O, How unlike the cumbrous works of man,
Heaven's easy, artless, unencumbered plan!
No meretricious graces to beguile,

No clustering ornaments to clog the pile;
From ostentation, as from weakness free,
It stands, like the cerulean arch we see,
Majestic in its own simplicity.
Inscribed above the portal, from afar
Conspicuous as the brightness of a star,

Legible only by the light they give,

Stand the soul-quickening words: Believe and live!

WITH outstretched arms,

Stern justice and soft-smiling love embrace,
Supporting, in full majesty, thy throne,
When seemed its majesty to need support,
Or that, or man, inevitably lost:

What, but the fathomless of love divine
Could labour such expedient from despair,

COWPER.

And rescue both? Both rescue? Both exalt!

O, how are both exalted by the deed!

The wondrous deed! or shall I call it more?
A wonder in Omnipotence itself!

A mystery no less to gods than men.

WHAT Adam had, and forfeited for all,
Christ keepeth now, who cannot fail or fall.

YOUNG.

GEORGE HERBERT.

(See also ATONEMENT, CROSS, CRUCIFIXION.)

REFLECTION-MEMORY.

THAT which hath been, is now; and that which is to be, hath already been; and God requireth that which is past. ECCLESIASTES, iii, 15.

Ask now of the days that are past. DEUTERONOMY, İV, 32.

O Lord, Thou hast searched me and known me.

Thou knowest my down-sitting and mine up-rising; Thou understandest my thoughts afar off. PSALM CXXXIX, 1. 2.

'Tis greatly wise to talk with our past hours,

And ask them what report they bore to Heaven,

And how they might have borne more welcome news.
Their answers form what men experience call;

If wisdom's friend, her best; if not, worst foe.

YOUNG.

THINK'ST thou to be concealed, thou little thought,

That in the curtained chamber of the soul

Dost wrap thyself so close, and dream to do

A secret work? Look to the hues that roll
O'er the changed brow-the moving lips behold ---
Linking thee unto speech the feet that run
Upon thy errands, and the deeds that stamp
Thy lineage plain before the noon-day sun;
Look to the pen that writes thy history down

In those tremendous books that ne'er unclose
Until the day of doom, and blush to see

How vain thy trust in darkness to repose,

Where all things tend to judgment. So beware,

O, erring human heart! what thought thou lodgest thera

MRS. SIGOURNEY.

A SOUL without reflection, like a pile
Without inhabitant, to ruin runs.

YOUNG.

Look at this skeleton of a once green leaf:
Time and the elements conspired its fall;

The worm hath eaten out the tenderer parts,
And left this curious anatomy

Distinct of structure-made so by decay.
So, at this moment, lies my life before me
In all its intricacies, all its errors.

COMPANION none is like

Unto the mind alone,

HENRY TAYLOR,

For many have been harmed by speech,-
Through thinking, few, or none.

Fear oftentimes restraineth words,
But makes not thoughts to cease;
And he speaks best, that hath the skill
When for to hold his peace.

Our wealth leaves us at death,
Our kinsmen at the grave,

But virtues of the mind unto

The heavens with us we have; Wherefore, for virtue's sake,

I can be well content

The sweetest time of all my life

To deem in thinking spent.

LORD VAUX.

TIME, as he courses onwards, still unrolls
The volume of concealment. In the future,
As in the optician's glassy cylinder,
The undistinguishable blots and colours.
Of the dim past collect and shape themselves,
Upstarting in their own completed image
To scare, or to reward.

COLERIDGE.

THINK that is just; 't is not enough to do,
Unless thy very thoughts are upright too.

THOMAS RANDOLPH.

HAIL, Memory, hail! in thy exhaustless mine,
From age to age, unnumbered treasures shine!
Thought, and her shadowy brood, thy call obey,
And place and time are subject to thy sway!
Thy pleasures most we feel, when most alone;
The only pleasures we can call our own.
Lighter than air, Hope's summer visions die,
If but a fleeting cloud obscure the sky;
If but a beam of sober Reason play,
Lo, Fancy's fairy frost-work melts away!
But can the wiles of Art, the grasp of Power,
Snatch the rich relics of a well-spent hour?
These, when the trembling spirit wings her flight,
Pour round her path a stream of living light;
And gild those pure and perfect realms of rest,
Where Virtue triumphs, and her sons are blest!

ROGERS.

THE Soul's life, mystic Memory, more sublime
Than that which stores from wisdom's boundless sea-
She sleeps not 'neath the rapid wing of time,
But garners for a long eternity.

ANONYMOUS.

REGENERATION-RENEWAL.

NoT by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost. TITUS, iii, 5.

Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the king. dom of God. JOHN, iii, 3.

THERE are blest inhabitants of earth,
Partakers of a new ethereal birth,-
Their hopes, desires, and purposes estranged
From things terrestrial, and divinely changed;
Their very language of a kind that speaks
The soul's sure interest in the good she seeks.

COWPER

THE consciousness of faith, of sins forgiver,
Of wrath appeased, of heavy guilt thrown off,
Sheds on my breast its long-forgotten' peace,
And, shining steadfast as the noon-day sun,
Lights, me along the path that duty marks.

WHEN man is born anew,

And being's perfect bliss is given,
Lo, a new Eden starts to view,

While angel-harps rejoice in Heaven-
"Tis wondrous all, divinely bright,
And the new creature walks in light.

MRS. HALL.

THOMAS GRINFIELD.