THE FINAL JUDGMENT. the most deplorable sinners in the left-hand throng. It is the man who has a cultivated mind, and who has been trained up in the midst of churches and Bibles and Sabbaths-who has been warned from the pulpit, and warned by conscience, and has felt and resisted the pleadings of the Spirit ;it is the man who turns in cold unconcern from the sacramental table, and utters no voice of morning or evening prayer in his family, and sets his children the example of rejecting the Saviour, and of a prayerless life-who has no pious emotion to throb in sympathy with a Christian friend, but who contributes by his own spiritual death to the desolation of the soul, to the stupefaction of the spiritual feelings of all within the reach of bis paralyzing influence-whose lips never teach his infant child to lisp in prayer, or with paternal warnings guide its youthful spirit to penitence and the Saviour;-it is the man who knows God, but does not love him-who has the Bible, but will not read it-who is familiar with God's commands, yet refuses to obey them-who has heard of a Saviour's love, and carelessly disregards it who sees the wants and woes of a lost world, but has no prayer for its relief, and no effort for its redemption: this is the man upon whom will rest doomsday's heaviest penalty. He is, of all the world, God's most implacable foe. He has shut his eye against light, and steeled his heart against influence, and betrayed immortal souls; and in judgment's hour, his cry of despair will be the loudest. The indictment in that day preferred against the sinner will be, "God, in whose hands thy breath is, and whose are all thy ways, thou hast not glorified." The poor benighted Hindu woman, who rises in the morning, and from the mud, at the door of her hovel, squeezes out the image of her god and bows before it in worship, has a more devout spirit than many a man in New England, whose mind is enlightened by all the revelations of philosophy, and who knows the requirements of religion. Even in this act of brutal blindness, of degrading superstition, she rises in moral dignity above that man who has known God, and yet has glorified him not as God. We are apt to make altogether erroneous estimates of the comparative degree of sin. We look into the brothels of pollution--into the grated cells of crime, for the worst specimens of human depravity; and we see there, indeed, the most brutish ignorance, the most disgusting degradation and the direst wretchedness; but we do not 341 see that which God regards as the most atrocious sin. Most of these wretched victims, cradled in vice and nurtured in crime, have many extenuating pleas to move the compassion of God. But his eye rests with a frown which compassion does not soften, upon the man whom he has blest with a home of every comfort, whose mind he has enlightened by free access to knowledge, whose manners he has refined by giving him his birth in a Christian land, and who is nevertheless living without God in the world. His neglect of God has no extenuation. His ingratitude is unparalleled in its enormity. Retribution's blackest cloud hangs over him. Eternity's heaviest thunder will peal upon his soul. Most emphatically is it true that it shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for him. Do you feel the glow of love and gratitude towards your heavenly Father? Do you carefully cherish every religious emotion which the Holy Spirit excites in your mind? Do you honor the Saviour by meeting him at the sacramental table and unreservedly dedicating your all to him? Do you love the sweet hour of secret prayer, and that commingling of Christian sympathies which is the communion of the saints? Do you choose for your friends your heavenly Father's friends, and in their congenial Christian sympathies find your chief joy? Do you love to talk of heaven, and try to encourage and animate your friends to press onward in the divine life? Do you weep over a perishing world, and devote your energies to reclaiming a lost race to God? These are the tests of character which will be applied at the judgment? The consciousness of preparation for this great day is the only solace of life. Life is filled with scenes of trial, where nothing cheers but hopes of heaven. The mind has its storms as well as the material world. At times the clouds will gather, we know not why; the horizon of hope is shut in by the gathering gloom; all the inward thoughts and feelings begin to swell in wild commotion, and then the tempest rages, day after day, and night after night, with unabating violence. In vain we ask whence came these darkening clouds, these troubled waves? All our endeavors to assuage this elemental war, to calm this agitating storm, are unavailing; it rages like the ocean tempest, till apparently it exhausts itself, and then the vapors are gradually dissipated; rays of light break in ; the clouds scatter and roll away, and the soul reposes in sunshine and lovely calm. LAST MOMENTS OF CRANMER. POETRY. BY A YOUNG LADY. SOME seek for the surface of beauty, Oft dazzling, enchanting, and bright, There's a love in the wide throng of fashion While feelings and objects well worthy Oh, where are the true sons of feeling? Their spirits recoil at the thought: 'Tis the ocean's fair surface that sparkles, What Heaven's so richly bestowed? But we ask now, in what they consist? Is it gold and bright pearls which should charm us? To search, to strive, and to soar ! LAST MOMENTS OF CRANMER. as represented to us by a Popish spectator; to his self-possession and alacrity at the stake; to the fortitude which enabled him steadily to hold his offending hand in the flame without a movement or a cry; to his "patience in the torment, and his courage