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than arms, to organize her public schools upon a war footing, and infuse into the uncorrupted hearts of their pupils this new sentiment of nationality, by the daily repetition, with the morning prayers, of the magnificent anthems of American liberty. She was the first to institute the system of compensated labor, that makes the restoration of the institution of slavery on this continent impossible that compels us to prepare for the elevation of the oppressed race among us, and the ultimate recognition of all their rights. She is the first in this revolution of ideas to give to the social element of the people a national interest and a national spirit in the great drama of life through which we are passing. And here, to-day, with this splendid pageant — here, to-day, at the inauguration which consummates an election by the people of more than ordinary purity and of unrestricted freedom here, to-day she is to recognize, as a national sentiment for the new age and the new history, the doctrine that Union AND Liberty, now and forever, must be, and will be, one and inseparable.

as of a people

In proportion to the confidence with which the people of the American continent shall view the results of this day's history, so will arise, in all parts of our land, a cry of joy liberated from the bondage of slavery and death. And from the hearthstone and the altar will arise the prayer of the good and wise, that this first gleam of light will prove a joyful harbinger of a perpetual day of peace, prosperity, and power.

N. P. Banks.

CCCXIX.

THE BIBLE-ITS INFLUENCE.

THIS Book has taken such a hold on the world as no other. The literature of Greece, which goes up like incense from that land of temples and heroic deeds, has not half the influence of this Book from a nation alike despised in ancient and modern times. It is read of a Sunday in all the thirty thousand pulpits of our land. In all the temples of Christendom is its voice lifted up, week by week. The sun never sets on its gleaming page. It goes equally to the cottage of the plain man and the palace of the king. It is woven into the literature of the scholar, and colors the talk of the street. The bark of the merchant cannot

sail the sea without it; no ship of war goes to the conflict but the Bible is there! It enters men's closets; mingles in all the grief and cheerfulness of life. The affianced maiden prays God in Scripture for strength in her new duties; men are married by Scripture. The Bible attends them in their sickness; when the fever of the world is on them, the aching head finds a softer pillow if such leaves lie underneath. The mariner, escaping from shipwreck, clutches this first of his treasures, and keeps it sacred to God. It goes with the peddler, in his crowded pack; cheers him at eventide, when he sits down dusty and fatigued; brightens the freshness of his morning face. It blesses us when we are born; gives names to half Christendom; rejoices with us; has sympathy for our mourning; tempers our grief to finer issues. It is the better part of our sermons. It lifts man above himself; our best of uttered prayers are its storied speech, wherewith our fathers and the patriarchs prayed.

The timid man, about awaking from this dream of life, looks through the glass of Scripture and his eye grows bright; he does not fear to stand alone, to tread the way unknown and distant, to take the death-angel by the hand, and bid farewell to wife, and babes, and home. Men rest on this their dearest hopes. It tells them of God, and of his blessed Son; of earthly duties and of heavenly rest. Foolish men find it the source of Plato's wisdom, and the science of Newton, and the art of Raphael; wicked men use it to rivet the fetters of the slave. Men who believe nothing else that is Spiritual, believe the Bible all through; without this they would not confess, say they, even that there was a God.

T. Parker.

CCCXX.

THE BIBLE-ITS DEEP AND LASTING POWER.

FOR this deep and lasting power of the Bible there must be

an adequate cause. That nothing comes of nothing is true all the world over. It is no light thing to hold, with an electrie chain, a thousand hearts, though but an hour, beating and bounding with such fiery speed. What is it then to hold the Christian world, and that for centuries? Are men fed with chaff and

