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righteousness, though the gold of Ophir cannot purchase it, it is a privilege that he gives, gives as an affectionate father gives to his son, as a wealthy, bountiful prince adopts some poor orphan, and makes him the inheritor of his crown.

Come, then, ye who are young! no longer despise the bounty and grace of your Father who is in heaven. Come and enter into his family, whose faithful love will guard you from the sins that embitter, and the woes that await all who are strangers to the living God. Now, while conscience is yet tender, and memory and heart are open to impressions that will leave their trace upon many a passing year; now, "while the evil days come not," remember your Creator in the days of your youth. He utters no stronger and no more affectionate claim, than when he says, "My son, give me thy heart." He would have those wayward and wandering thoughts, those dissipated, and vain, and idolatrous affections weaned from others, and concentrated on himself. Child of promise and of hope, of solicitude and prayer! thoughtless and gay, and never more in need of a father's care, "wilt thou not, from this time, say unto him, My Father! thou art the guide of my youth?"

AMUSEMENTS IN COLOR.

WHAT a beautiful thing is Color; and yet what frightful effects are sometimes produced by injudicious or discordant combinations of different tints. Such combinations, however, are not found in nature; and from this fact alone, we might deduce a powerful argument for the Divine wisdom and goodness. We see the hand of a consummate Artist in every tinge that ornaments the landscape, or marks the tiniest flower-in the marbling of an insect's wing, and the lighting up of an universe with stars and planets.

Yet to this day we know not what color is, unless it be a modification of light, varied according to the direction in which it falls, or separated by some mystic affinities in those objects it illuminates, into its component parts. When a ray of light strikes on a triangular bar of glass, technically called a prism, it does not pass directly through it, but is deflected or turned aside in such a way as to disentangle the seven threads

of which it is composed, and leave as many different colors upon the surface of an object, so placed as to intercept its further progress. This colored image is called the solar, or prismatic spectrum, and the colors into which the light is resolved are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.

In this first form-this unsophisticated infancy of color, when we see it, as it were, in its very birth-the principle of harmony to which we have alluded is eminently conspicuous. Color comes into the world with the impress of its Maker's hand upon it.

Though seven colors have been enumerated, Sir David Brewster has lately shewn that there are in fact but three simples ones-red, yellow, and blue. These colors, it is well known, will not harmonize. The attempt to combine them would be intolerable to persons making any pretensions to taste, and they are only found together when it is sought to please the low, loud, vulgar predilections of the untaught or the unteachable.

We have had this fact brought before us in a very pleasing manner by means of a scientific toy lately issued, entitled "Amusements in Color."* It consists of a small box containing some dozens of triangular pieces of card-board, colored respectively yellow, red, blue, orange, green, yellow-green, purple, crimson, olive, brown, slate, and russet. These triangles, arranged according to the natural laws of color, form an endless variety of beautiful combinations; but injudiciously assorted, produce anomalous and ugly figures, for which even their symmetry and mathematical accuracy can make no adequate amends.

To revert now to our argument respecting the natural arrangement of the colors in Light. "Discords," says one of the canons of this art printed on the lid of our little box, "are formed by colors that look ill when placed together. Yellow and red, red and blue, and yellow and blue, are discordant, and should not touch, but have a harmonizing color put between, as orange or green between yellow and blue.”

Whence comes this rule? Is it intuitive, or is it a lesson learned in the great school of outward nature by severe and

* Published by J. Underwood and Co. 4, Crane-court, Fleet-street.

exact observation. Our sympathies tend towards the first of these conclusions. We are not such ready scholars as to pick up, spontaneously, a principle like this. Rather do we believe that we have that within us which greedily lays hold of, and appropriates these harmonies in nature. He who 'knows our frame,' has made us for the world we live in, and that world for us. The beauties above and around us have each and all a corresponding power of appreciation in the soul; and this is but one of its manifold illustrations.

God has provided music for the eye in this wonderful world of color. The very gradations necessary to produce pleasing and harmonious effects are observable in its simplest, its earliest, combinations. A ray of light has no discords. The red ray passes into orange before it meets the yellow, and the yellow into green before it impinges on the blue. There can be nothing harsh-nothing repulsive-nothing anomalous in the handiworks of the Great Artist. And man has always thought so. "Colors harmonize with those that are most like them. Red harmonizes with crimson, orange, purple, or russet. Yellow harmonizes with green, orange, brown, or citron. Blue harmonizes with green, purple, slate, or grey."