in 'dying, which," says the Catholic reporter, "if it had been taken either for the glory of God, the wealth of his country, or the testimony of truth, as it was for a pernicious error, and the subversion of true religion, I could worthily have commended the example, and matched it with the fame of any Father of ancient time." Such was the departure of Cranmer. And when we recollect his constitutional defect of firmness, nothing is more astonishing than the heroism of his last hour. It has been most invidiously alleged that his retraction at St. Mary's was merely the consequence of his despair of pardon. But his despair of pardon never could have inspired this "timid courtier" with invincible firmness while the flames were devouring his flesh. His courage in the midst of suffering (which might well extort shrieks and groans even from men made of more stubborn stuff than Cranmer) could never have been the effect of hypocrisy and dissimulation. The most perverse malignity will hardly maintain that he was playing a part when he held his hand immovably in the fire that was scorching every nerve and sinew, accusing that hand as the guilty instrument of his disgrace. We have here, at least, a substantial proof that, at that moment, every other anguish was trifling, compared with the agony of his deep but not despairing repentance. We have here an exhibition which pours contempt upon the hateful and flippant surmise, that had his life been spared, he would have heard mass like a good Catholic; and that he would afterwards have purchased, by another apostasy, the right of burning braver and better men. SHORTLY after the accession of Mary, Cranmer was earnestly warned by his friends to fly, as many others were preparing to do, from the approaching persecution. No advice or entreaty could shake his resolution to remain at his post. He displayed on this occasion a fortitude worthy of the brightest periods of primitive self-devotion. It is true, that when his heaviest trials came upon him, they were at first too sore for his spirit and he fell. He signed his recantation, (whether once, or twice, or seven times, is scarcely worth inquiry,) and yet he was brought to the stake. We will not dwell on the refinement in barbarity which spared no insidious blaudishment, first to awaken his love of life What then is the truth of this whole matter! and his dread of a tormenting death, then to We have here before us a person endowed with lure him to set his hand to his own infamy, and many inestimable qualities, though not, perhaps, which did not drag its victim forth to execution with that iron fortitude, that constitutional force till he was steeped to the very lips in humilia- of character, which, combined with higher prinunder tion. We pass by the detestable mockery of ciples, bears men uniformly and stiffly up citing him to Rome, when he could not stir bethe sternest trials of this life. The fatality which yond the walls of his dungeon; of pronouncing placed him in a court, and especially in such a upon him a sentence of contumacy for disobeying the summons; and of going through the forms of a trial, when the accused was physically incapable of defence, or remonstrance, or even of personal appearance before the tribunal. We turn at once to his demeanor in the last agony, court as that of Heury, was most unfortunate for his quiet and his happiness. He was there like a man shut up with a half-tame lion, who would sometimes fawn upon him, and sometimes be ready to fly upon him. During the rest of his days he was doomed, more or less, to live in SELF-IMPROVEMENT. a menagerie of ravenous beasts-in the very midst of the impurity and the violence of the capricious savages. A more inauspicious and comfortless position for human virtue cannot well be imagined; and the consequence has been, that some spots and blemishes have broken out upon his character, which those who best knew his substantial merits must always look upon with the bitterest regret. But then, on the other hand, it will ever remain indelibly true, that the obligations of his country to him are "broad and deep;" that to his conscientious labors, and to his incomparable prudence and moderation, England mainly owes the present fabric of her Church; and that his sincerity and faithfulness were triumphant in the hour of death. THE FLIGHT OF TIME. BY J. G. PERCIVAL. FAINTLY flow, thou falling river, Down the ocean gliding ever, Roses bloom, and then they wither; Then, like visions, hurry by. Quick as clouds at evening driven O'er the many-colored west, Years are bearing us to heaven, Home of happiness and rest. 343 highly respectable education by his own private exertions. If we consult the history of distinguished individuals, we shall find, that in most cases they had, in early life, to pass through circumstances the most adverse and unpropitious. Pope Adrian the Sixth, the son of a poor barge-builder of Utrecht, was so persevering in his pursuit after knowledge when young, that, it is said, he used to take his station with his book in his hand in the church porches, or at the corners of the street, where lamps are generally kept burning, and to read by their light. Mr. Gifford, who was for several years the learned editor of the Quarterly Review, was apprenticed to a shoemaker. He has given us the following touching account of his poverty and perseverance in the pursuit of knowledge at the time of his apprenticeship. He had a strong desire to be acquainted with mathematics. "But I possessed at this time," he observes, "but one book in the world --it was a treatise on algebra, given to me by a young woman, who had found it in a lodginghouse. I considered it as a treasure; but it was a treasure locked up; for it