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said an ear would follow the blade, but what that is like I cannot tell. I can only wait and see. And while I watch, the ear comes-the crown of bristling cones. I can scarcely recognize the plant, and yet it is the same. One single life, through changes manifold. And not a change in vain. I see no tokens of mistake anywhere. And the man said the corn would come in the ear. I am waiting to see.

And as you and I, my friends, await the coming of that kingdom which the Master said was like this growing of the grain of wheat, we too have some impressive suggestions as to the attitude in which we wait and work.

We are reminded that the kingdom of God is one. A single life runs through it all. Under all its changes works a power which alters not the divine design. And there does not appear to be any arbitrary or sudden break. I see no indication of failure anywhere. The dispensation of the Patriarchs served its day. I do not see how it could have been bettered for its time. The dispensation of Mosaic law and ceremony served its end. We can partly discern its fitness and necessity. And the dispensation of the life of Christ-astounding and ever glorious efflorescence of the plant of the kingdom—this, certainly, could no more completely fulfil its purpose than it did. And the dispensation of the Holy Ghost in the midst whereof we stand,-what a wonderful period is this! I do not like to hear that it has failed, or will probably fail. Does any one know exactly what is the might of the Holy Ghost? Can any one surely say it is a might adequate to this result, but not adequate to that? It may renew a soul, but may not renew a world? O Infinite and on-moving Power! We fathom not, nor dare we limit thy unexhausted strength. We look with joy and trust to thy might in leading on, surely and apace, the latter day glory of the kingdom of God!

And it is on that power also that we rely in the patient and strenuous endeavor which is our part in this great enterprise. For we have a part also.

What is our part? Our part is not restless struggle to reproduce a by-gone, or to anticipate an unarrived period of the kingdom's progress. Not in plucking apart the unripe ear in haste for the grain. But in watching and cherishing the plant

of God's grace wherever visible in the world. In digging about its roots, and opening the soil for the heavenly rain. In caring for its welfare on the broad fields of Christian enterprise, or in the narrow field of personal devotion.

Gentlemen of this Theological Seminary, and you especially, my young friends, just entering on the work of the gospel ministry, to you is, in a manner, peculiarly given the divine function of the tillage of the plant of the kingdom in this evil world. This high, sacred, benign employment in which so many of the good and great of past generations have found their noblest occupation and most satisfying joy, is to be the employment of your lives. Called to it we trust by the Spirit of God; prepared for it in some measure by study of truth and by experience of grace, set high, I beseech you, the mark of your expectation and endeavor.

Ah, the divinely glorious mission of a true gospel husbandman! Who of us has ever reached an adequate estimate of its exalted privileges, or the dignity of its appointed work?

Suffer the word of exhortation which urges on you a truer conception of its sacred aim. To a complete consecration of yourselves to its objects I entreat you to be personally dedicated. More and more seek to make the ministry of grace in your hands all that it was meant to be for a sinning and suffering world. By individual effort, by united endeavor, by a dedication to it which grows daily more like Christ's, watch and tend, and cultivate, the plant of righteousness; till at last, its appointed changes all fulfilled, whether in the individual or the collective life, the ear succeeding to the blade, the full corn ripening in the ear, in God's set time, the wheat be garnered, and the harvesters rejoice together in the kingdom of heaven.

GEO. LEON WALKER.

VOL. XIII.

4

CURRENT LITERATURE.

HEARTSEASE AND RUE.*-To the reader who is quick to apprehend, there is in each one of the works of a writer of genius a subtle flavor which marks the particular period in which it was written. One who can read between the lines, always finds his interest. heightened as he detects the effects of the life-experiences of an author as they are displayed in each new volume. There is usually something about a first production, in any department of literature, however able it may be, which marks it as a maiden effort. Perhaps it may be only the careful precision of the style that gives it whatever of peculiar charm it may have. There is a flavor, also, which is found in the later productions of a writer, which belongs to the period when he has all his powers well in hand, when his experiences of life are fully rounded, and he handles his themes with the confidence of a veteran. All this is especially true of the works of a poet. In reading poetry there is a still further delight, if, in addition to the flavor of which we have spoken, the reader finds that the flowers, from which the poet has collected the material that he has distilled into sweetest honey, have grown in the familiar fields that he has himself long known. We may well be grateful to the poet who is able by his genius to invest evermore the scenes and characters, the thoughts and sentiments which are dear to us, with new interest and beauty.

