forward to a station in life a little above what they can well afford, or struggling to do a business a little more extensive than they have capital or steady credit for; and thus they keep, all through life, just above their means; and just above, no matter by how small an excess, is inevitable misery.

Be sure, then, if your aim is happiness, to bring down, at all hazards, your style of living and your responsibilities of business to such a point that you shall easily be able to reach it. Do this,

It is

I say, at all hazards. If you cannot have money enough for your purposes in a house with two rooms, take a house with one. your only chance for happiness. For there is such a thing as happiness in a single room, with plain furniture and simple fare; but there is no such thing as happiness with responsibilities which cannot be met, and debts increasing without any prospect of their discharge. Way to do Good.

HORACE BUSHNELL.

HORACE BUSHNELL, D.D., was born in Washington, Litchfield County, Connecticut, in 1804, and was graduated at Yale College in 1827. After leaving college, he became the literary editor of the New York Journal of Commerce, and in 1829 was appointed tutor in Yale College. In May, 1838, he was called to be the pastor of the North Congregational Church in Hartford, which position he still retains. Dr. Bushnell is a profound and therefore an independent thinker, and has consequently been arraigned by some of his clerical brethren as not soundly "orthodox," because he does not choose to adopt all the old phraseology. Those who have attacked him, however, on this ground, have had abundant reason to repent of their rashness; for he has vindicated his faith in a manner that has completely silenced his opponents. His writings have been mainly on the subject of theology, though he has occasionally stepped aside into the paths of literature. In 1837 he delivered the Phi Beta Kappa oration at New Haven, On the Principles of National Greatness; in 1848, before the same society, at Cambridge, an oration entitled Work and Play; and in 1849 he addressed the New England Society of New York on The Fathers of New England. His chief theological works are entitled God in Christ;-Views of Christian Nurture;—and Christ in Theology. He has also contributed largely to the "New Englander," and published several occasional sermons, entitled Unconscious Influence,―The Day of Roads, tracing the progress of civilization by the character and condition of the great highways,--Barbari»m the First Danger, in allusion to emigration; Religious Music; and Politics under the Law of God.

His latest published work--Nature and the Supernatural as together constituting the One System of God-is one of profound thought, and will arrest the attention of all thinking minds. Its starting-point of discussion, its definitions and modes of statement, the breadth of its view, the terseness of its language, and the vigor of its logic, give it a grasp and power over the main issue which no work on kindred

themes has shown since Butler wrote his "Analogy." Besides, too, since the "Analogy" was written, the ground in dispute has changed; and Dr. Bushnell goes beyond Butler, in proving not only an ANALOGY of Natural and Revealed religion, but the UNITY of Nature and the Supernatural in the one system of God.

WORK AND PLAY.

The drama, as a product of genius, is, within a certain narrow limit, the realization of play. But far less effectively, or more faintly, when it is acted. Then the counterfeit, as it is more remote, is more feeble. In the reading we invent our own sceneries, clothe into form and expression each one of the characters, and play out our own liberty in them as freely, and sometimes as divinely, as they. Whatever reader, therefore, has a soul of true life and fire within him, finds all expectation balked when he becomes an auditor and spectator. The scenery is tawdry and flat, the characters, definitely measured, have lost their infinity, so to speak, and thus their freedom, and what before was play descends to nothing better or more inspired than work. It is called going to the play, but it should rather be called going to the work, that is, to see a play worked, (yes, an opera! that is it!)-men and women inspired through their memory, and acting their inspirations by rote, panting into love, pumping at the fountains of grief, whipping out the passions into fury, and dying to fulfil the contract of the evening, by a forced holding of the breath. And yet this feeble counterfeit of play, which some of us would call only "very tragical mirth," has a power to the multitude. They are moved, thrilled it may be, with a strange delight. It is as if a something in their nature, higher than they themselves know, were quickened into power,-namely, that divine instinct of play, in which the summit of our nature is most clearly revealed.

