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hands before him. Now beckoned he to Eloa, and the seraph, reading in Jehovah's countenance what he should say, turned to the celestial audience, and said:

"Behold the Eternal, ye chosen righteous ones, ye holy children. Know his heart, for in his thoughts ye were the most beloved, when he contemplated the salvation by the Redeemer. Ye have ardently desired, God is your witness, to see at last the day of redemption, and his Messiah. Blessed be ye, children of the Deity, born of the spirit! Shout for joy, ye celestial sons, ye behold the Father, the Being of Beings. Lo, he is the First and Last, the everlasting God of mercy! He, God,-Jehovah, who is from eternity, whom no creature can conceive-he condescends to call you children. This messenger of peace sent from his son, has come in your behalf to this high altar. Were ye not born to be spectators of this great redemption, O then would it have been in distant solitudes a mysterious, unsearchable theme. But now with us, shall ye, offspring of the earth, welcome that day with rapture, with eternal exultation. We too will explore the whole unrevealed extent of your redemption: with you will we complete this mystery with a more enlightened view than ye, ye devout and weeping friends of your Redeemer, who still wander in darkness. But his lost persecutors! Long already hath the Eternal blotted them from the holy book! but to his redeemed he sends a divine light. They shall view the blood of reconciliation no longer with weeping eyes. They shall see it, as, before them, its stream is lost in the ocean of eternal life. O then shall they here, solaced in the bosom of peace, spend the illustrious festival of eternal rest. Ye Seraphim, and ye souls, escaped from the snares of life, begin the jubilee, which shall last henceforward through eternity. The yet mortal children of the earth, generation after generation, shall all be gathered to you, until at last perfected, and clothed with new bodies, they shall enter into blessedness after the general judgment. Meanwhile, ye high angels of the throne, go forth from us, and instruct the guardians of God's creatures, to prepare themselves against the festival of the chosen, mysterious day."

[Christian Citizen.]

THE PRESS. The press is a messenger of truth, the herald of science, the interpreter of letters, the amanuensis of history, and the teacher of futurity. Like the sun, it dispels the gloom of night, irradiates the shade of ignorance, and pours a flood of knowledge on the world: it dilates the perceptions of man, extends his intellectual vision, inspires his heart with sensibility, and his mind with thought, and endows him with past and present omniscience; it directs his way to the temple of fame, and discovers to him the path by angels trod to Zion's holy hill.

SORROW FOR THE DEAD

BY WASHINGTON IRVING.

THE Sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal; every other affliction to forget; but this wound we consider it a duty to keep open; this affliction we cherish and brood over in solitude. Where is the mother who would willingly forget the infant that perished like a blossom from her arms, though every recollection is a pang? Where is the child that would willingly forget the most tender of parents, though to remember be but to lament? Who, even in the hour of agony, would forget the friend over whom he mourns? Who, even when the tomb is closing upon the remains of her he most loved; when he feels his heart, as it were, crushed in the closing of its portal, would accept of consolation that must be bought by forgetfulness? No, the love which survives the tomb is one of the noblest attributes of the soul. If it has its woes, it has likewise its delights; and when the overwhelming burst of grief is calmed into the gentle tear of recollection; when the sudden anguish, and the convulsive agony over the present ruin of all that we most loved, is softened away into pensive meditation on all that it was in the days of its loveliness, who would root out such a sorrow from the heart? Though it may sometimes throw a passing cloud over the bright hour of gaiety, or spread a deeper sadness over the hour of gloom, yet who would exchange it, even for the song of pleasure, or the burst of revelry? No, there is a voice from the tomb sweeter than song. There is a remembrance of the dead to which we turn, even from the charms of the living. O, the grave! the grave! It buries every error; covers every defect; extinguishes every resentment! From its peaceful bosom spring none but fond regrets and tender recollections. Who can look down upon the grave, even of an enemy, and not feel a compunctious throb that he should ever have warred with the poor handful of earth that lies mouldering before him!

But the grave of those we loved-what a place for meditation! There it is that we call up in long review the whole history of virtue and gentleness, and the thousand endearments lavished upon us almost unheeded in the daily intercourse of intimacy; there it is that we dwell upon the tenderness, the solemn, awful tenderness of the parting scene. The bed of death, with all its stifled griefs, its noiseless attendance, its mute, watchful assiduities. The last testimonies of expiring love! The feeble, fluttering, thrilling-O, how thrilling-pressure of the hand! The last

fond look of the glazing eye, turning upon us even from the threshold of existence! The faint, faltering accents, struggling in death to give one more assurance of affection!

Ay, go to the grave of buried love, and meditate. There settle the account with thy conscience for every past benefit unrequited; every past endearment unregarded, of that departed being, who can never, never, never return to be soothed by thy contrition!

