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THE COMMUNICANT.

as she has, the sincerity of her penitence, by abstaining from the repetition of persecuting acts, with power abundant in her hands to perpetrate them, and not a few most irritating provocations. For the temporary outbursts of her rabble she is not responsible. Had Rome made a like recantation, her days of darkness might, most gladly, be hidden under the mantle of oblivion for ever.

INDIAN GRAVES ON THE QUINNEBAUG.

BY HORACE DRESSER, ESQ.

TELL-tell me what these are whereon I now tread-
The graves of the Red-Man long, long ago dead;
They have gone away, gone to the bright Spirit Land,
And only their cerements are here where I stand.

Mark-a slow-rising mound is here and there seen,
Among the low brambles and thick evergreen-
List-the hemlock and pine and dark forest trees
Breathe forth their sad whispers as passes the breeze.

Deep solitudes circle-the tumults of day,
And man's habitations are far, far away;

O Genius! who dwell'st here, an utterance give-
Canst tell me and say shall these dead again live?

Perchance here's the Sachem who deep counsel gave,
Asleep with his warriors in one common grave-
Their weapons of warfare so skilfully made,
Alike with themselves here to moulder were laid.

Their council-fires gleaming once shone around here,
And heard was their war-song with note loud and clear.
Those fires are extinguished, no longer they glow,
And the shrill voice of war was hushed years ago.

On the rivers bright stream they urged their light skiffs, And scaled its high sand-banks and far-jutting cliffsBrave hearted and fearless, in love with their home, These forests and woodlands their delight was to roam.

No more will these wild men dash over the wave--
Profoundly they rest inhumed in the grave;
The chase is now over, and here never more,
Will echo their voices 'mong the rocks on the shore.

Who weeps for the red Aboriginal Lord ?

Who hallows his ashes? where springs the green-sward
Which tells of the graves of the forest-bred sons?
Alas-these are they which the brier o'erruns!

THE best thing to give your enemy is forgive⚫ness; to your opponent, tolerance; to your friend, your heart; to a child, a good example; to your father, deference; to your mother, conduct that will make her proud of you; to yourself, respect; to all men, charity; to God obedience.-Rough Notes.

THE COMMUNICANT.

BY MARY A. COLLIER.

SHE was aged-very aged-but it was old age in its most beautiful form. The silvery hair parted on a calm brow, told of scores of years long past. It gave to her aspect a venerable character, yet was her eye clear as with the light of youth; and when she spoke, it beamed with a softened animation.

She was speaking of the recurrence of the Lord's Supper on the next coming Sabbath. Not always did the trembling steps of the aged matron bear her to the sanctuary, but when she did fail, it was to her a grief.

"This," she would say, "is not merely a duty, it is a most precious privilege!" Would that we could transcribe the impressive tone, the eloquent look, as easily as the words! She seemed not quite sure that the feelings of the listener were in unison with her own, so she stopped: "Don't think it so?" She would be sure of you the sympathy of the other. "Don't you consider it a most precious privilege?" She sought in others for a fervor answering to her own. The momentary doubt of its existence had changed her tone of joy to a softer one of expostulation.

This anticipated communion service was not the very last of that aged saint, yet before many more had been enjoyed, she who so loved the symbol when on earth, was called away to partake of the marriage-supper of the Lamb in heaven. She passed away, yet not so soon passed the spirit of her example, the savor of her piety, the remembrance of her words. Especially did her solemn and reverential love for the sacramental service impress the memory of survivors.

She valued it as a season of spiritual refreshing. When she looked upon the symbolic representatives of the Saviour's death, she felt that though for her the joys of life had decayed; though of some that she had once loved, there now remained only a remembrance; though the days had come in which she might well say she had no pleasure in them, yet here were the images of spiritual love, joy, and peace; here were objects represented that had power to awaken anew the soul's capacity for happiness. Yes, here might the worn spirit forget all that it had lost and all that it had suffered during its lengthened pilgrimage on earth.

