Man, too, the proud lord of creation, so fearfully and wonderfully made, each joint in its corresponding socket, each muscle, tendon, and artery performing its allotted functions with all the precision of the most perfect mechanism, and, surpassing all, possessed of a soul capable of enjoying the most exquisite pleasure or of enduring the most excruciating pain; which is endowed with immortal capacities, and is destined to live onward through the endless ages of eternity, these all unite in one general proclamation of the eternal truth: there is a Being, infinite in wisdom, who reigns over all, undivided and supreme, the fountain of all life, source of all light, from whom all blessings flow, and in whom all happiness centers.

LVIII. JAFfàr.

JAFFAR, the Barmecide, the good vizier,

The poor man's hope, the friend without a peer,
Jaffar was dead, slain by a doom unjust;
And guilty Hàroun, sullen with mistrust
Of what the good, and e'en the bad, might say,
Ordained that no man living, from that day,
Should dare to speak his name on pain of death.
All Araby and Persia held their breath.
All but the brave Mondeer.-He, proud to show
How far for love a grateful soul could go,
And facing death for very scorn and grief
(For his great heart wanted a great relief),
Stood forth in Bagdad, daily, in the square
Where once had stood a happy house; and there
Harangued the tremblers at the scymitar

On all they owed to the divine Jaffär.

"Bring me this man," the caliph cried. The man
Was brought, was gazed upon. The mutes began
To bind his arms. Welcome, brave cords," cried he;
"From bonds far worse Jaffar delivered me;

From wants, from shames, from loveless household fears;
Made a man's eyes friends with delicious tears;
Restored me, loved me, put me on a par
With his great self. How can I pay Jaffar?"
Haroun, who felt that on a soul like this
The mightiest vengeance could but fall amiss,
Now deigned to smile, as one great lord of fate
Might smile upon another half as great.
He said, "Let worth grow frenzied if it will;
The caliph's judgment shall be master still.

Go; and since gifts thus move thee, take this gem,
The richest in the Tartar's diadem,

And hold the giver as thou deemest fit!"

"Gifts!" cried the friend. He took, and holding it High tow'rds the heavens, as though to meet his star, Exclaimed, "This, too, I owe to thee, Jaffar!”

-Leigh Hunt.

LIX.-OPPOSITE EXAMPLES.

I ASK the young man who is just forming his habits of life, or just beginning to indulge those habitual trains of thought out of which habits grow, to look around him and mark the examples whose fortunes he would covet, or whose fate he would abhor. Even as we walk the streets we meet with exhibitions of each extreme.

Here, behold a patriarch, whose stock of vigor threescore years and ten seem hardly to have impaired. His erect form, his firm step, his elastic limbs, and undimmed senses, are so many certificates of good conduct; or, rather, so many jewels and orders of nobility with which nature has honored him for his fidelity to her laws. His fair complexion shows that his blood has never been corrupted; his pure breath, that he has never yielded his digestive apparatus to abuse; his exact language and keen apprehension, that his brain has never been drugged or stupefied by the poisons of distiller or tobacconist.

Enjoying his appetites to the highest, he has preserved the power of enjoying them. As he drains the cup of life, there are no lees at the bottom. His organs will reach the goal of existence together. Painlessly as a candle burns down in its socket, so will he expire; and a little imagination would convert him into another Enoch, translated from earth to a better world without the sting of death.

But look on an opposite extreme, where an opposite history is recorded. What wreck so shocking to behold as the wreck of a dissolute man!-the vigor of life exhausted, and yet the first steps in an honorable career not taken; in himself a lazar-house of diseases; dead, but by a heathenish custom of society, not buried! Rogues have had the initial letter of their title burnt into the palms of their hands; even for murder Cain was only branded on the forehead, but over the whole person of the debauchee or the inebriate the signatures of infamy are written.

How nature brands him with stigma and opprobrium! How she hangs labels all over him to testify her disgust at his existence, and to admonish others to beware of his example! How she loosens all his joints, sends tremors along his muscles, and bends forward his frame, as if to bring him upon all-fours with kindred brutes, or to degrade him to the reptile's crawling! How she disfigures his countenance, as if intent upon obliterating all traces of her own image, so that she may swear she never made him! How she pours rheum over his eyes, sends foul spirits to inhabit his breath, and shrieks, as with a trumpet, from every pore of his body, "Behold a Beast!"

LX.-ACCESS TO GOD.

HOWEVER early in the morning you seek the gate of access, you find it already open; and the midnight moment when you find yourself in the sudden arms of death, the winged prayer can bring an instant Savior near. And this

wherever you are. It needs not that you ascend some special Pisgah or Moriah. It needs not that you should enter some awful shrine, or pull off your shoes on some holy ground.

Could a memento be reared on every spot from which an acceptable prayer had passed away, and on which a prompt answer has come down, we should find Jehovah-shammah, "the Lord hath been here," inscribed on many a cottage hearth and many a dungeon floor. We should find it not only in Jerusalem's proud Temple, and David's cedar galleries, but in the fisherman's cottage by the brink of Genesareth, and in the chamber where Pentecost began.

Whether it be the field where Isaac went to meditate, or the rocky knoll where Jacob lay down to sleep, or the brook where Israel wrestled, or the den where Daniel gazed on lions and the lions gazed on him, on the hill-sides where the Man of sorrows prayed all night, we should still discern the prints of the ladder's feet let down from heaven-the landing-place of mercies, because the starting-point of prayer. And all this whatsoever you are.

It needs no saints, no proficient in piety, no adept in eloquent language, no dignity of earthly rank. It needs but a blind beggar, a loathsome lazar. It needs but a penitent publican or a dying thief. And it needs no sharp ordeal, no costly passport, no painful expiation, to bring you to the mercy-seat. The Savior's merit-the name of Jesus, priceless as they are, cost the sinner nothing. They are freely put at his disposal, and instantly and constantly he may use of them. This access to God in every place, at every moment, without any price or personal merit, is it not a privilege? -James Hamilton.

THE NATIONAL BANNER.

ALL hail to our glorious ensign! Courage to the heart, and strength to the hand to which, in all time, it shall be

intrusted! May it ever wave in honor, in unsullied glory and patriotic hope on the dome of the capitol, on the country's stronghold, on the tented plain, on the waverocked topmast!

Wherever, on the earth's surface, the eye of the American shall behold it, may he have reason to bless it! On whatsoever spot it is planted, there may freedom have a foothold, humanity a brave champion, and religion an altar! Though stained with blood in a righteous cause, may it never in any cause be stained with shame!

Alike, when its gorgeous folds shall wanton in lazy holiday triumphs on the summer breeze, and its tattered fragments be dimly seen through the clouds of war, may it be the joy and pride of the American heart! First raised in the cause of right and liberty, in that cause alone may it forever spread out its streaming blazonry to the battle and the storm! Having been borne victoriously across the continent, and on every sea, may virtue and freedom and peace forever follow where it leads the way.

-Edward Everett.

LXI. HE LIVETH LONG WHO LIVETH WELL.

HE liveth long who liveth well!
All other life is short and vain;
He liveth longest who can tell
Of living most for heavenly gain.

He liveth long who liveth well!

All else is being flung away;
He liveth longest who can tell

Of true things truly done each day.

Waste not thy being; back to Him
Who freely gave it, freely give,
Else is that being but a dream,—
'Tis to Be, and not to Live.