Are these our prospects then?

Is such our destiny?

Ah! wherefore should immortal men

E'er build their hopes beneath the sky.

And why should unbelief

Her cold, dark mantle spread

To wrap him round in hopeless grief,

And with the night-shade wreathe his head.

Be mine, trust in the word

Of our Creator-God:

Faith in the blood of Christ the Lord,

Whose Spirit lights my upward road.—

Then whether now in dreams,

Or when at last I die,

Whether my spirit only seems,

Or really soars, to worlds on high.

I'm safe beneath His care,
Whose blest Almighty will
Made me thus fearfully to share
A nature so mysterious still.

Yes! mysteries hold their sway
While chain'd to sense we lie,
But they shall all be clear'd away,
When time sinks in Eternity.

A WORD FOR PEACE.

"Peace I leave with you; my peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth, give I unto you,"-John xiv. 27.

IF such the legacy bequeathed
By JESUS to his own;

If such the meek injunctions breathed
Ere he from earth had flown,-
How should his lowly followers fight?
Reading his gracious words aright.

His kingdom is not of this world!
Nor by it understood !

The banner, from his cross unfurl'd,
Leads not to acts of blood!

The Christian's warfare is within-
With pride and passion, self and sin.

Whence come your wars, frail worms of dust?
What are your fightings for?

Envy and hatred, greed and lust,

Which in your members war: Dwells such a dark, unhallow'd host, In temples of the holy Ghost?

When angels first, to shepherds' ears,
Announced THE SAVIOUR'S birth,
What watchword did the heavenly spheres
Pour down on listening earth;

"Glory to God, who dwells on high;

Tow'rd men-good-will and unity!"

When CHRIST, on Calvary's blood-stain'd hill,

His life a ransom paid,

What peaceful love, triumphant still,

Prompted the prayer he pray'd!

A prayer-how tender, brief and true,-
'Forgive; they know not what they do!"

66

'Tis by its fruit the tree is known;

The test of truth is love!
Have they, then, reverently shown
Their's to their Lord above,
Who bid their fellow-creatures bleed,
And by their acts belie their creed?

Thank God! this gospel truth, no more
To one small sect confined,

From sea to sea, from shore to shore,
Shall flash on many a mind;

'Till earth below, and heaven above,
Join in one hymn of PEACE and LOVE!

BERNARD BARTON.

THE

YOUTHS' MAGAZINE;

OR

Evangelical Miscellany.

OCTOBER, 1843.

THE BURNT MOUNTAIN.

THE prophet Jeremiah, in denouncing God's wrath against Babylon, makes use of these remarkable expressions. "I will stretch out mine hand upon thee, and roll thee down from thy rocks, and will make thee a burnt mountain." (ch. li. 25.)

Our engraving shews how literally this has been done, as it represents a part of the ruins of that once mighty city thrown down from its foundation, and exhibiting on the summit of the ruinous heap, "immense fragments of brick-work, of no determinate figure, tumbled together and converted into solid vitrified masses, as if they had undergone the fiercest fire, or been blown up with gunpowder." It is, in fact, a burnt mountain, fused either by the direct or intermediate agency of the God of heaven-not improbably by lightning.

Of this mound, Mr. Rich, in his memoir on the ruins of Babylon, says, "I visited the Birs, under circumstances peculiarly favorable to the grandeur of its effect; the morning was at first stormy, and VOL. VI. 4th SERIES.

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