sparks in the sky, or than the larger and more useful lamp of the moon. The Psalmist must, therefore, have written under the impression, either that the planets and stars were worlds without life, or worlds inhabited by rational and immortal beings. If he regarded them as unoccupied, we cannot see any reason for surprise that God should be mindful of His noblest work, because innumerable masses of matter existed in the universe, performing, for no intelligible purpose, their solitary rounds. If they were thus made for the benefit and contemplation of man, unseen by any mortal eye but his, then should the Psalmist have expressed his wonder, not at the littleness, but at the greatness of the Being for whose use such magnificent worlds had been called into existence. But if the poet viewed these worlds, as he doubtless did, as teeming with life, physical and intellectual, as globes which may have required millions of years for their preparation, exhibiting new forms of being, new powers of mind, new conditions in the past, and new glories in the future, we can then understand why he marvelled at the care of God for creatures so comparatively insignificant as man.

When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man. that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man that thou visitest bim-PSALM viii: 3, 4.

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