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One is almost tempted to think that their impious hatred of the very name of God arose in part from a desire to secure all the worship of mankind for themselves. It is difficult to read without a blush the fulsome language in which they addressed each other. A specimen or two will suffice. "I was asked the other day,' writes Voltaire, 'what I thought of the Eloges of M. de Condorcet. I replied, by writing on the title-page, Justice, accuracy, learning, clearness, precision, taste, elegance, and nobleness.' Has he occasion to speak of Marmontel? 'Our age must have lain sweltering in the mud, had not the fifteenth chapter of Belisarius been written.' Has he to speak of La Harpe, on the announcement of a new piece from his pen Europe is waiting for Melanie,' says he. In his correspondence with D'Alembert, we find perpetually, My dear great man -my universal genius-adieu, thou man who art above thine age and country-adieu great man-adieu eagle,' and the like; the whole, to give higher relief to these magnificent expressions, amid familiarities and obscenities of all sorts." Only think of "the age" being rescued from ruin by a chapter of Marmontel, and all Europe standing in breathless expectation of a work by La Harpe! After this it was a poor compliment to D'Alembert, to say that he was above his age and country. Poor men! their dust has long since mingled with its parent earth, and their very names are vanishing from the memory of mankind, while the inspired productions of the fishermen of Galilee are daily winning new converts to the cause of truth and righteousness. But, were they honest in thus flattering each other? According to our author, far from it. They did it, partly to create a fictitious reputation, which might be of service to the cause of infidelity, and partly to get themselves flattered. The compact was as hollow as it was profane.-Leisure Hour.

The Man-degrading Character of Unbelief.

The lofty

By some it is denied, that "there is a spirit in man." distinction between mind and matter is confounded; and the organization of a clod is thought sufficient to give birth to reason and feeling; to all that dignifies the nature of man in comparison with the capacities of animals.

If a few allow that this frame, disorganized by death, shall live again by a resurrection, and thus only make death a parenthesis in our being, the majority take a wider sweep into speculative impiety, pluck off the crown of immortality which was placed upon the head of humanity by the Trinity in council; and doom him who in this life feels that he but begins to live, to live no more. Thus death is not the mere parenthesis, but the period of life: the volume closes at the preface; and vice exults at the news, that this portal of our present existence leads only to airy, empty nothingness.

Another stratagem of the philosophy which has no faith, is to persuade us that we are but atoms in the mass of beings; and that to suppose ourselves noticed by the Great Supreme, either in judgment or in mercy, is an unfounded, presumptuous conceit. With David there are persons who lead us to survey the ample cope of the fir

mament, "the moon and the stars," which God hath ordained, and cry, not like him in adoring wonder at fact, but in the spirit of a base and grovelling unbelief,-"What is man, that " God" should be mindful of him?"

The word of God stands in illustrious and cheering contrast to all these chilling and vicious speculations. As to our moral condition, it lays us deep in the dust, and brings down every high imagination. "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked." In our unregenerate state we are represented as capable of no good, and incapable of no evil. But it never abases our nature itself. In this sacred record, this testimony of God, man is the head and chief of the system he inhabits, and the image of God. He is arrayed in immortality, and invested with high and even awful capacities both of good and evil. Nay, more; low as he may be reduced by sickness and poverty, his interest in his Maker's regards continues unbroken and unforfeited. So in the text, Job, poor, diseased, unpitied, and forsaken, sees the hand, yes, and the heart of God, in his trouble, and in a strain of devout gratitude exclaims, "What is man, that thou shouldest magnify him, and that thou shouldest set thy heart upon him ?" WATSON.

THE POWER OF LOVE.