In like manner, the passion of our race for war, and the eager admiration yielded to warlike exploits, are resolvable principally into the same fundamental cause. Mere ends and uses do not satisfy us. We must get above prudence and economy, into something that partakes of inspiration, be the cost what it may. Hence war, another and yet more magnificent counterfeit of play. Thus there is a great and lofty virtue that we call courage, (cour-age,) taking our name from the heart. It is the greatness of a great heart, the repose and confidence of a man whose soul is rested in truth and principle. Such a man has no ends ulterior to his duty, -duty itself is his end. He is in it therefore as in play, lives it as an inspiration. Lifted thus out of mere prudence and contrivance, he is also lifted above fear. Life to him is the outgoing

of his great heart, (heart-age,) action from the heart. And because he now can die without being shaken or perturbed by any of the dastardly feelings that belong to self-seeking and work, because he partakes of the impassibility of his principles, we call him a hero, regarding him as a kind of God, a man who has gone up into the sphere of the divine.

Then, since courage is a joy so high, a virtue of so great majesty, what could happen but that many will covet both the internal exaltation and the outward repute of it? Thus comes bravery, which is the counterfeit, or mock virtue. Courage is of the heart, as we have said; bravery is of the will. One is the spontaneous joy and repose of a truly great soul; the other, bravery, is after an end ulterior to itself, and, in that view, is but a form of work, -about the hardest work, too, I fancy, that some men undertake. What can be harder, in fact, than to act a great heart, when one has nothing but a will wherewith to do it?

Thus you will see that courage is above danger, bravery in it, doing battle on a level with it. One is secure and tranquil, the other suppresses agitation or conceals it. A right mind fortifies one, shame stimulates the other. Faith is the nerve of one, risk the plague and tremor of the other. For, if I may tell you just here a very important secret, there be many that are called heroes who are yet without courage. They brave danger by their will, when their heart trembles. They make up in violence what they want in tranquillity, and drown the tumult of their fears in the rage of their passions. Enter the heart, and you shall find, too often, a dastard spirit lurking in your hero. Call him still a brave man, if you will; only remember that he lacks courage.

No, the true hero is the great, wise man of duty,—he whose soul is armed by truth and supported by the smile of God,-he who meets life's perils with a cautious but tranquil spirit, gathers strength by facing its storms, and dies, if he is called to die, as a Christian victor at the post of duty. And if we must have heroes, and wars wherein to make them, there is no so brilliant war as a war with wrong, no hero so fit to be sung as he who has gained the bloodless victory of truth and mercy.

But if bravery be not the same as courage, still it is a very imposing and plausible counterfeit. The man himself is told, after the occasion is past, how heroically he bore himself, and when once his nerves have become tranquillized, he begins even to believe it. And since we cannot stay content in the dull, uninspired world of economy and work, we are as ready to see a hero as he to be one. Nay, we must have our heroes, as I just said, and we are ready to harness ourselves, by the million, to any man who will let us fight him out the name. Thus we find out occasions for war, wrongs to be redressed, revenges to be taken, such

as we may feign inspiration and play the great heart under. We collect armies, and dress up leaders in gold and high colors, meaning, by the brave look, to inspire some notion of a hero beforehand. Then we set the men in phalanxes and squadrons, where the personality itself is taken away, and a vast impersonalperson called an army, a magnanimous and brave monster, is all that remains. The masses of fierce color, the glitter of steel, the dancing plumes, the waving flags, the deep throb of the music lifting every foot,-under these the living acres of men, possessed by the one thought of playing brave to-day, are rolled on to battle. Thunder, fire, dust, blood, groans,-what of these?--nobody thinks of these, for nobody dares to think till the day is over, and then the world rejoices to behold a new batch of heroes. And this is the devil's play, that we call war.

LIGHT.

