My Lord! how full of sweet content
I pass my years of banishment !
All scenes alike engaging prove
To souls impressed with sacred love!
Where'er they dwell, they dwell in Thee :
In heaven, in earth, or on the sea.
To me remains nor place nor time,
My country is in every clime;
I can be calm and free from care
On any shore, since God is there.
While place we seek, or place we shun,
The soul finds happiness in none;
But with a God to guide our way,
'Tis equal joy to go or stay.

Could I be cast where Thou art not,
That were indeed a dreadful lot;
But regions none remote I call,
Secure of finding God in all.

My country, Lord, art Thou alone;
Nor other can I claim or own;

The point where all my wishes meet—
My law, my love, life's only sweet!

I hold by nothing here below;
Appoint my journey and I go,

Though pierced by scorn, oppress'd by pride,
I feel Thee good-feel nought beside.
No frowns of men can hurtful prove
To souls on fire with heavenly love;
Though men and devils both condemn,
No gloomy days arise from them.
Ah, then to His embrace repair;
My soul, thou art no stranger there;
There love divine shall be thy guard,
And peace and safety thy reward.

A PRISONER'S SONG.

A LITTLE bird I am,

Shut from the fields of air; And in my cage I sit and sing

To Him who placed me there; Well pleased a prisoner to be, Because, my God, it pleases Thee.

as a poor scholar, with £200 in his possession, and, though disowned by his relations, managed to complete his education and become a clergyman of the Church of England. He was a curate in London, a chaplain on board a ship of war, and, after his marriage to Susan Annesley, a cousin of the Earl of Anglesey, he was presented by Queen Mary with the living of Epworth, in Lincolnshire. Some of his parishioners set fire to the parsonage because he had reproved them for their sinful lives. Samuel Wesley was the author of several prose and poetical works. He was the father of the Wesleys, the founders of Methodism. He died 30th April, 1735.

THE SAVIOUR.

BEHOLD the Saviour of mankind

Nailed to the shameful tree;
How vast the love that Him inclined
To bleed and die for me.

Hark! how He groans, while nature shakes,
And earth's strong pillars bend!

The temple's veil asunder breaks,

The solid marbles rend.

'Tis finished! now the ransom's paid,
"Receive my soul!" He cries;
See how He bows His sacred head!
He bows His head and dies!

But soon He'll break death's iron chain,
And in full glory shine.

O Lamb of God! was ever pain-
Was ever love like Thine?

Matthew Prior.

(Born 1664.

Died 1721.

MATTHEW PRIOR, born either at Wimborne, Dorsetshire, or in London, July, 1664, was, after the death of his father, sent by his uncle to Westminster School. When employed by his uncle in the Rummer Tavern, Charing Cross, London, he attracted the notice of the Earl of Dorset, by whom he was enabled to finish his education at St. John's College, Cambridge, where he obtained a fellowship. By the influence of the Earl of Dorset, Prior obtained several Government appointments, but after the accession of King George I., he was imprisoned for two years for his share in the treaty of peace at Utrecht. His poem of "Alma on the Progress of the Soul," ridicules the ideas of the period about the place of the soul. "Solomon" is a poem founded on Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. A complete edition of his poems produced 4000 guineas, to which the Earl of Oxford added another 4000. Prior died at Wimpole, in Cambridgeshire, 18th September, 1721.

CHARITY.

DID sweeter sounds adorn my flowing tongue
Than ever man pronounced, or angels sung;
Had I all knowledge, human and divine,
That thought can reach, or science can define;

And had I power to give that knowledge birth
In all the speeches of the babbling earth;
Did Shadrach's zeal my glowing breast inspire,
To weary tortures, and rejoice in fire;
Or had I faith like that which Israel saw
When Moses gave them miracles and law:
Yet, gracious Charity! indulgent guest,
Were not thy power exerted in my breast,
Those speeches would send up unheeded prayer;
That scorn of life would be but wild despair;
A tymbal's sound was better than my voice;
My faith were form, my eloquence were noise.
Charity, decent, modest, easy, kind,
Softens the high, and rears the abject mind,
Knows with just reins and gentle hand to guide
Betwixt vile shame and arbitrary pride.
Not soon provoked, she easily forgives;
And much she suffers, as she much believes.
Soft
peace she brings wherever she arrives;
She builds our quiet, as she forms our lives;
Lays the rough paths of peevish nature even,
And opens in each heart a little heaven.

Each other gift, which God on man bestows,
Its proper bound and due restriction knows;
To one fixt purpose dedicates its power;
And finishing its act, exists no more.
Thus, in obedience to what Heaven decrees,
Knowledge shall fail and prophecy shall cease;
But lasting Charity's more ample sway,

Nor bound by time, nor subject to decay,

In happy triumph shall for ever live,

And endless good diffuse, and endless praise receive. As, through the artist's intervening glass,

Our eye observes the distant planets pass,

A little we discover, but allow

That more remains unseen than art can show.

So, whilst our mind its knowledge would improve

(Its feeble eye intent on things above),

High as we may, we lift our reason up,

By Faith directed and confirm'd by Hope
Yet we are able only to survey

Dawning of beams, and promises of day.

Heaven's fuller effluence mocks our dazzled sight; Too great its swiftness, and too strong its light. But soon the mediate clouds shall be dispell'd; The sun shall soon be face to face beheld