amongst the ruins of a charnel-house. Newton shut out the world, that he might range through the universe: Locke closed his door on the crowd of busy bodies, that he might open his soul to the bright Intelligences who visited him from above: and Milton traversed the midnight woods of Ludlow, to mark

-the spiritual creatures that walk the earth, "Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep."

Such men, when they withdraw from society, go on heavenly errands. Genius would want one of the essentials towards its perfection, if it were ignorant of its destination: it knows its own worth and its own uses: it is a minister of the king of kings; and to fulfil its duty, that duty must be diligently studied. The great benefactors of mankind, (they who teach men to be wise, virtuous, and happy;) when they have viewed the diseased multitude, usually retire to consider the cases and the remedies: the wound is in the soul, and the secret of cure must be sought in the physician's own bosom. He goes into the depths of solitude,

"to commune with his own heart ;" to judge man by man; to tremble at what he is, to marvel at what he might be;-how prone to vice, how adapted to virtue; how foolish in pride, how wise in humility! The sage is alone: temptation is distant; and the world and its snares are at its feet; for a time he forgets the earth, and, like the prophet of old, his soul is in heaven.-" And behold! THE LORD PASSED BY! And a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake: and after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire A STILL SMALL VOICE! And it was so, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle." Conscience is not heard amid the tempests of the world; the aspirations of the soul are overwhelmed in the press of business, in the noise of pleasure, and the uproar of ambition; it is only in solitude that we can hear distinctly the still small voice from heaven, that whispers a pleading warning to erring man. How

sweet, yet how awful is its sound! It is the soft cooing of the dove at the ark-window: the lonely patriarch of a drowned world, starts from his couch, and listens with a still joy to the herald of heaven,-the messenger of peace on earth, and good-will towards man !

LIFE.

How pitiable is that vanity which possess→ eth many, to make a perpetual mansion of this poor baiting-place of man's life!

Remark.

The baser part of man must obscure and almost extinguish the nobler, before he can be content to set up his rest here and resign his heavenly country. This abjectness may be shewn in men who devote themselves to the accumulation of wealth, to the pursuit of

idle pleasures, or to the constant excitement and gratification of the senses: all these creatures (and others like unto them,) are mere earth-worms, and would be happy to lick the dust to eternity. Neglecting thought, they can have no imagination; that smiling prophetess whose "promised events cast their shadows before!" They see no heaven in the sky; they acknowledge no providence in good fortune; they feel no carnest of immortality in the deathless affections of the soul! Weak is the pleasure of the world-encrusted wretch, when compared with the buoyant emotions of him who spurns its dross. He knows whose hand placed him in the world: and as we esteem presents for the sake of the friend that gives them, rather than on account of their own value; and as they acquire new beauty in our eyes, by reminding us of the good-will of the donor; so a considerate man finds more loveliness in the world than the inconsiderate does; because all that is in it he looks on as bestowed by his best friend, Almighty God! He admires creation, but he does not love the gift better than the giver. What man is

there among us, who would prefer the scarf wrought by his lady's hands, the bracelets which she wore, the letters which she wrote, or perhaps her very picture, which he has so often pressed to his heart, before her own presence? Who would be such a fool as to hesitate about throwing all these comforters of banishment into the wide sea, when she held out her arms to receive him on the opposite shore? If this seems so reasonable in earthly love, how unreasonable is any contradiction of the principle when applied to heavenly! But it is not so with him who estimates life properly he exults in accomplishing the task assigned him here; and though his head be covered with honours, and his heart filled with the sweetest affections, he is ready to depart : but, he consents not to leave what has so long mingled with his soul. His soul grasps them yet closer; and in its bosom they are borne to the footstool of the Most High, to the infinite fields of ether, to the eternal home of paradise. When such a man meditates on the brevity of life, on the near approach of death, the grave is the last object that passes