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النشر الإلكتروني

THE HOLY GRAIL.

By Frederick A. Parmenter. [The Holy Grail was a bowl out of which, tradition says, Christ ate the Last Supper; and which, coming into the possession of the descendants of Joseph of Arimathea, who were wicked and corrupt, was, for this reason, taken in charge by three angels. Henceforth it became the highest aim of every Christian knight to find the Holy Grail.]

"SIR KNIGHT, pray whither ridest thou 'Mid blinding snow and hail?"

"I ride, good monk, as thou dost see, To find the Holy Grail;

I've rode for many a weary year,

And still I deeply yearn

To find the blessed angels three
Who bear the Sacred Urn.”

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O loving Father, must it be
That we shall thus forever fail
To find what in thy heavenly sight
Is better than the Holy Grail?
Ah, no! one day we yet shall gain
The thing we seek, though not on earth,
But when in yon celestial land

We have diviner, higher birth?

BEAUTIFUL EXTRACT.

THE following eloquent paper on "Time," is, we think, from the pen of Paulding: "I saw a temple reared by the hands of man, standing with its high pinnacle in the distant plain. The streams beat against it, the God of nature hurled his thunderbolts against it, and yet it stood firm as adamant. Revelry was in its halls, the gay, the happy, the young, the beautiful were there; I returned, and

lo! the temple was no more. Its high walls lay in scattered ruins; moss and wild grass grew rankly there; and at the midnight hour the owl's long cry added to the deep solitude. The young and gay who revelled there had passed away.

"I saw a child rejoicing in his youth, the idol of his mother and the pride of his father. I returned, and the child had become old. Trembling with the weight of years, he stood the last of his generation, a stranger amidst the desolation around him.

"I saw the old oak standing in all its pride upon the mountain; the birds were carolling in the boughs. I returned, and that oak was leafless and sapless; the winds were playing at their pastimes through its branches.

"Who is this destroyer?' said I to my guardian angel.

When the

"It is Time,' said he. morning stars sung together with joy over the new-made world, he commenced his course, and when he shall have destroyed all that is beautiful of the earth,plucked the sun from its sphere, veiled the moon in blood, yea, when he shall have rolled the heavens and the earth away as a scroll, then shall an angel from the throne of God come forth, and with one foot on the sea and one on the land, lift up his hand toward heaven and swear by heaven's Eternal, -Time is, time was, but time shall be no longer!" "

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renders youth joyous and beautiful, this the month that is so grayly dawning upon us, ushered in by dreary winds and lingering snows, and highways floating with deep seas of unfathomable mud.

Out upon it! Why does not some independent stude ft of nature cry out against the false pretences of this same month of many storms and direful roadways, and call her, as she merits, a winter month? Surely, not until far into May do the trees put forth their leaves, and the meadows wax green and golden with their fair garniture of grass and flowers. May is the only real spring month of all the three that bear the name. Everything seems to make a mistake in the matter. Even the birds are piping their sweet notes as if "winter were over and gone," and the time were fully arrived for "the voice of the turtle to be heard in our land."

NATURE'S MYSTERIES. -THE FLIES.

NATURE has many mysteries. Where do the flies spend their winter? Surely, they do not belong to the migratory species, yet here they are now, and to-day the very air out of doors is thick with them, while within doors the windows are covered with the buzzing insects, all as stout and merry as if they had eaten their regular rations all winter, instead of hybernating, as they must have done somewhere, frozen stiff and lifeless for many months. This is one of the many mysteries of nature which we do not, which we never can, understand. No one can explain it ; we know that it is so, and that is all. It is just as wonderful for a fly to live frozen stiff and solid through the winter months as for a toad to exist ten thousand years shut up in a solid rock. God only can explain either.

Another mystery which has excited our attention ever since we can remember is connected with the birds. What becomes of the birds when they die? They do die like all other live ing things, and die in all seasons and in all climates. They return North perhaps in some

treacherous period of unseasonable warmth, but after a few days of genial sunshine old winter comes roaring down from his northern caves once more, and the birds, unable long to face his rigors, die by hundreds, of starvation and cold. We know they die, for they are gone when the sunshine reappears, and do not come back. But where rest their little lifeless forms? Who in searching the woods and fields for the first spring flowers has ever suddenly and unexpectedly, when about to detach a delicate plant from its soil, put his hand upon a lifeless bird! We never knew any one who had done so. They are not to be found. They are all vanished as mysteriously as ghosts at the sound of the cock-crow, and not a feather or a little bone remains to tell the tale of where they died.

