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EUTHANASIA.

OVER the sea-green belt on the horizon
After the sun went down, a flock of clouds,
Some dark with fiery skirts, and fleecy some,
Purple and golden, drifted from the west
Up the blue concave. In the lake beneath,
Where the broad shadow of the mountain fe'l,
They multiplied their glory, and 'mid rock,
And oaks, and flowers, that lined the southern shore
Th' unsteady waters threw a mellow glow.
And there beside a cliff, crested with pines,
Under a crab-tree, whose sweet blooms the bee
And wanton wind dispersed, an aged man
Of mild and thoughtful air, his hoary locks
Loose waving, sat, as held by strong enchantment.
At length, in voice of quaintest melody,
He sang of one he knew in life's gay morn.

Dreams of my youth return;
Brightly the sun-rays

Dance on the running stream,
Spotted with foam-flakes.

Violets and narcissi

Grow up side by side,

Sisters in beauty, hey

Stand on the green bank.

Fairest of all, her eyes

Drink in the vision,

Filling her gentle soul

With its own splendor.

Thus is her spirit fed

Till too pure for earth-
Angels' wings in the light

Of Heaven-gate, like a dove's

Gleam, and immortal Love,

Soft as a moon beam,
Enters the happy breast
Of Rotha, the blue-eyed.

Mercersburg, Pa.

T. C. P.

ANGELS.

Ir may seem a consideration of force against the angelophanies of the Bible, that nothing of the sort is known or heard of in the modern world. Like the apparitions of spirits generally, they appear to have fled before the light of cultivation and science. It ought not to be overlooked however, that the angels of the Old Testament attend only special occasions, the opening as it were of new acts, in the drama of revelation. Now the modern world is indeed a deep, broad, mighty stream; but it is still a stream in its settled and regular course; only issuing from the miraculous period of Christ's incarnation. The angelophanies which took place at his grave ushered in our aeon, which will now last to the end of the world. Then, we are told (Matth. xiii: 39), the angels will again make their appearance among men. Account must be taken besides of the peculiar nature of this christian aeon. Christ has appeared, and the believing christian world has been brought to see his glory by his Spirit. The old christological longing thus is satisfied, and the element of angelic visions lost we may say in the presence of this higher light. In this respect, the angels may be compared with the stars of heaven; they vanish with the rising sun; even the full moon becomes at mid-day but as a pale fleecy cloud.

The possibility of such beings as the angels of holy Writ, is continually more and more confirmed by modern natural science. There on high, stars of endlessly diversified hue and form roll through the boundless fields of space; many of them ethereally light as golden dreams, like floating orbs of spirit. The dwellers in them must be answerable to their sylph-like nature, in fineness of organization and freedom of movement. For philosophers indeed who see in the whole starry heavens only" rocks of light," or uninhabited deserts, the whole universe is but an Ahriman, a world shut up and dark for mind. But if the heavens are really inhabited, as the analogy of our own earth authorises us to believe, they must be regarded of course as a vast boundless region of spirits. In this boundless range are to be found the ministering spirits, which are spoken of in the Epistle to the Hebrews certainly as having an objective or real existence. To conceive however of their apparition objectively, we must take into view the preparation of the subject inwardly for being favored with such vision.

In the night, streams can be heard afar off, whose sound amid

the tumult of day was not perceived. The light from a distant hut becomes conspicuous over a whole region, where by day the hut itself on fire would hardly be noticed. The thunder of Niagara is said to be more felt at a certain distance, than in the immediate neighborhood of the rushing cataract. The same difference holds in the sphere of the inner life. Most souls are unceasingly filled with the noise of the outward actual world, led captive by it and bound. Their eyes can hardly discern simple greatness or beauty, when it is made to pass before them in bodily form; for they seek the single only in the midst of the manifold, and give themselves up entirely to the whirl and tumult with which they are surrounded. When however this spirit has taken demona cal possession of an age, or has become even its worship, we need not wonder at the total failure of that deep sense, which feels and owns the travelling of spirits from star to star or from heaven to earth. When one has set himself down in the mill of a world-seeking selfishness, with all its wheels in full roll, he hears not the fall of Niagara itself-though outwardly close at hand.

