one only motion and petition which I earnestly pray the town to lay to heart, as ever they look for a blessing from God on the town, on your families, your corn and cattle, and your children after you; it is this: That after you have got over the black brook of some soul bondage yourselves, you tear not down the bridge after you, by leaving no small pity for distressed souls that may come over you.

What are all the contentions and wars of this world about, but for greater dishes and bowls of porridge? But here all over this colony a great number of weak and distressed souls, scattered, are flying hither; the Most High and only Wise hath provided this country and this corner as a shelter for the poor and persecuted, according to their several persuasions. And as to myself, in endeavoring after your temporal and spiritual peace, I humbly desire to say, if I perish, I perish. It is but a shadow vanished, a bubble broke, a dream finished. Eternity will pay for all.

ROGER WILLIAMS.

H, could I worship aught beneath the skies

That earth hath seen or fancy can devise,
Thine altar, sacred liberty! should stand,
Built by no mercenary, vulgar hand

With fragrant turf, and flowers as wild and fair

As ever dressed a bank, or scented summer air.

XXII.

Our Acts Our Angels.

Say ye to the righteous that it shall be well with them, for they shall eat the fruit of their doings. Woe unto the wicked, it shall be ill with him, for the reward of his hands shall be given him.—Isaiah iii, 10, II.

THE only things in which we can be said to have any

property are our actions. Our thoughts may be bad, yet produce no poison; they may be good, yet produce no fruit. Our riches may be taken from us by misfortune, our reputation by malice, our spirits by calamity, our health by disease, our friends by death. But our actions must follow us beyond the grave; with respect to them alone we cannot say that we shall carry with us nothing when we die, neither that we shall go naked out of the world. Our actions must clothe us with an immortality loathsome or glorious; these are the only title-deeds of which we cannot be disinherited; they will have their full weight in the balance of eternity, when everything else is as nothing. COLTON.

Act well at the moment, and you have performed a good action to all eternity. LAVATER.

when time's veil shall fall asunder,
The soul may know

No fearful change nor sudden wonder,

Nor sink the weight of mystery under,

But with the upward rise, and with the vastness grow.

XXIII.

Liberty and Light.

O send out Thy light and Thy truth, let them lead me, let them bring me unto Thy holy hill and to Thy tabernacle. Then will I go unto the altar of God, unto God, my exceeding joy.

-Psalm xliii.

ERTAIN past ages are called Ages of Faith, in

contradistinction to our own to which that title is denied. Justly? I more than doubt it. For one thing, our age believes in Liberty and Light; year after year the efforts increase to spread their blessings, to emancipate and enlighten the minds even of the humblest classes. And the consequence is that Ideas begin to rise above material power. They scorn armed hosts; they break through frowning fortresses, and they will, at last, silence the roar of the battlefield. The time when theorists are contemptuously pushed aside, are ridiculed as impracticable dreamers, is passing away; because the world has found out that their dreams have come true, and are now commonplace realities. Liberty and Light are the watchwords of those who believe in the redemption of mankind in this world. May they ever inspire and guide us.

HE light pours down from heaven
And enters where it may;

The eyes of all earth's children
Are cheered with one bright day.

So let the mind's true sunshine

Be spread o'er earth as free, And fill men's waiting spirit

As the waters fill the sea.

G. G.

XXIV.

Belief in Man.

The Lord is good to all; and His tender mercies

are over all His works.—Psalm cxlv. 9.

CONSCIENTIOUS person would rather doubt his own judgment than condemn his species. He would say: "I have observed without attention, or judged upon erroneous maxims; I trusted to profession when I ought to have attended to conduct." Such a man will grow wise, not malignant, by his acquaintance with the world. But he that accuses all mankind of corruption, ought to remember that he is sure to convict only one.

In truth, I should much rather admit. those, whom, at any time, I have disrelished the most, to be patterns of perfection, than seek a consolation to my own unworthiness in a general communion of depravity with all about me. BURKE.

I never knew one who made it his business to lash the faults of other writers that was not guilty of greater

XXV. The Architect of Circumstances.

And the Lord God took Adam and put him into the Garden of Eden to work at it and to keep it.Genesis ii. 15.

These twenty

And Jacob said to Laban years have I worked for thee; in the day the drought consumed me and the frost by night, and the sleep departed from mine eyes.—Genesis xxxi. 38-40.

JNSTEAD of saying: Man is the creature of circum

stances, it would be nearer the mark to say: That man is the architect of circumstance. Our strength is measured by our plastic power. From the same materials one man builds palaces, another hovels; one warehouses, another villas; bricks and mortar are bricks and mortar until the architect can make them something else. Thus it is that in the same family, in the same circumstances, one man rears a stately edifice, while his brother, vacillating and incompetent, lives forever amidst ruins. The block of marble which was an obstacle in the path of the weak becomes a stepping-stone in the pathway of the strong. THOMAS CARLYLE.

As a man thinks or desires in his heart, such, indeed, he is; for then, most truly, because most uncontrolably, he acts himself.

ET us then be up und doing

With a heart for every fate; Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labor and to wait.

SOUTH.