From town to town,-through all the villages,—
With trusty guidance, roamed the aged saint,
And preached the word with all the fire of youth.

One day, his boy had led him to a vale
That lay all thickly sowed with mighty rocks.
In mischief, more than malice, spake the boy:
"Most reverend father, there are many men
Assembled here, who wait to hear thy voice.”
The blind old man, so bowed, straightway rose up,
Chose him his text, expounded, then applied;
Exhorted, warned, rebuked, and comforted,
So fervently, that soon the gushing tears
Streamed thick and fast down to his hoary beard.

When, at the close, as seemeth always meet,
He prayed, "Our Father," and pronounced aloud,
"Thine is the kingdom and the power, thine
The glory now, and through eternity,"

At once there rang, through all that echoing vale,
A sound of many voices, crying,

"Amen! most reverend sire, Amen! Amen!"

Trembling with terror and remorse, the boy Knelt down before the saint, and owned his sin; "Son," said the old man, "hast thou, then, ne'er read, 'When men are dumb, the stones shall

cry

aloud'?

Henceforward, mock not, son, the word of God!
Living it is, and mighty, cutting sharp,
Like a two-edged sword. And when the heart
Of flesh grows hard and stubborn like the stone,
A heart of flesh shall stir in stones themselves "

CXII. -THE ROMAN EMPIRE A PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY.

WAYLAND.

[FRANCIS WAYLAND was born in the city of New York, March 11, 1796, and was graduated at Union College in 1812. In 1821 he was settled over the First Baptist Church in Boston, was elected president of Brown University, in Rhode Island, in 1827, and held that office till the present year, (1855.) He has published various sermons, a treatise on Political Economy, the Elements of Moral Science, and several occasional discourses. He has a vigorous and logical mind, and writes with clearness and energy. He has a wide range and strong grasp of thought, and a power both of intellectual construction and analysis. His deep religious convictions, and his sensibility to moral beauty, save his writings from the dryness which is apt to characterize the productions of minds of so much logical acuteness.

The following extract is from one of his sermons.]

You well

ONE other condition remains yet to be observed. know that the nations inhabiting the shores of the Mediterranean were originally distinct in government, dissimilar in origin, diverse in laws, habits, and usages, and almost perpetually at war. To pass from one to the other without incurring the risk of injury, nay, even of being sold into slavery, was almost impossible. A stranger and an enemy were designated by the same word. Beginning with Spain, and passing through Gaul, Germany, Italy, Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and Carthage, until you arrive again at the Pillars of Hercules, every state was most commonly the enemy of every other. It was necessary that these various peoples should all be moulded by the same pressure into one common form; that one system of laws should bind them all in harmony; and that, under one common protection, a citizen might be able to pass through all of them in security. This seems to have been needful in order that the new religion might be rapidly and extensively promulgated.

In order to accomplish his purpose, as I suppose, was the Roman empire raised up, and intrusted with the sceptre of universal dominion. Commencing with a feeble colony on the banks of the Tiber, she gradually, by conquest and conciliation, incorporated with herself the many warlike tribes of ancient

Italy. In her very youth, after a death struggle of more than a century, she laid Carthage, the former mistress of the Mediterranean, lifeless at her feet. From this era she paused not a moment in her career of universal conquest. Nation after nation submitted to her sway. Army after army was scattered before her legions, like the dust of the summer threshing floor. Her proconsuls sat enthroned in regal state in every city of the civilized world; and the barbarian mother, clasping her infant to her bosom, fled to the remotest fastnesses of the wilderness when she saw, far off in the distance, the sunbeams glittering upon the eagles of the republic.

Far different, however, were the victories of Rome from those of Alexander. The Macedonian soldier thought mainly of battles and sieges, the clash of onset, the flight of satraps, and the subjugation of kings. He overran; the Romans always conquered. Every vanquished nation became, in turn, a part of the Roman empire. A large portion of every conquered people was admitted to the rights of citizenship. The laws of the republic threw over the conquered the shield of her protection. Rome may, it is true, have oppressed them; but then she delivered them from the capricious and more intolerable oppression of their native rulers. Hence her conquests really marked the progress of civilization, and extended in all directions the limits of universal brotherhood.

