2. Few men suspect, perhaps no man comprehends, the extent of the support given by religion to every virtue. No man, perhaps, is aware, how much our moral and social sentiments are fed from this fountain; how powerless conscience would become without the belief of a God; how palsied would be human benevolence, were there not the sense of a higher benevolence to quicken and sustain it; how suddenly the whole social fabric would quake, and with what a fearful crash it would sink into hopeless ruin, were the ideas of a Supreme Being, of accountableness and of a future life to be utterly erased from every mind. 3. And, let men thoroughly believe that they are the work and sport of chance; that no superior intelligence concerns itself with human affairs; that all their improvements perish forever at death; that the weak have no guardian, and the injured no avenger; that there is no recompense for sacrifices to uprightness and the public good; that an oath is unheard in heaven; that secret crimes have no witness but the perpetrator; that human existence has no purpose, and human virtue no unfailing friend; that this brief life is every thing to us, and death is total, everlasting extinction; once let them thoroughly abandon religion, and who can conceive or describe the extent of the desolation which would follow? 4. We hope, perhaps, that human laws and natural sympathy would hold society together. As reasonably might we believe, that were the sun quenched in the heavens, our torches would illuminate, and our fires quicken and fertilize the creation. What is there in human nature to awaken respect and tenderness, if man is the unprotected insect of a day? And what is he more, if atheism be true? 5. Erase all thought and fear of God from a community, and selfishness and sensuality would absorb the whole man. Appetite, knowing no restraint, and suffering, having no solace or hope, would trample in scorn on the restraints of human laws. Virtue, duty, principle, would be mocked and spurned as unmeaning sounds. A sordid self-interest would supplant every feeling; and man would become, in fact, what the theory in atheism declares him to be,-a companion for brutes. DEFINITIONS. -1. Com-mu'ni-ty, society at large, the public. Dif-fü'şion, extension, spread. En-light'ened, elevated by knowledge and religion. 2. Făb'rie, any system composed of connected parts. E-rased', blotted out. 3. Per'pe-tra-tor, one who commits a crime. Ex-tine'tion, a putting an end to. 4. Fer'ti-lize, to make fruitful. A'the-ism, disbelief in God. Sen-su-ăl'i-ty, indulgence in animal pleasure. t XCIV. ROCK ME TO SLEEP. Elizabeth Akers Allen (b. 1832, ) was born at Strong, Maine, and passed her childhood amidst the picturesque scenery of that neighborhood. She lost her mother when very young, but inherited her grace and delicacy of thought. Shortly after her mother's death, her father removed to Farmington, Maine, a town noted for its literary people. Mrs. Allen's early pieces appeared over the pseudonym of "Florence Percy." Her first verses appeared when she was twelve. years old; and her first volume, entitled "Forest Buds from the Woods of Maine," was published in 1856. For some years she was assistanteditor of the "Portland Transcript." The following selection was claimed by five different persons, who attempted to steal the honor of its composition. 1. BACKWARD, turn backward, O Time, in your flight, 2. Backward, flow backward, O tide of the years! I am so weary of toil and of tears;. Toil without recompense, tears all in vain; 3. Tired of the hollow, the base, the untrue, 4. Over my heart in the days that are flown, 5. Come, let your brown hair, just lighted with gold, 6. Mother, dear mother, the years have been long Sing, then, and unto my soul it shall seem XCV. MAN AND THE INFERIOR ANIMALS. 1. THE chief difference between man and the other animals consists in this, that the former has reason, whereas the latter have only instinct; but, in order to understand what we mean by the terms reason and instinct, it will be necessary to mention three things in which the difference very distinctly appears. 2. Let us first, to bring the parties as nearly on a level as possible, consider man in a savage state, wholly occupied, like the beasts of the field, in providing for the wants of his animal nature; and here the first distinction that appears between them is the use of implements. When the savage provides himself with a hut or a wigwam for shelter, or that he may store up his provisions, he does no more than is done by the rabbit, the beaver, the bee, and birds of every species. 3. But the man can not make any progress in this work without tools; he must provide himself with an ax even before he can cut down a tree for its timber; whereas these animals form their burrows, their cells, or their nests, with no other tools than those with which nature has provided them. In cultivating the ground, also, man can do nothing without a spade or a plow; nor can he reap what he has sown till he has shaped an implement with which to cut down his harvest. But the inferior animals provide for themselves and their young without any of these things. 4. Now for the second distinction. Man, in all his operations, makes mistakes; animals make none. Did you ever hear of such a thing as a bird sitting on a twig lamenting over her half-finished nest and puzzling her little head to know how to complete it? Or did you ever see the cells of a bee-hive in clumsy, irregular shapes, or observe any thing like a discussion in the little community, as if there were a difference of opinion among the architects? 5. The lower animals are even better physicians than we are; for when they are ill, they will, many of them, seek out some particular herb, which they do not use as food, and which possesses a medicinal quality exactly suited to the complaint; whereas, the whole college of physicians will dispute for a century about the virtues of a single drug. 6. Man undertakes nothing in which he is not more or less puzzled; and must try numberless experiments before he can bring his undertakings to any thing like perfection; even the simplest operations of domestic life are not well performed without some experience; and the term of man's life is half wasted before he has done with his mistakes and begins to profit by his lessons. 7. The third distinction is that animals make no improvements; while the knowledge, and skill, and the success of man are perpetually on the increase. Animals, in all their operations, follow the first impulse of nature or that instinct which God has implanted in them. In all they do undertake, therefore, their works are more perfect and regular than those of man. 8. But man, having been endowed with the faculty of thinking or reasoning about what he does, is enabled by patience and industry to correct the mistakes into which he at first falls, and to go on constantly improving. A bird's (5.-19.) |