But there is another law with reference to color from which we may educe proofs equally interesting of the wisdom and goodness of God. Besides the combinations already spoken of, there are those dependent on "harmonious contrasts" which are still more beautiful-red with green, yellow with purple, or blue with orange. Now these harmonious contrasts are abundant in the world around us. Color is in itself a rich gift to man; but color, enhanced by such a disposition of its elements, is pre-eminently worthy of our deepest gratitude. "Colors," says the late author of the Eighth Bridgewater Treatise," are universally agreeable to mankind; and the most incurious and ignorant are attracted by, and delighted with, showy exhibitions of them. There is no reason why man should have distinguished colors at all, much less have been delighted with them: but what is the fact? Not only are we gifted with organs exquisitely sensible to the beauty of colors; but as if solely to gratify this feeling, the whole of nature, from the highest to the lowest of her productions, forms one gorgeously

colored picture, in which every possible tint is contrasted or associated in every possible manner. Is there a human being who can witness the splendid coloring of the atmosphere above him by the setting sun; who can witness the beauty and endless variety of tint displayed by every object of the landscape around him, down to the minutest insect, or flower, or pebble at his feet; who is conscious of the pleasure he derives from these objects, and who reflects that this pleasure was not necessary to his existence, and might have been withheld-is there, we ask, a human being who duly considers all these things, and who will dare to assert that the Being who made them all is not benevolent?"

We think there are such beings, though we know there ought not to be. But our admiration of color rests not in the mere fact of its existence. Our faith in the Divine goodness delights not so much in these "showy exhibitions," or "gorgeously-colored pictures," as in the quiet and harmonious arrangement of the tints which glow in every form around us. There is nothing abrupt or violent in nature; and in no one thing is this law more conspicuous than in the due assortment and coupling and blending of these tints.

Nature abhors all discord, and the Great Author of nature has actually brought into operation a new and beautiful arrangement, by which those discords that might otherwise occur, are softened down into graceful harmonies. Objects in themselves colorless, or for aught we know, harshly contrasted with others, have their own hues toned down or superseded by a well-known principle in optics, called the doctrine of complementary colors.

"Many of our double stars," says Herschel, "exhibit the curious and beautiful phenomenon of contrasted or complementary colors. In such instances the larger star is usually of a ruddy or orange hue, while the smaller one appears blue or green, probably in virtue of that general law of optics which provides that when the retina is under the influence of excitement by any bright colored light, feebler lights shall, for the time, appear colored with the tint complementary to that of the brighter."

And what is this complementary tint, but the very one which by its contrast, ministers most pleasure to the eye of taste.

God pairs those colors which it is universally agreed look best together, and thus furnishes another proof of his consummate beneficence towards his intelligent but erring creatures. The star marked iota, in the constellation Cancer, is of a bright yellow, and its lesser attendant appears, in consequence, beautifully blue; whilst that marked gamma, in Andromeda, being of a rich crimson, its satellite appears green-both instances of harmonious contrast, calculated to fill the mind with highest admiration of the Great Architect of the universe, who "brings forth the twelve signs in their seasons."

Descending from the worlds above us to the minutest object at our feet-coming down from the star to the flower, we see still the same pervading principle. Colors are either blended or beautifully contrasted :—the rich deep purple of the heartsease throwing up, with full effect, the glorious golden lustre of its lower petals, or the full warm pencillings of the homely wall-flower, melting into orange or its kindred hues.

And what a wonderful arrangement is the graceful intermixture of those universal harmonizers-black and white-both of them nonentities; the first merely a negation of light, the other a fusion of its many colors into none. Yet who can describe the richness of effect produced by an all-wise management of these two agencies! Few contrasts are in themselves so grateful as black and white; and they can neither be misplaced. The bird, the flower, the insect, all bear witness to this fact, and exhibit equally, in the bold and delicate management of their coloring, "the unambiguous footsteps of a God."

BIBLE PUBLICATIONS.

Though we are not professed reviewers, it affords us pleasure from time to time to notice such of the works sent us as admit of extract. But many books will not allow of this, though exceedingly valuable and especially adapted to our class of readers. We feel therefore tempted on the present occasion to deviate from this practice in recommending to all Bible-students especially, and indeed to every thinking and reading mind, "The Analysis and Summary of Old Testament History," lately published by Messrs. Bagster, whose name is a sufficient

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