brother man. As in the first years of his ministry Mr. Cheever entered heartily the lists against our wide-spread vice,-intemperance,-over which almost the whole community were sleeping, so for the past few years his vigorous pen and eloquent preaching have been directed against our great national sin,-slavery. To the columns of the "New York Independent" he has been a regular contributor since its establishment in 1849; and all his pieces, whether in literature, politics, practical morals, or religion, evince great power and genius, but, above all, the pure Christian patriot.1

THE BENEFIT OF GREEK CULTURE.2

With the exception of Shakspeare, on whom was bestowed one of the greatest minds God ever gave to man, the sweetest and best of English poetry is that which Greek scholars have written. Every page shows the power of an early familiarity with the treasures of antiquity. Spenser, that romantic and harmonious mind, grew up with Sir Philip Sidney, under the influence of classical studies. A greater than these, and after Shakspeare, it may be the greatest of all poets, was one of the profoundest Greek scholars that ever lived. He does not know the true power of Milton's poetry, who is ignorant of Milton's Greek. His genius, it is true, was baptized in a purer fountain: it was familiar with the infinite, the eternal, the religiously sublime, in the poetry of the Bible; his mind was nourished and moulded more by the sacred writers than by all his other studies put together. Next to these came the orators, poets, and historians

He

1 "The fundamental trait of Dr. Cheever's character, which is the key to his preaching, is his sense of RIGHT. He detests compromises; he abhors oppression; he magnifies justice; he contends with all systems which bind, or enslave, or deteriorate, whether of governments, or forms, or laws, or institutions. does not regard expediency or consult consequences. Fear is a feeling utterly unknown to him. He becomes fired with indignation against all Austrias and Judge Jeffries. His fullest sympathies go forth towards the oppressed Bunyans, or the pilloried Baxters, or the exiled Kossuths, or the imprisoned Williamsons."-Fowler's American Pulpit.

2"It was not an accident that the New Testament was written in Greek, the language which can best express the highest thoughts and worthiest feelings of the intellect and heart, and which is adapted to be the instrument of education for all nations." Again: "How great has been the honor of the Greek and Latin tongues! associated together, as they are, in the work of Christian education, and made the instruments for training the minds of the young in the greatest nations of the earth."-Conybeare and Howson's St. Paul, chap. i.

3 That is, of course, "after" in point of time; for no one can doubt the superiority of Milton over Shakspeare in learning, genius, affluence and grandeur of thought, varied power, and sublimity.

He alludes to the imprisonment of Passmore Williamson, of Philadelphia, by Judge Kane, for an alleged contempt of court,-an act so mean, as well as tyrannical and unjust, that it excited contempt and indiguatio 1 throughout the land.

of Greece. He was wont to prepare himself for composition by the perusal of his Hebrew Bible, or of some Greek poet :

"Thee, Sion, and the flowery brooks beneath,
That wash thy hallow'd feet, and warbling flow,
Nightly I visit: nor sometimes forget

Those other two equall'd with me in fate,
(So were I equall'd with them in renown!)
Blind Thamyris, and blind Moonides:
And Tiresias and Phineas, prophets old.
Then feed on thoughts, that voluntary move
Harmonious numbers."

He had "unsphered the spirit of Plato," and held companionship with Eschylus and Sophocles and Euripides, and in thought and imagination was all fragrant with the richness of Grecian mind: his exquisite language was moulded on those ancient models, not less in its great strength in Paradise Lost, than in the lightness and harmony of the Allegro and Penseroso. Andrew Marvell, that rare example of virtuous patriotism, one of Milton's most intimate friends, and one of our best prose writers as well as most pleasant poets, grew up under the same kind of discipline. Gray has been called the most learned man in Europe: he was certainly one of the most finished classical scholars. The spirit of the Grecian mind pervades his poetry, so elaborately wrought, so pure in its moral influence, abounding in such rich personifications, such lofty images, and often such sweet thoughts. Collins, too, that child of imagination and tenderness, was a superior Greek scholar, as any man would judge from his exquisite lyrical productions. And it is worthy of remark that the purest and the most valued of all English poetry should happen to be the production of minds thus severely disciplined. Indeed, it is preposterous to think of becoming a true scholar, even in English literature merely, without a knowledge of Greek.

BUNYAN IN HIS CELL.

Now let us enter his little cell. He is sitting at his table to finish by sunlight the day's work, for the livelihood of his dear family, which they have prepared for him. On a little stool, his poor blind child sits by him, and, with that expression of cheerful resignation with which God seals the countenance when he takes away the sight, the daughter turns her face up to her father as if she could see the affectionate expression with which he looks upon her and prattles to her. On the table and in the grated window there are three books, the Bible, the Concordance, and Bunyan's precious old copy of the Book of Martyrs. And now

the day is waning, and his dear blind child must go home with the laces he has finished, to her mother. And now Bunyan opens his Bible and reads aloud a portion of Scripture to his little one, and then, encircling her in his arms and clasping her small hands in his, he kneels down on the cold stone floor, and pours out his soul in prayer to God for the salvation of those so inexpressibly dear to him, and for whom he has been all day working. This done, with a parting kiss he dismisses her to her mother by the rough hands of the gaoler.

And now it is evening. A rude lamp glimmers darkly on the table, the tagged laces are laid aside, and Bunyan, alone, is busy with his Bible, the Concordance, and his pen, ink, and paper. He writes as though joy did make him write. His pale, worn countenance is lighted with a fire as if reflected from the radiant jasper walls of the Celestial City. He writes, and smiles, and clasps his hands, and looks upward, and blesses God for his goodness, and then again turns to his writing, and then again becomes so entranced with a passage of Scripture, the glory of which the Holy Spirit lets in upon his soul, that he is forced, as it were, to lay aside all his labors, and give himself to the sweet work of his closing evening devotions. The last you see of him for the night, he is alone, kneeling on the floor of his prison; he is alone with God.

