Here then is a support, which will never fail; here is 40 a foundation which can never be moved-the everlasting Creator of countless worlds, "the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity." What a sublime conception! He inhabits eternity, occupies this inconceivable duration, pervades and fills throughout this boundless 45 dwelling. Ages on ages before even the dust of which we are formed was created, he had existed in infinite majesty, and ages on ages will roll away after we have all returned to the dust whence we were taken, and still he will exist in infinite majesty, living in the eternity 50 of his own nature, reigning in the plenitude of his own omnipotence, for ever sending forth the word, which forms, supports, and governs all things, commanding new created light to shine on new created worlds, and raising up new created generations to inhabit them.

55

The contemplation of this glorious attribute of God, is fitted to excite in our minds the most animating and consoling reflections. Standing, as we are, amid the ruins of time, and the wrecks of mortality, where every thing about us is created and dependent, proceeding 60 from nothing, and hastening to destruction, we rejoice that something is presented to our view which has stood from everlasting, and will remain forever. When we

have looked on the pleasures of life, and they have vanished away; when we have looked on the works of na65 ture, 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 fleeting as they; when we have looked on every object to which 70 we could turn our anxious eyes, and they have all told us that they could give us no hope nor support, because they were so feeble themselves; we can look to the throne of God: change and decay have never reached that; the revolution of ages has never moved it; the 75 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. Greenwood.

Take, holy earth! all that my soul holds dear;
Take that best gift, which heav'n so lately gave;
To Bristol's fount I bore, with trembling care,

Her faded form ;--She bow'd to taste the wave,
5 And died. Does youth, does beauty, read the line?
Does sympathetic fear their breast alarm?
Speak, dead Maria! breathe a strain divine:

10

Ev'n from the grave thou shalt have pow'r to charm. Bid them be chaste, be innocent, like thee;

Bid them in duty's sphere, as meekly move;

And, if as fair, from vanity as free,

As firm in friendship, and as fond in love,

Tell them, though 'tis an awful thing to die!

('Twas even to thee) yet, the dread path once trod,

15 Heaven lifts its everlasting portals high,

And bids the "pure in heart behold their God."

O! lives there heaven! beneath thy dread expanse,
One hopeless, dark idolator of Chance,
Content to feed with pleasures unrefined,
The lukewarm passions of a lowly mind;

5 Who, mouldering earthward, 'reft of every trust,
In joyless union wedded to the dust,
Could all his parting energy dismiss,

And call this barren world sufficient bliss ?—
There live, alas! of heaven directed mien,
10 Of cultured soul, and sapient eye serene,
Who hail thee, man! the pilgrim of a day,
Spouse of the worm, and brother of the clay!
Frail as the leaf in Autumn's yellow bower,
Dust in the wind, or dew upon the flower!
15 A friendless slave, a child without a sire,
Whose mortal life, and momentary fire,
Lights to the grave his chance-created form,
As ocean-wrecks illuminate the storm;

And, when the gun's tremendous flash is o'er, 20 To night and silence sink for evermore!—

Are these the pompous tidings ye proclaim,
Lights of the world, and demi-gods of fame ?
Is this your triumph--this your proud applause,
Children of Truth, and champions of her cause?
25 For this hath Science search'd, on weary wing,
By shore and sea--each mute and living thing?
Launched with Iberia's pilot from the steep,

To worlds unknown, and isles beyond the deep?
Or round the cope her living chariot driven,
30 And wheeled in triumph through the signs of heaven?
Oh! star-eyed Science, hast thou wandered there,
To waft us home the message of despair ?--
Then bind the palm, thy sage's brow to suit,
Of blasted leaf, and death-distilling fruit!

