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unreservedly confide in each other, are happy in a mutual love, and content to die for each other.

Pyth. How should you have friends, you who never loved any body? Had you loved men, they would love you: you have feared them: they fear you, they detest you.

Diony. Damon! Pythias! vouchsafe to admit me between you, to be the third friend of so perfect a society: I give you your lives, and will load you with riches.

Damon. We have no occasion for thy riches; and as for thy friendship, we cannot accept of it until thou be good and just; till that time thou canst have only trembling slaves, and base flatterers. Thou must be virtuous, beneficent, sociable, susceptible of friendship, ready to hear the truth, and must know how to live in a sort of equality with real friends, in order to be beloved by free men.

LESSON XII.

The Rainbow.-CAMPBELL.

The evening was glorious, and light through the trees
Play'd the sunshine and rain-drops, the birds and the breeze;
The landscape, outstretching in loveliness, lay

On the lap of the year, in the beauty of May.

For the Queen of the Spring, as she pass'd down the vale,
Left her robe on the trees, and her breath on the gale;
And the smile of her promise gave joy to the hours,
And flush in her footsteps sprang herbage and flowers.

The skies, like a banner in sunset unroll'd,
O'er the west threw their splendour of azure and gold;
But one cloud at a distance rose dense, and increas'd,
Till its margin of black touch'd the zenith, and east.

We gazed on the scenes, while around us they glow'd,
When a vision of beauty appear'd on the cloud-
"Twas not like the Sun, as at mid-day we view,

Nor the Moon, that rolls nightly through star light and blue.
Like a spirit, it came in the van of a storm!
And the eye and the heart, hail'd its beautiful form.
For it look'd not severe, like an Angel of Wrath,
But its garment of brightness illumed its dark path.

In the hues of its grandeur, sublimely it stood,
O'er the river, the village, the field, and the wood;
And river, field, village, and woodlands grew bright,
As conscious they gave and afforded delight.

'Twas the bow of Omnipotence; bent in His hand,
Whose grasp at Creation the universe spann'd;
'Twas the presence of God, in a symbol sublime;
His vow from the flood to the exit of Time!

Not dreadful, as when in the whirlwind he pleads,
When storms are his chariot, and lightnings his steeds,
The black clouds his banner of vengeance unfurl'd,
And thunder his voice to a guilt-stricken world ;-

In the breath of his presence, when thousands expire,
And seas boil with fury, and rocks burn with fire,

And the sword, and the plague-spot, with death strew the plain,

And vultures, and wolves, are the graves of the slain :

Not such was the Rainbow, that beautiful one!
Whose arch was refraction, its key stone-the Sun;
A pavilion it seem'd which the Deity graced,
And Justice and Mercy met there, and embraced.

Awhile, and it sweetly bent over the gloom,
Like Love o'er a death couch, or Hope o'er the tomb;
Then left the dark scene; whence it slowly retired,
As Love had just vanish'd, or Hope had expired.

I gazed not alone on that source of my song;
To all who beheld it these verses belong;
Its presence to all was the path of the Lord!
Each full heart expanded,―grew warm, and adored!

Like a visit the converse of friends-or a day,
That bow, from my sight, passed for ever away:
Like that visit, that converse, that day-to my heart,
That bow from remembrance can never depart.

'Tis a picture in memory distinctly defined,
With the strong and unperishing colours of mind:
A part of my being beyond my control,

Beheld on that cloud, and transcribed on my soul.

LESSON XIII.

Eternity of God.-GREENWOOD.

We receive such repeated intimations of decay in the world through which we are passing; decline and change and loss, follow decline and change and loss in such rapid succession, that we can almost catch the sound of universal wasting, and hear the work of desolation going on busily around us. "The mountain falling cometh to nought, and the rock is removed out of his place. The waters wear the stones, the things which grow out of the dust of the earth are washed away, and the hope of man is destroyed." Conscious of our own instability, we look about for something to rest on, but we look in vain. The heavens and the earth had a beginning, and they will have an end. The face of the world is changing, daily and hourly. All animated things grow old and die. The rocks crumble, the trees fall, the leaves fade, and the grass withers. The clouds are flying, and the waters are flowing away from us.

