Whose iron arm hath made the mighty world LESSON LIII. HONOR DUE TO ALL MEN. "Honor all men-Honor the king." CHALMERS. 1. TO HONOR all men, is alike the lesson of Philosophy and Religion. He who studies humanity, not according to its accidental distinctions in socity, but in its great and general characteristics,--he who looks to its moral nature, as a piece of curious and interesting mechanism, forgets the distinctions of rank, in the homage which he renders to man, simply as the possessor of a constitution that bas so often exercised and regaled his faculties as an object of liberal curiosity. 2. The humblest peasant bears within himself, that very tablet, on the lines and characters of which the highest philosopher may, for years, perhaps, have been most intensely gazing. All the secrets of our wondrous economy, are deposited there; and, in the heart even of the most unlettered man, the memory, the understanding, the imagination, the conscience, and every other function and property of the yet inaccessible soul, are all in busy operation. To the owner of such an unexplorable microcosm, we attach somewhat of the same reverence which we entertain for some profound and hidden mystery. 3. To think that each individual around us has within the precincts of his own bosom, a chamber of thoughts and pur poses, and fond imaginations as warm and teeming as our own, --that every one of the immense multitude is the center of his own distinct amphitheater, which, however unknown to us, is the universe to him,-that each meditative countenance bespeaks a play of hopes, wishes, and interests within, in every way as active as we experience in ourselves, and to think that should my own heart cease its palpitations, and were the light of my own wakeful spirit to be extinguished forever, that still there would be a world as full of life and intelligence as before, there is a humility that ought to be impressed by such a contemplation; or, it ought, at least, to exalt our reckoning of all men. 4. It is true, that, in what may be called the outward magnitude of these interests, there is a wide distance between a sovereign and his subject,-between the cares of an empire, and the cares of a small household economy. They are a different set of objects, wherewith the monarch is conversant, and that keep in play the system of his thoughts and emotions. But as the peasant is like him in respect of anatomy, so, with all the diversity of circumstances, he is substantially like him in the frame and mechanism of his spirit. 5. The outward causes, by which each is excited, are vastly diferent; but the inward excitement of both is the same; and, could we explore the little world that is in each of the two bosoms, we should recognize in each the same busy rotation of hopes and fears, wishes and anxieties. If it is, indeed, a just calculation, that there is a superiority, a surpassing worth in the moral, which far outweighs the material, then, let the cottage be as widely dissimilar from the palace as it may, there is a similarity between their inhabitants, not in that which is minute, but in that which is momentous,—and our weightiest arguments for honoring the king, bear with efficacy upon the lesson, to "honor all men." 6. Let us rate the importance of one thinking and living spirit, when compared with all the mute and unconscious materialism which is in our universe. Without such a spirit the whole visible existence were but an idle waste-a nothingness. For what is beauty, were there no eye to look upon it; and what is music, were there no ear to listen; and what is matter in all its rich and wondrous varieties, without a spectator-mind to be regaled by the contemplation of them? One might conceive the very panorama that now surrounds us,—the same earth, and sea, and skies, that we now look upon,—the same graces on the face of terrestrial nature,-the same rolling wonders in the firmament, yet without one spark of thought or animation throughout the unpeopled amplitude. This, in effect, were nonentity. 7. To put out all the consciousness that is in nature, were tantamount to the annihilation of nature; and the lighting up again of but one mind in the midst of this desolation, would of itself restore significancy to the scene, and be more than equivalent to the first creation of it. In other words, one living mind is of more worth than a dead universe; or there is that in every single peasant, to which I owe sublimer homage, than, if untenanted of mind, I should yield to all the wealth of this lower world, to all those worlds that roll in spaciousness and in splendor through the vastnesses of astronomy. 8. Our Savior himself hath instituted the comparison between a world and a soul; and, whether both were alike perishable or alike enduring, His estimate of the soul's superiority would hold. He founds His computation on our brief tenure of all that is earthly, and on the magnitude of those abiding interests which wait the immortal spirit in other scenes of existence. All men are immortal. There is a grandeur of destination here, that far outweighs all the pride and pretension of this world's grandeur. 9. Those lordly honors which some men fetch from the antiquity of their race, are but poor, indeed, when compared with that more signal honor which all men have in the eternity of their duration. In respect to immortality, the great and the small ones of the earth stand on an equal eminence; and in respect to the death which comes before it, both have to sink to the same humiliating level. The prince shares with the peasant, in the horror and loathsomeness of death,-the peasant shares with the prince in the high distinction of immortality. 10. It is because in the poorest man's bosom, there resides an undying principle; it is because of that endless futurity which is before him, and in the progress of which all the splendors and obscurations of our present state will be speedily forgotten; it is because of these that humanity, however it be clothed and conditioned in this evanescent world, should be the object of an awful reverence. And if, by reason of the perishable glories which sit on a monarch's brow for but one generation, it is imperative to honor the king; then, by reason of those glories, to which the meanest may attain, and which are to last forever, it is still more imperative to " HONOR ALL MEN." 11. "WHY did the fiat of a God give birth Το yon fair Sun, and his attendant Earth? LESSON LIV. THE LAST MAN. 1. ALL worldly shapes shall melt in gloom,- Before this mortal shall assume I saw a vision in my sleep, That gave my spirit strength to sweep I saw the last of human mold, 2. The sun's eye had a sickly glare,— Some had expired in fight,—the brands Earth's cities had no sound or tread, And ships were drifting with the dead- 3. Yet, prophet-like, that lone one stood, That shook the sear leaves from the wood, CAMPBELL Saying "We are twins in death, proud Sun; Thy face is cold, thy race is run, 'Tis mercy bids thee go; For thou, ten thousand thousand years, Hast seen the tide of human tears, That shall no longer flow. 4. "This spirit shall return to Him That gave its heavenly spark; |