in the Individual or in the State-by its tendency to confer happiness and glory upon men,-by its tendency to exalt their sense of fraternal relations, and to multiply their deeds of charity, by its tendency to expand the capacities of the human intellect, and to raise the soul to a dignified converse with all that is great and beautiful in the handiwork of God.

XV

PROPHETIC REALITIES.

EVERY age has had its hopeful, half-inspired Minstrel, singing to his generation the promise of a better Era;-its high-souled and discerning Seer, receiving from the hand of God the glowing coals of Truth, and with them illuminating the dim region in which he was appointed to dwell;-its studious and contemplative Philosopher, observing the world in its varied relations and under its changing aspects, and, in serene wisdom, calculating the progress of principles, and es timating the tendency of events. Dreams of a holier and happier condition of Society, we have reason to believe, have been indulged even in the most barbarous ages, and nour

ished amid the adverse circumstances of desolating wars, of reckless and unblushing sensuality, and of all-pervading political and religious despotism. For Hope is found to have dwelt with every people, as Comforter and Prophet, and to have blessed the mind with those gladdening anticipations, which destroy the sting of present calamity, and possess the sufferer with heavenly patience. From that primeval time of tears that saw Man expelled from the Paradise he had forfeited, down through all the periods of guilty strife, of groaning slavery, and of unrequited toil, Hope has preserved her watch-fires on dismal and stormy fields, and her hymn of promise, unbroken, through the battle-wail of discordant empires. In the strength imparted by her assurances, have the nations walked beneath the pitiless storm of centuried Iniquity. Without Hope, they must have been crushed by their Atlas-burthen of horrors. Without Hope, there could have been no reaching forward for better things,-no resolute, angelwrestling prayer for blessing,-no ideals of excellence, no visions of salvation,-and

hence no progress in the great Purpose of Ex

istence.

Primeval Hope, the Aonian Muses say,

When Man and Nature mourned their first decay,
When every form of death, and every woe,
Shot from malignant stars to earth below;
When Murder bared his arm, and
rampant War

Yoked the red dragons of her iron car;
When Peace and Mercy, banished from the plain,
Sprung on the viewless winds to Heaven again;
All, all forsook the friendless, guilty mind,
But HOPE, the charmer, lingered still behind.
Thus, while Elijah's burning wheels prepare
From Carmel's height to sweep the fields of air,
The Prophet's mantle, ere his flight began,
Dropped on the world-a sacred gift to man.
CAMPBELL.

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It is an apostolic doctrine, that this lower Creation "was made subject to vanity" in HOPE, "because the creation shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption, into the glorious liberty of the sons of God." And,-as though this promise had been written on the firmament of Heaven, legible to every human being, men have trusted in its eventual fulfillment, and, in their trust, have glorified their afflictions.

Divine Revelation, when it broke the murky Night of Paganism, gave its everlasting sanction to the great hope of the human mind, by revealing a law of Improvement in the nature