universe, makes His creatures forget to wonder at its wonderfulness, to feel true thanksgiving for its immeasurable goodnèss. The sun rises and sets so surely, the seasons run on amid all their changes with such inimitable 1 truth, that we take as a matter of course that which is amazing beyond all stretch of the imagination, and good beyond the widest expansion of the noblèst human heart.

1

2. The poor man, with his hälf-dozen children, toils, and often dies, under the vain labor of winning bread for them. God feeds His family of countlèss myriads swarming over the surface of all His countless worlds, and none know need but through the follies or the cruelty of their fellows. God pōurs His light from innumerable 2 suns on innumerable rejoicing planets; He waters them everywhere in the fitting moment; He ripens the food of globes and of nations, and gives them fair weather to garner it; and from age to age, amid His creatures of endless forms and powers, in the beauty and the sunshine, and the magnificence of nature, He seems to sing throughout creation the glorious song of His own divine joy in the immortality of His youth, in the omnipotence of His nature, in the eternity of His patience, and the abounding boundlessness of His love.

4

3. What a family hangs on His sustaining arm! The life and souls of infinite ages and uncounted worlds! Let a moment's failure of His power, of His watchfulness, or of His will to do good, occur, and what a sweep of death and annihilation 6 through the universe! How stars would reel, planets expire, and nations pĕrish!

8

4. But from age to age no such catastrophe occurs, even in the midst of national crimes, and of atheism that denies the 1 In ĭm'i ta ble, not capable of or condition which begins at death; being imitated or copied; surpass- everlastingness. ingly excellent or superior.

6 An ni'hi la'tion, the act of re

2 In nu'mer a ble, that can not ducing to nothing; the act of de

be numbered.

3 Im'mor tǎl'i ty, the quality of being exempt from death and destruction; deathlessness.

stroying the form of a thing.

'U'ni verse, all things created

as a whole; the world.

8 A'the ism, the disbelief or de

4 Om nĭpo tence, the state of nial of the existence of a God, or

being all-powerful.

5 Eternity (e ter'ni ti), the state

supreme intelligent Being.

hand that made and fecds it: life springs with a power ever new, food springs up as plentifully to sustain it, and sunshine and joy are poured over all from the invisible throne of God, as the poetry of the existence He has given. If there come seasonsof dearth or of failure, they come but as warnings to proud and tyrannic 2 man. The potato is smitten, that a nation may not be oppressed forever; and the harvest is diminished, that the laws of man's unnatural avarice may be rent asunder. And then again the sun shines, the rain falls, and the earth rejoices in a renewed beauty, and in a redoubled plenty.

II.

3

78. THE DAY OF THE LORD.

[A Selection from the Prophecy of JOEL.]

HOWITT.

LOW ye the trumpet in Sion, sound an alarm in my holy

BLOW

mountain, let all the inhabitants of the land tremble: because the day of the Lord comèth, because it is nigh at hand.

2. A day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and whirlwinds a numerous and strong people, as the morning spread upon the mountains: the like to it hath not been from the beginning, nor shall be after it even to the years of generation and generation.

3. Before the face thereof a devouring fire, and behind it a bûrning flame: the land is like a garden of pleasure before it, and behind it a desolate wilderness, neither is there any one that can escape it.

4. The appearance of them is as horses, and they shall run as horsemen. They shall leap like the noise of chariots upon the tops of mountains, like the noise of a flame of fire destroying the stubble, as a strong people prepared to battle.

5. At their presence the people shall be in grievous pain; all faces shall be made like a kettle.

1

Dearth, a scarcity of food.

2 Tý rǎn'nic, unjustly severe in government; oppressive; cruel. 3 Av′a rice, undue love of money; greediness of gain.

▲ Pēo'ple, a great number of individuals taken as one; the people here meant are probably locusts or grasshoppers, laying waste a land accursed by sin.

6. They shall run like valiant men; like men of war they shall scale the wall; the men shall march every one on his way, and they shall not turn aside from their ranks.

