rest.

God designs not earth for our permanent restingplace. He has stamped mutability on all tangible things, that we might raise our souls to things above. While change comes over all our relations, God kindly permits us to look, even with mortal eye, on some objects which seem to change not. The sun, the glorious sun, shines on the eye of age as on that of youth. The moon, the silvery moon, looks forth in the heavens, fair as she did to the eye of man in Paradise. The stars, the brilliant constellations in the heavens, unchanged and unchanging, maintain, from age to age, the same place in the sky. The heavens exhibit the same appearance to us as they did to Newton, and to Galileo, and to old Abraham, when, on the Chaldean plain, God told him to number them, if he could. There are, also, immaterial ideas, or conceptions of the soul, which are immutable-ideas of the good, the beautiful, and the true, which know no change nor decay.

By these God teaches us that there is, beyond the stars, a world which knows no change that there are things which are eternal. Happy, then, is he who sets his affections on things above-on things heavenly and divine-on goodness, and on truth, and on God.

12

THOUGHTS ON YOUTH AND AGE.

ON all things outward is written, by the pen of Time, in characters deep, legible, and effaceless, change, mutation, perishability. Not even the aggregate forms of nature escape the common doom. The compact rock, itself a noted example of solidity and permanence-the conceded emblem of the eternal One-yields up its form, disintegrates, and crumbles under the influence of heat, moisture, and frost. The mineral, beautiful in appearance, perfect in shape, and curious in structure, becomes impalpable dust under the action of atmospheric or chemical influences. The iron, dug from the deep recesses of earth, gathers rust on its surface, and yields up its distinctive form to the law of change. The earth herself, the solid earth on which we tread, through the long cycles of ages past, has been passing through changes and revolutions; nor is the time of permanence yet arrived. Her mountains are elevated by volcanoes, and worn down by winds and storms; her rivers are, by changes of current and of course, constantly modifying her hills, her plains, and her valleys; her oceans are making land in one and destroying it in another quarter of the globe. Nor are the solar or the stellar systems of the universe less subject to the inevitable law of mutation. The bosom of the moon is heaved, and her face torn by volcanoes. The sun is marked by spots betokening, from their varying appearance, incessant action and change. The stars, though removed too far for accurate observation, exhibit unquestionable indications of revolutions. and changes.

If the works of nature thus obey the great law of change, still more readily do the material works of man yield to the same law-works, too, which were designed for permanence, and built for eternity. Thebes, the hundred-gated; Babylon, the city of palaces; Tadmor, that flourished amidst palm-trees; Baalbec, of mysterious origin and unknown founder, have all disappeared from the face of earth, leaving only broken ruins to mark the place where once they stood. Even Jerusalem, the city of the chosen ones; and Rome, called by her builders the Eternal, no longer rear, the one its magnificent temple, and the other its Capitol, as in days of yore.

The law of change extends to the immaterial organizations of human ingenuity. Political organizations have been ever yielding, and are yet yielding to the inevitable decree of change. The old Assyrian empire, the earliest on the records of authentic history, and for many centuries limitless in extent, and omnipotent in authority, long since wholly disappeared, leaving not a vestige of itself among men. The empire of the great Cyrus, though long the most remarkable in the annals of time, exists now only in the dim pencilings and the shadowy recollec tions of semi-fabulous history. The Grecian republics, the Grecian kingdoms, and the Grecian empire, all equally and effectually have disappeared forever from earth. The Roman organizations, beginning with a monarchy, passing through the mutations of a republic, and terminating in an empire of boundless extent, irresistible power, and exhaustless resources, long ago crumbled like a disintegrating rock exposed to the furnace, and its fragments were blown away like comminuted dust.

Among the kingdoms, empires, and republics of modern ages, changes in precedence, relations, constitutional organization, and distinctive characteristics have ever been and are yet varying, with all the facility of the

ever-changing colors of the kaleidoscope. Organizations founded in philosophy exhibit no lasting form. We read of the schools of the Peripatetics and of the Stoics, of the philosophical systems of Plato and of Aristotle, of Pythagoras and of Epicurus; but where shall we find even a vestige of the magnificent temple of philosophy which they built and adorned, and which they hoped would stand forever?

Nor have religious organizations formed favored exceptions to the general law of change. The mythology of antiquity was beautiful, extremely beautiful. The religion of Greece was conceived by poets, and adorned with all the beautiful drapery within the power of exuberant fancy and exquisite taste. For ages it sat enthroned in the respect and affections of the people. Yet was its foundation unsubstantial as the dreams of fairy-land. Nor has the form of religion yet ceased, through the successive ages of modern history, to change its phases. It would seem that the religious sentiment is, in man, inherent in nature, incessant in action, and perpetual in duration. But the form in which it embodies itself is ever-changing. The dwellers along the valley of the Nile embodied and adored the great powers of nature. The accomplished and educated Greeks personified and worshiped the intellectual and moral attributes of humanity. The Jew satisfied the religious sentiment by ceremonies, sacrifices, oblations, and observances. The early Christians were taught a more spiritual worship. To preserve, during successive ages, in any particular sect the same uniform usages is matter of exceeding difficulty. The spirit may remain the same, but the form will change. As well might you hope to preserve the same substance of body under all the changes of growth and decay.

Living forms are not less liable than are aggregate or

immaterial to mutation. Change is not the exception, but the law of animal and of vegetable nature. The process of growth and of decay is natural and certain. Each act of the living being is supposed to use up and destroy some definite portion of its substance. But living beings, unlike aggregate forms, unlike immaterial organizations, have in their own nature the power and the means of renewal. The consumption and the renewal of living matter seem thus continually going on to such an extent as to effect, as is supposed, in the human body, an entire change in seven years. In youth the waste is less than the supply of matter, and hence the body increases in size and weight. In maturity the waste and renewal are equal, and the body maintains its uniform proportion. In age the waste exceeds the renewal, and the body languishes, decays, and dies.

All outward human appendances seem to have a specific purpose, and when they have accomplished it they proceed rapidly to decay and dissolution. All the political organizations, all the theories and dogmas of philosophy, and all the varying forms of religion of antiquity had their end, which they accomplished, and then they perished. The spirit which animated these incorporeal forms passed, when the set time was come, into other, higher, and nobler forms. The spirit of religion, which had animated the typical and ceremonial forms of the Jewish worship, did, on the bringing in of the better covenant, forsake its old and dilapidated habitation, as would the winged butterfly its effete and defunct chrysalis, and assume the living and inexpressibly-improved form of Christianity.

Each individual particle of the human body has, probably, in like manner, its end. That purpose accomplished, the effete particle is thrown from the system, and its place supplied by another vital particle. Each