THIS is the most mighty, as well as most lofty, principle in the universe. You see its power in the individual, in the family, and in society, wherever it has free development. All the happiness of society and of families turns upon the extent to which this celestial principle has been developed among the individual members of which they consist. And yet, strange to say, there are many heads of families who, intent only on acting a dignified part, regard the indulgence of affection as an unpardonable weakness. "They will," as has been well observed, "return from a journey, and greet their families with a distant dignity, and move among their children with the cold and lofty splendour of an iceberg, surrounded by its broken fragments. There is hardly a more unnatural sight on earth than one of these families without a heart. A father had better extinguish a boy's eyes than take away his heart. Who that has experienced the joys of friendship, and values sympathy and affection, would not rather lose all that is beautiful in nature's scenery, than be robbed of the hidden treasure of his heart? Cherish, then, your heart's best affections. Indulge in the warm and gushing emotions of filial, parental, and fraternal love. Think it not a weakness. God is love. Love God, everybody, and everything that is lovely. Teach your children to love; to love the rose; to love the robin; to love their parents; higher stillto love their God. Let it be the studied object of their domestic culture to give them warm hearts, ardent affections. Bind your whole family together by these strong cords. You cannot make them too strong. Religion is love-love to God, love to man."

14

THE FIRESIDE HAS ITS HEROES, AS WELL AS THE BATTLE-FIELD.

A writer in one of the leading journals of this great country, says, in allusion to the fearful cavalry charge at Balaklava, in the dreadful battle of the 25th of November last, that "The Roman citizen hardly rode more gallantly, more deliberately, into the fabled gulf in the Forum, than those devoted six hundred rushed to the place of their glorious doom. They went as fanatics seek the death that is to save them, and as heroes, have sought death in the thick of the fight, when they could no longer hope to conquer. But this was something more than individual prowess, or the enthusiasm of a crowd. There was organization and discipline; there was even experience and military skill, at least, enough to enable the chiefs to know the terrible nature of the deed. They saw, that in the execution of the order in their hands, they would have to run the gauntlet of batteries, ambuscades, reserves, enough for the destruction of an army, but they went with their eyes open, as if under a spell. It was a skilful, murderous, and powerful foe, that prepared the path for their destruction, and yet at that challenge, they went on and persevered to their doom. This was not war, as the French General said; it was a spectacle, and one worthy of the cloud of witnesses' that encompassed the performers. When our first horror and admiration have subsided, one feels a species of mystery in the deed, which interests us even more than the more important tidings that are now pouring in. What is the meaning of a spectacle so strange, so terrific, so disastrous, and yet so grand ?"

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So much for the heroes of the battle field, and never did gallant men more richly deserve such praise; but let us turn to the displays of more than mortal courage, which are sometimes witnessed in social life. We cannot do better than take the curate of St. Luke's, "If a person, in the parish of St. James's, London, for our Mentor. says the curate, were to start from the western end of Broad Street, and traversing its whole length on the south side, from west to east, to return as far as the brewery, and then going down Hopkins' Street, and up New Street, to end by walking through Pulteney Court, he would pass successively forty-five houses, of which only six, escaped without a death, during the recent outbreak of Cholera in that neighbourhood. According to a calculation based upon the late Census, these forty-five houses, contained a population of about 1000; out of that number, 103 perished by the pestilence!" a proportion of mortality, more than twice as great as that inflicted on the allies at Alma; and more than equal to that sustained by the Autocrat, in the affair at Balaklava. And it was a sudden infliction, which enveloped the people almost instantly in its full horrors. One half of the deaths occurred during

the first four days.

But the shower of iron and of fire at Balaklava, was not sustained more heroically by our troops, than the fell attacks of the invisible destroyer by the heroines, who during these awful days, watched by the side of the dead, and of the dying. There was no panic-terror;

no craven yielding up, of the sympathies of humanity to the instinct of self-preservation. On the contrary, the people according to the testimony of the curate, "with scarce an exception, stood by one another in the season of peril and perplexity, with unflinching and admirable courage. Panic there was none; but it was a trying time— all the more trying, by reason of the uncertainty that prevailed at first, as to the area of the pestilence, and its probable duration."

