LAUDABLE CURIOSITY.

THERE is a disposition in the human mind, to investigate subjects on which it is not possible to attain certainty: and which excite the strong and awful feeling of sublimity. When reason confesses her inability to pursue the train of reflection upon which she enters, imagination loves to soar beyond the point where reason closes her pinions, and to bewilder herself in a mazy flight through the boundless regions of infinity. For this cause the mind delights to expatiate in the starry heavens; the fancy to wander beyond the confines of creation; and formed under her plastic hand, new worlds, new suns, new systems, "arise and shine." The same principle makes us love to dwell upon the mysteries of Providence; to attempt to explore hidden causes from obvious effects; and to anticipate what shall be from that which has already taken place. The same feeling summons the secrets of futurity to pass before us: we love to speculate upon that which we must die to learn; and are never weary of sending imagination to create visions of that unseen state of being.

Yet is futurity, under the sanctions of revelation, not a subject of mere speculation, but of laudable inquiry, of solemn hope, of awful fear, of lively faith. Who can feel himself a traveller through this wide solitude, a stranger and pilgrim upon the earth, about to press into the hidden and unseen state of existence whither his forefathers

have entered, without inquiring into the partioulars of that country, whence "no traveller returns?" He who is about to leave his native land forever, and to pass the remainder of his days in some foreign clime, is anxious to learn every particular respecting his future residence. It is a consolation to him to reflect that the same sun which rises upon his country will visit him when he is banished from her shores. But we must exchange worlds. The state to which we hasten has not the same sun, the same stars, the same light, the same nature. All is changed; all is new. Is it idle curiosity that prompts the anxious, eager inquiry after its features, before we become its inhabitants? No-it is a reasonable investigation. Let us not lightly cast from us a volume from whose pages alone we draw any certain information as to this awful, pleasing state of being. We may not be able to demonstrate all its positions, but the heart refuses to resign its hope. We exult in the prospects which it discloses and bow to its testimony, even where it seems to run counter to general experience; remembering that while it is impossible with man, with "God all things are possible."

THE APOSTLES OF CHRIST.

THE annals of time will not afford us such another list of characters. In vain we search the chronicles of empires-they are barren of every

thing so illustrious. In vain we penetrate the bosom of courts-they present not any thing so dignified. In vain we walk through camps filled with heroes, and over fields which they have won -we meet with no minds so extraordinary—and with no achievements to be compared with the deeds of these champions of eternal truth-written on this neglected record. We encounter, indeed, men rising into distinction for science- becoming eminent for talents-moving high in the sphere of society-possessing power to disturb the repose of mankind to destroy the liberties and the happiness of nations-to break up the boundaries of empires, and to remove their ancient land-marks :— we see them availing themselves of this power to the utmost—but covered with all the glory reflected from a thousand fields contested and obtainedthey are eclipsed by the divine radiance of one of the least of these. The page of history may produce a Nimrod, an Alexander, a Hannibal, a Cæsar : the page of inspiration displays an Abraham, a Moses, a Samuel, a David. Plunder six thousand years of their treasures-lay in the balances all that has been found great and glorious and godlike in the human character, from the commencement of time to this hour-and one witness of the miracles-Jesus their author-outweighs the whole.

The greatness of the Apostles is founded upon their worth. Their magnificence is not built upon the ruins of desolated humanity. Their laurels

were not raised in the field of blood, nor nourished by the widow's tears. They were not celebrated for their contempt of the common feelings of nature, but for the perfection to which they cultivated them. Their course was not marked like that of the hurricane, by the vestiges of destruction but distinguished like the track which the shower of the spring pursues, by the blessings distributed on every side as it passes. The face of nature was not withered in their presence, but brightened by the sun beam of their eye. Peace fled not their approach, but lived in their smile, and waited on their footsteps. It was piety which rendered them illustrious, and religion which exalted them above the sphere of humanity.

Neither was their dignity obtrusive. They did not court renown, nor sacrifice principle to applause. They did not ask the votes of mankind by stooping to their prejudices: nor buy their favour by the brilliancy of their exploits. They sought a quiet, and often trod a humble walk through life. They shone, so to speak, in defiance of themselves, in the eyes of admiring angels, stars of the first magnitude in the constellation of religion, but unseen, or unheeded, by those who gazed only on the hemisphere of time. They were lent to the last but for a season-and are set in this world. They shine in the first with additional splendour, and shall continue so to do, in the firmament of heaven, upon which they have long since risen,-forever!

IMPORTANCE OF RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT.

We all receive the system of Copernicus in astronomy, in preference to that of Ptolemy, by which the ancients were determined in their observations: because, upon such evidences as the nature of the subject will allow, and by a comparison of the appearances and the motions of the heavenly bodies with the laws which the commonly received system involves in it, we feel assured that it agrees with matter of fact. But suppose the Corpernican system had never been discovered, and the Ptolemaic had never been exploded, no serious consequences could have arisen from this: we should indeed have been unable so fully to account for certain appearances, but still the sun would have shown upon us, and the seasons would have revisited us in their order, whether we could accurately and philosophically have accounted for these things or not: whether we supposed the sun to be the centre of the system as now, or continued to believe with our fathers, that with inconceivable rapidity he whirled his dazzling orb round the comparatively little sphere inhabited by man. is far otherwise in morals. A mistake here is of incalculable mischief, as it produces the most fatal consequences in this world, and is irreparable in another. Not merely the joys and the sorrows of the individual will depend continually upon his moral principles; but the whole cast and colour of

It