"Siloa's brook, that flows fast by the oracles of God"? Is there nothing in the Bible that can enlarge your understandings, elevate your imaginations, or refine your tastes? Has it no sublimity of conception, no richness of imagery, no power of description? Has it nothing useful in ethics, or valuable in philosophy-nothing instructive as a history, or interesting as a system of religion-nothing elevated in its poetry, or affecting in its incidents, or important in its moral?

Have you determined to know no God, except he be found in the ancient mythology-no religion, unless it has been proved fabulous-no morality, unless it be notoriously defective as to the true springs of virtue and the true principles of duty? Are you only solicitous for the esteem of men, and utterly regardless of the opinion of your Maker, anxious to obtain earthly fame and wisdom, but caring nothing for "that honor which cometh from on high," or for that knowledge which alone can "make you wise unto salvation"? Can this be so? Was it for this that you were educated here, and that you intend to prosecute the improvement of your minds? Is it indeed the only object of your future lives, so to acquire everything useful and beautiful, except religion, that you may be decorated like victims for the sacrifice, and sink for ever, like a richly-freighted bark, to the fathomless abyss of eternal woe? Bear with me for a moment! Are you revelling in youthful vigor, and know you not that the domain of death is peopled with the young?

Do you anticipate a long career of activity and usefulness, and know you not that there is nothing more uncertain than the frail tenure of human existence? Are you proud of your talents, glowing with the ardor of ambition, and longing for distinction in the race of life, and know you not that the most buoyant heart may soon be chilled by the icy touch of the destroyer, and the most eloquent tongue be hushed for ever in the silent tomb?

"Begin-be bold, and venture to be wise;

He who defers this work from day to day
Does on a river's bank expecting stay,

Till the whole stream that stopped him shall be gone,
Which runs, and, as it runs, for ever shall run on."

THE GLORY OF CHRISTIANITY.-JOHN MCLAURIN.

CHRISTIANITY communicates a glory to all other objects, according as they have any relation to it. It adorns the universe; it gives a lustre to nature and to Providence; it is the greatest glory of this lower world, that its Creator was for awhile its inhabitant. A poor landlord thinks it a lasting honor to his cottage that he has once lodged a prince or emperor. With how much more reason may our poor cottage, this earth, be proud of it, that the Lord of glory was its tenant from His birth to His death! yea, that he rejoiced in the habitable parts of it before it had a beginning, even from everlasting!

It is the glory of the world that He who formed it dwelt on it; of the air, that He breathed in it; of the sun, that it shone on Him; of the ground, that it bore him; of the sea, that He walked on it; of the elements, that they nourished Him; of the waters, that they refreshed Him; of us men, that He lived and died among us, yea, that he lived and died for us; that he assumed our flesh and blood, and carried it to the highest heavens, where it shines as the eternal ornament and wonder of the creation of God. It gives also a lustre to Providence It is the chief event that adorns the records of time, and enlivens the history of the universe. It is the glory of the various great lines of Providence, that they point at this as their centre; that they prepared the way for its coming; that after its coming they are subservient to the ends of it, though in a way indeed to us at present mysterious and unsearchable. Thus we know that they either fulfil the promises of the crucified Jesus, or His threatenings; and show either the happiness of receiving Him, or the misery of rejecting Him.

BELIEF IN GOD'S EXISTENCE.-JONATHAN MAXCY.

NEVER be tempted to disbelieve the existence of God, when everything around you proclaims it in a language too plain not

to be understood. Never cast your eyes on creation without having your souls expanded with this sentiment, "There is a God!" When you survey this globe of earth, with all its appendages-when you behold it inhabited by numberless ranks of creatures, all moving in their proper spheres, all verging to their proper ends, all animated by the same great source of life, all supported at the same great bounteous table; when you behold not only the earth, but the ocean and the air, swarming with living creatures, all happy in their situation-when you behold yonder sun darting a vast blaze of glory over the heavens, garnishing mighty worlds, and waking ten thousand songs of praise-when you behold unnumbered systems diffused through vast immensity, clothed in splendor, and rolling in majesty when you behold these things, your affections will rise above all the vanities of time, your full souls will struggle with ecstasy, and your reason, passions, and feelings, all united, will rush up to the skies, with a devout acknowledgment of the wisdom, existence, power, and goodness of God. Let us behold Him, let us wonder, praise, adore. These things will make us happy. They will wean us from vice, and attach us to virtue.