But was this all! Was it merely a truce with the sorrow arising from bereavements and the

INSENSIBILITY TO SPIRITUAL DANGER.

decay of outward sources of joy? Was it only this? No! Far from it. This, sweet as it was, was but a means to a diviner end. The occasion was precious, not only that in its joy there was - a temporary forgetfulness of grief, but it was also a season of spiritual growth. At each recurring festival did the soul come consciously nearer to its Redeemer. The voice which says, “Abide in me and I in you," however it might be understood by others, came to her soul as a living reality. Again, when she heard that same voice saying of those who do the will of God, "The same is my brother and sister and mother," her heart, even as the wax beneath the impress of the seal, gave back the hallowed sentiment. Looking through the dim vistas of departed years, and remembering her buried loves, her soul in its deep places responded to the "thought that the Redeemer was, in very deed, to her, more than all that she had lost. Here was not only enjoyment, but progress. It was progress in the divinest of sciences. These thoughts of devotion passing in scattered fragments through the mind, amid the ordinary scenes of life, were wont, at these sacred seasons, by the operation of a law of our mental nature, to gather strength and acquire fixedness. Another and a higher nature was infused into her own, and she was given to understand the Saviour's words, “As thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us."

No wonder that the soul of this aged one, whose life had been marked by joys blossoming only to be blighted, was glad at the recurrence of these festival seasons. It was not strange that all connected there with assumed a sacredness in her eyes. A colder heart might have deemed it a weakness--her love for the minor accompaniments of the ordinance, her reverence for the very "wreaths and branches of the church." Her welcome to this season could not fail. heart responded to the poet's words,

"Sweet, awful hour! the only sound, One gentle footstep gliding round, Offering by turns, on Jesus' part,

How her

The cross to every hand and heart!"

Long since, daughter of sorrow, thy griefs are ended, thy wanderings are over, thy rest is won. The sacred symbols of Christ's presence are still ours, the reality is thine. Yet the excellence and beauty of thy faith and love still live in memory, the savor of piety still breathes in all its fragrance.

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INSENSIBILITY TO SPIRITUAL DANGER.

WHEN the Austrian army advanced in 1821 into the Roman territory, the Neapolitans, whose constitutional government was threatened, resolved to meet them in the passes of the Apennines. It was announced that they would purchase their freedom by a desperate resistance of this unauthorized interference of a foreign power.

General Pepe took his stand near the falls of Terni. Here is one of the most beautiful scenes in the world. The water rushes from the top of a mountain down a perpendicular precipice of about three hundred feet. Towers are upon the summits of the neighboring walls, and thus is the memory of past ages recalled by these monuments of dead men's greatness. The river Velino afterwards rolls foaming through groves of olive and orange trees, soon becomes connected with the Tiber, and thus washes the walls of Rome.

When General Pepe was defeated, his troops fled in great disorder. Being hard pressed by the Austrians, they attempted to make their escape over a bridge at no great distance from the falls above. When the bridge was filled with the retreating companies, it suddenly broke with the unusual weight, and hundreds were instantly precipitated into the rolling tide. The river was here so rapid that they could not sink, but were borne along with immense velocity to the roaring gulf, whence clouds of mist were rising as if from the explosion of many waterspouts.

The miserable creatures, all conscious of their approaching fate, were carried onward and downward, to the point where the river pitches off the mountain, and were thence hurled into the fathomless abyss. No shrieks of horror could be heard in the din of the water; no bones were ever buried: they went beneath the foundation of the mountains.

Alas! how like is this to what "angels and the spirits of the just made perfect" see of human things! We, mortal men, are borne on, in a tide rapid as thought, irresistible as lightning; we, too, are soon to be plunged into a gulf dark as the grave, and into caverns vast as eternity. And yet we go on-heedless as these soldiers before they got upon the bridge-and think not of all the events which angels and devils stand by to see.

And is it, I exclaim, the lot of poor human nature of frail mortal creatures-to have no

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THE ROCK OF THE PILGRIMS.

refuge from the blow of fate-no deliverance from the power of the grave-no knowledge of the caverns that are in eternity--no better hope than the brutes that perish?

Ah, yes! I have heard of a message from God —of the Bible, which is as a map of that invisible world which, if it were not of unequalled vastness, would be already crowded with our race. I have heard of one who holds the keys and unbars the gates of that wide region where are already those who are bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh; and where my spirit--this common sense and throbbing heart, which goes over these thoughts-must soon be summoned.

Yet more, I have heard of God's own Son, who has appeared in the flesh, with the best news that heaven ever sent to earth. My conscience and the divine law have told me that "death is the wages of sin;" that while in this world I may hurt my soul as well as my body, and contract a disease in the immortal part of my nature, which no medicine of man can cure, and defile my soul with pollution which snowwater will not wash out. Let me then listen to what the Maker of my soul and its Judge has thought important enough for him to send me a message about.

