mate tendency of Christianity. A belief in the Fatherhood of God, and the brotherhood of man, as taught by the great Saviour of the world, will induce better moral conduct than any other system of religion ever revealed to the human race. This principle was recognized by the venerable Dr. Franklin. He said, "Mankind are all of a family; therefore, let good offices go round." Reader, "Have we not all one Father? Hath not one God created us? Why do we deal treach erously every man against his brother?" THE STARS. [From the German of Emanuel Geibel.] BY J. W. HANSON. ARE the Stars a flock of lambkins, Has gone, in the blue fields of heaven, Their shepherdess the Night? Or are they silver lilies, Which open their vases fair, And pour their slumber-fragrance Through all the weary air? Or are they holy tapers, Which on Night's high-altar shine, When the spacious dome of the midnight Is filled with the darkness divine? No! but they are silver letters, With which the ANGEL OF LOVE Has written her psalms and anthems In the blue Book of Heaven above! VESUVIUS AND ITS NEIGHBORHOOD. BY A. A. MINER. To the devout Christian, the wonderful phenomena of nature, no less than the comprehensive purposes of grace, afford varied subjects for meditation and instruction. The great vitalizing force of the universe is by no means absent from what we call "nature." By it the sun shines, the waters flow, the dews freshen the withering flower, and the fruitful earth yields her autumnal harvest. To behold the ways of God, then, it is not necessary that our gaze should be exclusively in one direction, it may be in all directions. If the divine mercy and grace shine most conspicuously in the words and deeds of Christ, we would not, therefore, overlook the wonderful illumination of prophets, and the vision-guidance of the seers of old. In like manner, if it be true that the spiritual domain reveals the most of God, it may still be true that "mountains and hills, fruitful trees and cedars, dragons and all deeps, fire and hail, snow and vapor, stormy wind fulfilling his word, may praise the Lord from the earth.” Indeed, to the common mind, the lessons of the material world may be more easily apprehended than those of the spiritual world. The outward may serve as a kind of ladder, on which to climb to summits affording extensive views and delightful prospects. That which is greatest in fact may not most deeply impress the mind. There can be no doubt that the stupendous greatness of the universe to the mind that can grasp it, addresses itself with immense effect. But who will deny that causes much less in magnitude may impress the mind more vividly, and even more deeply? If one would have a vivid conception of power, let him look upon the ocean when lashed into fury by the tempest. As surge after surge, with awful rage, breaks upon the rocks, their increasing fury dashing them higher and still higher, until the very rocks themselves seem to groan in anguish, a sense of Almighty power, in contrast with his own personal weakness, steals upon the spectator, and Neptune becomes more than a fabled god. Or, let him turn to some wild mountain height, let him climb into Alpine regions, and, as he wends his way through the immense mountain gorges, and trembles on the brink of the almost fathomless chasms, with the overhanging cliffs and eternal snows above him, and the rushing torrents at his feet, every remoter view disclosing platoons of mountains, in serried ranks, height o'er-topping height, how does a sense of that unseen power, casting up in such endless profusion the "barriers of a world," impress the soul! One is led to ask, with the poet Rogers: "Who first beholds those everlasting clouds, As to belong rather to heaven than to earth,- A sense, a feeling, that he loses not; A something that informs him 't is a moment Whence he may date henceforward and forever?" |