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June 6.

For this God is our God for ever and ever; He will be our guide even unto death.-Ps. xlviii. 14.

"HIS bodily life which we think so sacred, and which

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is such a mystery, as it waits on the beating pulse and runs through the throbbing, tingling veins, is unutterably less precious than the other life of God in the soul. The life of the body wastes like the dropping sand, and is daily swept away, as the dust of the floor, into the tomb, whose door swings in a thousand turnings while we speak. But the other life, that Christ gives, is not consumed. The language of Scripture lament was not taken up over that. It is no vapor, no fleeing shadow, or withering flower, but firm, bright, and blooming with immortal vigor and increase.

CYRUS A. BARTOL.

DEATH.1

I.

THE dew is on the summer's greenest grass
Through which the modest daisy blushing peeps;
The gentle wind, that like a ghost doth pass,
A waving shadow on the corn-field keeps ;
But I, who love them all, shall never be
Again among the woods, or on the moorland lea !

The sun shines sweetly, sweeter may
it shine,
Blessed is the brightness of a summer's day;
It cheers lone hearts; and why should I repine,
Although among green fields I cannot stray?
Woods! I have grown, since last I heard you wave,
Familiar with death, and neighbor to the grave!

These words have shaken mighty human souls;
Like a sepulchre's echo drear they sound,-
E'en as the owl's wild whoop at midnight rolls
The ivied remnants of old ruins round.
Yet wherefore tremble? Can the soul decay? —
Or that which thinks and feels in aught e'er fade away?

1 This poem is among the last of Nicoll's compositions.

Are there not aspirations in each heart
After a better, brighter world than this?
Longings for beings nobler in each part,

Things more exalted - steeped in deeper bliss?
Who gave us these? What are they? Soul! in thee
The bud is budding now for immortality!

ROBERT NICOLL.

June 7.

If a man keep My saying, he shall never taste of death.JOHN viii. 52.

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FOR when he dies, life shall so lift itself up before him,

that for this life which he sees, he shall not be able to see death. For the night becomes clear light, and bright as day, because the light and the shining of that rising, dawning, new life, altogether quenches and shines. away this dying and self-destroying death.

LUTHER.

DEATH.

II.

DEATH comes to take me where I long to be;
One pang, and bright blooms the immortal flower;
Death comes to lead me from mortality,

To lands which know not one unhappy hour:
I have a hope

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a faith; from sorrow here I'm led by death away; why should I start and fear ?

If I have loved the forest and the field,

Can I not love them deeper, better, there?
If all that power hath made, to me doth yield
Something of good and beauty, something fair, -
Freed from the grossness of mortality,
May I not love them all, and better all enjoy?

A change from woe to joy, from earth to heaven,
Death gives me this; it leads me calmly where
The souls that long ago from mine were riven

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May meet again! Death answers many a prayer.
Bright day, shine on; be glad. Days brighter far
Are stretched before my eyes than those of mortal are!

I would be laid among the wildest flowers,
I would be laid where happy hearts can come.
The worthless clay I heed not; but in hours
Of gushing noontide joy, it may be some
Will dwell upon my name; and I will be
A happy spirit there, affection's look to see.

Death is upon me, yet I fear not now;
Open my chamber window-let me look
Upon the silent vales, the sunny glow

That fills each alley, close, and copsewood nook;
I know them - love them - mourn not them to leave;
Existence and its change my spirit cannot grieve!

ROBERT NICOLL.

June 8.

That the Lord thy God may bless thee in all the work of thine hand which thou doest. - DEUT. xiv. 29.

B LESSED is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness. He has a work, a lifepurpose; he has found it, and will follow it! How, as a free-flowing channel, dug and torn by noble force through the sour mud-swamp of one's existence, like an everdeepening river there, it runs and flows; draining off the sour, festering water gradually from the root of the remotest grass-blade; making, instead of pestilential swamp, a green, fruitful meadow with its clear-flowing stream, how blessed for the meadow itself, let the stream and its value be great or small! Labor is life; from the inmost heart of the Worker rises his God-given force, the sacred celestial life-essence, breathed into him by Almighty God; from his inmost heart awakens him to all nobleness, to all knowledge, "self-knowledge," and much else, so soon as Work fitly begins. Knowledge! the knowledge that will hold good in working, cleave thou to that; for Nature herself accredits that, says Yea to that.

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Properly, thou hast no other knowledge but what thou hast got by working; the rest is yet all an hypothesis of knowledge, a thing to be argued of in schools, a thing floating in the clouds, in endless logic vortices, till we try it and fix it. Doubt, of whatever kind, can be ended by Action alone." All true work is sacred; in all true Work, were it but true hand-labor, there is something of divineness. Labor, wide as the earth, has its summit in heaven.

THOMAS CARLYLE: Past and Present.

I AM a stream of Time, running to God my sea,
But once I shall myself the eternal ocean be.

CHERUBIC PILGRIM.

BROOK AND LIFE.

I TRACED a little brook to its well-head, Where, amid quivering weeds, its waters leap From the earth, and hurrying into shadow, creep Unseen but vocal in their deep-worn bed. Hawthorns and hazels, interlacing, wed

With roses sweet, and overhang the steep

Mossed banks, while through the leaves stray sunbeams peep,
And on the whispering stream faint glimmerings shed.
Thus let my life flow on, through green fields gliding,
Unnoticed, not unuseful, in its course,

Still fresh and fragrant, though in shadow hiding,
Holding its destined way with quiet force,
Cheered with the music of a peace abiding,
Drawn daily from its ever-springing source.

RICHARD WILTON: Good Words.

June 9.

What! Could ye not watch with Me one hour? — MATT. xxvi. 40.

THE love of the things that perish can only be driven

out by the strength of a superior love. Love is the pure and perfect discipline. He who is perfect in love, the love of the divinely beautiful and good, is perfect in life. He who loves finds sacrifice holy, battle joyous, toil easy; pain has even a sweetness when love imposes it, and tender touches purge all the anguish away. Commence your self-discipline by that which alone can complete it. Open your heart to the love of the Lord Jesus. Loving Him, all lovely things fall into their just proportion, their true relation to your being; while all unlovely things fall into their true contempt and shame. It is the one regnant principle in the free creation. It will make such order in your nature as reigns in the bright universe around you. It shines resplendent as the essential glory in the saints and angels who bow before the eternal throne. J. BALDWIN BROWN.

TWO THAT SLEEP AND ONE THAT WATCHETH.

[Suggested by the picture by S. Solomon.]

"COULD ye not watch one hour?" The hour is late,
And the chill air is drowsy, and they sleep,
Two, but one sleeps not; he whose love was great,
And who was greatly loved, his watch will keep.

The stars are clear, but not to them his eyes
Turn to win patience from their patient light;
Still on the earth he keeps his steadfast sight,
And bid to watch, so watches for surprise.
And so to his unsleeping eyes was given
To see his Master's agony, that drew

That sweat of blood; to hear that cry of woe!
'Tis thus with the three priceless gifts of Heaven :
Hope sleeps, and faith may slumber, but the few
Who really love, nor sleep nor slumber know.

F. W. BOURDILLON.

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