The stone itself will sink, or crumble; and the wanderer of another age will pass, without a single call upon his sympathy, over our unheeded graves.

8. Is there nothing to counteract the sinking of the heart, which must be the effect of observations like these? Is there no substance among all these shadows? Can no support be offered,- -can no source of confidence be named? Yes! there is a Being, to whom we can look with a perfect conviction of finding that security which nothing about us can give,nothing can take away. To this Being we can lift up our souls, and on Him we may rest them, exclaiming in the language of the monarch of Israel,

"Before the mountains were brought forth,

Or ever Thou hadst formed the earth and the world,
Even from everlasting to everlasting, THOU ART GOD."
9. "Of old hast Thou laid the foundations of the earth,
And the heavens are the works of Thy hands.
They shall perish, but Thou shalt endure;

Yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment,

As a vesture shalt Thou change them, and they shall be changed;
But Thou art the same, and Thy years shall have no end."

10. Here, then, is a support which will never fail. IIere is a foundation which can never be moved,—the everlasting Creator of countless worlds,

"The high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity." When we have looked on the pleasures of life, and they have vanished away; when we have looked on the works of nature, and perceived that they were changing; on the monuments of art, and seen that they would not stand; on our friends, and they have fled while we were gazing; on ourselves, and felt that we were as flecting as they; we can look to the throne of God. Change and decay have never reached that. The waves of an eternity have been rushing past it, but it has remained unshaken. The waves of another eternity are rushing toward it, but it is fixed, and can never be disturbed.

11. We shall shortly finish our allotted time on earth, and a world of other days and other men will be entirely ignorant

that once we lived. But the same unalterable Being will still preside over the universe, through all its changes, and, from His remembrance we shall never be blotted. He is our Father and our God forever. He takes us from earth that He may lead us to Heaven,-that He may refine our nature from all its principles of corruption,-share with us His own immortality, admit us to His everlasting habitation, and crown us with His eternity.

LESSON CV.

HYMN TO THE CREATOR.

1. THOU didst, O Mighty God, exist
Ere time began its race;

Before the ample elements
Filled up the voids of space:

2. Before the ponderous earthly globe
In fluid air was stayed;

Before the ocean's mighty springs
Their liquid stores displayed.

3. Ere men adored, or angels knew,
Or praised Thy wondrous name;
Thy bliss, O sacred Spring of Life,
And glory were the same.

4. And, when the pillars of the world,
With sudden ruin, break;

And all this vast and goodly frame
Sinks in the mighty wreck;—

5. When from her orb the moon shall start,
Th' astonished sun roll back;

While all the trembling, starry lamps

Their ancient course forsake;—

6. Forever permanent and fixed,
From agitation free;

Unchanged, in everlasting years,
Shall thy existence be.

ROWE.

LESSON CVI.

NOTE.-The following excellent advice from the late Chief Justice of the United States, eminent as a Scholar and Jurist, though addressed to a young lawyer, suggests no less important hints to all writers and speakers.

ADVICE TO A YOUNG LAWYER.

1. WHENE'ER you speak, remember, every cause
Stands not on eloquence, but stands on laws;
Pregnant in matter, in expression brief,
Let every sentence stand with bold relief;
On trifling points, nor time, nor talents waste,-
A sad offense to learning and to taste;

Nor deal with pompous phrase; nor e'er suppose,
Poetic flights belong to reasoning prose.

2. Loose declamation may deceive the crowd,
And seem more striking, as it grows more loud;
But sober sense rejects it with disdain,
As naught but empty noise, and weak, as vain.
The froth of words, the school-boy's vain parade
Of books and cases,-all his stock in trade,—
The pert conceits, the cunning tricks, and play
Of low attorneys, strung in long array,
The unseemly jest, the petulant reply,
That chatters on, and cares not how, or why,
Studious avoid, unworthy themes to scan,-
They sink the Speaker, and disgrace the Man.
Like the false lights, by flying shadows cast,
Scarce seen, when present, and forgot, when past.