I ask whether one of these soldiers, if an angel had come near to the brink of the river and offered him a rescue, would not gladly have taken it? What then hinders sinners from seeking aid from the "Angel of the Covenant," who inscribes upon his banner, "Look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth." Ah! it may be answered, this is easily explained: these sinners have been long in this way; they have come to like the sort of movement which drives them forward, though sensible that they go on rapidly, as down a river; they understand that a little farther off are other messengers standing with the flag, upon which is written, "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." They do not like to get up upon the river bank now, for it would be the consequence of their deliverance that they would enter upon a new and straight and narrow way. It is demanded, if they will come to Jesus Christ, that they abandon all the friends who are hurrying on upon the current of ungodliness, that they crucify the flesh, with all its affections and lusts, that they be new creatures and lights of holiness in the world. What they promise, therefore, is, tomorrow or next day, when the tide shall have swept them a little farther down, to call for help from one of the divine messengers, and so get

upon the narrow path before the last deep pitch into darkness.

If we imagine a person awake to the events of an eternal world, and for the first time looking at the multitude of impenitent sinners who live upon to-morrow, and float carelessly upon the stream of time, the question he would ask instantly is, How much farther have they yet to go? The answer at once is, No one of them knows. There is a heavy mist over the gulf into which these waters discharge themselves; the edges of it are uneven, the eddies irregular. Some take the leap at an earlier, some at a later period; many who have been alarmed, have afterwards fallen asleep upon the current, and gone off in the night-time. Fools and madmen! would he exclaim, they love their lusts so well that they are not willing, for the few days they can see the sun and moon and stars with the eyes of flesh, to deny themselves and take up their cross and follow Jesus-not even when he will lead them now into spiritual pastures as a good shepherd, and, when their earthly pathway ends, enable them to look off their eminence, and know that their souls are to pass upward into the New Jerusalem, the everlasting paradise!

Angels have no words sufficiently emphatic to characterize man's folly and madness in the affairs of his soul-perhaps, reader, to characterize your folly and madness. "Now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation." "Today, if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts."

THE ROCK OF THE PILGRIMS.

A ROCK in the wilderness welcomed our sires
From bondage far over the dark-rolling sea;
On that holy altar they kindled the fires,
Jehovah, which glow in our bosoms for thee.
Thy blessings descended in sunshine and shower,
Or rose from the soil that was sown by thy hand
The mountain and valley rejoiced in thy power,
And heaven encircled and smiled on the land.

The Pilgrims of old an example have given

Of mild resignation, devotion, and love, Which became, like the star in the blue vault of heaven, A beacon-light hung in their mansion above.

In church and cathedral we kneel in our prayerTheir temple and chapel were valley and hill — But God is the same in the aisle or the air,

And He is the Rock that we lean upon still.

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SECTARIAN JEALOUSY.

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THE absurdity and impropriety of the narrow sectarian jealousy between the different denominations of evangelical Christians, may be thus illustrated:

There are several packet-ships plying between New York and Liverpool. If I am about to cross the Atlantic, I select that ship which appears to me to be most commodious and safe. Other persons, with the same object in view, select a different ship. Perhaps they think it better adapted to encounter storms, or they wish to go in company with a friend who has already secured his passage. We all embark on the voyage, in our different ships. God prospers us all. He sends his wind to waft us across the ocean, and one after another we arrive at our destined port. One ship has furnished rather the best accommodations and the most pleasant society. Another has proved the better sailer.

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A third has rode through every storm, without shipping a sea. But all are good ships. All arrive in safety; and the little inconveniences of the voyage are soon forgotten.

Thus do several individuals, who have become the disciples of Jesus Christ, set out on their voyage to Heaven. Their tastes, their friendships, their means of information respecting the different organizations into which the Christian Church is divided, are different. One has had his attention called to the subject of religion while listening to the appeals of an Episcopal clergyman; and consequently his earliest and his warmest religious associations cluster around the Episcopal Church. Another is surrounded with Baptist friends, who have plead with him and prayed for him till, by the blessing of God, he has been led to the believer's hope. And in their Christian sympathies he finds support and encouragement, such as he can find nowhere else. Another would have gone to the grave, strong in his sins, were it not that the earnest accents of a Methodist preacher startled his slumbering conscience. He was led to the class meeting, and while listening to fervent prayer, the Holy Spirit renewed his heart. Such a man will surely embark in the Methodist ship, to meet the storms and adverse winds of life. Another has been reared in the bosom of a Congregational family. He has, from early life, listened to the prayers of parents whose stable and cheerful piety has ever been soothing his passions and appealing to his conscience. He has been led by them by the hand to the church, and has listened year after year to the calm instructions of their revered pastor. And when, by the grace of God, he becomes a child of Jesus, he thinks there is no ship in the world like the good old Congregationalist. Another, who has few early prepossessions to influence his choice who has no youthful religious associations entwining around the fibres of his heart, embarks on board any ship that happens to be most convenient. After sailing a few days, a storm arises, or fogs and adverse winds are encountered. He thinks it the fault of the ship, and begins to murmur. As soon as he sees another sail looming in the distance, he will take no rest till he is put on board, bag and baggage. But before many days pass away, some new inconveniences induce him to try another ship that heaves in sight. And it has generally been observed that such a man never leaves a ship without throwing back a few volleys of peevishness and petulance as he goes