40 Ah me! the laurelled wreath that murder rears,
Blood-nursed, and watered by the widow's tears,
Seems not so foul, so tainted, and so dread,

As waves the night shade round the skeptic head.
What is the bigot's torch, the tyrant's chain?
45 I smile on death, if heaven-ward hope remain !
But, if the warring winds of Nature's strife
Be all the faithless charter of my life,
If chance awaked, inexorable power!
This frail and feverish being of an hour,

50 Doomed o'er the world's precarious scene to sweep,
Swift as the tempest travels on the deep,
To know Delight but by her parting smile,
And toil, and wish, and weep a little while ;
Then melt, ye elements, that formed in vain
55 This troubled pulse, and visionary brain!

Fade, ye wild flowers, memorials of my doom!
And sink, ye stars, that light me to the tomb!
Truth, ever lovely since the world began,
The foe of tyrants and the friend of man,-
60 How can thy words from balmy slumber start
Reposing Virtue, pillowed on the heart!
Yet, if thy voice the note of thunder rolled,
And that were true which Nature never told,
Let Wisdom smile not on her conquered field;

65 No rapture dawns, no treasure is revealed!
Oh! let her read, nor loudly, nor elate,
The doom that bars us from a better fate;
But, sad as angels for the good man's sin,
Weep to record, and blush to give it in!

106. The Atheist.

Campbell.

How wonderful the process by which a man can grow to the immense intelligence that can know that there is no God. What ages and what lights are necessary for this stupendous attainment ! This intelli5 gence involves the very attributes of Divinity, while a God is denied. For unless this man is omnipresent, unless he is at this moment in every place in the universe, he cannot know but there may be in some place manifestations of a Deity by which even he would be 10 overpowered. If he does not know absolutely every agent in the universe, the one that he does not know may be God. If he is not himself the chief agent in the universe, and does not know what is so, that which is so may be God. If he is not in absolute possession 15 of all the propositions that constitute universal truth, the one which he wants may be, that there is a God. If he cannot with certainty assign the cause of all that he perceives to exist, that cause may be a God. If he does not know every thing that has been done in the 20 immeasurable ages that are past, some things may have been done by a God. Thus, unless he knows all things, that is, unless he precludes another Deity by being one himself, he cannot know that the Being whose existence he rejects, does not exist. But he must know that he 25 does not exist, else he deserves equal contempt and compassion for the temerity with which he firmly avows his rejection and acts accordingly. And yet a man of ordinary age and intelligence may present himself to you with an avowal of being thus distinguished from 30 the crowd; and if he would describe the manner in which he has attained this eminence, you would feel a melancholy interest in contemplating that process of which the result is so portentous.

Surely the creature that thus lifts his voice, and de35 fies all invisible power within the possibilities of infinity, challenging whatever unknown being may hear him, and who may, if he will, appropriate that title of Almighty which is pronounced in scorn, to evince his existence, by his vengeance; surely this man was not as yesterday 40 a little child, that would tremble and cry at the approach of a diminutive reptile. Foster.

And now let me ask you solemnly; will you persist in your attachment to these guilty men? Will you any longer, either deliberately or thoughtlessly, vote for them? Will you renounce allegiance to your Maker, 5 and cast the bible behind your back? Will you confide in men void of the fear of God and destitute of moral principle? Will you intrust life to murderers-liberty to despots? Are you patriots, and will you constitute those legislators who despise you, and despise equal 10 laws, and wage war with the eternal principles of justice? Are you christians, and by upholding duellists will you deluge the land with blood, and fill it with widows and with orphans? Will you aid in the prostration of justice--in the escape of criminals--in the extinc15 tion of liberty? Will you place in the chair of statein the senate on the bench of justice, or in the assembly, men who, if able, would murder you for speaking truth? Shall your elections turn on expert shooting, and your deliberative bodies become an host of armed 20 men? Will you destroy public morality by tolerating, yea, rewarding, the most infamous crimes? Will you teach your children that there is no guilt in murder? -Will you instruct them to think lightly of duelling, and train them up to destroy or be destroyed in the bloody field? Will you bestow your suffrage, when you know that by withholding it you may arrest this deadly evil-when this too is the only way in which it can be done, and when the present is perhaps the only period in which resistance can avail-when the remedy is so 30 easy, so entirely in your power; and when God, if you