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If all who live and breathe around us are the creatures of yesterday, and destined to see destruction to-morrow; if the same condition is our own, and the same sentence is written against us; if the solid forms of inanimate na5 ture and laborious art are fading and falling, if we look in vain for durability to the very roots of the mountains, where shall we turn, and on what can we rely? Can no support be offered; can no source of confidence be named? Oh yes! there is one Being to whom we can 10 look with a perfect conviction of finding that security, which nothing about us can give, and which nothing about us can take away. To this Being we can lift up our souls, and on him we may rest them, exclaiming in the language of the monarch of Israel, "Before the 15 mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting thou art God." "Of old hast thou laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of thy hands. They shall perish, but thou shalt endure, 20 yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment, as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed but thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end."

The eternity of God is a subject of contemplation, 25 which, at the same time that it overwhelms us with astonishment and awe, affords us an immoveable ground of confidence in the midst of a changing world. All things which surround us, all these dying, mouldering inhabitants of time, must have had a Creator, for the plain 30 reason, that they could not have created themselves. And their Creator must have existed from all eternity, for the plain reason, that the first cause must necessarily be uncaused. As we cannot suppose a beginning without a cause of existence, that which is the cause of 35 all existence, must be self-existent, and could have had no beginning. And, as it had no beginning, so also, as it is beyond the reach of all influence and control, as it is independent and almighty, it will have no end.

Here then is a support, which will never fail; here is 40 a foundation which can never be moved-the everlasting Creator of countless worlds, "the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity." What a sublime conception! He inhabits eternity, occupies this inconceivable duration, pervades and fills throughout this boundless 45 dwelling. Ages on ages before even the dust of which we are formed was created, he had existed in infinite majesty, and ages on ages will roll away after we have all returned to the dust whence we were taken, and still he will exist in infinite majesty, living in the eternity 50 of his own nature, reigning in the plenitude of his own omnipotence, for ever sending forth the word, which forms, supports, and governs all things, commanding new created light to shine op new created worlds, and raising up new created generations to inhabit them.

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The contemplation of this glorious attribute of God, is fitted to excite in our minds the most animating and consoling reflections. Standing, as we are, amid the ruins of time, and the wrecks of mortality, where every thing about us is created and dependent, proceeding 60 from nothing, and hastening to destruction, we rejoice that something is presented to our view which has stood from everlasting, and will remain forever. When we have looked on the pleasures of life, and they have vanished away; when we have looked on the works of na65 ture, and perceived that they were changing; on the monuments of art, and seen that they would not stand; on our friends, and they have fled while we were gazing; on ourselves, and felt that we were as fleeting as they; when we have looked on every object to which 70 we could turn our anxious eyes, and they have all told us that they could give us no hope nor support, because they were so feeble themselves; we can look to the throne of God: change and decay have never reached that; the revolution of ages has never moved it; the 75 waves of an eternity have been rushing past it, but it has remained unshaken; the waves of another eternity are rushing toward it, but it is fixed, and can never be disturbed. Greenwood.

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Take, holy earth! all that my soul holds dear;
Take that best gift, which heav'n so lately gave;
To Bristol's fount I bore, with trembling care,

Her faded form ;--She bow'd to taste the wave, 5 And died. Does youth, does beauty, read the line? Does sympathetic fear their breast alarm? Speak, dead Maria! breathe a strain divine:

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Ev'n from the grave thou shalt have pow'r to charm.
Bid them be chaste, be innocent, like thee;

Bid them in duty's sphere, as meekly move;
And, if as fair, from vanity as free,

As firm in friendship, and as fond in love,
Tell them, though 'tis an awful thing to die!

('Twas even to thee) yet, the dread path once trod,

15 Heaven lifts its everlasting portals high,

And bids the "pure in heart behold their God."

