"When James the First the sceptre swayed They placed the powder down below, Lucky the man, and happy the day, That caught Guy Fawkes in the middle of his play!" "Hark! our bell goes jink, jink, jink; Pray, madam, pray, sir, give us something to drink; We'll burn the dog, and not let him live. And then you'll say the dog is dead." "Look here! from Rome The pope has come, That fiery serpent dire; Here's the pope that we have got, The old promoter of the plot; We'll stick a pitchfork in his back, There is a slight savor of a Smithfield roasting about these lines, such as regaled the senses of the virgin Queen or "bloody Mary," which entirely reconciles us to their disuse at the present time. It should be the fervent prayer of all good men that the evil spirit of religious hatred and intolerance, which on the one hand prompted the gunpowder plot, and which on the other has ever since made it the occasion of reproach and persecu tion of an entire sect of professing Christians, may be no longer perpetuated. In the matter of exclusiveness and intolerance, none of the older sects can safely reproach each other; and it becomes all to hope and labor for the coming of that day when the hymns of Cowper and the Confessions of Augustine, the humane philosophy of Channing and the devout meditations of Thomas à Kempis, the simple essays of Woolman and the glowing periods of Bossuet, shall be regarded as the offspring of one spirit and one faith-lights of a common altar, and precious stones in the temple of the one universal church. THE BETTER LAND. "THE shapings of our heavens are the modifications of our constitution," said Charles Lamb, in his reply to Southey's attack upon him in the Quarterly Review. He who is infinite in love as well as wisdom has revealed to us the fact of a future life, and the fearfully important relation in which the present stands to it. The actual nature and conditions of that life he has hidden from us-no chart of the ocean of eternity is given usno celestial guide book or geography defines, localizes, and prepares us for the wonders of the spiritual world. Hence imagination has a wide field for its speculations, which, so long as they do not positively contradict the revelation of the Scriptures, cannot be disproved. We naturally enough transfer to our idea of heaven whatever we love and reverence on earth. Thither the Catholic carries in his fancy the imposing rites and timehonored solemnities of his worship. There the Methodist sees his love feasts and camp meetings in the groves and by the still waters and green pastures of the blessed (161) 11 abodes. The Quaker, in the stillness of his self-communing, remembers that there was "silence in heaven." The Churchman, listening to the solemn chant of vocal music or the deep tones of the organ, thinks of the song of the elders and the golden harps of the New Jerusalem. The heaven of the northern nations of Europe was a gross and sensual reflection of the earthly life of a barbarous and brutal people. The Indians of North America had a vague notion of a sunset land, a beautiful paradise far in the west, mountains and forests filled with deer and buffalo, lakes and streams swarming with fishes the happy hunting ground of souls. In a late letter from a devoted missionary among the western Indians (Paul Blohm, a converted Jew) we have noticed a beautiful illustration of this belief. Near the Omahaw mission house, on a high bluff, was a solitary Indian grave. "One evening," says the missionary, "having come home with some cattle which I had been seeking, I heard some one wailing; and, looking in the direction from whence it proceeded, I found it to be from the grave near our house. In a moment after a mourner rose up from a kneeling or lying posture, and, turning to the setting sun, stretched forth his arms in prayer and supplication with an intensity and earnestness as though he would detain the splendid luminary from running his course. With his body leaning forward and his arms stretched towards the sun, he presented a most striking figure of sorrow and petition. It was solemnly awful. He seemed to me to be one of the ancients come forth to teach me how to pray." A venerable and worthy New England clergyman, on his death bed, just before the close of his life, declared that he was only conscious of an awfully solemn and intense curiosity to know the great secret of death and eternity. The excellent Dr. Nelson, of Missouri, was one who, while on earth, seemed to live another and higher life in the contemplation of infinite purity and happiness. A friend once related an incident concerning him which made a deep impression upon my mind. They had been travelling through a summer's forenoon in the prairie, and had laid down to rest beneath a solitary tree. The doctor lay for a long time, silently looking upwards through the openings of the boughs into the still heavens, when he repeated the following lines, in a low tone, as if communing with himself in view of the wonders he described :— "O the joys that are there mortal eye hath not seen! |