husks? The authors we reckon great, whose word is in the newspaper, and the market-place, whose articulate breath now sways the nation's mind, - will soon pass away, giving place to other great men of a season, who in their turn shall follow them to eminence and then to oblivion. Some thousand "famous writers" come up in this century, to be forgotten in the next. But the silver cord of the Bible is not loosed, nor its golden bowl broken, as Time chronicles its tens of centuries passed by. Has the human race gone mad? Time sits as a refiner of metal; the dross is piled in forgotten heaps, but the pure gold is reserved for use, passes into the ages, and is current a thousand years hence as well as to-day. It is only real merit that can long pass for such. Tinsel will rust in the storms of life. False weights are soon detected there. It is only a heart that can speak, deep and true, to a heart; a mind to a mind; a soul to a soul; wisdom to the wise, and religion to the pious. There must then be in the Bible, mind, conscience, heart and soul, wisdom and religion. Were it otherwise, how could millions find it in their lawgiver, friend, and prophet? Some of the greatest of human institutions seem built on the Bible; such things will not stand on heaps of chaff but on mountains of rocks.

T. Parker.

CCCXXI.

SUPPORT OF THE GOVERNMENT BY FORCE.

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WHAT we have to do is clear. The dictate of wisdom, the impulse of patriotism, the instinct of safety and preservation, the lessons of the past, the hopes of the future, all bid us uphold the constitutional Government of the United States, and by the power of force a power which, of necessity, underlies all government carry it triumphantly through this conflict, till its legitimate results are attained. Upon this power of force, the conspirators against this Government have relied from the beginning. They have expected to appeal to it, as is evident from the extent to which the Northern forts, arsenals, and people have been robbed of arms and munitions of war, which, during the last administration, were sent into the Southern States in numbers altogether disproportionate to their population, and

unauthorized by law. If they believed in the right of peaceable secession from the Government of the United States, as a right clearly admitted and secured by the Constitution, it is strange that they should have made such far-sighted preparations to maintain this right by forcible resistance to its authority. To this power, these conspirators and those whom they had beguiled from their allegiance, made a direct appeal when they fired their first shot upon Fort Sumter. This appeal, the United States Government is compelled to meet, and by the strong arm of its military power, at the point of the bayonet, and beneath the smoke and blaze of its guns, enforce the obedience which reason, if it had not been dethroned, would never have refused, and recover the allegiance which patriotism, if it had not been deceived and bewildered, would never have relinquished. In this case, it is not the Government that inaugurates civil war, but the men who, by treason and rebellion, are seeking to overturn it; and for this gigantic crime, the crime of disturbing the peace of thirty millions of people, of attempting to dismember a Union fraught with manifest advantages to all embraced in it, and to overturn, by force, a Government benignant in its sway, and mighty in its protection, its benefits, and its blessings, — for this crime they have no justification.

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Under civil institutions, republican and representative in their character, where there are legitimate, constitutional channels provided for the expression of the popular will, through which the Government can be modified, its organic or its statute laws reached, altered, amended, so as to meet the wishes of the majority, or protect the rights of a minority, there can be no justification of rebellion that will stand before the world, or secure a verdict of approval from the pen of impartial history. If we would secure for ourselves that approval, let us stand by this constitutional Government of the United States, and at whatever cost, carry it through to the legitimate results of this conflict.

S. K. Lothrop.

BOOK SECOND.

RECENT SELECTIONS.

POETRY.

LA

CCCXXII.

OUR COUNTRY'S CALL.

AY down the axe, fling by the spade:
Leave in its track the toiling plough;
The rifle and the bayonet-blade

For arms like yours were fitter now;
And let the hands that ply the pen
Quit the light task, and learn to wield
The horseman's crooked brand, and rein
The charger on the battle-field.

Our country calls; away! away!

To where the blood-stream blots the

Strike to defend the gentlest sway

That Time in all his course has seen.

See, from a thousand coverts

see

green,

Spring the armed foes that haunt her track;

They rush to smite her down, and we
Must beat the banded traitors back.

Ho! sturdy as the oaks ye cleave,

And moved as soon to fear and flight,

Men of the glade and forest! leave
Your woodcraft for the field of fight.
The arms that wield the axe must pour
An iron tempest on the foe;

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