The wind rushes by, but its howl is unheard,—

Unfelt the sharp drift in his face;

For bright through the tempest his own home appear'd,--
Ay, though leagues intervened, he can see;

There's the clear, glowing hearth, and the table prepared,
And his wife with their babes at her knee.

Blest thought! how it lightens the grief-laden hour,
That those we love dearest are safe from its power!

"It snows!” cries the Belle," Dear, how lucky!” and turns
From her mirror to watch the flakes fall;

Like the first rose of summer, her dimpled cheek burns

While musing on sleigh-ride and ball:

There are visions of conquest, of splendor, and mirth,
Floating over each drear winter's day;

But the tintings of Hope, on this storm-beaten earth,
Will melt, like the snow-flakes, away;

Turn, turn thee to heaven, fair maiden, for bliss;
That world has a fountain ne'er open'd in this.

"It snows!" cries the Widow,-" () God!" and her sighs
Have stifled the voice of her prayer;

Its burden ye'll read in her tear-swollen eyes,

On her cheek, sunk with fasting and care.

'Tis night, and her fatherless ask her for bread,

But

He gives the young ravens their food,"

And she trusts, till her dark hearth adds horror to dread,
And she lays on her last chip of wood.

Poor sufferer! that sorrow thy God only knows,-
'Tis a pitiful lot to be poor when it snows!

FRANCIS WAYLAND.

FRANCIS WAYLAND, for more than a quarter of a century the distinguished President of Brown University, was born in the city of New York, on the 11th of March, 1796. When he was eleven years of age, his father removed to Poughkeepsie, where he was prepared for college by the Rev. Daniel H. Barnes. In 1811, he entered the junior class in Union College, and, after graduating, studied medicine for three years, and was admitted to practice; but, experiencing a change of religious views, he relinquished this profession for the ministry, and in 1816 entered the theological seminary at Andover, Massachusetts. In 1817, he accepted a tutorship in Union College, and in 1821 he was called to the pastorate of the First Baptist Church in Boston. While here, he published, in 1823, his first printed work,—a sermon on The Moral Dignity of the Missionary Enterprise, -a very eloquent production, which had great success, and placed him in the rank of the first writers of his day. To this succeeded, in 1825, two excellent discourses on The Duties of an American Citizen.

In 1826, he returned to Schenectady as Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy in Union College; but, before the close of the year, he removed to

Providence, Rhode Island, having been elected to the presidency of Brown University, into which office he was inducted in February, 1827; and never was a choice of a president more happy, for the college started at once into new life. In a few years appeared his Moral Science, Political Economy, and Intellectual Philosophy, which have enjoyed great popularity, and been introduced as textbooks into many of our best colleges. He also deserves high commendation for the noble part he has borne in the anti-slavery discussion, shown partly in his correspondence with Rev. Richard Fuller, of Beaufort, South Carolina. Their letters were published in one duodecimo volume, entitled Domestic Slavery considered as a Scriptural Institution.

Besides the great ability and thoroughness conspicuous in all his writings, Dr. Wayland has shown true independence in thought and action. He was the first President of a college to advocate and carry out a change in the collegiate course, extending the benefits of the college beyond the small class intending to pursue professional studies, by introducing a partial course to be pursued by such as intend to engage in mechanics or in mercantile business, and conferring degrees according to the attainments made. He has also identified himself with a movement among his own religious denomination, by the advocacy of lay preaching,' and a better adaptation of the training of candidates to the work of the Christian ministry. In 1856, Dr. Wayland resigned the presidency of Brown University, and now resides in Providence.2

THE OBJECT OF MISSIONS.

Our object will not have been accomplished till the tomahawk shall be buried forever, and the tree of peace spread its broad branches from the Atlantic to the Pacific; until a thousand smiling villages shall be reflected from the waves of the Missouri, and the distant valleys of the West echo with the song of the reaper; till the wilderness and the solitary place shall have been glad for us, and the desert has rejoiced and blossomed as the rose. Our labors are not to cease until the last slave-ship shall have visited the coast of Africa, and, the nations of Europe and America having long since redressed her aggravated wrongs,

Read an admirable book, anonymously published in 1857, by J. B. Lippincott & Co., entitled Priesthood and Clergy Unknown to Christianity; or, The Church a Community of Co-Equal Brethren." The author is one of our most distinguished "divines,"-a D.D. eminent alike for his piety and learning.

2 His published works are.-1. Occasional Discourses, 1 vol.; 2. Moral Science; 3. Political Economy; 4. Thoughts on Collegiate Education; 5. Limitations of Human Responsibility; 6. University Sermons; 7. Memoirs of Judson, 2 vols.; 8. Intellectual Philosophy; 9. Notes on the Principles and Practices of the Baptists. Besides these volumes, a number of his occasional addresses and discourses have been published; as, Discourse on the Life and Character of Hon. Nicholas Brown; of William G. Goddard, LL.D.; and of James N. Granger, D.D. His latest work 1858) is a duodecimo of 281 pages, entitled Sermons to the Churches.

Ethiopia, from the Mediterranean to the Cape, shall have stretched forth her hand unto God.