The firmest works of man, too, are gradually giving way, the ivy clings to the mouldering tower, the brier hangs out from the shattered window, and the wallflower springs from the disjointed stones. The founders of these perishable works have shared the same fate long ago. If we look back to the days of our ancestors, to the men as well as the dwellings of former times, they become immediately associated in our imaginations, and only make the feeling of instability stronger and deeper than before. In the spacious domes, which once held our fathers, the serpent hisses, and the wild bird screams. The halls, which once were crowded with all that taste, and science, and labour could procure, which resounded with melody, and were lighted up with beauty, are buried by their own ruins, mocked by their own desolation. The voice of merriment, and of wailing, the steps of the busy and the idle have ceased in the deserted courts, and the weeds choke the entrances, and the long grass waves upon the hearth-stone. The works of art, the forming hand, the tombs, the very ashes they contained, are

all gone.

While we thus walk among the ruins of the past, a sad feeling of insecurity comes over us; and that feeling is by no means diminished when we arrive at home. If we turn to

our friends, we can hardly speak to them before they bid us farewell. We see them for a few moments, and in a few moments more their countenances are changed, and they are sent away. It matters not how near and dear they are. The ties which bind us together are never too close to be parted, or too strong to be broken. Tears were never known to move the king of terrours, neither is it enough that we are compelled to surrender one, or two, or many of those we love; for though the price is so great, we buy no favour with it, and our hold on those who remain is as slight as ever. The shadows all elude our grasp, and follow one another down the valley. We gain no confidence, then, no feeling of security, by turning to our contemporaries and kindred. We know that the forms, which are breathing around us, are as shortlived and fleeting as those were, which have been dust for centuries. The sensation of vanity, uncertainty, and ruin, is equally strong, whether we muse on what has long been prostrate, or gaze on what is falling now, or will fall so soon.

If every thing which comes under our notice has endured for so short a time, and in so short a time will be no more, we cannot say that we receive the least assurance by thinking on ourselves. When they, on whose fate we have been meditating, were engaged in the active scenes of life, as full of health and hope as we are now, what were we ? We had no knowledge, no consciousness, no being; there was not a single thing in the wide universe which knew us. And after the same interval shall have elapsed, which now divides their days from ours, what shall we be? What they are now. When a few more friends have left, a few more hopes deceived, and a few more changes mocked us, "we shall be brought to the grave, and shall remain in the tomb: the clods of the valley shall be sweet unto us, and every man shall follow us, as there are innumerable before us." All power will have forsaken the strongest, and the loftiest will be laid low, and every eye will be closed, and every voice hushed, and every heart will have ceased its beating. And when we have gone ourselves, even our memories will not stay behind us long. A few of the near and dear will bear our likeness in their bosoms, till they too have arrived at the end of their journey, and entered the dark dwelling of unconsciousness. In the thoughts of others we shall live only till the last sound of the bell, which informs them of our deParture, has ceased to vibrate in their ears. A stone, per

haps, may tell some wanderer where we lie, when we came here, and when we went away; but even that will soon refuse to bear us record: "time's effacing fingers" will be busy on its surface, and at length will wear it smooth; and then 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.

LESSON XIV.

Same subject concluded.

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? If all who live and breathe around us are the creatures of yesterday, and destined to see destruction to-morrow; if the same condition is our own, and the same sentence is written against us; if the solid forms of inanimate nature and laborious art are fading and falling; if we look in vain for durability to the very roots of the mountains, where shall we turn, and on what can we rely? Can no support be offered; can no source of confidence be named? Oh yes! there is one Being to whom we can look with a perfect conviction of finding that security, which nothing about us can give, and which nothing about us 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." "Of old hast thou laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work 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."

The eternity of God is a subject of contemplation, which, at the same time that it overwhelms us with astonishment and awe, affords us an immoveable ground of confidence in the midst of a changing world. All things which surround us, all these dying, mouldering inhabitants of time, must have had a Creator, for the plain reason, that they could not have created themselves. And their Creator must have existed

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