hands, and making the thoughtless perish in their thoughtlessness."

If, reader, we have not heard his gentler voice, let us listen to the stern rebuke he has lately uttered. Open your ear to instruction. The Sovereign of heaven and earth speaks to you of his sovereignty. How vain is human wisdom-how vain human precautions in opposition to his will! Despatch as well as delay, he makes to answer his purposes. The skill of the skilful he can and does confound. The considerate he makes rash, and the energetic powerless. "I will," he says, and before his fiat all opposition bends. And let us, too, bend in lowly submission at his footstool, adoring the mighty hand and outstretched arm that raises and troubles "the great wide sea," brings the torrent over the ripened fruits of autumn, and launches the thunderbolt with resistless force. And if calamity should fall upon ourselves, let us feel submission to the divine decree. Whom he will, he chastens. Whom he will, he bids the sea engulf. Whom he will, he bids the mountain-torrent bear away. Why complain? Will it ought avail us? Will it meliorate our lot? Will it soften a pain? Will it restore a friend? No: but it will add anguish to grief; it will undermine our mental and moral strength; it will create internal in addition to external harassments. It is God's will that we should be submissive-that we should bow beneath and kiss the rod of his fatherly anger; and therefore the rebellious he punishes; and therefore men double their calamity, by so struggling against it as to impeach the divine wisdom and refuse the divine yoke.

Submission to God is the only way to that union of will between Him and us, in which consists the highest triumph of religion, and the consummate happiness of man. To see events as God sees them, to desire what he desires, to be averse from what he dislikes, is a state of mind to which the redeemed tend throughout eternity, and in which he who makes the greatest progress, will now and in every successive stage of being, be the best and happiest. Whatever leads on to this, must be good and worthy of all acceptation. And though at its entrance the road may be rugged and painful, it grows smoother as it grows longer, till at last it ends in a land richer in good, and brighter in effulgence, and more durable in its possessions, than that which flowed with milk and honey.

Think not, then, that the divine sovereignty is severed from the divine benignity. No! accents of mercy and love are mingled with the fearful sounds of the storm and tempest, and, a short time over, they triumph in the prevalence of a universal calm, as the hurricane issues in the halcyon brightness that invests with joy, heaven and earth and ocean.

While we see and know that there is much wickedness and degradation in the world, and betimes shudder and betimes are ready to weep at the vices and crimes with which our fellow creatures degrade themselves and dishonour their kind, we have not learned to believe that human nature is a mass of corruption; but, on the contrary, are as sure that it has splendid excellences, as that it has foul and malignant passions. But, did we need a proof to satisfy ourselves or others, that the human breast is capable of sublime emotions and deeds, we would refer to a recent calamity; we would point to friends periling their own safety for the preservation of each other:here, a husband determined to share her fate whose preservation he knew to be all but impossible, and attempting which would double his own risk, if not remove the last chance of his escape; there, a father lashes to his body those very children (whose weight he never felt before) that may be the innocent cause of his sinking, overcome in the unequal strife. Yes, there was to be seen the real greatness of the human breast. Friends and companions -yea, perhaps strangers too, clung together in the vain yet sublime intention of yielding each other aid. With no few, self was forgotten in the hour of peril, as with the Saviour on the cross. Afflicting, yet noble exhibition of human misery and human elevation! Oh, why are not men true to their nature? why not rise to the dignity of which God has rendered them susceptible? Why should this sublimity be reserved for extraordinary occasions? Live not the elements of it hourly, incessantly in our breasts? Yes, this holy spirit of divine origin, leaves none but the profligate. It needs but be bid, and it will come. "Call," it says, "and I will answer; and by me you shall have true honour and lasting peace."

We have heard some speak in disparagement of, we have seen others sneer at, the exhibition of strong emotions. Excitement, they plead, is short-lived and delusive. We wish it were not; and sure we are, that the readiest

way to make it so, is to disparage and contemn it. But, excitement is the parent of the noblest virtues, the purest and most honourable sentiments-yea, often of the most beneficent undertakings. Poor and mean is the soul that scarcely if ever feels it, or bids it begone as soon as it comes; and poor and mean will it ever remain. Excitement that is based on sound principles, on the love of God and man, on an intense interest in human welfare, on a generous nature and a spiritual faith, on hopes and wishes that comprise eternity as well as time-to be "zealously affected" in so good a cause- -this salutary excitement is the true index of a noble heart, the best support of selfdenying beneficence, the richest fructifier of the human soul, and the most effective lever to raise man from earth to heaven. What is there great or good, without excitement? What is of power sufficient to check the triumphant career of selfishness?-noble and sublime affection! It has made some forget they stood on the brink of destruction; and others to rush into the midst of the abyss, defying its terrors, periling their own lives to save others. Who can fail to admire? We would hope, that in the contemplation of such a scene, none can fail to be benefitted -least of all the Christian, whose Master, in a sublime act of self-devotement-excitement, if you will-urged on by the intensity of his love to God and man, died that we might live. G. C. S.

Stanzas

Suggested on reading in the pages of the Christian Pioneer, an account of the late Persecutions in the Church of Scotland.

(Continued from page 49).

