On the steps let down from heaven, rugged though they seem and hard, Pilgrims from all lands will meet thee, silver-haired and battle scarred, And the young, in meekness lovely, shielded by an angel guard. With a grasp the worldling feels not, by a touch he cannot see, Holy joy their bosoms thrilling, they will greet and welcome thee; With their hymns of glad thanksgiving, that thy mission is begun, That the Father's kingdom cometh, that His will on earth is done, Mingleth soft thy heart's "Eureka,"-Peace! The Father's boon is won. God hath many aims to compass, many messages to send, chain Minds, designed for noble uses, bondaged to the lust of gain Souls, once beautiful in whiteness, crimsoned with corruption's stain. Through earth's wrong, and woe, and evil, sometimes seeing, sometimes blind, Ever must the homeward pathway of the humble Christian wind; Stooping over sin and sorrow-watching by the couch of pain Holy promises outpouring, grateful as the summer rain, To the heart whose hope had withered never to revive again. Dark perplexing questions cross him-meet him as he onward goes; Why a God of love and mercy should permit Life's ills and woes? Why the good should strive and differ? If His love be over all, Why the guiltless and the guilty by the same dread stroke should fall? Why the haughty arm of power should meek innocence enthrall? Why with Joy is Sorrow walking, hand in hand and side by side, Sparing not the sad and lowly-breaking in on strength and pride? Grief and Gladness touch each other-pass each other in the street Why should trains of sabled mourners young and happy lovers meet, Chilling on their lips the whisper, "Life is good, and Love is sweet!" As the earnest soul advances, step, by step to higher ground, Simple Faith and steady Patience slowly bring the answers. round: Then it moves serenely forward, trusting less to Reason's span, Satisfied with Faith's revealings of a broad Paternal plan Down Existence one is sailing, by fair breezes borne along What, to him, is that wrapt thinker-wearing out the night in toil, Gleaning, for the thankless Future, from the Past a golden spoil But an idle, useless dreamer, but a cumberer of the soil? Say we these can never mingle ?-soon the student's cheek shall pale, And the o'er-tasked brain shall shall fail: weary, and the soul-lit eye Whose bright face his sick room lighteth, with hope's language all a-glow? Whose kind hand the hair is smoothing backward from his burning brow? Ah, his careless-hearted neighbour is a gentle brother now. There a proud man coldly gazes on a meek, forgiving face! Once he loved her-but ambition crept into affection's place; From her Christian garb unspotted, turns he now his scornful eye, But on his last lowly pillow, when the great man comes to lie, He will long to hear the rustle of her white robe passing by. Thus are God's ways vindicated; and at length we slowly gain, As our needs dispel our blindness, some faint glimpses of the chain Which connects the Earth with Heaven, Right with Wrong and Good with Ill Links in one harmonious movement, slowly learn we to fulfill Our appointed march in concert with His manifested will! E. L. JR. Extracts from Nichols Planetary Systems. THE obscurity of the times in which he lived, rests over the early character of Copernicus. We know not how far favourable circumstances contributed to the development of his genius, or whether, without peculiar advantages, he owes all to an inborn energy. But whatever his intellectual culture, the greatness of his mind could be borrowed from no one; as of all who had yet lived, he was the earliest to accomplish a task most difficult for man. Feeling, with the intuitive force of the highest genius, that those popular systems of the heavens could not be true, and, at the same time, recognising that the logic or mere reasoning which sustained them was impregnable, he threw from him the weight of ages, and quietly asked whether that fundamental tenet, which asserts that the earth is motionless, might not be false? The effort required to hesitate on a point which all mankind-up to that moment-had undoubtingly believed, and which had now interwoven itself with every mode of thought, was an achievement for the loftiest order of genius. The question being put, it required very superior, but not uncommon talent, to follow it to its conclusions. Indued by that modesty which invaribly characterises minds of the finest texture, this great man-immediately on obtaining sight of the idea which moved him-turned again to the elder philosophers, lest there might be precious relics buried there to inspire and encourage him; and accordingly, he did find certain hints. touching on a simple order of things; hints, which his correct and discriminating intellect speedily methodized into that system which, in the somewhat hyperbolical language of his successor, Tycho, "moved the earth from its foundations, stopped the revolution of the firmament, made the sun stand still, and subverted the whole ancient order of the universe." What a change must come over the mind, when from the idea S 12* 137 138 EXTRACTS FROM NICHOL'S PLANETARY SYSTEMS. that this Earth is the centre around which all things are symmetrically arranged-the body for whose sake the brilliant fret-work of the skies was hung up-we pass to the conception that it is merely one of a small class of orbs attached to the Sun, and by no means the largest of these; and that those multitudes of Stars, greater than the eye can number, or even the imagination conceive, are globes like the Sun, only lessened by their immeasurable distances, but around which planets may also roll, and all space be thus filled with motion and life! Doubtless there is here wherewith to stun the self-important, and startle the timid; and it is not astonishing that demurs arose among believers in the narrow creeds of those days; but indeed, that mind only can be afraid to look at the Universe as it typifies the greatness of its great Creator, which knows not the comprehensiveness of the glance of an Almighty eye. The love which warms the blue depths of space, holds within it also our microscopic earth, which even in its most microscopic atoms, teems with fine arrangements, so minute and manifold, that man is yet baffled in his ambition to know them all, where the smallest creature that creeps along the ground, has its home, its rooftree, and its young, its passions, affections, and loves,-where one drop of water swarms with myriads of living beings, each drinking up life and happiness within the sphere of laws that know no caprice, and is exquisitely adapted to its place! Yes! Oh reverent adorer, the God of these shining skies, is also the Being who provides the young ravens with their food! But even the interest of these general views does not incline us to overlook the fine harmony as to minor arrangements which now appeared in the scheme of the Heavens. The two simple motions of the Earth produce our day and year. Revolving on its axis in twentyfour hours, the Earth turns every part of its surface in that period towards the Sun; whence a regular succession of light and darkness and to a peculiarity connected with its yearly orbitual motion we owe the change of seasons. The source of this most |