RETRIBUTIVE PROVIDENCES.

God's retributive providence may be invisible as the angel of death, and gradual as the remorseless tide that steals its march for centuries, or the malaria that depopulates cities and makes the very sight of them the dread of the traveller. Sometimes a series of retributive providences is unfolded, no one of which, by itself, excites alarm or surprise, till in the lapse of ages the solemn work is done, the nation has passed from existence, and historians write its epitaph, and philosophize upon the causes of its fall. A lingering decay may be far worse than a sudden overthrow; so that, in such a case, the common lamentation of mankind may be deeper for the degradation that remains than the glory that has departed. A nation dies when the spirit of every thing good and noble dies in it. The name may live when the elements of life and beauty have departed. God may suffer the sins which a nation is cherishing to consume its energies, till the gangrene becomes incurable, and then his abused mercies work their own revenge. How solemn, in such a case, are the records and the proofs of the divine indignation; the prediction and the fulfilment seen and read together!

I have stood beneath the walls of the Coliseum in Rome, the Parthenon in Athens, and the Temple of Karnak in Egypt; each

of them the mighty relic of majestic empires, and the symbol of the spirit of the most remarkable ages in the world. The last, carrying you back as in a dream over the waste of four thousand years, might be supposed to owe its superior impressiveness to its vast antiquity; but that is not the secret of the strange and solemn thoughts that crowd into the mind: it is the demonstration of God's wrath fulfilled according to the letter of the Scriptures! No ruins of antiquity are so overwhelming in their interest as the gigantic remains of that empire, once the proudest in the world, and now, according to the very letter of the divine prediction, "the basest of the kingdoms." From the deep and grim repose of those sphinxes, obelisks, and columns,-those idols broken at the presence of God,-as the mind wanders back to the four hundred years of Israel's bondage in Egypt, methinks you may hear the wail of that old and awful prophecy, with the lingering echo of every successive prediction:-"THE NATION WHOM THEY SHALL SERVE WILL I JUDGE!" Who would have believed it possible, four thousand years ago, amidst the vigor and greatness of the Egyptian kingdom, that, after that vast lapse of time, travellers should come from a world then as new, unpeopled, and undiscovered as the precincts of another planet, to read the proofs of God's veracity in the vestiges at once of such stupendous glory and such a stupendous overthrow! And now, if any man, contemplating the youthful vigor, the energy, the almost indestructible life of our own country, finds it difficult to believe that the indulgence of the same national sin, under infinitely clearer light, may be followed with a similar overthrow, let him wander on the banks of the Nile, and think down hours to moments in the silent sanctuaries of its broken temples.

"STEP TO THE CAPTAIN'S OFFICE AND SETTLE!"

All

This old watchword, so often heard by travellers in the early stages of steam-navigation, is now and then ringing in our ears with a very pointed and pertinent application. It is a note that belongs to all the responsibilities of this life for eternity. There is a day of reckoning, a day for the settlement of accounts. unpaid bills will then have to be paid; all unbalanced books will have to be settled. There will be no loose memorandums forgotten; there will be no heedless commissioners for the convenience of careless consciences; there will be no proxies; there will be no bribed auditors.

Neither will there be such a thing as a hesitating conscience; but the inward monitor, so often drugged and silenced on earth, will speak out. There will be no doubt nor question as to the right and the wrong. There will be no vain excuses, nor any

attempt to make them. There will be no more sophistry, no more considerations of expediency, no more pleading of the laws of men and the customs of society, no more talk about organic sins being converted into constructive righteousness, or collective and corporate frauds releasing men from individual responsibilities.

When we see a man, a professed Christian, running a race with the worshippers of wealth and fashion, absorbed in the vanities of the world, or endeavoring to serve both God and mammon, we hear the voice, Step to the Captain's office and settle!

When we see a man spending his whole time and energies in getting ready to live, but never thinking how he shall learn to die, endeavoring even to forget that he must die,-poor man, he must step to the Captain's office and settle!

When we see editors and politicians setting power in the place of goodness, and expediency in the place of justice, and law in the place of equity, and custom in the place of right, putting darkness for light, and evil for good, and tyranny for general benevolence, we think of the day when the issuers of such counterfeit money will be brought to light, and their sophistries and lies exposed,for among the whole tribe of unprincipled politicians there will be great consternation when the call comes to step to the Captain's office and settle.

When we see unjust rulers in their pride of power fastening chains upon the bondmen, oppressing the poor, and playing their pranks of defiant tyranny before high heaven, then also come these words to mind, like a blast from the last trumpet,-Step to the Captain's office and settle!

THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

We speak a language containing vast treasures of religious wisdom, and vernacular, more or less, over a large portion of the globe, and, for this and other causes, perhaps destined to become an organ of international communication more universal than any other tongue. The students at the missionary seminary at Basle, in Germany, well denominated the English language the missionary language. It might almost be called the language of religion, in reference to the vast treasures of theological science, the mines of religious truth, and, above all, the inestimable works of practical piety, of which it furnishes a key. There is in it a capital of speculative and practical theology, rich and deep enough for the whole world to draw upon. From time to time, God himself has especially honored it, and prepared it more and more for his glory, by giving to the world, through its medium, such works as the Pilgrim's Progress and the Paradise Lost. It is the language of Protestantism, the language of civil and religious free