supposed the reader to be acquainted with simple equations, and I knew nothing of the matter. My master's son had purchased Fenning's Introduction; this was precisely what I wanted--but he carefully concealed it from me, and I was indebted to chance alone for stumbling upon his hiding-place. I sat up for the greatest part of several nights successively, and, before he suspected that his treatise was discovered, I had completely mastered it; I could now enter upon my own; and that carried me pretty far into the science. This was not done without difficulty. I had not a farthing on earth, nor a friend to give me one; pen, ink, and paper, therefore, (in despite of the flippant re-. mark of Lord Orford,) were for the most part as far out of my reach as a crown and sceptre. There was indeed a resource, but the utmost caution and secresy were necessary in applying it. I beat out pieces of leather as smooth as possible, and wrought my problems on them with a blunted awl; for the rest, my memory was tenacious, and I could multiply and divide by it to a great extent." THE opinion, we fear, is too prevalent among the youth of our land, that to become truly educated, it is necessary to spend some time at some well-established college or seat of learning. Now, it is far from our intention to underrate institutions so elevated in their character and so laudable in their aims, or to withhold from them that tribute of praise to which they are so justly entitled. We most readily admit that their advantages will be felt through coming ages; but, at the same time, we deem it our duty to state that it is in the power of every youth in our land, however humble may be his sphere of action, and however unpropitious the circumstances by which he is surrounded, to acquire a We might have brought forward numerous other instances, but we deem the preceding sufficient for our purpose. A writer on education, speaking of self-improvement, very justly remarks: "When there is a strong determination to attain an object, it rarely fails of discovering the requisite means of doing so, and almost any 344 DEPTH OF THE OCEAN. means are sufficient. We mistake in supposing there is only one way of doing a thing, namely, that in which it is commonly done. Whenever we have to prove it, we find how rich in resources is necessity; and how seldom it is that, in the absence of the ordinary instrument, she has not some new invention to supply its place. This is a truth of which the studious have often had experience, and been all the better for experiencing; for difficulties so encountered and subdued, not only awaken ingenuity, but strengthen a man's whole intellectual and moral character, and fit him for struggles and achievements in after-life, from which other spirits, less hardily trained, would turn in despair." We have no hesitation in saying, that if the youth of our land, surrounded as they are with educational facilities of the highest order, would steadily devote but one hour a day to self-improvement, and be judicious in the selection of their books, placing the Bible first, they would find, in the course of a few years, there is no leading fact in history with which they would be unacquainted-there is no principle in any science that they could not understand-there is no truth in morals or religion of which they would be ignorant. By way of encouraging them in this important undertaking, we would remind them of the honors and pleasures that invariably attend all efforts at moral and intellectual improvement. How dignifying to human nature, and how bliss-inspiring to the human heart, to be employed in obtaining a knowledge of the natural and moral history of our world— of the construction and laws of the universeand, moreover, of looking "Through Nature up to Nature's God." But we fear there are thousands of our young people, even in this highly favored and enlightened country, who pay more attention to the decoration of their persons than the inward adornings of the mind, and who spend more time in trifling and vanity than in the pleasures of science and religion. We perhaps cannot do better than set before such the example of the great Roman orator Cicero. What a nobleness of being and what a loftiness of aim he evinces in the following words: "What others give to their own affairs, to the public shows, and other entertainments, to festivity, to amusement-nay, even to mental and bodily rest, I give to study and philosophy." Can any one wonder that Cicero became a great man? And will Christians of the present enlightened age permit themselves to be surpassed in devotion to self-improvement by a heathen philosopher? DEPTH OF THE OCEAN. THE bottom of the ocean is like the surface of the dry land. Islands are but the summits of mountains rising above the waves. If a person were wafted along in a balloon just above the region of the clouds, the Alps and the Andes would be the islands of his vapory sea. In some places from his airy flight he would in vain drop the sounding-line, and again, when passing over some high land, with the lead and line he would find soundings. Thus it is with the navigator of the He sails over lofty mountains and deep valleys, and mighty monsters gambol in these valleys, and roam in the fastnesses of these submarine mountains. Sometimes the lofty summit of some tablemountain presents a shoal upon which the navigator anchors his ship. Again the precipitous summit of some granite cliff pierces through the surface of the ocean, and when the ocean. ship is dashed by the storm against this rock, the drowned mariner rolls down the declivity of the mountain till he finds a grave far below, in the depths of the valley at its base. Again, the summit of the ocean mountain