but if a wondrous hand from the blue yonder
Held out a scroll,

On which my life was writ, and I with wonder
Beheld unroll

To a long century's end its mystic clue,
What should I do?

What could I do, oh! blessed Guide and Master,
Other than this;

Still to go on as now, not slower, faster,
Nor fear to miss

The road, although so very long it be,
While led by Thee?

Stop after step, feeling Thee close beside me,
Although unseen,

Through thorns, through flowers, whether the tempest hide

Thee,

Or heavens serene,

Assured thy faithfulness cannot betray,

Thy love decay.

I may not know; my God, no hand revealeth
Thy counsels wise;

Along the path a deepening shadow stealeth,
No voice replies

To all my questioning thought, the time to tell,
And it is well.

Let me keep on, abiding and unfearing
Thy will always,

Through a long century's ripening fruition
Or a short day's,

Thou canst not come too soon; and I can wait
If thou come late.

DERMOT'S PARTING.

Он, waken up, my darlin'-my Dermot, it is day,-
The day, when from the mother's eyes the real light dies away;
For what will daylight be to me that never more will see
The fair face of my Dermot come smilin' back to me?
Arise, my son-the morning red is wearing fast away,
And through the grey mist I can see the masts rock in the bay.
Before the sea-fog clears the hill, my darlin' must depart—
But oh, the cloud will never lift that wraps the mother's heart!

Sure, then, I'm old and foolish; what's this I'm saying now?
Will I see my fair son leave me with a shadow on his brow?
Oh, no we'll bear up bravely, and make no stir, nor moan;
There will be time for weepin' when my fair son shall be gone.
I've laid the old coat ready, dear; my pride this day has been
That on your poor apparel shall no rent nor stain be seen.
And let me tie that 'kerchief, too; it's badly done, I fear,
But my old hands tremble sadly, with the hurry, Dermot, dear
And are you ready, darlin'? Turn round, and bid farewell
To the roof-tree of the cabin that has sheltered us so well;
Leave a blessing on the threshold, and on the old hearth
stone,-

'Twill be a comfort to my heart when I sit there alone.
And often at the twilight hour, when day and work are done,
I'll dream the old time's back again, when you were there, my

son,

When you were there, a little thing that prattled at my knee, Long ere the evil days had come to part my child and me.

The dear arm is still round me, the dear hand guides me still; 'Tis but a little step to go-see, now we've gained the hill; Is that the vessel, Dermot, dear?—the mist my eyesight dimsOh, shame upon me now! what means this trembling in my limbs?

My child! my child! oh, let me weep awhile upon your breast; Would I were in my grave! for then my heart would be at

rest;

But now the hour is come, and I must stand upon the shore,
And see the treasure of my soul depart for evermore !

I know, my child!-I know it, the folly and the sin,-
But oh! I think my heart would burst to keep this anguish in-
To think how in yon sleeping town such happy mothers be,
Who keep their many sons at home, while I-I had but thee!
But I have done; I murmur not; I kiss the chastening rod,
Upon this hill-as Abraham did-I give my child to God !
But not, like him, to welcome back the precious thing once
given;

I'll see my fair son's face again—but not on this side Heaven!

VOICES OF THE DEAD.-REV. JOHN CUMMING.

WE die, but leave an influence behind us that survives The echoes of our words are evermore repeated, and re

flected along the ages. It is what man was that lives and acts after him. What he said sounds along the years like voices amid the mountain gorges; and what he did is repeated after him in ever-multiplying and never-ceasing reverberations. Every man has left behind him influences for good or for evil that will never exhaust themselves. The sphere in which he acts may be small, or it may be great. It may be his fireside, or it may be a kingdom; a village, or a great nation; it may be a parish, or broad Europe; but act he does, ceaselessly and forever. His friends, his family, his successors in office, his relatives, are all receptive of an influence, a moral influence which he has transmitted and bequeathed to mankind; either a blessing which will repeat itself in showers of benedictions, or a curse which will multiply itself in everaccumulating evil.

