Next day the fatal precedent will plead; Year after year it steals, till all are fled, Of man's miraculous mistakes, this bears L The thing they can't but purpose, they postpone. 'Tis not in folly not to scorn a fool, And scarce in human wisdom to do more. All promise is poor dilatory man, And that through every stage; when young, indeed, As duteous sons, our fathers were more wise. At thirty man suspects himself a fool; And why? because he thinks himself immortal. HE omnipresent Spirit perceives all but an infinite number of actions taking place together throughout the different regions of His empire. And by the end of the hour which has just begun, a greater number of operations will have been performed, which at this moment have not been performed, than the collective sum of all that has been done in this world since its creation. The hour just now begun may be exactly the period for finishing some great plan, or concluding some great dispensation, which thousands of years or ages have been advancing to its accomplishment. This may be the very hour in which a new world shall originate, or an ancient one sink in ruins. At this hour, such changes and phenomena may be displayed in some parts of the universe, as were never presented to the astonishment of the most ancient created minds. At this very hour the inhabitants of some remote orb may be roused by signs analogous to those which we anticipate to precede the final judgment, and in order to prepare them for such an event. This hour may somewhere begin or conclude mightier contests than Milton was able to imagine, and contests producing a more stupendous result; contests, in comparison of which those which shake Europe are more diminutive than those of the meanest insects. At this very hour thousands of amazing enterprises may be undertaken, and by the end of it a progress made, which to us would have seemed to require ages. At this hour wise intelligences may terminate long and patient pursuits of knowledge in such discoveries as shall give a new science to their race. At this hour a whole race of improved and virtuous beings may be elevated to a higher station in the great system of beings. At this hour some new mode of Divine operation, some new law of Nature, which was not required before, may be introduced into the first trial of its action. At this hour the most strange suspensions of regular laws may take place at the will of Him that appointed them, for the sake of commanding a solemn attention, and confirming some Divine communication by miracles. At this hour the inhabitants of the creation are most certainly performing more actions than any faculty of mind, less than infinite, can observe or remember. All this, and incomparably more than all this, a philosopher and a Christian would delight to imagine. And all that he can imagine in the widest stretch of thought, is as nothing in comparison with what most certainly takes place in so vast a universe every hour, and will take place this very hour in which these faint conjectures are indulged. BE (Gray.) ENEATH those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade, Each in his narrow cell for ever laid, The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. The breezy call of incense-breathing morn, The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed, For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, Or climb his knees, the envied kiss to share. |