What superstition is so abject, that it doth not blanch

his cheek?

Whereof can he be sure, with whom Chaos is substitute " for Order?

How should his silly structure stand, a pyramid built

upon its apex ?.

Yea, I have seen grey-headed men, the bastard slips of science,

Go for light to glow-worms, while they scorn the sun at

noon;

Men, who fear no God, trembling at a gipsey's curse, Men, who jest at revelation, clinging to a madman's prophecy!

There is a pleasing dread in the fashion of all mysteries, For hope is mixed therein and fear; who shall divine their issues?

Even the orphan, wandering by night, lost on dreary

moors,

Is sensible of some vague bliss amidst his shapeless

terrors;

The buoyancy of instant expectation, spurring on the mind to venture,

Overbeareth, in its energy, the cramp and the chill of apprehension.

There is a solitary pride, when the heart, in new importance,

Writeth gladly on its archives, the secrets none other men have seen:

And there is a caged terror, evermore wrestling with the mind,

When crime hath whispered his confession, and the secrets are written there in blood:

The village maiden is elated at a tenderly confided tale: The bandit's wife with sickening fear guessed the premeditated murder:

The sage, with triumph on his brow, hideth up his deep discovery;

The idlest clown shall delve all day, to find a hidden

treasure.

For mystery is man's life; we wake to the whisperings of novelty:

And what, though we lie down disappointed? we sleep, to wake in hope.

The letter, or the news, the chances and the changes, matters that may happen,

Sweeten or embitter daily life with the honey-gall of

mystery.

For we walk blindfold, — and a minute may be much,

a step may reach the precipice;

What earthly loss, what heavenly gain, may not this day produce?

Levelled of Alps and Andes, without its valleys and ravines,

How dull the face of earth, unfeatured of both beauty and sublimity!

And so, shorn of mystery, beggared in its hopes and fears,

How flat the prospect of existence, mapped by intuitive foreknowledge.

Praise God, creature of earth, for the mercies linked with secresy,

That spices of uncertainty enrich the cup of life:

Praise God, his hosts on high, for the mysteries that make all joy;

What were intelligence, with nothing more to learn, or heaven, in eternity of sameness?

To number every mystery were to sum the sum of all things:

None can exhaust a theme, whereof God is example and similtude.

Nevertheless, take a garland from the garden, a handful from the harvest,

Some scatter drops of spray from the ceaseless mighty

cataract.

Whence are we, - whither do we tend, how do we feel, and reason?

How strange a thing is man, a spirit saturating clay! When doth soul make embroys immortal,- how do they rank hereafter,

And will the unconscious idiot be quenched in death as nothing!

In essence immaterial, are these minds, as it were, thinking machines ?

For, to understand may but rightly be to use a mechanism all possess,

So that in reading or hearing of another, a man shall seem unto himself

To be recollecting images or arguments, native and congenial to his mind:

And yet, what shall we say,

who can arede the riddle?

The brain may be clockwork, and mind its spring, mechanism quickened by a spirit.

Who so shrewd as rightly to divide life, instinct, reason; Trees, zoophytes, creatures of the plain, and savage men among them?

Hath the mimosa instinct,

Or the dog less than reason, than instinct?

or the scallop more than life; or the brute-man more

What is the cause of health, and the gendering of

disease?

Why should arsenic kill, and whence is the potency of antidotes?

Behold, a morsel, eat and die: the term of thy probation is expired:

Behold, a potion, — drink and be alive; the limit of thy trial is enlarged.

Who can expound beauty? or explain the character of nations?

Who will furnish a cause for the epedemic force of fashion?

Is there a moral magnetism living in the light of example?

Is practice electricity ?-Yet all these are but names. Doth normal Art imprison, in its works, spirit translated into substance,

So that the statue, the picture, or the poem, are crystals of the mind?

And doth Philosophy with sublimating skill shred away the matter,

Till rarefied intelligence exudeth even out of stocks and stones?

mysteries, ye all are one, the mind is an inexplicable Architect

Dwelleth alike in each, quickening and moving in them all.

Fields, and forests, and cities of men, their woes and wealth and works,

And customs, and contrivances of life, with all we see and know,

For a little way, a little while, ye hang dependent on each other,

But all are held in one right-hand, and by His Will ye

are.

Here is answer unto mystery, an unintelligible God, This is the end and the beginning, it is reason that He be not understood.

Therefore it were probable and just, even to a man's weak thinking,

To have one for God who always may be learnt, yet never fully known:

That He, from whom all mysteries spring, in whom they all converge,

Throned in his sublimity beyond the grovellings of lower intellect,

Should claim to be truer than man's truest, the boasted certainty of numbers,

Should baffle his arithmetic, confound his demonstrations, and paralyse the might of his necessity,

Standing supreme as the mystery of mysteries, everywhere, yet impersonate,

Essential one in three, essential three in one!

of Gifts.

had a seeming friend;-I gave him gifts, and he was gone:

I had an open enemy;-I gave him gifts and won him : Common friendship standeth on equalities, and cannot bear a debt;

But the very heart of hate melteth at a good man's love : Go to, then, thou that sayest, I will give and rivet the

links:

For pride shall kick at obligation, and push the giver

from him.

-

The covetous spirit may rejoice, revelling in thy largess, But chilling selfishness will mutter, I must give again : The vain heart may be glad, in this new proof of man's esteem,

But the same idolatry of self abhorreth thoughts of thanking.

Nevertheless, give; for it shall be a discriminative test Separating honesty from falsehood, weeding insincerity from friendship.

Give, it is like God; thou weariest the bad with benefits: Give, it is like God; thou gladdenest the good by gratitude.

Give to thy near of kin, for providence hath stationed thee his helper:

Yet see that he claim not as his right, thy freewill offering of duty.