Every man is a missionary, now and forever, for good or for evil, whether he intends and designs it, or not. He may be a blot, radiating his dark influence outward to the very circumference of society, or he may be a blessing, spreading benedictions over the length and breadth of the world; but a blank he cannot be. The seed sown in life springs up in harvests of blessings, or harvests of sorrow. Whether our influence be great or small, whether it be for good or evil, it lasts, it lives somewhere, within some limit, and is operative wherever it is. The grave buries the dead dust, but the character walks the world, and distributes itself, as a benediction or a curse, among the families of mankind.

The sun sets beyond the western hills, but the trail of light he leaves behind him guides the pilgrim to his distant home. The tree falls in the forest; but in the lapse of ages it is turned into coal, and our fires burn now the brighter because it grew and fell. The coral insect dies, but the reef it raised breaks the surge on the shores of great continents, or has formed an isle in the bosom of the ocean, to wave with harvests for the good of man. We live and we die; but the good or evil that we do lives after us, and is not "buried with our bones."

The babe that perished on the bosom of its mother, like a flower that bowed its head and drooped amid the deathfrosts of time-that babe, not only in its image, but in its

influence, still lives and speaks in the chambers of the mother's heart.

The friend with whom we took sweet counsel is removed visibly from the outward eye; but the lessons that he taught, the grand sentiments that he uttered, the holy deeds of generosity by which he was characterized, the moral lineaments and likeness of the man, still survive and appear in the silence of eventide, and on the tablets of memory, and in the light of morn and noon and dewy eve; and, being dead, he yet speaks eloquently, and in the midst of us.

Mahomet still lives in his practical and disastrous influence in the East. Napoleon still is France, and France is almost Napoleon. Martin Luther's dead dust sleeps at Wittenburg, but Martin Luther's accents still ring through the churches of Christendom. Shakspeare, Byron, and Milton, all live in their influence, for good or evil. The apostle from his chair, the minister from his pulpit, the martyr from his flame-shroud, the statesman from his cabinet, the soldier in the field, the sailor on the deck, who all have passed away to their graves, still live in the practical deeds that they did, in the lives they lived, and in the powerful lessons that they left behind them.

"None of us liveth to himself;"-others are affected by that life;" or dieth to himself;"-others are interested in that death. Our queen's crown may moulder, but she who wore it will act upon the ages which are yet to come. The noble's coronet may be reft in pieces, but the wearer of it is now doing what will be reflected by thousands who will be made and moulded by him. Dignity, and rank, and riches, are all corruptible and worthless; but moral character has an immortality that no sword-point can destroy; that ever walks the world and leaves lasting influences behind.

What we do is transacted on a stage of which all in the universe are spectators. What we say is transmitted in echoes that will never cease. What we are is influencing and acting on the rest of mankind. Neutral we cannot be. Living we act, and dead we speak; and the whole uni. verse is the mighty company forever looking, forever listening; and all nature the tablets forever recording the words, the deeds, the thoughts, the passions of mankind!

NUMBER SIX.

Monuments, and columns, and statues, erected to heroes, poets, orators, statesmen, are all influences that extend into the future ages. "The blind old man of Scio's rocky isle" still speaks. The Mantuan bardt still sings in every school. Shakspeare, the bard of Avon, is still translated into every tongue. The philosophy of the Stagyrite is still felt in every academy. Whether these influences are beneficent or the reverse, they are influences How blest must be the recollection fraught with power. of those who, like the setting sun, have left a trail of light behind them by which others may see the way to that rest which remaineth for the people of God!

It is only the pure fountain that brings forth pure water. The good tree only will produce the good fruit. If the centre from which all proceeds is pure and holy, the radii of influence from it will be pure and holy also. Go forth, then, into the spheres that you occupy, the employments, the trades, the professions of social life; go forth into the high places, or into the lowly places of the land; mix with the roaring cataracts of social convulsions, or mingle amid the eddies and streamlets of quiet and domestic life; whatever sphere you fill, carrying into it a holy heart, you will radiate around you life and power, and leave behind you holy and beneficent influences.

THE DOCTOR AND HIS APPLES.

WHAT is a schoolmaster? Why, can't you tell?

A quizzical old man

Armed with a ratan;
Wears a huge wig,

And struts about;

Strives to look big,

With spectacles on snout,

And most important pout,

Who teaches little boys to read and spell.

Such my description is, of a man,
If not a clergyman, a layman :—

*Homer.

†Virgil.

Aristotle.