In a word, point us to the loveliest village that smiles upon a Scottish or New England landscape, and compare it with the filthiness and brutality of a Caffrarian kraal, and we tell you that our object is to render that Caffrarian kraal as happy and as gladsome as that Scottish or New England village. Point us to the spot on the face of the earth where liberty is best understood and most perfectly enjoyed, where intellect shoots forth in its richest luxuriance, and where all the kindlier feelings of the heart are constantly seen in their most graceful exercise; point us to the loveliest and happiest neighborhood in the world on which we dwell, and we tell you that our object is to render this whole earth, with all its nations, and kindreds, and tongues, and people, as happy, nay, happier than that neighborhood. Our object is to furnish every family upon the face of the whole earth with the word of God written in its own language, and to send to every neighborhood a preacher of the cross of Christ. Our object will not be accomplished until every idol temple shall have been utterly abolished, and a temple of Jehovah erected in its room; until this earth, instead of being a theatre, on which immortal beings are preparing by crime for eternal condemnation, shall become one universal temple, in which the children of men are learning the anthems of the blessed above, and becoming meet to join the general assembly and church of the first-born, whose names are written in heaven.

THE ILIAD AND THE BIBLE.

Of all the books with which, since the invention of writing, this world has been deluged, the number of those is very small which have produced any perceptible effect on the mass of human character. By far the greater part have been, even by their contemporaries, unnoticed and unknown. Not many a one has made its little mark upon that generation that produced it, though it sunk with that generation to utter forgetfulness. But, after the ceaseless toil of six thousand years, how few have been the works, the adamantine basis of whose reputation has stood unhurt amid the fluctuations of time, and whose impression can be traced through successive centuries, on the history of our species!

When, however, such a work appears, its effects are absolutely incalculable; and such a work, you are aware, is the Iliad of Homer. Who can estimate the results produced by the incomparable efforts of a single mind? who can tell what Greece owes to this first-born of song? Her breathing marbles, her solemn temples, her unrivalled eloquence, and her matchless verse, all

point us to that transcendent genius, who, by the very splendor of his own effulgence, woke the human intellect from the slumber of ages. It was Homer who gave laws to the artist; it was Homer who inspired the poet; it was Homer who thundered in the senate; and, more than all, it was Homer who was sung by the people; and hence a nation was cast into the mould of one mighty mind, and the land of the Iliad became the region of taste, the birthplace of the arts.

But, considered simply as an intellectual production, who wil compare the poems of Homer with the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament? Where in the Iliad shall we find simplicity and pathos which shall vie with the narrative of Moses, or maxims of conduct to equal in wisdom the Proverbs of Solomon, or sublimity which does not fade away before the conceptions of Job, or David, or Isaiah, or St. John? But I cannot pursue this comparison. I feel that it is doing wrong to the mind which dictated the Iliad, and to those other mighty intellects on whom the light of the holy oracles never shined.

If, then, so great results have flowed from this one effort of a single mind, what may we not expect from the combined efforts of several, at least his equals in power over the human heart? If that one genius, though groping in the thick darkness of absurd idolatry, wrought so glorious a transformation in the character of his countrymen, what may we not look for from the universal dissemination of those writings on whose authors was poured the full splendor of eternal truth? If unassisted human nature, spellbound by a childish mythology, have done so much, what may we not hope for from the supernatural efforts of pre-eminent genius, which spake as it was moved by the Holy Ghost?

THE GUILT OF PUNISHING THE INNOCENT.

By our very constitution as men, we are under solemn and unchangeable obligations to respect the rights of the meanest thing that lives. Every other man is created with the same rights as ourselves; and most of all, he is created with the inalienable "right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." To deprive him of these as a punishment for crime, while yet he continues under the protection of law, is one of the severest inflictions that the criminal code of any human government can recognize, even when the punishment is confined to his own person. But what crime can be conceived of so atrocious as to justify the consigning of a human being to servitude for life, and the extension of this punishment to his posterity down to the remotest generations? Were this the penalty even for murder, every man in the civilized world would rise up in indignation at its enormous

injustice. How great, then, must be the injustice when such a doom is inflicted, not upon criminals convicted of atrocious wickedness, but upon men, women, and children who have never been accused of any crime, and against whom there is not even the suspicion of guilt! Can any moral creature of God be innocent that inflicts such punishment upon his fellow-creatures who have never done any thing to deserve it? I ask, what have those poor, defenceless, and undefended black men done, that they and their children forever should thus be consigned to hopeless servitude? If they have done nothing, how can we be innocent if we inflict such punishment upon them? But yet more. The spirit

of Christianity, if I understand it aright, teaches us not merely the principles of pure and elevated justice, but those of the most tender and all-embracing charity. The Captain of our salvation was anointed "to preach the gospel to the poor; he was sent to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind; to set at liberty them that are bruised." "He is the comforter of them that are cast down." Can the disciple of such a Saviour, then, inflict the least, how much less the greatest of punishments upon a human being who has never been guilty of a crime that should deserve it?

THE TRUE GOSPEL MINISTRY.

It so chanced that, at the close of the last war with Great Britain, I was temporarily a resident of the city of New York. The prospects of the nation were shrouded in gloom. We had been for two or three years at war with the mightiest nation on earth, and, as she had now concluded a peace with the continent of Europe, we were obliged to cope with her single-handed. Our harbors were blockaded. Communication coast-wise, between our ports, was cut off. Our ships were rotting in every creek and cove where they could find a place of security. Our immense annual products were moulding in our warehouses. The sources of profitable labor were dried up. Our currency was reduced to irredeemable paper. The extreme portions of our country were becoming hostile to each other, and differences of political opinion were embittering the peace of every household. The credit of the Government was exhausted. No one could predict when the contest would terminate, or discover the means by which it could much longer be protracted.

It happened that, on a Saturday afternoon in February, a ship was discovered in the offing, which was supposed to be a cartel, bringing home our commissioners at Ghent, from their unsuccessful mission. The sun had set gloomily, before any intelligence from the vessel had reached the city. Expectation became pain