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E'en the rapture of pardon is mingled with fears,
And my cup of thanksgiving with penitent tears,
The festival trump calls for jubilant songs,
But my spirit her own miserere' prolongs.

I would not live alway: no, welcome the tomb;
Immortality's lamp burneth bright 'mid the gloom;
The pillow is there on which Christ bowed his head;
How sweetly I'll slumber on that holy bed!

But sweeter the morn that shall follow that night,
When the sunrise of glory shall beam on my sight,
While the full matin song, as the sleepers arise

To hail the glad morning, shall peal through the skies.

Who, who would live alway? away from his God;
Away from yon heaven, that blissful abode ?
Where the rivers of pleasure flow o'er the bright plains,
And the noontide of glory eternally reigns;
Where the saints of all ages in harmony meet
Their Savior and brethren transported to greet;
While the songs of salvation unceasingly roll,
And the smile of the Lord is the feast of the soul.

That heavenly music! What is it I hear?
The notes of the harpers ring sweet in the air!
And see, soft unfolding, those portals of gold!
The king all arrayed in his beauty behold!
O give me, O give me the wings of a dove!
Let me hasten my flight to that palace above-
'Tis now that my soul on glad pinions would soar,
And in ecstasy bid earth adieu, evermore.

YOU WOULD LOSE YOUR REASON.-MASSILON.

Are you placed upon earth only to live in an indolent calm, and to occupy your minds with none but pleasant and cheerful objects? We should lose our reason, you say, if we were to think closely upon death. You would lose your reason! What! Have the many pious people who mingle this thought with all their actions, and who, from reflecting on their last hour, learn to restrain their passions, and derive the most pow

erful motive to fidelity,-have the saints who, like the apostle, die daily, that they may not die eternally, have all they lost their reason? You would lose your reason! That is to say, you would regard this world as a state of banishment; pleasures, as intoxicating; sin, as the greatest of evils; places, honors, favor, fortune, as dreams; and salvation, as the great, the only business of life. Happy folly! I wish from this day you might all be of the number of those thus wisely bereft of reason! You would lose your reason!-Yes, that false, worldly, proud, carnal, foolish reason which seduces you; that corrupt reason which obscures faith, which authorizes the indulgence of passion, which makes people prefer time to eternity, a shadow to a substance, and which leads all men astray; that deplorable reason, that vain philosophy, which considers the fear of an hereafter as a weakness, and which, because it fears it too much, pretends or endeavors not to believe it.

THE CALM AT SEA.-COLERIDGE.

Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down,

'T was sad as sad could be ;

And we did speak only to break

The silence of the sea!

All in a hot and copper sky,

The bloody sun, at noon,

Right up above the mast did stand,

No bigger than the moon.

Day after day, day after day,

We stuck, nor breath nor motion;

As idle as a painted ship

Upon a painted ocean.

Water, water, every where,

And all the boards did shrink :

Water, water, every where,

Nor any drop to drink.

The very deep did rot: O Christ!

That ever this should be!

Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon the slimy sea.

About, about, in reel and rout
The death-fires danced at night;
The water, like a witch's oils,
Burnt green, and blue, and white.

And some in dreams assured were
Of the spirit that plagued us so;
Nine fathom deep he had followed us
From the land of mist and snow.

And every tongue, through utter drought
Was withered at the root;

We could not speak, no more than if
We had been choked with soot.

There passed a weary time. Each throat
Was parched, and glazed each eye.
A weary time! a weary time!
How glazed each weary eye,
When looking westward, I beheld
A something in the sky.

At first it seemed a little speck,
And then it seemed a mist;

It moved and moved, and took at last
A certain shape, I wist.

A speck, a mist, a shape, I wist!
And still it neared and neared:
As if it dodged a water-sprite,

It plunged and tacked and veered.

With throats unslaked, with black lips baked,
We could nor laugh nor wail;

Through utter drought all dumb we stood;
I bit my arm, I sucked the blood,

And cried, A sail! a sail!

