her glory will still survive, fresh in eternal youth, exempt from mutability and decay, immortal as the intellectual principle from which they derived their origin, and over which they exercise their control.

LESSON XLIV.

INFLUENCE OF THE BIBLE ON LITERATURE AND ART.

MARSH.

1. With our Puritan ancestors, the Bible was the textbook of parental instruction; it was regarded with fond and reverent partiality as the choicest classic of the school; it was the companion of the closet, the pillow of the lonely wayfarer, the only guide to happiness beyond the tomb. Of all Christian sects, the Puritans were most profoundly versed in the sacred volume; of all men, they have best exemplified the spirit of its doctrines; of all religious communities, they have most abundantly enjoyed those blessings wherewith God has promised to crown his earthly church.

2. It is to early familiarity with the Bible, to its persevering study and its daily use, that we must chiefly ascribe the great intellectual power of the English Puritans of the seventeenth century, and the remarkable metaphysical talent of many of their American descendants.

3. Intellectual philosophy, the knowledge of the spiritual in man, is literally, as well as figuratively, a divine science. It can be successfully pursued only where the divine word, undistorted by any gloss of human authority, may be both

The early dissenters from the Church of England were called Puritans, on nocount of their professing to follow the pure word of God in opposition to all traditions and human constitutions.

freely read and openly discussed, and when the relations of man to God and divine things, are subject to investigation, and checked by no fear of legal restraints.

4. All higher philosophy is essentially religious; and its fearless, yet reverent study, as a science, implied if not revealed in the Scriptures, is the fittest preparation both for achieving and appreciating the highest triumphs of human genius, whether in the sublimest flights of poesy, or the glorious creations of plastic and pictorial art.

5. If it be asked, what human spirit has been most keenly alive to feel, and most abundantly endowed with the creative power to realize, in living and imperishable forms, all that is lovely or terrible in nature, all that is grand or beautiful in art, all that is noble or refined in feeling, all that is glorious in humanity, and all that is sublime in religion, all men unhesitatingly answer, the soul of John Milton, the Christian, and the Puritan.

6. The source whence Milton drew his inspiration, was the sacred book. Without a thorough familiarity with that volume, such poetry and such prose as that of Milton can neither be produced, nor comprehended; for the knowledge. of the Bible is not merely suggestive of the loftiest conceptions, but, in awakening the mind to the idea of the infinite, it confers the power of originating as well as of appreciating them.

LESSON XLV.

THE ETERNITY OF GOD.- BROOKS.

[See Rule 7, p. 183.]

1. The deep fountains of the earth are thine, Laid by thy hand, Almighty, when of old From ancient chaos order rose, and light,

From darkness,

- beauty, from a shapeless mass.

A glorious orb from its Creator's hands

It came, in light and loveliness arrayed,

Crowned with green em'rald mounts, tinted with gold,
And wearing as a robe, the silver sea,
Seeded with jewels of resplendent isles.

2. The awful heavens are thine:

the liquid sun

That heaves his fiery waves beneath thine eye -
The ocean-fount of all the streams of light,

That, from their beamy treasures through the wide,
Illimitable ether, water with their rays,

The wide-spread soil, to where the burning sands
Of dark immensity, eternal barriers throw
Against the flowing of their crystal streams,-
Was from the Godhead's urn of glory poured.

3. The stars are thine, - thy charactery grand,
In which, upon the face of awful heaven,
Thy hand has traced in radiant lines, thy grace,
Thy glory, thy magnificence and power,

For eye of man and angel to behold,

And read and gaze on, worship and adore.

These shall grow old; the solid earth, with years
Shall see her sapless body shrivel up,

And her gray mountains crumble piecemeal down,
Like crypt and pyramid, to primal dust.

4. The sea shall labor: on his hoary head
Shall wave his tresses, silvered o'er with age.
The deep pulsations of his mighty heart,
That bids the blood-like fluid circulate
Through every fiber of the earth, shall cease;
And the eternal heavens, in whose bright folds,
As in a starry vesture, thou art girt,

Shall lose their luster, and grow old with years.

5. And as a worn-out garment, thou shalt fold
Their faded glories, and they shall be changed
To vesture bright, immortal as thyself.

Yea, the eternal heavens, on whose blue page
Thy glory and magnificence are traced,
With age shall tarnish, and shall be rolled up
As parchment scrolls of abrogated acts,
And be deposited in deathless urns,
Among the archives of the mighty God.

6. Thou art the same,thy years shall never fail :
In glory bright, when every star and sun
Shall lose its luster, and expire in night;
Immortal all, when time and slow decay
Imprint their ravages on nature's face;
Triumphantly secure, when from the tower
Of highest heaven's imperial citadel,
The bell of nature's dissolution toll,

And sun, and star, and planet be dissolved,
And the wide drapery of darkness hang
A gloomy pall of sable mourning round
Dead nature in the grave of chaos laid.

LESSON XLVI.

EXTRACT FROM THE LIFE OF WASHINGTON.- CASKET. [Historical Narration.- Rule 1, p. 154.]

1. Considered as a compound of whatever is most estimable and magnificent in man, corporeal majesty and strength, united to unusual symmetry and comeliness of person; intellectual penetration, vigor, and decision; unsullied purity and moral grandeur, the subject of this article is without a parallel in history or tradition. In no other indi

vidual, ancient or modern, has such transcendent greatness been found associated with such exalted virtue. Perfection does not belong to humanity; but the nearest approach to it that mortal has attained, is believed to have been in him: a patriot without blemish; a statesman without guile; a leader of armies without ambition, except that noble and virtuous ambition which excites its possessor to become the greatest and the best; a magistrate without severity, yet inflexible in uprightness; a citizen exemplary in the discharge of every duty; a man in whose character weakness and faults appeared but as specks on the brightness of the sun; who had religion without austerity; dignity without pride; modesty without diffidence; courage without rashness; politeness without affectation; and affability without familiarity: such was the illustrious person whose life we now briefly attempt to portray.

2. When at the age of twenty-one, he greatly distinguished himself by his hardihood and intrepidity, perseverance and address, in bearing a dispatch to a French officer of distinction, through an extensive tract of unexplored country, planted with tribes of hostile Indians, and in conducting all the important business pertaining to it.

3. He next presents himself to our view on the field of Braddock. We there behold him in the midst of carnage, daring all that man can dare, and performing whatever is in the compass of human power. When the commander-inchief, and every other officer of rank had fallen, he alone, protected by Heaven for the fulfillment of great ulterior purposes, is left to contend with victorious savages, and to conduct to a place of safety the remnant of the army. All this he performed in a manner indicative of his exalted destiny.

4. And when the defensive war against the oppressing usurpations of Great Britain, had been agreed on by that august and enlightened body who proclaimed our independ