But let us follow our Mentor through a few of the touching, and indeed startling scenes, which he was called to witness. Hear him"The morning of Friday, the 1st of September, was a morning long to be remembered in this neighbourhood. The first intimation which the writer received of the sad incidents of the night, came in the form of a summons to the death-bed of one with whom he had cheerfully conversed at a late hour on the preceding evening. A patient, gentle widow, she was, an object of special interest to all who knew her. Many a pitying glance was cast that morning upon her little children, as they moved about scarcely conscious of what was happening. What was to become of them? They have found an asylum, but it is in their mother's grave. A fearful tragedy was enacting in that one small house, when eight of its twenty inmates died in quick succession before the night of the 4th September. And one there was who will be remembered by survivors, as one of God's own heroines, a truly Christian woman, who watched day and night at the bedsides of the dying, and by her calm, and quiet demeanour sustained the spirits of the living, till she herself fell the eighth victim to the disease. The writer will not soon forget, how, on the 5th or 6th evening of the month, he found the remnant gathered together in one room, in a state of anxiety and suspense, concerning one of their number, who complained of feeling sick and ill, and how their countenances lighted up with a gleam of satisfaction, when, he assured them, that the disease was subsiding, and its virulence abated, and that sickness was no longer the certain forerunner of death."

The next scene, to which we invite attention, is one of the most afflictive cases of domestic suffering ever witnessed; it may almost be regarded as the climax of wretchedness. Hear the worthy Curate's touching description :— "The writer well remembers one that he witnessed. It was on a ground floor where the rooms communicated with each other; in the centre lay an interesting girl, just recovering from collapse, feebly inquiring for her mother and her sister; none dared to breathe a whisper that on the right and left lay a coffin in either room. Worn out by the fatigues of two harassing days and a sleepless night, either dozing or too broken-hearted to speak, sat the father by the corpse of his wife. Two grown up sons were alternately nursing their sister, and conversing with a friend and neighbour who had come to cheer their drooping spirits. The sequel to this narrative, is fraught with far too much melancholy interest to be passed over in silence. The poor girl seemed for a time to progress favourably, and it was deeply touching to see, how the prospect of her recovery engrossed her father's thoughts. If she were but spared to him, he frequently said, he could be content to live. But his own turn came

to be laid low, and he was removed up stairs, there to be nursed by his sister-in-law and his sons. Meanwhile, his daughter died of the consecutive fever. For a few days, her death was kept from his knowledge, and he appeared to be slowly recovering, till one afternoon, he somehow became acquainted with the truth, cast one look of anguish upon all present, turned his head on his pillow, and was dead before night. His sister-in-law, one of her children, and the friend, whose midnight visit to the family was just now mentioned, all breathed their last about the same time."

Another example, and we are done. "A woman was watching by the bed--the death bed, she imagined, of a kind and affectionate husband. Her children were with her, already orphans in her sight; she had passed one long night of sleepless anxiety; another was before herthe shades of evening fast closing upon the silent group, when a gentle tap summoned her to the door, to welcome the sympathising countenance of a stranger. "Your husband is ill,” said this unknown friend: "and you sat up last night with him; I will sit by him to night. Hush!" motioning to suppress the expressions of gratitude that were forthcoming, 66 we must not disturb him ;" and then she proceeded at once to the bedside to nurse the sick man, as only a woman-not every woman can. It is notorious that for this disease, by far the best remedy is, an indefatigable skilful nurse; and so we may believe that, under the blessing of God, this kind good woman had much to do with the favourable turn taken by the patient, during the course of the night. "There, he is better now," she said in the morning; "I think you will be able to manage," and then withdrew as quickly as she came. Two or three times after, she presented herself at the door, but only to ask after the object of her tender care and solicitude, and immediately to retire."

Examples like this have a sweet odour. They exert a healing influence on human wretchedness. They realise, and more than realise, the visions of poesy with respect to the tenderness of woman. Who can turn from the contemplation of deeds like this, without pronouncing her, "the angel of life?"

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THE Great Exhibition of 1851, was the realization of a grand idea. The bringing together of the products, natural and industrial, of the four quarters of the globe, to the extent then witnessed, was an event without a parallel in the history of nations. At first, but an idea in the mind of the Prince Consort, the Exhibition gradually assumed a more definite and substantial form, until, at length, it stood forth a splendid reality, commanding the admiration, and administering to the instruction of mankind. The Crystal Palace was a structure worthy of the purpose to which it was consecrated, and was itself an exhibition of taste and genius, the sight of which was ample remuneration for the toil and expense of a long pilgrimage; but far

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