O GRANDEST gift of the Creator,-O largess worthy of a God,

Who shall grasp that thrilling thought, life and joy for ever?

For the sun in heaven's heaven is love that cannot change,
And the shining of that sun is life to all beneath its beams;
Who shall arrest it in the firmament, or drag it from its
sphere?

Or bid its beauty smile no more, but be extinct for ever?
Yea, where God hath given none shall take away,
Nor build up limits to his love nor bid his bounty cease;
Wide as space is peopled, endless as the empire of heaven,
The water of the river of life floweth on in majesty for
Martin Tupper.

ever.

TRUTH is order, the perfection of form, or manifestation of good; therefore truth is the form of God, whose essence is goodness.

James Arbouin.

Ir is in every one's power to see most clearly that life never exists without love, and that there is no kind of joy but what flows from love. Such however as the love is, such is the life, and such the joy; if you remove loves, or what is the same thing, desires, which have relation to love, thought would instantly cease, and you would become like a dead person. Self-love and the love of the world have in them some resemblance to life and to joy; altogether contrary to true love,

but as they are which consists

in a man loving the Lord above all things, and his neighbor as himself, it must be evident that they are not loves, but hatreds; for in proportion as any one loves himself and the world, in the same proportion he hates his neighbor, and thereby the Lord; wherefore true love is love towards the Lord, and true life is the life of love from him, and true joy is the joy of that life. There cannot possibly exist more than one single true love, nor more than one single true life, whence flow all true joys and true happinesses, such as are tasted by the angels in the heavens.

Swedenborg.

IN some good books one reads of a divine
Whose memorable case deserves a line;
Who to serve God the best and shortest way,
Pray'd for eight years together every day,
That in the midst of doctrines and of rules,
However taught and practised by the schools,
He would be pleased to bring him to a man,
Prepar'd to teach him the compendious plan.

He was a doctor, and well read

In all the points to which divines were bred;
Nevertheless, he thought that what concern'd
The most illiterate as well as learn'd,
To know and practise, must be something still
More independent on such kind of skill:
True Christian worship had within its root,
Some simpler secret, clear of all dispute;

Which by a living proof that he might know
He pray'd for some practitioner to shew.

One day possess'd with an intense concern
About the lesson which he sought to learn,
He heard a voice that sounded in his ears-
"Thou hast been praying for a man eight years;
Go to the porch of yonder church, and find
A man prepar'd according to thy mind."

Away he went to the appointed ground, When at the entrance of the church he found A poor old beggar with his feet full sore, And not worth two-pence all the clothes he wore. Surprised to see an object so forlorn,

"My friend," said he, "I wish thee a good morn." "Thank thee," replied ths beggar, "but a bad I don't remember that I ever had."

Sure he mistakes, the doctor thought, the phrase; "Good fortune, friend, befall thee all thy days!" "Me," said the beggar," many days befall, « But none of them unfortunate at all." "God bless thee, answer plainly, I request;" "Why plainly then I never was unblest." "Never? thou speakest in a mystic strain, Which more at large I wish thee to explain."

"With all my heart-thou first didst condescend To wish me kindly a good morning, friend; And I replied that I remember'd not A bad one ever to have been my lot; For let the morning turn out how it will I praise my God for every new one still:

If I am pinched with hunger or with cold,
It does not make me to let go my hold;
Still I praise God-hail, rain, or snow, I take
This blessed cordial, which has power to make
The foulest morning, to my thinking, fair;
For cold and hunger yield to praise and pray'r.
Men pity me as wretched, or despise ;

But whilst I hold this noble exercise,
It cheers my heart to such a due degree
That ev'ry morning is still good to me.

"Thou didst, moreover, wish me lucky days, And I, by reason of perpetual praise,

Said that I had none else; for come what would
On any day I knew it must be good
Because God sent it; sweet or bitter, joy
Or grief, by this angelical employ

Of praising him, my heart was at its rest,
And took whatever happened for the best;
So that my own experience might say
It never knew of an unlucky day.

"Then didst thou pray-God bless thee, and I said
I never was unblest; for being led
By the good Spirit of imparted grace
To praise his name, and ever to embrace
His righteous will, regarding that alone
With total resignation of my own,

I never could, in such a state as this,
Complain for want of happiness or bliss;
Resolved in all things, that the Will Divine-
The Source of all true blessing-should be mine."
The doctor learning from the beggar's case
Such wondrous instance of the power of grace,

Propos'd a question, with intent to try

The happy mendicant's direct reply

"What wouldst thou say," said he, "should God think fit

To cast thee down to the infernal pit?"

"He cast me down? He send me into hell?
No-He loves me, and I love him too well:
But put the case he should, I have two arms
That will defend me from all hellish harms;
The one humility, the other love,

These I would throw below him and above;
One under his humanity I'd place,
His deity the other should embrace;
With both together so to hold him fast,
That he should go wherever he should cast.
And whatever thou shalt call the sphere,

Hell if thou wilt, 'tis heav'n if he be there."

Thus was a great divine, whom some have thought

To be the justly-fam'd Taulerus, taught

The holy art, for which he used to pray,

That to serve God the most compendious way,
Was to hold fast a loving, humble mind,
Still praising him, and to his will resign'd.

THE Soul of intelligence is religion.

Dr. Byrom.

Cecil.

THE moon, a soft but not less beautiful object than the sun, returns to communicate to mankind the light of the sun, in a gentle and