There are many who will be ready to think that light is a very tame and feeble instrument, because it is noiseless. An earthquake, for example, is to them a much more vigorous and effective agency. Hear how it comes thundering through the solid foundations of nature. It rocks a whole continent. The noblest works of man, cities, monuments, and temples, are in a moment levelled to the ground, or swallowed down the opening gulfs of fire.

Little do they think that the light of every morning, the soft and silent light, is an agent many times more powerful. But let the light of the morning cease and return no more; let the hour of morning come, and bring with it no dawn; the outcries of a horror-stricken world fill the air, and make, as it were, the darkness audible. The beasts go wild and frantic at the loss of the sun. The vegetable growths turn pale and die. A chill creeps on, and frosty winds begin to howl across the freezing earth. Colder, yet colder, is the night. The vital blood, at length, of all creatures, stops congealed.

Down goes the frost to the earth's centre. The heart of the sea is frozen, nay, the earthquakes are themselves frozen in, under their fiery caverns. The very globe itself, too, and all the fellowplanets that have lost their sun, are become mere balls of ice, swinging silent in the darkness. Such is the light which revisits us in the silence of the morning.-It makes no shock or sear. It would not wake an infant in the cradle. And yet it perpetually new-creates the world, rescuing it each morning as a prey from night and chaos.

So the true Christian is a light, even "the light of the world;" and we must not think that because he shines insensibly or silently, as a mere object, he is therefore powerless. The greatest powers

are ever those which lie back of the little stirs and commotions of nature; and I verily believe that the insensible influences of good men are as much more potent than what I have called their voluntary and active, as the great silent powers of nature are of greater consequence than her little disturbances and tumults.

GEORGE W. BETHUNE.

THIS graceful scholar and eloquent divine was born in New York, on the 18th of March, 1805. He is the only son of Mr. Divie Bethune,' a native of Rossshire, Scotland, who for many years was an eminent merchant in New York,eminent not only for business qualifications, but for an intelligent, ever-active piety. In 1819, he entered Columbia College, and, three years afterwards, the senior class of Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania. During that year (1822) he was the subject of a revival of religion that took place in the college, and he resolved to devote his life to the Christian ministry.2 After graduating, he entered Princeton Theological Seminary, and, in 1827, was settled over the Reformed Dutch Church at Rhinebeck, Dutchess County, New York. In 1830, he removed to Utica, to take charge of the new Reformed Dutch Church, which he gathered and built up; and in 1834, he was called to the First Reformed Dutch Church, Philadelphia. After laboring in this field two years, a number of his friends in that city determined to build a new house of worship for him; and in 1837, he was settled over the Third Reformed Dutch Church, worshipping at the corner of Tenth and Filbert Streets. Here he remained twelve years, when he left to take charge of the Reformed Dutch Church on Brooklyn Heights, New York, where he now resides.

In consequence of his fine scholarship, and his power as a writer and an orator, Dr. Bethune has received many invitations to posts of high honor and trust. The chair of Moral Philosophy at West Point was offered to him by President Polk; and he was elected Chancellor of the University of New York, to succeed

Dr. Bethune's mother, Mrs. Joanna Bethune, was the daughter of the celebrated Isabella Graham, and inherited much of her mother's spirit of earnestphilanthropy. She was very active in founding the Widow's Society and Orphan's Asylum in New York, and was among the first in laying the foundation of many benevolent institutions, such as the Sunday-school, the Society for the Promotion of Industry, &c. &c.

2 Another subject of that revival was the late Erskine Mason, D.D., for twentyone years pastor of the Bleecker Street Church, who died May 14, 1851. His sermons were distinguished for great compactness of thought and severe logical arrangement, united to a fervid and often impassioned eloquence, that gave him a very high rank as a pulpit-orator. An octavo volume of his sermons, entitled The Pastor's Legacy, has been published since his death, prefixed to which is an excellent memoir, by Rev. William Adams, D.D. Read also a very discriminating and beautifully-written article on his character, by the late Rev. R. S. Storts Dickinson, for two years assistant pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, whose early death was a great loss to the Christian church.