this to be the general character of not that what was before the wilthe scene upon one side of his con- derness would become the land of templation, and that on the other, invitation, and that now the world. beyond the verge of the goodly would be the wilderness? What planet on which he was situated, he unpeopled space could not do can could descry nothing but a dark and be done by space teeming with fathomless unknown. Think you beautiful scenes and beautiful societhat he would bid a voluntary ty. And let the existing tenden. adieu to all the brightness and all cies of the heart be what they may the beauty that were before him to the scene that is near and visibly upon earth, and commit himself to around us, still if another stood the frightful solitude away from revealed to the prospect of man, it? Would he leave its peopled either through the channel of faith dwelling-places and become a soli- or through the channel of his tary wanderer through the fields senses, then, without violence done of nonentity? If space offered to the constitution of his moral nahim but a wilderness, would he for ture, may he die unto the present it abandon the home-bred scenes of world, and live to the lovelier life and cheerfulness that lay so world that stands in the distance near, and exercised such a power away from it.-DR. CHALMERS. of urgency to detain him? Would he not cleave to the regions of sense, and of life, and of society? And shrinking from the desolation that was beyond it, would he not be glad to keep his firm footing on the territory of this world, and take shelter under the silver canopy that was stretched over it?

Gently Glides the Stream of Time."

MEN are not always conscious of their own movements. Our globe is ever moving; and relatively, to other worlds, we are ever changing our position, while we seem to ourselves to be stationary. We launch But if, during the time of his upon a broad and deep river, contemplation, some happy island whose current rolls noiselessly toof the blessed had floated by, and ward ocean's dark and briny bothere had burst upon his senses the som; quietly and cheerfully we are light of its surpassing glories and borne along. We gaze upon the its sounds of sweet melody, and verdant meadows with which it is he saw clearly that there a purer bounded on one side, or stand in beauty rested upon every field and mute admiration while we view a more heartfelt glow spread itself the towering cliffs and rugged among all the families, and he precipices that frown upon could discern there peace, and other, and fancy them to be things piety, and benevolence, which put of life, flying past us upon the a moral gladness into every bosom, pinions of the eagle. But such and united the whole society with is not the fact. We are the trav one rejoicing sympathy with each other and with the beneficent Father of them all could he fur ther see that pain and mortality were unknown, and, above all, that signals of welcome were hung out, and an avenue of communication was made for him- perceive you

elers, and the objects of our vision are stationary. The divine word has indeed told us that "the things which are seen are temporal"-they are all, all passing away. But the flight of some things pertaining to this world is much more rapid and affecting than that of

The Bible a Compass.

sea.

sands

others. We can look with composure upon the fading beauties of a retiring spring; can cheerfully IN the voyage of human life are go past the summer solstice, and many dangers, rocks and shoals; welcome the " sere and yellow but an unerring chart and compass leaf" of autumn, to which, in turn, are provided to guide the mariwe can bid adieu, as dark Novem- ner's bark safely through it, if he ber rushes by, the sure precursor will steer by it. But suppose of hoary winter, which we all know there is a ship in a dark night at full well, must in a little time give There are rocks and quickplace to the reviviscence of spring. But to man there is no such vicissi tude. The winter of his life, so far as mortal vision can reach, is followed by no soft southern breezes; no gentle showers make nature smile around him; no feathered warblers carol their inimitable melody to soothe his soul. He passes surely and rapidly, though not always thoughtfully, to the grave.

-a

near. There are currents that are setting toward the shore, and the wind is rising, and every thing indicates a tempest. There are a chart and a compass near the helmsman. But he is unsettled in his views and his aims. He will chart, but he begins to be distresslook neither at his compass nor his ed, and he turns his helm this way and that way, and he guides his What is there here of which we ship by caprice, and she moves in may not say, "It is temporal". a zig-zag course, and his hope is beginning it had, and it hastens to chance, and a few more moments its termination ? The decaying in this way will dash the ill-fated marble will not long commemorate vessel on a rock. Meantime many the virtues of the pious dead. Its a mariner has gone calmly through inscription will soon become ex- those seas, and stood out with a tinct atmospheric action will bold front and swelling canvas speedily disintegrate it; and long to the ocean, and seen the tempest ere the fiat of the Almighty goes rise without alarm, and been unforth, declaring that time shall be moved when cloud has been piled no more, it may disappear, or be on cloud, and the ocean been lashed agglomerated into other into foam, and the lightnings have shape. And yet it is much more played, and the thunder bas rolled permanent than man. Let the along the deep. Human life is a majestic mountain raise its rocky Voyage; and men act in reference peak above the clouds, towering in to that, not as the skillful marigrandeur above all surrounding ner does on the deep, but as no objects; those rocks, broken and mariner ever did, or ever will. pulverized by the winter frosts They have the chart and the comand summer heats, will float pass in their own dwellings, but with the torrent from their lofty they will not look at them; and hight, to be imbedded in some they are unsettled in their views, dark ocean cavern. But while and when the storm arises, and this process is going on, how many danger deepens, they are alarmed, generations of men will dash over and when they die their hopes betime's awful cataract, and are come a wreck. buried in oblivion !

some

Rev. ALBERT BARNES.