THE SONG OF DEBORAH.

Awake, awake, Deborah; awake, awake; utter a song : arise, Barak, and lead thy captivity captive, thou son of AbiThen he made him that remaineth have dominion over the nobles among the people: the Lord made me have domin

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ion over the mighty. Out of Ephraim was there a root of them against Amalek; after thee, Benjamin, among thy people: out of Machir came down governors, and out of Zebulun they that handle the pen of the writer. And the princes of Issachar were with Deborah; even Issachar and also Barak: he was sent on foot into the valley. For the divisions of Reuben there were great thoughts of heart. Why abodest thou among the sheep-folds, to hear the bleatings of the flocks? For the divisions of Reuben there were great searchings of heart. Gilead abode beyond Jordan: and why did Dan remain in ships? Asher continued on the sea-shore, and abode in his breaches. Zebulun and Naphtali were a people that jeoparded their lives unto the death in the high places of the field. The kings came and fought then fought the kings of Canaan in Tanach by the waters of Megiddo; they took no gain of money. They fought from heaven; the stars in their courses fought against Sisera. The river of Kishon swept them away, that ancient river, the river Kishon. O my soul, thou hast trodden down strength. Then were the horse-hoofs broken by the means of the prancings, the prancings of their mighty ones. Curse ye Meroz, (said the angel of the Lord,) curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof; because they came not to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty. Blessed above women shall Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, be; blessed shall she be above women in the tent. He asked water, and she gave him milk; she brought forth butter in a lordly dish. She put her hand to the nail, and her right hand to the workmen's hammer; and with the hammer she smote Sisera; she smote off his head, when she had pierced and stricken through his temples. At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down; at her feet he bowed, he fell: where he bowed, there he fell down dead. The mother of Sisera looked out at a window, and cried through the lattice, Why is his chariot so long in coming? why tarry the wheels of his chariots ? Her wise ladies answered her, yea, she returned answer to herself. Have they not sped? have they not divided the prey; to every man a damsel or two, to Sisera a prey of divers colors, a prey of divers colors of needle-work, of divers colors of needle-work on both sides, meet for the necks of them that take the spoil? So let all thine enemies perish, O Lord: but let them that love him be as the sun when he goeth forth in his might.

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EXCLAMATION.

THE BURIAL PLACE.-STORY.

What a multitude of thoughts crowd upon the mind, in the contemplation of such a scene! How much of the future, even in its far distant reaches, rises before us with all its persuasive realities! Take but one little narrow space of time, and how affecting are its associations! Within the flight of one half century, how many of the great, the good, and the wise will be gathered here! How many, in the loveliness of infancy, the beauty of youth, the vigor of manhood, and the maturity of age, will lie down here, and dwell in the bosom of their mother earth! The rich and the poor, the gay and the wretched, the favorites of thousands, and the forsaken of the world, the stranger in his solitary grave, and the patriarch, surrounded by the kindred of a long lineage! How many will here bury their brightest hopes, or blasted expectations! How many bitter tears will here be shed! How many agonizing sighs will here be heaved! How many trembling feet will cross the pathways, and, returning, leave behind them the dearest objects of their reverence or their love!

EXTRACT FROM A DISCOURSE.-NOTT.

"How are the mighty fallen!" Fallen before the desolating hand of death. Alas! the ruins of the tomb! The ruins of the tomb are an emblem of the ruins of the world; when not an individual, but a universe, already marred by sin, and hastening to dissolution, shall agonize and die! Directing your thoughts from the one, fix them for a moment on the other. Anticipate the concluding scene, the final catastrophe of nature: when the sign of the Son of man shall be seen in heawhen the Son of man himself shall appear in the glory of his Father, and send forth judgment unto victory. The fiery desolation envelopes towns, palaces, and fortresses; the heavens pass away! the earth melts! and all those magnificent productions of art, which ages, heaped on ages, have reared up, are in one awful day reduced to ashes.

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