"Where it listeth, there it bloweth; all existence “If I fail to find her out by her gold tresses, I shall know her by the traces of dead kisses, And changed to something other than it was; And the future with the past is set at variance; And life falters with the burthens which it has. Earth's old sins press fast behind me, weakly wailing; Faint before me fleets the good I have not done; And my search for her may still be unavailing 'Mid the spirits that have passed beyond the sun. BEFORE THE RAIN. THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. We knew it would rain, for all the morn Of marshes and swamps and dismal fens- To sprinkle them over the land in showers. BABYHOOD. Heigh-ho! Babyhood! Tell me where you linger: Let's toddle home again, for we have gone as tray; Take this eager hand of mine and lead me by the finger Back to the Lotus lands of the far away. Turn back the leaves of life; don't read the story, Let's find the pictures, and fancy all the rest:We can fill the written pages with a brighter glory Than Old Time the story-teller, at his very best! Turn to the brook, where the honeysuckle, tipping O'er its vase of perfume spills it on the breeze, And the bee and humming-bird in estacy are sipping From the fairy flagons of the blooming locust trees. Turn to the lane, where we used to "teeter-tottor," Where the dusky turtle lies basking on the gravel tray; Take this eager hand of mine and lead me by the finger Back to the Lotus lands of the far-away, AFTER THE RAIN. THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. The rain has ceased, and in my room The sunshine pours an airy flood; And on the church's dizzy vane The ancient cross is bathed in blood. From out the dripping ivy-leaves, With purple ripples on her neck. He kisseth first, then sits as blithe to eat If country loves such sweet desires gain, Upon his couch of straw he sleeps as sound For cares cause kings full oft their sleep to spill, If country loves such sweet desires gain, Thus with his wife he spends the year as blithe And blither too: For kings have wars and broils to take in hand; If country loves such sweet desires gain, Like the weary march of the hands of time, That meet and part at the noontide chime. And the shore is kissed at each turning anew, By the dripping bow of the old canoe. Oh! many a time with careless hand, I have pushed it away from the pebbly strand, And paddled it down where the stream runs quick, Where the whirls are wild and the eddies are thick, And laughed as I leaned o'er' the rocking side, To see that the faces and boats were two, But now, as I lean o'er the crumbling side, As I rocked where the whirls their white spray shed Ere the blossom waved or the green grass grew O'er the moldering stern of the old canoe. THE OLD CANOE. Where the rocks are gray and the shore is steep The useless paddles are idly dropped, The stern half-sunk in the slimy wave, Like the hand that plants o'er the tomb a flower, The currentless waters are dead and still, But the twilight wind plays with the boat at will; And lazily in and out again It floats the length of the rusty chain. THE CHARACTER OF CHRIST. We are struck with this peculiarity in the author of Christianity, that whilst all others are formed in a measure by the spirit of the age, we can discover in Jesus no impression of the period in which He lived. We know with considerable accuracy the state of society, the modes of thinking, the hopes and expectations of the country in which Jesus was born and grew up; and He is as free from them, and as exalted above them, as if He had lived in another world, or, with every sense shut on the objects around Him. His character has in it nothing local or temporary. It can be explained by nothing around Him. His history shows Him to be a solitary being, living for purposes which none but himself comprehended, and enjoying not so much as the sympathy of a single mind. His apostles, His chosen companions, brought Him to the spirit of the age; and nothing shows its strength more strikingly, than the slowness with which it yielded in these honest men to the instructions of Jesus. Jesus came to a nation expecting a Messiah, and He claimed this character. But instead of conforming the opinions which prevailed in regard to the Messiah, He resisted them wholly and without reserve. To a people anticipating a triumphant leader, under whom vengeance as well as ambition was to be glutted by the prostration of their oppressors, He came as a spiritual leader teaching humility and peace. This undisguised hostility to the dearest hopes and prejudices of His nation; this disdain of the usual compliances by which ambition and imposture conciliate adherents; this deliberate exposure of Himself to rejection and hatred, cannot easily be examined by the common principles of human nature, and excludes the possibility of selfish aims in the author of Christianity. One striking peculiarity in