SUNDAY.

THOU blessed day! I will not call thee last,
Nor Sabbath,-last nor first of all the seven,
But a calm slip of intervening heaven,
Between the uncertain future and the past;
As in a stormy night, amid the blast,
Comes ever and anon a truce on high,

And a calm lake of pure and starry sky

Peers through the mountainous depth of clouds amass'd.
Sweet day of prayer! e'en they whose scrupulous dread
Will call no other day, as others do,

Might call thee Sunday without fear or blame;
For thy bright morn deliver'd from the dead
Our Sun of Life, and will for aye renew

To faithful souls the import of thy name.

IN CONTINUATION.

The ancient Sabbath was an end,—a pause,—
A stillness of the world; the work was done!
But ours commemorates a work begun.

Why, then, subject the new to antique laws?
The ancient Sabbath closed the week, because
The world was finish'd. Ours proclaims the sun,
Its glorious saint, alert its course to run.
Vanguard of days! escaped the baffled jaws
Of slumberous dark and death,-so fitly first

Is Sunday ranked before the secular days;
Unmeetly clad in weeds, with arms reversed,

To trail in sullen thought by silent ways. Like the fresh dawn, or rose-bud newly burst,

So let our Sabbath wear the face of praise!

THE SOUL.

Is not the body more than meat? The soul
Is something greater than the food it needs.
Prayers, sacraments, and charitable deeds,
They realise the hours that onward roll
Their endless way "to kindle or control."
Our acts and words are but the pregnant needs
Of future being, when the flowers and weeds,
Local and temporal, in the vast whole
Shall live eternal. Nothing ever dies!

The shortest smile that flits across a face,
Which lovely grief hath made her dwelling-place

Lasts longer than the earth or visible skies!
It is an act of God, whose acts are truth,

And vernal still in everlasting youth.

PRAYER.

BE not afraid to pray-to pray is right.
Pray, if thou canst, with hope; but ever pray,
Though hope be weak, or sick with long delay;
Pray in the darkness, if there be no light.
Far is the time, remote from human sight,
When war and discord on the earth shall cease;
for universal peace

Yet every prayer

Avails the blessed time to expedite.

Whate'er is good to wish, ask that of Heaven,
Though it be what thou canst not hope to see:
Pray to be perfect, though material leaven
Forbid the Spirit so on earth to be;
But if for any wish thou darest not pray,
Then pray to God to cast that wish away.

PRIVILEGES.

GOOD is it to be born in Christian land,

Within the hearing of sweet Sabbath bells,
To con our letters in the book that tells

How God vouchsafed His creatures to command.
How once He led His chosen by the hand,
Presenting to their young and opening sense
Such pictures of His dread Omnipotence,

As all could see, though none might understand.
Oh! good it is to dwell with Christian folk,
Where even the blind may see, the deaf may hear,
The words that Paul hath wrote, that Jesus spoke,
By book or preacher shown to eye or ear,

Where Gospel truth is rife as song of birds

Familiar in our ears as household words."