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life only changes its form, and the destruction of one generation is the vivification of the next. Hence, the Hindu mythologists, with a force and elegance peculiarly striking, and which are no where to be paralleled in the theogonies of Greece and Rome, describe the Supreme Being, whom they denominate Brahm, as forming and regulating the universe through the agency of a triad of inferior gods, each of whom contributes equally to the general result, under the names of Brahma, Visnu, and Iswara; or the generating power, the preserving or consummating power, and the decomposing power. And hence the Christian philosopher, with a simplicity as much more sublime than the Hindu's, as it is more veracious, exclaims, on contemplating the regular confusion, the intricate harmony, of the scenes that rise before him

These, as they change, Almighty Father! these

Are but the varied God. The rolling year
Is full of Thee.

LESSON LXV.

Distinguishing and Sublime Characteristics of Nature.

IN the meantime, from the remarks which have already been hazarded, we cannot, I think, but be struck with the two following sublime characters, which pre-eminently, indeed, distinguish all the works of nature :—a grand comprehensiveness of scheme, a simple but beautiful circle of action, by which every system is made to contribute to the well-being of every system, every part to the harmony and happiness of the whole; and a nice, and delicate, and ever-rising gradation from shapeless matter to form, from form to feeling, from feeling to intellect,

from the clod to the crystal, from the crystal to the plant, from the plant to the animal, from brutal life to man. Here, placed on the summit of this stupendous pyramid, lord of all around him, the only being through the whole range of the visible creation endowed with a power of contemplating and appreciating the magnificent scenery by which he is encompassed, and of adoring its Almighty Architect-at once, the head, the heart, and the tongue. of the whole-well, indeed, may he exult and rejoice! But let him rejoice with modesty. For, in the midst of this proud exaltation, it is possible that he forms but one of the lowest links in "the golden everlasting chain" of intelligence; that he stands on the mere threshold of the world of perception; and that there exists at least as wide a disproportion between the sublimest characters that ever were born of women, our Bacons, Newtons, and Lockes, our Aristotles, Des Cartes, and Eulers, and the humblest ranks of a loftier world, as there is between these highly gifted mortals and the most unknowing of the animal creation. Yet MIND, thanks to its beneficent bestower! is itself immortal, and knowledge is eternally progressive; and hence man, too, if he improve the talents entrusted to him, as it is his duty to do, may yet hope, unblamed, to ascend hereafter as high above the present sphere of these celestial intelligences, as they are at present placed above the sphere of man. But these are speculations in some degree too sublime for us: the moment we launch into them, that moment we become lost, and find it necessary to return with suitable modesty to our proper province, an examination of the world around us; where, with all the aids of which we can avail ourselves, we shall still find difficulties enough to try the wisdom of the wisest, and the patience of the most persevering.

LESSON LXVI.

Human Happiness the Result of Virtue.

WE are now, then, prepared to enter upon our last question: Is a course of virtue the path to happiness, for if it be, it must necessarily be the will of God to walk in it? Or, having proved the terms to be co-ordinate, we may propose the question conversely, Is a course of virtue the will of God? For if it be, it must necessarily conduct to human happiness. Under either view of the question, the general proposition will be as follows: God has willed human happiness, and he has willed it to be obtained by a course of virtue. God, then, is the author, happiness the end, and virtue the means.

Let us take the question before us in its first view, Is human virtue the means of human happiness?

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Had we time it might perhaps be expedient to enter into a definition of the terms; but we have not time, and I must refer therefore to the general understanding of mankind upon this subject which I may do the more safely, because, though the terms virtue and happiness are strikingly comprehensive, there is no great difference of opinion either among the learned or the unlearned concerning their general outlines or more prominent characteristics.

The question, then, ought to be argued in relation to the happiness both of the individual and of the community; or, in other words, to the happiness of man in his private and his social capacity.

Is the practice of virtue most contributory to a man's individual happiness? The libertine says No; and he seeks for it in his mistress, whom he changes as often as he changes his dress. The glutton says No; unless

a good city-feast be virtue; for the soul of happiness with him consists in a haunch of venison and a brisk circulation of the bottle. The spendthrift says No: you may as well seek for happiness in a hay-stack; happiness, my dear Sir, you may depend upon it, consists in nothing else than a good stud, and a pack of hounds. The gamester, in like manner, says No; and he directs us to a pack of cards and a pair of dice. Even the miser joins in the general negative, and would fain persuade us that it resides in the meagre and miserable ghost that constitutes his own person, or the meagre and miserable pursuits to which his person is daily. prostituted.

Now all these have, no doubt, their respective enjoyments; but do they constitute happiness in any fair sense of the term? are they permanent? I do not say through life, but for four-and-twenty hours together. Many of them, on the contrary, are of that violent kind that they wear themselves out in an hour or two; and what is the state of the system before it recovers sufficient energy for a renewal ? To say that it is as empty as an air-pump would be to give a better character of it than it deserves. It is not empty; it is still full; full of bitterness or insupportable languor, sickness at heart or sickness at the stomach. Even the miser, who properly speaking, provides for a longer range of enjoyment than any of the rest of this precious group, is a victim while he is a worshipper, a sacrifice to anxiety while an idolater of Mammon.

We are at present, however, merely following them up through a single day; but life is a series of days in its ordinary estimate of three-score years and ten. And he who is a candidate for happiness must prepare himself, not for a single day, but for the entire term: he must save his strength, and proceed cautiously, for there is no race in which he may so soon run himself out of breath, His motto may perhaps be, "A short life and a merry

one;" and this, in truth, is the motto, and not the motto only, but the brief history of most of those whom we have thus far considered. For consumption, dropsy, gout, or chagrin and suicide, make not unfrequently a woeful havoc in their ranks before they have cleared two-thirds of the pleasurable career they had proposed to themselves. Let them, then, have their motto if they will; but let them not boast that they have found out the specific for making life happy; for all that they have found out is a specific for throwing both life and happiness away at the same time. They have had a few fitful bursts of enjoyment; but the price has been enormous,- -a costly birthright for a mess of pottage. He only can fairly boast of happiness, place it in whatever way you please, who, on casting up the account, can honestly say that it has accompanied him through the long run.

There is another and a very different set of people, both in the higher and lower ranks of life, who also occasionally strive to persuade themselves that they are happy, and who are sometimes actually thought so by those around them and these are the listless and idle, who loll and saunter life away as though it were a dream; and who, in truth, are more alive in their dreams than in their waking hours. Now happiness consists in activity such is the constitution of our nature it is a running stream, and not a stagnant pool. It shows itself under this form from the first moment it shows itself at all. Behold the happiness of the infant or of the school-boy : he is full of frolic; he cannot contain the current of self-delight in the bold significancy of vulgar language, it runs out at his finger's ends. Upon the whole, the listless and idle have less pretensions to happiness than the characters we have just surveyed,—the libertine, the gamester, and the spendthrift: for should you distil the aggregate of insignificant incidents that compose the

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