Strange as is this mystery, we have this very spring learned in part its solution, and we will teach it to you. The birds are buried! Yes, without the ceremony and rites of a funeral, they have their sepulture as really as human beings have theirs. They are not consigned to the grave by a long train of mourners and friends, nor does the solitary mate who has been bereaved thus pay the last tribute of what we have every reason to believe a very true and fond affection. The little sextons that perform the work are clad in black, and are as mysterious in their labors as the task itself, and, like the gnomes and little people of fairy-land, they dwell in the bowels of the earth. They are beetles, of that remarkable family called burying-beetles. They belong to that class of nature's scavengers, whose instincts lead them to a most useful work alike for themselves and even the human race.

The burying-beetle lays its eggs in the putrescous flesh of reptiles, birds, and little animals, and when the larvæ are developed in the form of maggots they find a food ready prepared for them by the instinctive foresight of the parents. But were these carcases so used to be left above ground they would be destroyed by other animals or would decay so rapidly as to defeat the uses to which they are put; so the beetle buries them. And the following very curious experiment will show how a gentleman of a very great fondness for natural history had observed that not only did the bodies of birds disappear very mysteriously from the surface of the ground, but mice, moles, and other little animals also, and he set himself to discover the cause. So he placed a dead mole in his garden, and marking the spot, left it. The third day the

mole was gone. Upon digging where it had been placed, it was found buried three inches deep, ana under it were four beetles. This was enough to give him the clew, but to make sure that those little creatures were the cause of its disappearance, four of the same kind were put into a large glass vessel half filled with earth, and covered over so that they could not get out. But let the gentleman tell his story:

"I laid two dead frogs on the surface of the earth, and two of the beetles immediately commenced their labors on one of these bodies, with such vigor that, in the course of twelve hours, it was completely buried. The other two were idle during this operation; but at last their time came, and the remaining frog was buried. I then put a dead linnet into the case. They began by pushing out the earth from under it so as to form a hole for its reception, and then dragged at its feathers from below to pull it into the grave. One of them at length seemed to quarrel with the other, and, driving it off, carried on the work alone for five hours. He lifted up the bird, changed its place, turned it about, and, from time to time coming out of the hole, climbed upon it, making, apparently, an effort to stamp it down; and, when he had effected everything that could be accomplished in this way, he again commenced his work beneath the surface. Being at last exhausted with so many hours of hard and incessant la. bor, he came out of his hole and lay down on the ground without moving for more than an hour. Again he commenced his work, and, next morning, I found the linnet sunk an inch and a half under the surface, with a trench all around it. In the evening it had sunk an inch lower, and, in another day it was quite covered up. I afterwards put other small dead animals into the glass case, until, in fifty days, those four little beetles had buried no fewer than twelve bodies."

We think this curious experiment eminently satisfactory and convincing, and that there need be no longer the least doubt "what becomes of the dead birds."

And who after this will say that anything is made in vain, or that design is not stamped on everything created? It is a pleasant thought that God in the earth, in the sea, and in the air has provided innumerable, often invisible means to purify a dwelling for the noblest of his creation. Millions on millions of insects inhabit the air whose business it is to consume the impurities it is constantly absorbing, thereby clearing it from malaria which might

otherwise produce disease and death. The water is purified in mysterious ways and filled with life-giving gases without which it would be unfit to quench our thirst. So everywhere God has set his seal of love and kindness and care, and who so blind or so ungrateful as not to recognize it?

Yes, in the physical, the moral, and the spiritual world there are influences always at work for our advantage, our purification, and happiness. Everywhere we meet, if we will but see them,

PURE INFLUENCES.

Oh! if no faces were beheld on earth

But toiling manhood and repining age, No welcome eyes of innocence and mirth, To look upon us kindly, who would wage The gloomy battle for himself alone? Or through the dark of the o'erhanging cloud Look wistfully for light? Who would not

groan Beneath his daily task, and weep aloud?

But little children take us by the hand,

And gaze with trustful cheer into our eyes; Patience and fortitude beside us stand

In woman's shape, and waft to heaven our sighs;

The guiltless child holds back the arm of guilt Upraised to strike, and woman may atone With sinless tears for sins of man, and melt The damning zeal when evil deeds are done.

LETTER FROM A LADY.

Ir will not, we hope, seem a thing out of place in our "Table" if we insert a part of a letter received some time since from a lady, a stranger. It marks so curious and interesting a phase in the history of the Faith we all love that, slight as the incident recounted may seem to many, we feel justified in presenting it for the fellow-feeling it will awaken in others. She writes,

"Pardon my abruptness and allow me to ex plain at once why you receive a letter from an entire stranger.