THE GOSPEL FOR THE POOR.-JOHN M. MASON.

FROM the remotest antiquity there have been, in all civilized nations, men who devoted themselves to the increase of knowledge and happiness. Their speculations were subtile, their arguings acute, and many of their maxims respectable. But to whom were their instructions addressed? To casual visitors, to selected friends, to admiring pupils, to privileged orders! In some countries, and on certain occasions, when vanity was to be gratified by the acquisition of fame, their appearances were more public. For example, one read a poem, another a history, and a third a play, before the crowd assembled at the Olympic games. To be crowned there, was, in the proudest period of Greece, the summit of glory and ambition. But what did this,

what did the mysteries of pagan worship, or what the lectures of pagan philosophy, avail the people? Sunk in ignorance, in poverty, in crime, they lay neglected. Age succeeded age, and school to school; a thousand sects and systems rose, flourished, and fell; but the degradation of the multitude remained. Not a beam of light found its way into their darkness, nor a drop of consolation into their cup. Indeed a plan of raising them to the dignity of rational enjoyment, and fortifying them against the disasters of life, was not to be expected: for as nothing can exceed the contempt in which they were held by the professors of wisdom; so any human device, however captivating in theory, would have been worthless in fact. The most sagacious heathen could imagine no better means of improving them than the precepts of his philosophy. Now, supposing it to be ever so salutary, its benefits must have been confined to a very few; the notion that the bulk of mankind may become philosophers, being altogether extravagant. They ever have been, and, in the nature of things, ever must be, unlearned. Besides, the grovelling superstition and brutal manners of the heathen presented insuperable obstacles. Had the plan of their cultivation been even suggested, especially if it comprehended the more abject of the species, it would have been universally derided, and would have merited derision, no less than the dreams of modern folly about the perfectibility of man.

A GUILTY CONSCIENCE BETRAYS ITSELF.-WEBSTER. AN aged man, without an enemy in the world, in his own house, and in his own bed, is made the victim of a butcherly murder for mere pay. The fatal blow is given, and the victim passes, without a struggle or a motion, from the repose of sleep to the repose of death. It is the assassin's purpose to make sure work: He explores the wrist for the pulse. He feels for it, and ascertains that it beats no longer. It is accomplished. The deed is done. He retreats, retraces his steps to the window, passes out through it as he came in, and escapes. He

has done the murder-no eye has seen him, nor ear has heard him. The secret is his own-and it is safe.

Ah, gentlemen, that was a dreadful mistake! Such a secret can be safe nowhere. The whole creation of God has neither nook nor corner where the guilty can bestow it, and say it is safe. Not to speak of that eye which glances through all disguises, and beholds everything as in the splendor of noon, such secrets of guilt are never safe from detection, even by men. True it is, generally speaking, that "murder will out." True it is, that Providence hath so ordained, and doth so govern things, that those who break the great law of Heaven, by shedding man's blood, seldom succeed in avoiding discovery. Especially in a case exciting so much attention as this, discovery must come, and will come, sooner or later. A thousand eyes turn at once to explore every man, every thing, every circumstance connected with the time and place; a thousand ears catch every whisper; a thousand excited minds intensely dwell on the scene, shedding all their light, and ready to kindle the slightest circumstance into a blaze of discovery.

Meantime, the guilty soul cannot keep its own secret. It is false to itself; or rather it feels an irresistible impulse of conscience to be true to itself. It labors under its guilty possession, and knows not what to do with it. The human heart was not made for the residence of such an inhabitant. It finds itself preyed on by a torment, which it dares not acknowledge to God nor man. A vulture is devouring it, and it can ask no sympathy or assistance, either from heaven or earth. The secret which the murderer possesses soon comes to possess him; and, like the evil spirits of which we read, it overcomes him, and leads him whithersoever it will. He feels it beating at his heart, rising to his throat, and demanding disclosure. He thinks the whole world sees it in his face, reads it in his eyes, and almost hears its workings in the very silence of his thoughts. It has become his master. It betrays his discretion, it breaks down his courage, it conquers his prudence. When suspicions from without begin to embarrass him, and the net of circumstance to entangle him, the fatal seeret struggles with