Hark! through the gorge of Time's deep solitudes
Accessible to no returning steps,

An echo now the ear obtains, deludes,

And now the swelling cadence nearer leaps.
From yonder Martyr's parch'd prophetic lips,
The augury rose, as the spent victim died;
So the expiring sun the clouds in glory steeps;
"Broad shall this flame spread as the land is wide,"
Nor has its strain been yet, nor shall it be belied.
Behold the illustrious fruit! his mind illumed
From the torch kindled at thy martyr pile-
Scotland's Reformer, Knox, the truth entomb'd
For ages, disinters; for nought, the while

Relaxes.

Priests, for their craft alarm'd, revile
In vain; and as with arm relentless, he,
The man of fearless soul, whom neither wile
Nor weapon could unman, idolatry

Assails, the harpies of her impious orgies flee.

Thy mantle, great Reformer! not to earth
Did fall, when with the valley's clods, thy bones
Were laid in latter days. Thy zeal had birth,
Burning as dauntlessly, and uttering tones
As deep and true. Upon earth's mountain thrones,
The sons of Cameron met, and there defied,
From out their hoary fastnesses-the stones
Whereof the eagle makes her nest-the pride
Of bigot hate, resisting which to blood, they died.
Ah! band of heroes! thee methinks I see,
Slowly to yon cloud-piercing peak retire;
Religious Liberty's Thermopyla!

Babes at the breast, with staff the gray-hair'd sire,
The tender maiden, and the youth of fire,
Compose that motley groupe. Their hearts all strung
Right true, proof 'gainst dismay from ills most dire,
Life's petty cares behind them manly flung;

Its cares fall pointless upon hearts by wrongs so wrung.
Hark! yonder sound rising above the storm;

Is it the eagle screaming in mid air,

As through the tempest-cloud her regal form Cleaves upward her proud path? or, from his lair Prowling for prey, with eyes that fiercely glare Through the murk night, is it the sullen howl Of the stealth wolf, brought soften'd to the ear From distant wold? No, 'tis the tameless soul, Hymning its Maker's praise, shackless of man's control. The mountain sanctuary! Truth's votaries driven From crowded cities and the peopled plain, Among earth's pinnacles by lightning riven, A temple find, to which (let Priests disdain) The proudest Minster's, as a drop of rain To ocean. Where are the gorgeous piles Whose bulk and splendour rivalry make vain, In dome stupendous, rich in fretted aisles,

With heaven's arch to compare, studded with starry isles? Between the cushion'd stall and moss-grown crag,

By freemen one, the other press'd by slave,

Oh! who would hesitate?

The humble rag

That wraps yon Pastor round-the murmuring wave

Of distant waterfall-the cherish'd grave

In the lone moor, to which affection steals,

Who would exchange for marble tomb in naive, For cumbrous robes of state, or organ peals, Which courtly hypocrite and scoffer, oft conceals?

Come, let us climb, and mingle with the groupe
Whose tabernacle's pitch'd within yon cloud;
'Tis well to steal from petty cares, which swoop
Around our path, and for a season shroud
Sorrow and worldliness. Drink in, drink proud,
High, and deep thoughts and feelings, with which beats
Quick and intense the pulse. The servile crowd

That licks the hand that fetters, and repeats
Its parrot creed, avoid; but seek the soul's retreats,
And there find strength and peace, self and self's God.
Oh, how the frame glows as it drinks the breeze,
Which reaping health, sports on the mountain sod;
The path is rough and steep, and the airs freeze

The blood's slow current. Gaze downwards. Ah, the trees
And yon gray tower, glist'ning in the moon, have grown
Scarce visible; the lake, whose waves could seize

And gorge a fleet, on its lash'd waters strown,

A puddle seems; here meet, earth's footstool and heaven's throne!
Softly! the object of our search we near:
Bounding the angle of yon cliff, in view,
The heroic worshippers in sight appear;

See! we're upon them; now crouch close, the dew
Our plaids' rough web defy, while their dull hue
Blend with the grey crags well, thick scatter'd round.
Fear not; these peasants' worship is too true
And rapt, to be disturb'd by ought light sound,

When they engage in prayer, or living Word expound.
Eye close that resolute promiscuous band

Of either sex, and varied rank and age:

Some sit on fragments of the rock, some stand,
While some on shelving cliff, a loftier stage
Select; nor contrast less in feature.

Rage,

Fierce, revenge athirst, but ill conceal'd

By cloak of sanctity, here smoulders; sage

Wisdom, experience temper'd, there reveal'd,

And there with rapture's die, her votary Heaven has seal'd.

How exquisite a symphony! the fall

Of distant water, blending with the strain
Of pious psalmody! The choir, with all
A Minster pomp, cannot the soul sustain
So tireless in devotion's heaven, and pain,
And grief, and mortal care, and fear elude.
The waves' rich murmur now alone remain;
The anthem dies, but there survives a mood,
To pour in truth's defence, as water, the life's blood!
The moon emerges from behind the cloud-
What Rembrandt brilliancy of light and shade!
What striking forms! That-how elate and proud,
How nervously it gripes the naked blade;
How the eye glitters!-it must long have sway'd