There is a decided flavor, such as that of which we have spoken, which is to be found in the new volume of poems-" Heartsease and Rue"-which Mr. James Russell Lowell has just given to the public. We owed much before to this veteran in so many departments of literature. We will not undertake to say that in this last book he has surpassed anything he has written before, but there are here such marks of ripeness of power, of genial mellowness of feeling, that we are sure the volume will be welcomed in thousands of our American homes as a friend. But in addition to this, the themes are thoroughly American, and are treated in a spirit that is so thoroughly American, that they will awaken a response in the heart of all who read his lines.

*Heartsease and Rue. By JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Boston: 12mo, pp. 218.

The Poems are arranged under the following heads: I. Friendship.-II. Sentiment.-III. Fancy.-IV. Humor and Satire.-V. Epigrams.

The themes of the Poems of "Friendship" are enough of themselves to attract attention. Among them are the carefully finished tributes of Mr. Lowell's appreciation and love of such men as Agassiz, Holmes, Jeffries Wyman, Whittier, and George William Curtis, in every way worthy of the men. The poem written in Florence, in 1874, on hearing of the death of Agassiz, is so beautiful that we shall take the liberty of calling the attention of our readers to it.

The Poem opens with a brief reference to the ocean telegraph, and the rapidity with which it spreads over the whole world intelligence of all that happens.

The flame-winged feet

Of Trade's new Mercury, that dry-shod run
Through briny abysses dreamless of the sun,
Are mercilessly fleet.

We are then reminded that formerly the ocean gave a "short reprieve" to those on one side of it, who were to hear "ill news" from the other; and in this delay there was an advantage, for tidings, when they came by letter, were then announced less abruptly.

Surely ill news might wait,

And man be patient of delay to grieve:

Letters have sympathies

And tell-tale faces that reveal,

To senses finer than the eyes,

Their errand's purport ere we break the seal;
They wind a sorrow round with circumstance
To stay its feet, nor all unwarned displace
The veil that darkened from our sidelong glance
The inexorable face:

But now Fate stuns as with a mace;

The savage of the skies, that men have caught,
And some scant use of language taught,

Tells only what he must,

The steel-cold fact in one laconic thrust.

Such were the poet's thoughts as he took up the morning paper in a far-off Italian city, and he describes the feelings with which he began to run over its columns.

Then

So thought I, as, with vague, mechanic eyes,
I scanned the festering news we half despise
Yet scramble for no less,

And read of public scandal, private fraud,
Crime flaunting scot-free while the mob applaud,
Office made vile to bribe unworthiness,

And all the unwholesome mess

The Land of Honest Abraham serves of late
To teach the Old World how to wait,
When suddenly,

As happens if the brain, from overweight
Of blood, infect the eye,

Three tiny words grew lurid as I read,
And reeled commingling: Agassiz is dead.

As when, beneath the street's familiar jar,
An earthquake's alien omen rumbles far,
Men listen and forebode, I hung my head,

And strove the present to recall,

As if the blow that stunned were yet to fall.

We quote a few lines here and there from his description of the thoughts that came to him.

Uprooted is our mountain oak,
That promised long security of shade.

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He by the touch of men was best inspired,
And caught his native greatness at rebound
From generosities itself had fired;

Then how the heat through every fibre ran,
Felt in the gathering presence of the man,
While the apt word and gesture came unbid !
Virtues and faults it to one metal wrought,
Fined all his blood to thought,

And ran the molten man in all he said or did.
All Tully's rules and all Quintilian's too
He by the light of listening faces knew,
And his rapt audience all unconscious lent
Their own roused force to make him eloquent ;
Persuasion fondled in his look and tone;

Our speech (with strangers prudish) he could bring
To find new charm in accents not her own;
Her coy constraints and icy hindrances

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