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O! lives there heaven! beneath thy dread expanse
One hopeless, dark idolator of Chance,

Content to feed with pleasures unrefined,
The lukewarm passions of a lowly mind;

5 Who, mouldering earthward, 'reft of every trust,
In joyless union wedded to the dust,
Could all his parting energy dismiss,

And call this barren world sufficient bliss ?-
There live, alas! of heaven directed mien,
10 Of cultured soul, and sapient eye serene,
Who hail thee, man! the pilgrim of a day,
Spouse of the worm, and brother of the clay!
Frail as the leaf in Autumn's yellow bower,
Dust in the wind, or dew upon the flower!
15 A friendless slave, a child without a sire,
Whose mortal life, and momentary fire,

Lights to the grave his chance-created form,
As ocean-wrecks illuminate the storm;

And, when the gun's tremendous flash is o'er, 20 To night and silence sink for evermore!—

Are these the pompous tidings ye proclaim,
Lights of the world, and demi-gods of fame?
Is this your triumph--this your proud applause,
Children of Truth, and champions of her cause?
25 For this hath Science search'd, on weary wing,
By shore and sea--each mute and living thing?
Launched with Iberia's pilot from the steep,

To worlds unknown, and isles beyond the deep?
Or round the cope her living chariot driven,

30 And wheeled in triumph through the signs of heaven?
Oh! star-eyed Science, hast thou wandered there,
To waft us home the message of despair ?--
Then bind the palm, thy sage's brow to suit,
Of blasted leaf, and death-distilling fruit!

40 Ah me! the laurelled wreath that murder rears,
Blood-nursed, and watered by the widow's tears,
Seems not so foul, so tainted, and so dread,

As waves the night shade round the skeptic head.
What is the bigot's torch, the tyrant's chain?
45 I smile on death, if heaven-ward hope remain!
But, if the warring winds of Nature's strife
Be all the faithless charter of my life,
If chance awaked, inexorable power!
This frail and feverish being of an hour,

50 Doomed o'er the world's precarious scene to sweep,
Swift as the tempest travels on the deep,
To know Delight but by her parting smile,
And toil, and wish, and weep a little while;
Then melt, ye elements, that formed in vain
55 This troubled pulse, and visionary brain!

Fade, ye wild flowers, memorials of my doom!
And sink, ye stars, that light me to the tomb !
Truth, ever lovely since the world began,
The foe of tyrants and the friend of man,-
60 How can thy words from balmy slumber start
Reposing Virtue, pillowed on the heart!
Yet, if thy voice the note of thunder rolled,
And that were true which Nature never told,
Let Wisdom smile not on her conquered field;

65 No rapture dawns, no treasure is revealed!
Oh! let her read, nor loudly, nor elate,
The doom that bars us from a better fate;
But, sad as angels for the good man's sin,
Weep to record, and blush to give it in!

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106. The Atheist.

Campbell.

How wonderful the process by which a man can grow to the immense intelligence that can know that there is no God. What ages and what lights are necessary for this stupendous attainment! This intelligence involves the very attributes of Divinity, while a God is denied. For unless this man is omnipresent, unless he is at this moment in every place in the universe, he cannot know but there may be in some place manifestations of a Deity by which even he would be 10 overpowered. If he does not know absolutely every agent in the universe, the one that he does not know may be God. If he is not himself the chief agent in the universe, and does not know what is so, that which is so may be God. If he is not in absolute possession 15 of all the propositions that constitute universal truth, the one which he wants may be, that there is a God. If he cannot with certainty assign the cause of all that he perceives to exist, that cause may be a God. If he does not know every thing that has been done in the 20 immeasurable ages that are past, some things may have been done by a God. Thus, unless he knows all things, that is, unless he precludes another Deity by being one himself, he cannot know that the Being whose existence he rejects, does not exist. But he must know that he 25 does not exist, else he deserves equal contempt and compassion for the temerity with which he firmly avows his rejection and acts accordingly. And yet a man of ordinary age and intelligence may present himself to you with an avowal of being thus distinguished from 30 the crowd; and if he would describe the manner in which he has attained this eminence, you would feel a melancholy interest in contemplating that process of which the result is so portentous.

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