Jesus is the extentthe vastness of His views. Whilst all around Him looked for a Messiah to liberate God's ancient people; whilst to every other Jew, Judea was the exclusive object of pride and hope-Jesus came declaring Himself to be the deliverer and light of the world: and in His whole teaching and life, you see a consciousness, which never forsakes Him, of a relation to the whole human race. This idea of blessing mankind, of spreading a universal religion, was the most magnificent which had ever entered man's mind. All previous religions had been given to particular nations. No conqueror, legislator, philosopher, in the extravagance of ambition, had ever dreamed of subjecting all nations to a common faith. This conception of a universal religion, intended for Jew and Gentile, for all nations and climes, is wholly inexplicable by the circumstances of Jesus. He was a Jew; and the first and deepest and most constant impression on a Jew's mind was that of the superiority conferred on his people and himself by the national religion introduced by Moses. The wall between the Jew and the Gentile seemed to reach to heaven. The abolition of the peculiarity of Moses, the overthrow of the temple of Mount Sinai, the erection of a new religion in which all men would meet as brethren, and which would be the common and equal property of Jew and Gentile-these were of all ideas the last to spring up in Judea, the last for enthusiasm or imposture to originate. Compare next these views of Christ with His station in life. He was of humble birth and education, with nothing in His lot, with no extensive means, no rank, or wealth, or patronage to infuse vast thoughts and extravagant plans. The shop of a carpenter, the village of Nazareth, were not spots for ripening a scheme more aspiring and extensive than had ever been formed. It is a principle in human nature, that except in cases of insanity, some proportion is observed between the power of an individual, and his plans and hopes. The purpose to which Jesus devoted Himself was as ill-suited to his condition as an attempt to change the seasons, or to make the sun rise in the west. That a young man in obscure life, belonging to an oppressed nation, should seriously think of subverting the time-hallowed and deep-rooted religions of the world, is a strange fact; but with this purpose we see the mind of Jesus thoroughly imbued; and sublime as it is, he never falls below it in His language or conduct; but speaks and acts with consciousness of superiority, with a dignity and authority becoming this unparalleled destination. In this connection I cannot but add another striking circumstance in Jesus; and that is the calm confidence with which He always looked forward to the accomplishment of His design. THE PROGRESS OF SIN. JEREMY TAYLOR I have seen the little purls of a spring sweat through the bottom of a bank, and intenerate the stubborn pavement, till it hath made it fit for the impression of a child's foot; and it was despised, like the descending pearls of a misty morning, till it had opened its way and made a stream large enough to carry away the ruins of the undermined strand, and to invade the neighboring gardens; but then the despised drops were grown into an artificial river, and an intolerable mischief. So are the first entrances of sin, stopped with the antidotes of a hearty prayer, and checked into sobriety by the eye of a reverend man, or the counsels of a single sermon; but when such beginnings are neglected, and our religion hath not in it so much philosophy as to think anything evil as long as we can endure it, they grow up to ulcers and pestilential evils; they destroy the soul by their abode, who at their first entry might have been killed with the pressure of a little finger. He that hath passed many stages of a good life, to prevent his being tempted to a single sin, must be very careful that he never entertain his spirit with the remembrances of his past sin, nor amuse it with the fantastic apprehensions of the present. When the Israelites fancied the sapidness and relish of the flesh-pots, they longed to taste and to return. So when a Libyan tiger, drawn from his wilder foragings, is shut up and taught to eat civil meat, and suffer the authority of a man, he sits down tamely in his prison, and pays to his keeper fear and reverence for his meat; but if he chance to come again and taste a draught of warm blood, he presently leaps into his natural cruelty. He scarce abstains from eating those hands that brought him discipline and food. The Pannonian bears, when they have clasped a dart in the region of their liver, wheel themselves upon the wound, and with anger and malicious revenge strike the deadly barb deeper, and cannot be quit from the fatal steel, but, in flying, bear along that which themselves make the instrument of a more hasty death; so is every vicious person struck with a deadly wound, and his own hands |