The Roman citizen was free of the civilized world; every where he might appeal to her laws, and repose in security under the shadow of her universal power. Thus the declaration, "Ye have beaten us openly, and uncondemned, being Romans," brought the magistrates of Philippi suppliants at the feet of the apostle Paul; his question, "Is it lawful for you to scourge a man that is a Roman, and uncondemned?” palsied the hands of the lictors at Jerusalem; and the simple words, "I appeal unto Cæsar," removed his cause from the jurisdiction even of the proconsul at Cæsarea, and carried it at once into the presence of the emperor. You cannot but per ceive that this universal domination of a single civilized power

must have presented great facilities for the promulgation of the gospel. In many respects, it resembled the dominion of Great Britain at the present day in Asia. Wherever her red cross floats, there the liberty of man is, to a great extent, protected by the constitution of the realm. Whatever be the complexion or the language of the nations that take refuge beneath its folds, they look up to it every where, and bid defiance to every other despotism.

[ORVILLE DEWEY was born in Sheffield, Massachusetts, in 1794, and was graduated at Williams College in 1814. He was for many years settled over a church in New Bedford, and subsequently over one in New York; but at the present time (1855) he is not connected with any religious society. He has published several volumes of sermons, some occasional discourses, and a journal of travels in Europe.

Dr. Dewey is an original and suggestive thinker. He combines the power of dealing adequately with the highest themes connected with man's spiritual nature and destiny with that of enforcing the practical duties of life in the most pungent and powerful manner. His style is finished and natural, glowing at times with high imaginative beauty, and winning its way to the heart by touches of deep and simple pathos. He is a most earnest and persuasive preacher; and his sermons, whether heard or read, take strong hold upon the mind. The following extract is from a sermon on the passion for a fortune.]

SUCH, I repeat, is the world, and such is man. The earth he stands upon, and the air he breathes, are, so far as his improvement is concerned, but elements to be wrought by him to certain purposes. If he stood on earth passively and uncon scious, imbibing the dew and sap, and spreading his arms to the light and air, he would be but a tree. If he grew up capable neither of purpose nor of improvement, with no guidance but instinct, and no powers but those of digestion and locomotion, he would be but an animal. But he is more than this; he is a man; he is made to improve; he is made, therefore, to think, to act, to work. Labor is his great function, his peculiar distinction, his privilege. Can he not think so? Can he not see, that from being an animal, to eat, and drink, and

sleep, to become a worker, to put forth the hand of ingenuity, and to pour his own thought into the moulds of nature, fashioning them into forms of grace and fabrics of convenience, and converting them to purposes of improvement and happiness, - can he not see, I repeat, that this is the greatest possible step in privilege?

Labor, I say, is man's great function. The earth and the atmosphere are his laboratory. With spade and plough, with mining shafts and furnaces and forges, with fire and steam, amidst the noise and whirl of swift and bright machinery, and abroad in the silent fields, beneath the roofing sky, man was made to be ever working, ever experimenting. And while he, and all his dwellings of care and toil, are borne onward with the circling skies, and the shows of heaven are around him, and their infinite depths image and invite his thought, still in all the worlds of philosophy, in the universe of intellect, man must be a worker. He is nothing, he can be nothing, he can achieve nothing, fulfil nothing, without working.

Not only can he gain no lofty improvement without this, but without it he can gain no tolerable happiness. So that he who gives himself up to utter indolence finds it too hard for him, and is obliged in self-defence, unless he be an idiot, to do something. The miserable victims of idleness and ennui, driven at last from their chosen resort, are compelled to work, to do something; yes, to employ their wretched and worthless lives in- —"killing time." They must hunt down the hours as their prey. Yes, time, that mere abstraction, that sinks light as the air upon the eyelids of the busy and the weary, to the idle is an enemy, clothed with gigantic armor; and they must kill it, or themselves die. They cannot live in mere idleness; and all the difference between them and others is, that they employ their activity to no useful end. They find, indeed, that the hardest work in the world is, to do nothing!