Yet the grief of my spirit-O, call it not gloom !— By sorrow reveal'd, as the stars are by night, And Hope, like the rainbow, a creature of light, LESSON XXI. A Christian viewing Death.-Dewey. I HAVE seen one die: she was beautiful; and beautiful were the ministries of life that were given her to fulfil. Angelic loveliness enrobed her; and a grace as if it were caught from heaven, breathed in every tone, hallowed every affection, shone in every action-invested as a halo her whole existence, and made it a light and blessing, a charm and a vision of gladness, to all around her: but she died! Friendship, and love, and parental fondness, and infant weakness, stretched out their hand to save her; but they could not save her: and she died! What! did all that loveliness die! Is there no land of the blessed and the lovely ones, for such tolive in! Forbid it reason, religion! bereaved affection, and undying love! forbid the thought! I have seen one die-in the maturity of every power, in the earthly perfection of every faculty; when many temptations had been overcome, and many hard lessons had been learned; when many experiments had made virtue easy, and had given a facility to action, and a success to endeavour; when wisdom had been learnt from many mistakes, and a skill had been laboriously acquired in the use of many powers; and the being I looked upon had just compassed that most useful, most practical of all knowledge, how to live, and to act well and wisely; yet I have seen such an one die! Was all this treasure gained only to be lost? Were all these faculties trained, only to be thrown into utter disuse? Was this instrument-the intelligent soul, the noblest in the universe-was it so laboriously fashioned, and by the most varied and expensive apparatus, that, on the very moment of being finished, it should be cast away forever? No, the dead, as we call them, do not so die. They carry their thoughts to another and a nobler existence. They teach us, and especially by all the strange and seemingly untoward circumstances of their departure from this life, that they, and we, shall live forever. They open the future world, then, to our faith. Oh! death!—dark hour to hopeless unbelief! hour to which, in that creed of despair, no hour shall succeed! being's last hour! to whose appalling darkness, even the shadows of an avenging retribution, were brightness and relief-death! what art thou to the Christian's assurance? Great hour! answer to life's prayer-great hour that shall break asunder the bond of life's mystery hour of release from life's burden-hour of reunion with the loved and lost-what mighty hopes hasten to their fulfilment in thee! What longings, what aspirations-breathed in the still night, beneath the silent stars-what dread emotions of curiosity-what deep meditations of joy-what hallowed impossibilities shadowing forth realities to the soul, all verge to their consummation in thee! Oh! death! the Christian's death! What art thou, but a gate of life, a portal of heaven, the threshold of eternity! LESSON XXII. In favour of acknowledging the Independence of Greece.HENRY CLAY. THE resolution proposes a provision of the means to defray the expense of deputing a commissioner or agent to Greece, whenever the President, who knows, or ought to know, the disposition of all the European powers, Turkish or Christian, shall deem it proper. The amendment goes to withhold any appropriation to that object, but to make a public declaration of our sympathy with the Greeks, and of our good wishes for the success of their cause. And how has this simple, unpretending, unambitious-this harmless proposition-been treated in debate? It has been argued, as if it offered aid to the Greeks; as if it proposed the recognition of the independence of their government; as a measure of unjustifiable interference in the internal affairs of a foreign state, and, finally, as war. And those, who thus argue the question, whilst they absolutely surrender themselves to the illusions of their own fervid imaginations, and depict, in glowing terms, the monstrous and alarming consequences, which are to spring out of a proposition so simple, impute to us, who are its humble advocates, Quixotism-Quixotism! Whilst they are taking the most extravagant and boundless range, and arguing anything and everything but the question before the Committee, they accuse us of enthusiasm, of giving the reins to excited feeling, of being transported by our imaginations. No, sir; the resolution is no proposition for aid-nor for recognition, nor for interference, nor for war. Sir, it is not for Greece alone, that I desire to see this measure adopted. It will give to her but little support, and that purely of a moral kind. It is principally for America, for the credit and character of our common country, for our own unsullied name, that I hope to see it What pass. appearance, Mr. Chairman, on the page of history, would a record like this exhibit : "In the month of January, in the year of our Lord and Saviour, 1824, while all European Christendom beheld, with cold and unfeeling indifference, the unexampled wrongs and inexpressible misery of Christian Greece, a proposition was made in the Congress of the United States, almost the sole, the last, the greatest, depository of human hope and human freedom-the representatives of a gallant nation, containing a million of freemen ready to fly to arms-while the people of that nation were spontaneously expressing its deep-toned feeling, and the whole continent, by one simultaneous emotion, was rising, and solemnly and anxiously supplicating and invoking high Heaven to succour Greece and to invigorate her arms, in her glorious cause; while temples and senate houses were alike resounding with one burst of generous and holy sympathy;-in that year of our Lord and Sa viour-the Saviour of Greece and of us—a proposition was offered in the American Congress to send a messenger to Greece, to inquire into her state and condition, with a kind expression of our good wishes and our sympathies--and it was rejected!” Go home, if you can go home, if you dare-to your constituents, and tell them that you voted it down; meet, if you can, the appalling countenances of those who sent you here, and tell them that you shrank from the declaration of your own sentiments;-that you cannot tell how, but that some unknown dread, some indescribable apprehension, some indefinable danger, drove you from your purpose; that the spectres of scimetars, and crowns, and crescents, gleamed before you, and alarmed you ;—and, that you suppressed all the noble feelings prompted by religion, by liberty, by national independence, and by humanity. I cannot bring myself to believe, that such will be the feeling of a majority of the Committee. But, for myself, though every friend of the cause should desert it, and I be left to stand alone with the mover of this resolution, I would give to it the sanction of my unqualified approba tion. LESSON XXIII. The Statue of the Belvidere Apollo.-REV. H. H. MILMAN. HEARD ye the arrow hurtle in the sky? Heard ye the dragon monster's deathful cry? In settled majesty of calm disdain, Proud of his might, yet scornful of the slain, Youth blooms immortal in his beardless face, A god in strength, with more than godlike grace; In deathless glory lives the breathing stone. *The Apollo is in the act of watching the arrow, with which he slew the serpent Python. Bright kindling with a conqueror's stern delight, Mighty Ephesian!* with an eagle's flight Yet, on that form, in wild, delirious trance, Slowly she waned, and cold and senseless grown, * Agasias of Ephesus. †The foregoing fact is related in the work of M. Pinel on Insanity. |