OLD! call you me? Ah, when the Almighty spoke creation into birth, I was there. Then was I born. 'Mid the bloom and verdure of paradise, I gazed upon the young world radiant with celestial smiles. I rose upon the pinions of the first morn, and caught the sweet dew-drops as they fell and sparkled on the boughs of the garden. Ere the foot of man was heard sounding in this wilderness, I gazed out on its thousand rivers, flashing in light, and reflecting the broad sun like a thousand jewels upon their bosoms. The cataracts sent up their anthems in these solitudes, and none was here to listen to the new-born melody but I. The fawns bounded over the hills, and drank at the limpid streams, ages before an arm was raised to injure or make them afraid. For thousands of years the morning star rose in beauty upon these unpeopled shores, and its twin sister of the eve flamed in the forehead of the sky, with no eye to admire their rays but mine. Ah! call me old? Babylon and Assyria, Palmyra and Thebes, rose, flourished, and fell, and I beheld them in their glory and their decline. Scarce a melancholy ruin marks the place of their existence; but when their fine stones were laid in the earth, I was there! 'Mid all their splendor, glory, and wickedness, I was in their busy streets, and crumbling their magnificent palaces to

*

the earth. My books will show a long and fearful account against them. I control the fate of empires; I give them their period of glory and splendor; but at their birth, I conceal in them the seeds of death and decay. They must go down and be humbled in the dust, their heads bowed down before the rising glories of young nations, to whose prosperity there will also come a date and a day of decline. I poise my wings over the earth, and watch the course and doings of its inhabitants. I call up the violets upon the hill, and crumble the gray ruins to the ground. I am the agent of a higher power, to give life and take it away. I spread silken tresses upon the brow of the young, and plant gray hair on the head of the aged man. Dimples and smiles, at my bidding, lurk around the lips of the innocent child, and I furrow the brow of the aged with wrinkles. Old call you me ? ay, but when will my days be numbered? When will time end, and eternity begin? When will the earth and its waters, and the universe, be rolled, and a new world commence its revolutions? Not till he who first bid me begin my flight, so orders it. When his purposes, who called me into being, are accomplished, then, and not till then, — and no one can proclaim the hour, — I, too, shall go to the place of all living.

THE DYING CHRISTIAN.

BY REV. I. SLADE.

OH! how refreshing, delightful, encouraging to us on our way to Zion, to perceive around us those who are "living unto the Lord," with their eyes and hearts fixed upon the heavenly inheritance. And oh, still happier sight, and yet an awful rejoicing, to behold a brother " dying unto the Lord," to witness the triumph of our holy faith in nature's last hour and Satan's last buffeting; to observe the trophies of divine love adorning and cheering the melancholy bed; the tranquil smile, the unwearied trust, the patient, contented, thankful resignation, the uplifted hand and eye, the illuminated countenance, the peaceful spirit all the while ready to wing its flight.

Go, boastful science! go, vain philosophy! and visit the death-beds of your votaries; mark well the doubts and fears betraying themselves under the mask of a bold profession; mark the impatience and vexation, the present burden and the miserable foreboding; go and discover your infidel champions, the proud Goliaths of your kingdom, trembling and quailing under the lifted stroke of death, and despairing under the load of unforgiveness of sin, under the terrors of an avenging God. Go to your despisers of the crucified Jesus, to those who have

been too wise to seek, or too busy to find him; see them, as I have seen, stretching out their hands `in agony, and saying, "Is there no one to save a fellowcreature from destruction ?" Then, when ye are sickened with such scenes, repair to the bedside of a departing saint, and see how a Christian can die. Go and study a lesson more instructive and more precious than all your pages of human lore and learning; go and learn from a lovely example, how to live and how to die.

TO MY FRIEND, ON THE DEATH OF HIS SISTER.*

BY JOHN G. WHITTIER.

THINE is a grief, the depth of which another
May never know.

Yet o'er the waters, O my stricken brother!
To thee I go.

I lean my heart unto thee, sadly folding

With even the weakness of my soul upholding
The strength of thine.

*Sophia Sturge was sister of Joseph Sturge, of Birmingham. She was the colleague, counsellor, and ever-ready helpmate of her brother, in his vast designs of beneficence. The Birmingham Pilot said of her: "Never, perhaps, were the active and passive virtues of the human character more harmoniously and beautifully blended, than in this excellent woman."

I never knew, like thee, the dear departed;

I stood not by

When, in calm trust, the pure and tranquil-hearted Lay down to die.

And on thine ear my words of weak condoling
Must vainly fall:

The funeral bell, which in thy heart is tolling,
Sounds over all!

I will not mock thee with the poor world's common
And heartless phrase,

Nor wrong the memory of a sainted woman
With idle praise.

With silence only as their benediction,
God's angels come

Where, in the shadow of a great affliction,
The soul sits dumb!

Yet, would I say what thine own heart approveth:
Our Father's will,

Calling to him the dear one whom he loveth,
Is mercy still.

Not upon thee or thine the solemn angel
Hath evil wrought:

Her funeral anthem is a glad evangel, -
The good die not!

God calls our loved ones, but we lose not wholly What he hath given;

They live on earth, in thought and deed, as truly As in his heaven.