RESIGNATION.

BY HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.

THERE is no flock, however watched and tended,

But one dead lamb is there!
There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended,

But has one vacant chair;
The air is full of farewells to the dying,

And mournings for the dead;
The heart of Rachel for her children crying

Will not be comforted ?

Let us be patient; these severe afflictions

Not from the ground arise.
But oftentimes celestial benedictions

Assume this dark disguise,

We see but dimly through the mists and vapours;

Amid these earthly damps
What seem to us but dim, funereal tapers,

May be heaven's distant lamps.
There is no death! what seems so is transition;

This life of mortal breath
Is but a suburb of the life elysian,

Whose portal we call Death.
She is not dead—the child of our affection-

But gone unto that school,
Where she no longer needs our poor protection,

And Christ himself doth rule.

In that great cloister's stillness and seclusion

By guardian angels led,
Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution,

She lives, whom we call dead.

Day after day we think what she is doing

In those bright realms of air:

Year after year, her tender steps pursuing,

Behold her grown more fair.
Thus do we walk with her, and keep unbroken

The bond which nature gives,
Thinking that our remembrance, though unspoken,

May reach her where she lives.
Not as a child shall we again behold her;

For when with rapture wild
In our embraces we again enfold her,

She will not be a child;
But a fair maiden in her Father's mansion,

Clothed with celestial grace;
And beautiful with all the souls expansion

Shall we behold her face.

And though at times, impetuous with emotion

And anguish long suppressed,
The swelling heart heaves moaning like the ocean

That cannot be at rest;
We will be patient, and assuage the feeling

We cannot wholly stay;
By patience sanctifying, not concealing

The grief that must have way.

THE HOURS.

THE hours are viewless angels,

That still go gliding by,
And bear each minute's record up

To Him who sits on high.
And we, who walk among them,

As one by one departs,
See not that they are hovering

For ever round our hearts.

ON DOING GOOD TO EVERYBODY. YOUNG people often ask many questions, which shows that they want to know all they can, and yet many of them do not like to go to school. How is this ?

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I will tell you how I think it is. It is not that children do not want to know, but it is because those who teach them do not talk to them in an easy and pleasant manner, but sometimes cross, or talk so that the little folks do not know what they mean, and so they neither like the school nor the teachers.

All teachers should always try to teach as the Great Teacher did. Jesus Christ was the Great Teacher. How easy, and yet how wise, were the lessons he taught! So easy that a child could understand him, and yet so wise that the wisest man never spake so wisely.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, tell us many of the wonderful things he said—things we should never have known if he had not told them. And this caused those who heard him with wonder and joy to cry out, “Never man spake like this man."

Once he wished to teach the people that they ought to do good to every body. What did he say? Turn now to your Testament, and read from the 25th to the 37th verse of the tenth chapter of Luke, and you will know.

The Lord Jesus said, “A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves." That was a thing which sometimes happened, for the road from Jerusalem to Jericho, about fifteen miles, was rocky and mountainous, and afforded opportunities to thieves and robbers to commit their depredations. It is said that at this time robberies accompanied by violence were frequent, Herod the Great having dismissed forty thousand men, whom he had employed in rebuilding and repairing the Temple, most of