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one of Tom Paine's lectures. The literary merit of the sermon gratified my taste, although I listened doubtingly ; but the grave, placid face of the preacher so undoubting in its serenity-drew me again on the next Sabbath to Orchard Street, and Mrs. Van B—, the old lady before mentioned, lent me denominational papers, wherein difficult texts were explained, which I read with eagerness. Now, when the housetop seems rather dangerous ground to my elderly feet, I smile to think on the study where I pondered on Universalism. Our house was small, and it seemed to me that a doctrine so magnificent, whose tender creed made me weep tears of joy, could be adequately pondered only in the open air beneath the sky which smilingly confirmed the glad tidings. So, on those blessed summer afternoons I took my papers and Bible and, passing through a garret window on to a roof sequestered from observation, and where I had the great delight of overlooking a neighboring grape-vine, - 'tis hard to gratify a craving for the beautiful in a poor neighborhood in New York, I read and prayed and wrought out my own salvation' in hope and joy. Can you imagine yourself in my situation? If you can, you have some idea of Mr. Sawyer's altitude in my estimation."

We can only congratulate the writer on her emancipation from the obscurities which had surrounded her so long, and her entrance at last into the fair radiance of God's clear light.

For her allusions to our own "fearful learnedness" we are humbly grateful, but forbear to introduce them here.

"WE make the weather in our hearts," says a sententious but thoughtful French writer, "whether the sun shines out, or the heavens are black with storms." This is true undoubtedly to a certain extent, yet whatever may be the tone of our hearts "some days must be dark and dreary," and we sometimes wonder whether the sunshine is ever broad and cheery on the hearthstones of some of our pioneer preachers. This thought has come up with uncommon force on reading an extract from a letter of a Western missionary to-day. He says,

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'We live on less than two hundred dollars a year including housekeeping and travelling expenses; and my travelling in a year is not less than three thousand miles. I have to go to a neighboring wood and fell down the trees, chop them into ten or twelve feet logs, hitch my horse to them, drag them to the house,

chop, saw, and split them into stove fuel, and then, after preaching two sermons a week, riding most weeks fifty or sixty miles, teaching Sabbath-schools, riding three miles to the postoffice, store, etc., even after all this, I am told by my brethren that 'I don't do anything but ride about and read my books,' and they wonder why I couldn't work a little now and then and try to earn a part of my living.'

When we read things like this, we pray for great, overmastering faith, that we may not be led to doubt whether "brethren "of this stamp are worth saving. The infinite cruelty of such remarks, under such circumstances, is past understanding, as the infinite sorrow of their clerical victims must be too heavy for our appreciation. Will the days with them always be thus "dark and dreary"? and if so, is it in their power always to have "fair weather in their hearts"? After the sadness of this subject, there is something exquisitely touching in the following lines on

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"I think there must be some one sick over to Mr. Strain's," I said to my sister, the Tuesday after Christmas. "The doctor went there yesterday morning and again to-day. I am afraid it's one of the children, for I see him go in and out as usual, and I have noticed her at the window several times. I hope they haven't got the scarlet fever."

"Oh, dear, I hope not, though I shouldn't wonder at all if they had, for it's all through the neighborhood. She spoke of it the other evening when I called in; said she dreaded it so much, and didn't knew what to do with the children, whether to take them out as usual or house them up. I do hope they wont take it, for I almost know if they do, Bessie'll die. She's too bright to live. I don't see why it is,

How long since you passed o'er the hill, old either, that such children always have to die,

man,

Of life, o'er the top of the hill?

Were there beautiful valleys on t'other side?
Were there flowers and trees with their branches
wide,

To shut out the heat of the sun, old man,
The heat of the fervid sun?

while such dumb-heads as Hannah's and Susan's are, live through everything. Darling little Bessie!" and she looked wistfully over the way; "I do hope it isn't you. I'll send Lizzie over to see as soon as she comes from school."

Lizzie went and came back with word that the baby had the scarlet fever and was quite sick,

And how did you cross the dark waves, old but not thought dangerous.

man,

Of sorrow, the fearful waves?

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Did you lay your dear treasures by, one by after the usual daily inspection of pantry and

one,

china-closet. "Have you seen the doctor go

With an aching heart, and "God's will be there yet?" done,"

Under the wayside dust, old man, —

In their graves, 'neath the wayside dust?

"Yes; and I'm afraid it's worse, for I saw the Irish girl carry Bessie, all wrapped up, into her grandmother's. I was afraid she'd

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