BY REV. WILLIAM G. T. SHEDD, D.D.,

ASSOCIATE PASTOR OF THE BRICK PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH NEW-YORK CITY.

"O LORD, thou hast searched me, and known me. Thou knowest my down-sitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off. Thou compassest my path and my lying-down, and art acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether. Thou hast beset me bebind and before, and laid thy hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, it is high; I can not attain unto it."-PSALM 139: 1-6.

ONE of the most remarkable characteristics of a rational being is the power of self-inspection. The brute creation possesses many attributes that are common to human nature, but it has no faculty that bears even the remotest resemblance to that of self-examination. Instinctive action, undoubtedly, approaches the nearest of any to human action. That wonderful power by which the bee builds up a structure that is not exceeded in accuracy, and regularity, and economy of space, by the best geometry of Athens or of Rome; by which the beaver, after having chosen the very best

possible location for it on the stream, constructs a dam that outlasts the work of the human engineer; by which the faithful dog contrives to perform many acts of affection, in spite of obstacles, and in the face of unexpected discouragements; the instinct, we say of the brute creation, as exhibited in a remarkably wide range of action and contrivance, and in a very varied, and oftentimes perplexing, conjuncture of circumstances, seems to bring man and beast very near to each other, and to furnish some ground for the theory of the materialist that there is no essential difference between the two species of existences. But when we pass beyond the mere power of acting, to the additional power of surveying, or inspecting an act, and of forming an estimate of its relations to moral law, we find a faculty in man that makes him differ in kind from the brute. No brute animal, however high up the scale, however ingenious and sagacious he may be, can ever look back and think of what he has done, "his thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing him."

The mere power of performance is, after all, not the highest power. It is the superadded power of calmly looking over the performance, and seeing what has been done, that marks the higher agency, and denotes a loftier order of existence than that of the animal or of material nature. If the mere ability to work with energy and produce results constituted the highest species of power, the force of gravity would be the loftiest energy in the universe. Its range of execution is wider than that of any other created principle. But it is one of the lower and least important of agencies because it is blind. It is destitute of the power of self-inspection. It does not know, and can not know, what it does, or why. "Man," say Pascal,* "is but a reed, and the weakest in all nature; yet he is a reed that thinks. The whole material universe does not need to arm itself in order to crush him. A vapor, a drop of water is enough to destroy him. But if the whole universe of matter should combine to crush him, man would be more noble than that which destroyed him. For he would be conscious that he was dying, while, of the advantage which the material universe had obtained over him, that universe would know nothing." The action of a little child is altogether nothing and vanity compared with the energy of the earthquake or the lightning, so far as the exhibition of force and the mere power to act is concerned; but on the other hand it is more solemn than centuries of merely natural processes, and more momentous than all the material phenomena that have ever filled the celestial spaces, when we remember that it is the act of a thinking agent, and a self-conscious creature. The power to survey the act when united with the power to act, sets mind infinitely above matter, and places the action of instinct, wonderful

* Pensées. Grandeur de l'Homme. p. 120. Ed. Wetstein.

as it is, infinitely below the action of self-consciousness. The proud words of one of the characters in the old Drama are strictly

true:

"I am a nobler substance than the stars.
Or are they better since they are bigger?
I have a will and faculties of choice,

To do or not to do; and reason why

I do or not do this: the stars have none.

They know not why they shine more than this taper,
Nor how they work, nor what."

"

But this characteristic of a rational being, though thus distinctive and common to every man that lives, is exceedingly marvelous. Like the air we breathe, like the light we see, it involves a mystery that no man has ever solved. Self-consciousness has been the problem and the thorn of the philosophic mind in all ages; and the mystery is not yet unraveled." Is not that a wonderful process by which a man knows, not some other thing, but himself? Is not that a strange act by which he, for a time, duplicates his own unity, and sets himself to look at himself? All other acts of consciousness are comparatively plain and explicable. When we look at an object other than ourselves, when we behold a tree or the sky, the act of knowledge is much more simple, and easy to be explained. For then there is something outside of us, and in front of us, and another thing than we are, at which we look, and which we behold. But in this act of selfinspection there is no second thing external, and extant to us, which we contemplate. That which is seen is one and the same identical object with that which sees. The act of knowledge which in all other instances requires the existence of two things a thing to be known, and a thing to know-in this instance is performed with only one. It is the individual soul that sees, and it is that very same individual soul that is seen. It is the individual man that knows, and it is that very identical man that is known. The eyeball looks at the eyeball.

And when this power of self-inspection is connected with the power of memory, the mystery of human existence becomes yet. more complicated, and its explanation still more baffling.

Is it not exceedingly wonderful that we are able to reexhibit our own thoughts and feelings; that we can call back what has gone clear by in our experience, and steadily look at it once more? Is it not a mystery that we can summon before our mind's eye feelings, purposes, desires, and thoughts, which occurred in the soul long years ago; and which perhaps until this moment we have not thought of for years? Is it not a marvel that they come up with all the vividness with which they first took origin in our experience, and that the lapse of time has deprived them of none of their first outlines or colors? Is it not strange, that

*Chapman's Byron's Conspiracy.