7. No one shall press upon his brother, they shall walk every one in his päth: yea, and they shall fall through the windows and shall take no harm. They shall enter into the city, they shall run upon the wall; they shall climb up the houses, they shall come in at the windows as a thief.

8. At their presence the earth hath trembled, the heavens are moved: the sun and the moon are darkened, and the stars have withdrawn their shining.

9. And the Lord hath uttered His voice before the face of His army; for His armies are exceedingly great, for they are strong and execute His word; for the day of the Lord is great and very terrible, and who can stand it?

III.

79. AVENGING ARMY OF LOCUSTS.

A

DAY of darkness and of gloom;

1

A day of clouds at morning spread
In lurid 1 gleams, presaging 2 doom,
Around the mountain's stormy head.
2. And lo! a people matchless, strong,
Rise o'er the far horiʼzon's rim,
And sweep like fire the lands along,
Led by avenging Seraphim.

3

3. Swift as an Ar'ab's charger 5 reels

In thundering flight o'er desert ground,
They come, while ring their chariot wheels,
And loud and shrill their trumpets sound.

4. Before their face the people mourn;

Before their breath the grănary stored,
The field, the threshing-floor, the corn,
Shrink from the army of the Lord.

Lu'rid, ghastly pale; gloomy; dismal.

? Pre sa'ging, foreshowing.
3 A věng'ing, inflicting just pun-

ishment on evil-doers.

4 Sěr a phĭm, angels of the highest order.

5 Char'ger, a horse used in battle.

5. Like mighty men they eager run;

Like men of war they climb the wall;
Each speeds his way, nor any one

Can break those ranks; and, though they fall
6. Upon the sword, they shall not die.

Yea, through the city shall they go
Like pestilence,1 and man shall fly
Before their wräth; God wills it so.

7. The earth shall quake beneath their tread,
And darkness shroud the stars and moon,
The heavens shall tremble as in dread;
Like blackest night shall be the noon.
8. Then in the van 2 the Lord shall cry,
Great is the Lord! who is beside?
His armies fill the earth and sky;

His day what mortal shall abide ?

IV.

JAMES DAVIS.

80. DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB.
HE Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in pûrple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.
2. Like the leaves of the forest when summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset were seen;
Like the leaves of the forest when autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strewn.

1 Pěs'ti lence, the plague; any contagious or infectious disease that is epidemic.

? Văn, the front of an army. This lesson, as will be readily observed, is a poetical version of that passage of Holy Scripture which forms the preceding one.

Sen nǎch' e rib, an Assyrian monarch who, in the days of Ez'eehi'as, King of Jerusalem, besieged that city. At the prayer of Eze

chias, God, whom the Assyrian had blasphemed, undertook the defence of His people. In the words of Holy Scripture, "It came to pass that night that an angel of the Lord came, and slew in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred and eighty-five thousand. And when Sennacherib, King of the Assyrians, arose early in the morning, he saw all dead bodies, and departing went away."

3. For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blåst,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and forever grew still!
4. And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,

But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride;
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
And cold as the spray of the rock-beating sûrf.

5. And there lay the rider distorted and pale,

With the dew on his brow and the rust on his mail;1
And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.

6. And the widows of Ashur2 are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord.

BYRON.

SECTION XXII.

I.

81. HOME OF THE HOLY FAMILY.

IT

T was the 4th of April-the 25th of March had fallen on Good Friday, so that the great festival of the Incarnation had been remitted to that day. From the earliest dawn the beautiful Church of the Annunciation, with its high altar, raised on a double flight of steps, and its beautiful shrine below, leading to the house of the Blessed Virgin, had been thronged with kneeling figures. The women were unveiledfor Nazareth, like Bethlehem, is essentially a Christian town. They were all dressed in gay colors and holiday costume, with strings of gold coins round their necks or wound in their dark hair. They covered every inch of the steps leading to the sacred subterranean shrine, above which a star marks the spot where 1 Mail, armor. 2 Ash'ur, Assyria.