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down her side. In this way perhaps he changes several times before the voyage of life terminates. But at last he arrives safely in the harbor, and probably expresses his regret to his early companions that he did not continue the voyage with them. Such an one should not be severely censured. His instability of mind is, perhaps, as much his misfortune as his fault.

Now and then a few speculators will rig out a raft with graceful awning, and advertise to carry passengers upon terms far more easy and accommodating than any of the regular packets. If any one suggests a fear that it will be hard to weather a gale of wind on the raft, they will assure him that a kind God will not allow a storm to rise and endanger the comfort of his helpless children, but will most certainly send them cloudless skies and favoring winds. In this way not a few of the simple and unwary are induced to embark on board the raft. And unless they happen to be picked up on the way by some of the regular packets, they must surely go to the bottom. Beware of the raft. "There are storms on life's dark waters."

We all have our preferences. I have mine. The ship I have embarked in, I like exceedingly. I like the hull and the rigging, the passengers and the crew. But when I see another ship, with full sail and favoring breeze, careering over the same sea, and bound to the same port, I, for one, feel like giving her three cheers, and bidding her God-speed. If a piratic craft looms in sight, I feel no disposition to stop and fight her, but to crowd on every stitch of canvas, and press on our way.

HAPPY AT HOME.

THERE is real beauty in mutual love, in mutual confidence, in mutual esteem, and in mutual attentions. Why, then, should they not be uniformly maintained? Those who play beautifully, or sing beautifully, take care that their musical taste shall not be discredited by their own rash. ness or heedlessness. Those who have personal beauty do not disfigure it wilfully. These natural or acquired characteristics are, however, far inferior, both in worth and beauty, to the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, and to the charm of a cheerful and good temper. These can compensate for the absence of all refinement but moral refinement. The plainest face will not be held unlovely by the man or woman who sees that it expresses love, and knows that it is

often lifted up to heaven in prayer. Even the most ordinary talents will lead to no contempt, when what talent there is is consecrated to God, and made up for by extraordinary piety. The want of literary taste may be regretted, but it will not be mocked nor upbraided when the Word of God dwells richly in the mind, and is sweet to the spiritual taste. In a word, great grace, in husband and wife, will secure great esteem, and thus secure domestic happiness, whatever their gifts be.

On the other hand, talent will not balance illtemper; nor cleverness, clamor; nor taste, caprice, on either side. Acquirements will not make up for unkindness ; nor genius, nor literature, palliate slovenliness or extravagance.

I challenge attention to these experimental and sober facts. Holiness, if rendered beautiful by consistency, can do more for domestic happiness than any other qualification. I mean, of course, when both parties are pious. And no pious husband can lightly esteem a holy wife; nor can any pious wife disregard a holy husband, however different may be their talents, taste, or mental element. The image of God on the heart and life will infallibly endear them to each other. How immensely important it is, therefore, when their general knowledge is not equal in extent, nor their talents equal in power, nor their taste equal in refinement, nor their persons' equal in fascination, that their piety should be equal! how pleasing it is to know that superior holiness can counterbalance all the disadvantages of inferior acquirements! Yes, both can and will do so. The beauty of holiness canpot fail to secure esteem and kindness from man or woman who loves holiness; because it is the point on which the hopes, the prayers, and the gracious principles of both bear; so that the one cannot be indifferent to or unaffected by that in the other, which is the test of the eternal safety of both.

If any of the pious doubt the truth of this, it must be owing to some misapprehension as to the nature of personal holiness. Now, if that be made to consist in the mere performance of holy duties, and not also in the temper and spirit of them, I certainly do not think that such holiness will secure domestic happiness. Prayer, followed by passion; or sacraments, followed by sulkiness; or searching the Scriptures, by sarcasm; or public worship, by the neglect of duty, cannot win nor command respect. What I am arguing for, therefore, is that holiness of temper and deportment at home, which has for its end to please God at home; which has for its rule the

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