3 Begin with dignity; expound with grace
Each ground of reasoning in its time and place;
Let order reign throughout; each topic touch,
Nor urge its power too little, or too much.
Give each strong thought its most attractive view,
In diction clear, and yet severely true.

STORY.

And, as the arguments in splendor grow,
Let each reflect its light on all below.
When to the close arrived, make no delays
By petty flourishes, or verbal plays,

But sum the whole in one deep, solemn strain,
Like a strong current hastening to the main.

LESSON CVII.

EXPLANATORY NOTES.-1. GEOLOGY is the science which treats of the structure of the earth, and of the substances which compose it.

2. LAB' O RA TO RY is a house or place, in which operations or experiments in chemistry or other sciences are performed.

3. VE SU VI Us, the volcanic mountain near Naples, Italy, is almost constantly in a state of eruption. The first great eruption took place in the year 79, which destroyed the cities of POMPEII and HERCULANEUM. THE DISCOVERIES OF GEOLOGY CONSISTENT WITH THE SPIRIT OF RELIGION.

EDWARD EVERETT.

1. Ir has been as beautifully as truly said, that the "undevout astronomer is mad." The same remark might, with equal force and justice, be applied to the undevout geologist. Of all the absurdities ever started, none more extravagant can be named, than that the grand and far-reaching researches and discoveries of geology,' are hostile to the spirit of religion. They seem to us, on the very contrary, to lead the inquirer, step by step, into the more immediate presence of that tremendous POWER, which could alone produce, and can alone account for the primitive convulsions of the globe, of which the proofs. are graven in eternal characters, on the sides of its bare and cloud-piercing mountains, or are wrought into the very substance of the strata that compose its surface, and which are, also, day by day, and hour by hour, at work, to feed the fires of the volcano, to pour forth its molten tides, or to compound the salubrious elements of the mineral fountains which spring in a thousand valleys.

2. In gazing at the starry heavens, all glorious as they are, we sink under the awe of their magnitude, the mystery of

their secret and reciprocal influences, the bewildering concep The tions of their distances. Sense and science are at war. sparkling gem that glitters on the brow of night, is converted by science into a mighty orb,-the source of light and heat, the center of attraction, the sun of a system like our own. The beautiful planet* which lingers in the western sky, when the sun has set, or heralds the approach of morning, whose mild and lovely beams seem to shed a spirit of tranquillity, not unmixed with sadness, nor far removed from devotion, into the very heart of him who wanders forth in solitude to behold it, -is, in the contemplation of science, a cloud-wrapped sphere, —a world of rugged mountains and stormy deeps.

3. We study, we reason, we calculate. We climb the giddy scaffold of induction up to the very stars. We borrow the wings of the boldest analysis, and flee to the uppermost parts of the creation, and then, shutting our eyes on the radiant points that twinkle in the vault of night, the well-instructed mind sees opening before it, in mental vision, the stupendous mechanism of the heavens. Its planets swell into worlds. Its crowded stars recede, expand, become central suns, and we hear the rush of the mighty orbs that circle around them. The bands of Orion are loosed, and the sparkling rays which cross each other on his belt, are resolved into floods of light, streaming from system to system, across the illimitable pathway of the outer heavens.

4. But, in the province of geology, there are some subjects, in which the senses seem, as it were, led up into the laboratory' of divine power. Let a man fix his eyes upon one of the marble columns in the Capitol at Washington. He sees there a condition of the earth's surface, when the pebbles of every size, and form, and material, which compose this singular species of stone, were held suspended in the medium, in which they are now imbedded, then a liquid sea of marble, which has hardened into the solid, lustrous, and variegated mass before his eye, in the very substance of which he beholds the record of a convulsion of the globe. Let him and stand go the sides of the crater of Vesuvius, in the ordinary state of its

upon

* Venus which is alternately an evening and morning star.