But there are souls on the other hand, which possess a higher and more active sense for the infinite, because they have courage from God to let the distractions of earth pass by then as something foreign from their own life. Their inward frame leads them even to see in the outward course of the world, its approaching dissolution and end. It lies however in the nature of the case, that one for whom the world is thus turned to shadow, should at the same time win an organ, or rather have one unfolded within him, by which he may see into heaven, and become sensible of heavenly impressions. When an old form of the world is ready to fall, and a new one from heaven is expected to take its place, the noblest minds are found to be so to speak vacant, or more properly open for what is from above-no more occupied with the old world, which with its noise and show has become for them as it were dead. In this state, they can hear spirit voices and see the angels of God. In such frame the women of the gospel came to the grave of Jesus; for them all the glory of the world lay in its bosom. They had for this reason an open eye, the inward vision of seers, for the heavenly messengers. So was it also with the sight bestowed upon the disciples on the Mount of Olives, when Christ left them for heaThe earth for them dissolved into nothing, as their Mas ter was taken from their side; and now they could see the messengers from on high, and understand their message. Translated from J. P. Lange.

ven.

THE FOOT-PRINTS OF THE CREATOR.

The Foot prints of the Creator, or the Asterolepsis of Stromness, by Hugh Miller, author of "The Old Red Sandstone,' with a memior of the author, by Lewis Agassiz. Gould, Kendall & Lincoln. Boston. 1850: pp. 337.

MR. MILLER is a native of Scotland, and editor of the Edinburg Witness, the chief newspaper of the Free Church. From the humble condition of a stone-cutter in the quarries of Cromerty, where his attention was first drawn to the study of fossil remains, he has risen, by the force of genius, to an eminent rank among the geologists of our time. His writings are character. ized by freshness, clearness and brilliance of style, as well as by depth and vigor of thought.

The present volume is doubtless named, "The Foot-prints of the Creator," because it stands out in bold contrast and opposition to the "Vestiges of Creation,"--a work, which, tending, as it does, to destroy ali belief in the existence of a personal God, has wrought vast mischief in minds of a certain order, both in this country and in Europe, either by undermining the foundations of faith, or by strengthening the common religious prejudice already too strong) against the revelations of paleontology. The Lamarckian hypothesis of development receives no quarter at the hands of Mr. Miller. He considers it as a dreamof vain philosophy-a specious theory, that had its birth, in sub stance, as long ago as Epicurus, and yet proceeds to overthrow it quietly, by a rigid induction of facts, obtained by years of pa tient toil and now brought forth and exhibited in a manner so skillful and ingenious as to excite universal admiration. A few more such onsets, and every one, who at all values his reputation as a man of science, will be ashamed to trace his own history in the monad, vesicle, or les petits gelatineux of the prime val oceans travelling, during immense cycles of ages, by gradual and successive transformations, through the whole range of the radiates, mollusks, articulates, and vertebrates, each new want, of its own accord, creating a new organ and producing a new species, until it end at last in the ape as his immediate predecesMr. Miller has done essential service to the cause of truth and progress by demonstrating that this theory has no real scientific ground on which to rest. To all, who feel any interest in the subject, we heartily recommend his book, as the work of a christian and a philosopher.

for.

Mercersburg, Pa.

T. C. P.

THE POETRY OF SCIENCE.

The Poetry of Science, by Robert Hunt, author of 'Panthea,' Researches on Light,' etc. Gould, Kendall & Lincoln.

Boston. 1850: pp. 388.

"THE poetry of Science!" and is there poetry in Science? Can mud be transmuted into gold, or homespun into robes of purple? That were indeed a miracle beyond the reach of art. Such is the opinion of the great mass of unthinking men. But the world has too long been accustomed to look upon the results of scientific labor as mere dry details of facts. The day is rapidly approaching when Truth in her own severe simplicity will be found to possess charms to attract the lover of the beautiful far more potent than the half-formed and incongruous creations of untutored Fancy-when the poet and the child of genius will make pilgrimages to the wells of Science and drink inspiration from waters purer than those of Castalia. In the delightful volume before us we have an earnest of what is yet to be done. Availing himself of the most recent discoveries in Natural Philosophy and Chemistry, Mr. Hunt has produced a work, the perusal of which must afford the highest gratification to every reader of intelligence and taste. It deserves a wide circula

tion.

Mercersburg, Pa.

T. C. P.

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