and invoking blessings upon them. About two hours before his death, he spoke to the friend at his bedside these remarkable words, solemn as eternity and beautiful as the love which fills it: "There is a spirit which I feel which delights to do no evil, nor to avenge any wrong; but delights to endure all things, in hope to enjoy its own in the end; its hope is to outlive all wrath and contention, and to weary out all exultation and cruelty, or whatever is of a nature contrary to itself. It sees to the end of all temptations; as it bears no evil in itself, so it conceives none in thought to any other if it be betrayed, it bears it, for its ground and spring is the mercy and forgiveness of God. Its crown is meekness; its life is everlasting love unfeigned; it takes its kingdom with entreaty, and not with contention, and keeps it by lowliness of mind. In God alone it can rejoice, though none else regard it, or can own its life. It is conceived in sorrow, and brought forth with none to pity it; nor doth it murmur at grief and oppression. It never rejoiceth but through sufferings, for with the world's joy it is murdered. I found it alone, being forsaken. I have fellowship therein with them who lived in dens and desolate places of the earth, who through death obtained resurrection and eternal Holy Life." So died James Nayler. He was buried in "Thomas Parnell's burying-ground, at King's Rippon," in a green nook of rural England. Wrong and violence, and temptation and sorrow, and evil-speaking, could reach him no more. And in taking leave of him, let us say with old Joseph Wyeth, where he touches upon this case in his Anguis Flagellatus: "Let none insult, but take heed lest they also, in the hour of their temptation, do fall away." J. G. WHITTIER. DUTY! the star to every wandering barque, The Neglected Call. WHEN the fields were white with harvest, and the labourers were few, Heard I thus a voice within me, "here is work for thee to do; But the wily Tempter queried, "ere thy substance be unspent? "Hast thou need to toil and labour? art thou fitted for the work? Many a hidden stone to bruise thee, in the harvest field doth lurk; There are others called beside thee-and perchance the voice may be, But thy own delusive fancy, which thou hearest calling theeThere is time enough before thee, all thy footsteps to retrace;" Then I yielded to the Tempter-and the angel veiled her face. Pleasure beckoned in the distance, and her syren song was sweet, "Through a thornless path of flowers, gently I will guide thy feet; Youth is as a rapid river, gliding noiselessly away, 252 THE NEGLECTED CALL. Earth is but a pleasant garden; cull its roses whilst thou may; Press the juice from purple clusters, fill life's chalice with the wine, Taste the fairest fruits which tempt thee, all its richest fruits are thine." Ah! the path was smooth and easy-but a snare was set therein, "Oh! my Father," cried I inly, "Thou hast striven-I have willed, But the still small voice within me, earnest in its truth and deep, reap; God is just, and retribution follows each neglected call; Thou hadst thy appointed duty taught thee by the Lord of all, Go not hence to glean, but tarry from the morning until night, H. LLOYD. Erology. "OF all the studies which relate to the material universe, there is none, perhaps, which appeals so powerfully to our senses, or which comes into such close and immediate contact with our wants and enjoyments, as that of Geology. In our hourly walks, whether on business or for pleasure, we tread with heedless step upon the apparently uninteresting objects which it embraces but could we rightly interrogate the rounded pebble at our feet, it would read us an exciting chapter on the history of primeval times, and would tell us of the convulsions by which it was wrenched from its parent rock, and of the floods by which it was abraded, and transported to its present humble locality. In our visit to the picturesque and the sublime in nature we are brought into close proximity to the more interesting phenomena of geology. In the precipices which protect our rock-girt shores, which flank our mountain glens, or which variegate our lowland valleys, and in the shapeless fragments at their base, which the lichen colours, and round which the ivy twines, we see the remnants of uplifted and shattered beds, which once reposed in peace at the bottom of the ocean. Nor does the rounded bowlder which would have defied the lapidary's wheel of the Giant Age, give forth a less oracular response from its grave of clay, or from its lair of sand. Floated by ice from some Alpine summit, or hurried along in torrents of mud, and floods of water, it may have traversed a quarter of the globe, amid the crash of falling forests, and the death shrieks of the noble animals which they sheltered. The mountain range, too, with its catacombs below, along which the earthquake transmits its terrific sounds, reminds us of the mighty power by which it was upheaved,while the lofty peak with its cap of ice, or its nostrils of fire, places in our view the tremendous agencies which have been at work beneath us. But it is not merely amid the powers of external nature, that the once hidden things of the earth are presented to our view. Our temples and our palaces are formed from the rocks of a primeval age: bearing the very ripple-marks of a Pre-Adamite ocean-grooved by the passage of the once moving bowlder, and embosoming the relics of an ancient life, and the plants by which it was sustained. Our dwellings, too, are ornamented with the variegated limestones-the indurated tombs of molluscous life— and our apartments heated with the carbon of primeval forests, and lighted with the gaseous element which it confines. From the green bed of the ocean has been raised the pure and spotless marble, to mould the divine lineaments of beauty, and perpetuate the expressions of intellectual power. From a remoter age, and a still greater depth, the primary and secondary rocks have yielded a rich tribute to the chaplet of rank, and to the processes of art. The diamond and the sapphire, while they shine in the royal diadem, and in the imperial sceptre, are invaluable instruments in the hands of the artisan: and the ruby and the topaz, and the emerald and the chrysoberyl, have been scattered from the jewel caskets of our mother Earth, to please the eye, and to gratify the vanity of her children." SIR DAVID BREWSTER. If there be sermons in stones, what think ye of the hymns and psalms, matin and vesper, of the lark, who, at heaven's gate sings of the wren, who pipes his thanksgivings, as the slant sunbeam shoots athwart the massy portal of the cave, in whose fretted roof she builds her nest above the waterfall? |