If thou art a child, and hast ever added a sorrow to the soul, or a furrow to the silvered brow of an affectionate parent; if thou art a husband, and hast ever caused the fond bosom that ventured its whole happiness in thy arms, to doubt one moment of thy kindness or thy truth; if thou art a friend, and hast ever wronged, in thought, or word, or deed, the spirit that generously confided in thee; if thou art a lover, and hast given one unmerited pang to that true heart which now lies cold and still beneath thy feet; then be sure that every unkind look, every ungracious word, even ungentle action, will come thronging back upon thy memory, and knocking dolefully at thy soul; then be sure that thou wilt lie down sorrowing and repentant on the grave, and utter the unheard groan, and pour the unavailing tear; more deep, more bitter, because unheard and unavailing.

Then weave thy chaplet of flowers, and strew the beauties of nature about the grave; console thy broken spirit, if thou canst, with these tender, yet futile, tributes of regret, but take warning by this, thy contrite affliction over the dead, and henceforth be more faithful and affectionate in the discharge of thy duties to the living.

STANDARD OF CHARACTER

BY D. BETHUNE.

THE prejudice of dark ages, when a false aristocracy contemned labor in any form as dishonorable necessity, is passing away, and should have no place in a philosophical or republican mind. To determine a man's position in society by the honest calling he follows in life, is as contrary to the justice of good sense, as it is to the genius of our political institutions. The petty distinctions of social rank which have obtained in this country, excite the deserved ridicule of calm observers of other lands. Nothing can be more absurd than pride of family, in people who scarcely know the birthplace of their grandfathers! or an assertion of superior nobility, by one who sells cloth in packages, over another who sells ribands by the yard! or by the importer of

bristles in hogsheads, or of hides in cargoes, over him who makes brushes or shoes! or by the professional man over either, when he is in reality the paid servant of them all. We are members of one body, necessarily dependent upon and contributive to each other's well being. To look down upon a neighbor because his way of serving the community differs from our own, is to despise ourselves. We should own no superiority but that of age, worth and wisdom. The highest officer of our government is entitled to honor, only as he faithfully administers to the people's good and for one, without any reference to parties or individuals, I can see no humiliation in the retirement of a statesman, conscious of truth, from his lost magistracy to his farm; while I rejoice that there is but a single step from the log-cabin to the capital.

It proves the working like leaven of that blessed doctrine our fathers wrote upon the bond of our confederacy, the native equality of the people. Yet, certainly, cultivated intelligence is, as it should be, necessary to real respectability. The merchant is little more than a common carrier, and the mere mechanic than an animated machine, convenient and useful in supplying the needs and business of the community. To win our trust and deference, they must prove themselves mentally and morally worthy of it. It is when, leaving behind them with the dust of their warehouses and workshops the thirst for gain, they exhibit a liberal sympathy and a wise zeal for social advancement; when the wealth they may have acquired is devoted not to ostentatious display, but to the patronage of art, the furtherance of learning, science and religion; and when the poor receive their unreluctant aid, the stranger their cheering hospitality, and every man their kindly courtesy, that we own them as brothers in their manhood, and venerate them as fathers after their heads are crowned with righteousness or hoariness. To acquire the elements of such a character, some years may well be spent in cultivating a taste for graceful thoughts, habits of philosophical observation, and sound notions of Christian, political and economical ethics.

POETRY.

BY DR. CHANNING.

POETRY, far from injuring society, is one of the great instruments of refinement and exaltation. It lifts the mind above ordinary life, gives it a respite from depressed cares, and awakens the consciousness of its efficacy with what is pure and noble. In its

legitimate and highest efforts, it has the same tendency and aim with Christianity; that is, to spiritualize our nature. Poetry has a natural alliance with our best affections. Its great tendency and purpose is to carry the mind beyond and above the beaten, dusty, weary walks of ordinary life, to lift it into a purer element, and to breathe into it more profound and generous emotion. It reveals to us the loveliness of nature, brings back the freshness of early feelings, revives the relish of simple pleasures, keeps unquenched the enthusiasm which warmed the spring-time of our being, refines youthful love, strengthens our interest in human nature by vivid delineations of its tenderest and loftiest feeling, expands our sympathies over all classes of society, knits us by new ties with universal being, and, through the brightness of its prophetic visions, helps faith to lay hold on the future life.

ON SEEING A MANIAC SUDDENLY SMILE.

BY MRS. EDWARD THOMAS.

WHERE are those poor thoughts wand'ring now?

Almost a sunny gleam

Broke o'er that melancholy brow,

To light its cheerless dream!

So swift the smile shot o'er thy face,

As if relentless thought

Resolv'd, unpitying, to efface

The transient joy it brought!

O! was it borne on Future's wings,

So radiant-so bright?

Where Hope its gladsome sonnet sings-
Of never proved delight!

Or was it of that joyous Past,

When boyhood's laughing hours

In sanguine projects speed so fast,
No disappointment lours?

It cannot of the Present be,
Wrapp'd in the fearful gloom
Of dull and drear insanity,
Which antedates the tomb!
Ah! sure it was of that fair sky,
Where reason lives again-
In holy calm reality,

Releas'd from folly's chain !

An angel, from that bright abode,
Sent thee that fleeting thought-

Painting the mercy of a God,

By patient suff'ring bought!

Ah! who can tell what radiant gleams
Of future glory shine,

To light the maniac's brooding dreams-
Shed by a power divine ?

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