rises above the wave, and becomes the fertile island, thronged with inhabitants and all the variety of animated life. In most parts of the open ocean, it is so deep that no bottom has been found by any line yet used. In consequence of the great depth of the ocean, it has frequently been called bottomless, and by the ignorant it has been supposed to be literally without a bottom. The mountains of the dry land do not rise above 30,000 feet; and reasoning from analogy, it is exceedingly improbable that the depth of the ocean, in any part, can exceed 30,000 feet. But it would hardly be in our power to find the bottom even at one-third of that depth. Lord Mulgrave, who had distinguished himself upon the floor of Parliament, as well as upon the deck of his ship, threw a sounding line in the Northern Ocean, of greater length than had ever before been used. He heaved a very heavy sounding-lead, and gave out along with it a rope of 4680 feet. But he found no bottom. This is the greatest depth that has ever been tried to be measured, and it is very possible that if the rope had been four times as long, the attempt would have been equally unavailing. EDITORIAL MISCELLANY. 345 Editorial Miscellany OUR THIRD ENGRAVING.-At a short distance from Mexico, on the rocky hill of Tepayacac, stands the church of "Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe," Our Lady of Guadalupe, which is celebrated throughout the whole of Mexico for its miraculous origin, and the possession of an equally miraculous picture of the Virgin. The absurd legend occupies a huge folio volume. It may be briefly noticed in a few lines, thus: Soon after the conquest, a vision of the Virgin appeared to an Indian peasant, and ordered him to go to the Bishop of Mexico, relate what he had seen, and order the prelate to build a chapel on that very spot in her honor. The man approached the episcopal palace, but was intimidated by the state and magnificence that surrounded the bishop, and retired accordingly without obeying the orders he had received. On his return he again saw the vision, which rebuked him for his disobedience, and delivered a more positive command. The peasant asked for some token to show that his mission was authentic: he was ordered to climb to the summit of the rock, and told that he would there find the sign which he required. The man obeyed, and though it was in the midst of winter, he found the heretofore desolate spot covered with flowers. He gathered some, went instantly to the palace, obtained admittance, related all that had happened, and then presented the flowers. The tale was instantly credited, a procession to the rock set forth, and the picture was discovered. The church was immediately built and munificently endowed. Such is the ridiculous fable which is implicitly believed by the inhabitants of this country, as the real history of the origin and foundation of the Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe. So strong is its influence, that even to this day offerings are sent from every part of Mexico to this shrine of the Virgin. The first chapel was built on the top of the hill; a large one at its foot is now the principal one, and within its walls the picture is preserved. A JOURNEY TO CENTRAL AFRICA, by BAYARD TAYLOR, is the title of a very graphic and interesting work recently issued by G. P. Putnam & Co., No. 10 Park Place. It is a lively description of life and landscapes from Egypt to the negro kingdoms of the White Nile. We know so little of Central Africa, that any new developments of the interior of that vast continent are invested with peculiar interest. This is Mr. Taylor's best book of travel. And we have thought a few sketches from it, as specimens of its style and spirit, would not be unwelcome to our readers, and help to spice our Miscellany. The work is illustrated with some beautiful lithographs, and also a number of wood-engrav ings. A few of the latter we are permitted by the publishers to insert here. The book contains a vast amount of valuable information, and the style of the writer is clear and glowing, as will be seen in the few quotations which we make. The first picture is a view of the traveller's barge ascending the Nile. "The Nile is the Paradise of Travel. I thought I had already fathomed all the depths of enjoyment which the traveller's restless life could reach-enjoyment more varied and exciting, but far less serene and enduring than that of a quiet home-but here I have reached a fountain too pure and powerful to be exhausted. I never before experienced such a thorough deliverance from all the petty annoyances in other lands, such perfect contentment of spirit, such entire abandonment to the best influences of nature. Every day opens with a jubilate, and closes with a thanksgiving. If such a balm and blessing as this life has been to me, thus far, can be felt twice in one's existence, there must be another Nile somewhere in the world. "The Cleopatra is a dahabiyeh, seventy feet long by ten broad. She has two short masts in the bow and stern, the first upholding the trinkeet, a lateen sail nearly seventy feet in length. The latter carries the belikôn, a small sail, and the American colors. The narrow space around the foremast belongs to the crew, who cook their meals in a small brick furnace, and sit on the gunwale, beating a drum and tambourine, and singing for hours in interminable choruses, when the wind blows fair. If there is no wind, half of them are on shore, tugging us slowly along the banks with a-tow-rope, and singing all day long: ‘Agà hamam – ayà ham am I If we strike on a sandbank, they jump into the river and put their shoulders against the hull, singing 'Hay haylee sah! If the current is slow, they |