The reason why the majority of irreligious and worldly men do not experience those pangs of conscience, that remorse, which the gospel ascribes to vice, is because they are not vicious. They are merely not virtuous. Now vice is positive and not negative just as virtue is something of itself, and not merely the absence of vice. God, by his eternal law, does not affix to sloth, to carelessness, to selfishness, to worldliness, the punishment that belongs to malignity, to violence, to guilty passions, to crime. Consequently the mass of men, inactive and not virtuous, suffer only the gradual decay of inward resources, lose the capacity of elevated happiness, and dwindle without anguish into moral nothingness. They perish by moral consumption, and not by violent spasms and convulsions. For the great retribution attached to the neglect of virtue is the absence of virtue's own rewards. Just as he, who will not plough and sow and labor, can have no harvest, which is the only direct consequence of his sloth, so he, who will not be virtuous, must lose the crown and joy of virtue.

Mere indifferency of character, which is the prevailing species of character, is a kind of gradual extinction of being, which it requires much hopefulness to believe may be stopped or remedied in some future sphere of action.

The moral element alone confers immortality. It is the sole principle of permanent growth and worth in the soul. Beyond a certain point there is no education possible, except moral discipline. The preparatory education of life is but the necessary foundation of this, the great education of eternity. The only happiness worthy of God to confer upon full grown men is moral happiness. He will confer none other. If not capable of receiving this, we must have nothing till we are. The character, which receives such partial attention from most men here, is the engrossing object of attention in a proper and ultimate state of being. The virtue, which confers so small a portion of the general happiness on earth, is the sole dispenser of felicity in Heaven.

It is for this reason alone, that religion is not content to let men be happy in their own way, because it is a temporary and perishing way. This is the occasion of all the moralizing and sermonizing against the pleasures of life, not that they are bad or wrong in themselves, but they engage and monopolize the attention which is needed for higher and truer enjoyments.

H. W. B.

THE DYING FLOWER.

FROM THE GERMAN OF RÜCKERT, BY THE REV, N. L. FROTHINGHAM.

HOPE! thou yet shalt live to see

Vernal sun and vernal air;
Such the hope of every tree

Stripped by autumn's tempests bare.
Hidden in their quiet strength,
Winter-long their germs repose,

Till the sap starts fresh at length,
And the new-born verdure grows.

"Ah! no mighty tree am I,

That a thousand summers lives,
And, its winter dream gone by,

Spring-like green and gladness gives.
I am but an humble flower

Wakened by the kiss of May;
There is left no trace of power,

As, shrouded white, I drop away."

Since thou, then, a floweret art,
Modest child, of gentle kin,
Hear thou this, and so take heart : —
Every plant has seed within.

Be it that the wind of death

Scatters thee with blast and cold,
Still thou 'It breathe in others' breath,
Thus renewed a hundred fold.

Be they all I used to show;

I can be myself no more;
All my being lives in now,

Nought behind and nought before.

Though the

sun, that warms me yet,
Dart through them his glances bright,
That soothes not the fate that's set,
Dooming me to endless night.
Sun, already them that follow

Followest thou with glowing eye;
Mock me not with that dim, hollow,
Frosty glance from clouded sky.

"Woe's me, that I felt thy blaze
Kindling me to my short day!

That I met thy ardent gaze
Till it stole my life away!
What of that poor life remains
From thy pity I'll withhold;

I'll avoid thee, and my pains

Close in my closed self uphold.

"Yet these icy thoughts relent,
Melted by thee to a tear;
Take, O take my breath that's spent,
Everlasting, to thy sphere.

Yes, thou sunnest all the sorrow

Out from my dark heart at last;

Dying, all I had to borrow

I thank thee for; now all is past.

VOL. XXXIII. 3D s. VOL. XV. NO. III.

37

"For every gentle note of spring;
Each summer's gale I trembled to;
Each golden insect's dancing wing,

That gaily round my leaflets flew;
For eyes that sparkled at my hues ;

For hearts that blessed my fragrancy, Made but of tints and odorous dews,Maker, I still give thanks to thee.

"Of thy world an ornament,

Though a trifling and a poor,
I to grace the fields was sent,
As stars bedeck the higher floor.
One gasp have I left me still,

And no sigh shall that be found;
One look yet to heaven's high hill,
And the beauteous world around.

"Let me towards thee pour my soul,
Fire-heart of this this lower sphere;
Heaven, thine azure tent unroll;
Mine, once green, hangs wrinkled here.
Hail, O Spring, thy beaming eye!

Hail, O Morn, thy wooing breath!
Without complaint in death I lie,

If without hope to rise from death."

NOTICE OF THE PROGRESS OF PEACE PRINCIPLES.

OUR attention has recently been attracted by symptoms of fresh life in the movement of peace. A new impulse has evidently been imparted to it. An activity seems to be beginning, which promises to fulfil the hopes of its friends, and scatter the apathy and unbelief of the indifferent.

It seems to belong to the history of moral progress, that it shall have stages; shall pass through alternations; be marked by eras; now go forward, now backward, now be stationary; linger sometimes slowly, like a fire that slackens for a period as if about to die away, but which is in fact only pausing, to refresh its strength, and then burst out with fresh fury. The project of laboring for permanent and universal peace was first agitated in 1815. It took immediate hold of many minds and made rapid advancement; then it languished for a time, made no apparent progress, and not only failed to command a general interest at all proportionable to its importance and promise, but was in danger of being absolutely smothered by a universal apathy, upon which the zealous fidelity of a few was able to make no impression. Now, at length, there are signs of awakening which give ground to believe that all that seeming lethargy, so like death in appearance, was only a pause of deliberation, during which a great preparation was silently made in a multitude of souls. The seeds, which had been sown and had apparently perished, were only reposing in the fattening furrow, till their natural period should be fulfilled for springing up in a thick growth of vigorous plants, to overshadow and bless the soil. They were thoughtless, faint-hearted, unbelieving souls, which imagined the sowing to be lost, because the ground looked so long barren, and no corn answered the inquiring eye of the impatient sower. They should have known better. They should have taken a lesson from the husbandman, who is not at all troubled that the ground remains barren for a while, because a long-hidden work beneath the surface is an essential preliminary to the glorious springing of the green herb above, and the final burden of an ample harvest. The seed is not quickened, except it die. The small band of believing and resolute men, (resolute, because believing,) who watched with undaunted hope the apparent deadness of the