morse. As he thought of parents and friends, the agony of his soul was too great for endurance. His lip quivered. His blood rushed through his veins with maddened speed. His frame trembled, and he dropped down dead!

Conscience! O, how terrific is its power! "The world of woe has no more excruciating pangs," said the dying sinner, "than those which now consume me."

On the other hand, there is no joy greater than that which an approving conscience gives. How often have you been made happy, exceedingly happy, by the approbation of your parents or instructor, when conscious that the approbation was merited! What means the frank and joyous countenance of the school-boy, as he hastens homeward with a heart so light, that his feet can hardly touch the ground? It is the reward which conscience is conferring for diligence and improvement. Earth has nothing purer, nothing more elevated, nothing more satisfying, than this joy.

This is the great joy of heaven. You will be like your Savior in perfect holiness. There you will have no faults, no imperfections. You will never be guilty of any improprieties. You will never speak unadvisedly. You will never do any thing upon which you will not reflect with pleasure. You will have the consciousness of perfect holiness,-of the perfect approval of God.

our own.

God originally created us in his own moral image. This image was lost by the fall. It is again to be restored to the redeemed. We now look into our minds, and behold prejudice and ignorance. There, ignorance will have disappeared, and inexhaustible treasures of wisdom will be We now look into our hearts, and behold sin and corruption. There, we shall see no sin; but the image of God will be there. As God's benevolence is diffused through heaven, and his love beams upon all his children, so love will flow back from every heart to God, and mingle in sweetest sympathy with those thousand rills, which cheer and invigorate the affections of heaven. As God is perfectly happy in himself, so will his children be like him in their happiness. To this felicity there will be no alloy, and no termination. As God will forever exist, so have his children entered upon an immortal state. Such, my young reader, is the happy state, which God has offered to all who will repent of sin, and turn to his service. Is this not worth striving for? Will you lose it all, that you may enjoy the miserable pleasures of sin?

It is that you may prepare for this world that God now allows you to live. The object of the various allotments of his providence, whether joyful or sorrowful, is to prepare you for this heavenly state. Are you looking forward and ma

king preparation for this new abode? In a very short time you will be in this eternal world. Your years are passing as a dream; soon they will all gone, and you will be with angels in immortal blessedness, or with the lost in unending woe.

be

CHAPTER VII.

TRUE GREATNESS.

WE cannot find in all the uninspired records of antiquity, a character to be compared, for true magnanimity and heroism, with that of the devout prophet Daniel.

About 600 years before the birth of Christ, the king of Babylon marched with his assembled army against Jerusalem. He was successful in his expedition, and after carrying the city by siege, he despoiled it of its treasures, and marched back in triumph, with an immense train of weeping captives, to his own proud city of oppression.

In that sorrowing train of prisoners, dragged in chains to grace the conqueror's triumph, were seen the princes, and the nobles, and all the honorable families, of the once magnificent and powerful, but now dishonored and prostrate city. A young man was there of noble birth, of great personal beauty, and his eye gleamed with the radiance of a vigorous and lofty mind. His name was Daniel.

The conqueror, with his captives, arrived in

Babylon, and Daniel, in consequence of his exalted lineage, his personal beauty, and his intellectual endowments, was selected to adorn by his presence the palace of the king. But, as he was yet in his early youth, he was first placed under the guidance of the wise men of the East, that he might be instructed in all their wisdom.

The king gave orders that Daniel should be treated with the most especial marks of favor, and that he should be daily fed with the most luxurious viands from his own table. But these meats and these wines had been consecrated, on heathen altars, to heathen gods, and Daniel could not, in conscience, by partaking of them, countenance these rites of paganism. He therefore rejected the high-seasoned meats and generous wines of Nebuchadnezzar, and, with self-denying abstemiousness, persisted in a temperate diet of vegetables and water. Nurtured as he had been in the lap of affluence, this was a noble triumph of principle, and reveals, at a glance, the energy of character and the true magnanimity of spirit which this young man possessed.

And in this characteristic incident there was a wonderful alliance of mildness with his decision; -pure principle compelling him to take the stand of unwavering firmness, and yet the kind feelings of his heart enabling him to do it with