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LXXXVIII.—THE PROBLEM OF CREATION.

I

F we look out upon the starry heavens by which we are surrounded, we find them diversified in every possible way. Our own mighty Stellar System takes upon itself the form of a flat disc, which may be compared to a mighty ring breaking into two distinct branches, severed from each other, the interior with stars less densely populous than upon the exterior. But take the telescope and go beyond this; and here you find, coming out from the depths of space, universes of every possible shape and fashion; some of them assuming a globular form, and, when we apply the highest possible penetrating power of the telescope, breaking into ten thousand brilliant stars, all crushed and condensed into one luminous, bright, and magnificent center.

2. But look yet farther. Away yonder, in the distance, you behold a faint, hazy, nebulous ring of light, the interior almost entirely dark, but the exterior ring-shaped, and exhibiting to the eye, under the most powerful telescope, the fact that it may be resolved entirely into stars, producing a universe somewhat analogous to the one we inhabit. Go yet deeper into space, and there you will behold another universe-voluminous scrolls of light, glittering with beauty, flashing with splendor, and sweeping a curve of most extraordinary form and of most tremendous outlines.

3. Thus we may pass from planet to planet, from sun to sun, from system to system. We may reach beyond the limits of this mighty stellar cluster with which we are allied. We may find other island universes sweeping through space. The great unfinished problem still remains-Whence came this universe? Have all these stars which glitter in the heavens been shining from all eternity? Has our globe been rolling around the sun for ceaseless ages? Whence, whence this magnificent Architecture,

whose architraves rise in splendor before us in every direction? Is it all the work of chance? I answer, No. It is not the work of chance.

4. Who shall reveal to us the true cosmogony of the universe by which we are surrounded? Is it the work of an Omnipotent Architect? If so, who is this August Being? Go with me to-night, in imagination, and stand with old Paul, the great Apostle, upon Mars' Hill, and there look around you as he did. Here rises that magnificent building, the Parthenon, sacred to Minerva, the Goddess of Wisdom. There towers her colossal statue, rising in its majesty above the city of which she was the guardian-the first object to catch the rays of the rising, and the last to be kissed by the rays of the setting sun. There are the temples of all the gods; and there are the shrines of every divinity.

5. And yet I tell you these gods and these divinities, though created under the inspiring fire of poetic fancy and Greek imagination, never reared this stupendous structure by which we are surrounded. The Olympic Jove never built these heavens. The wisdom of Minerva never organized these magnificent systems. I say with St. Paul, "O Athenians, in all things I find you too superstitious; for in passing along your streets, I find an altar inscribed, To the Unknown God-Him whom ye ignorantly worship; and this is the God I declare unto you-the God that made heaven and earth, who dwells not in temples made with hands."

6. No, here is the temple of our Divinity. Around us and above us rise Sun and System, Cluster and Universe And I doubt not that in every region of this vast Empire of God, hymns of praise and anthems of glory are rising and reverberating from Sun to Sun and from System to System-heard by Omnipotence alone across immensity and through eternity!

O. M. MITCHEL.

L

LXXXIX. THE HURRICANE.

I.

ORD of the winds! I feel thee nigh,

I know thy breath in the burning sky,

And I wait with a thrill in every vein,

For the coming of the hurricane!

And lo! on the wing of the heavy gales,

Through the boundless arch of heaven he sails;
Silent and slow, and terribly strong,

The mighty shadow is borne along,
Like the dark eternity to come;

While the world below, dismayed and dumb,
Through the calm of the thick, hot atmosphere,
Look up at its gloomy folds with fear.

II.

They darken fast; and the golden blaze
Of the sun is quenched in the lurid haze,
And he sends through the shade a funeral ray-
A glare that is neither night nor day,

A beam that touches with hues of death
The clouds above and the earth beneath.
To its cover glides the silent bird,

While the hurricane's distant voice is heard,
Uplifted among the mountains round;

And the forests hear and answer the sound.

III.

He is come! he is come! do ye not behold
His ample robes on the wind unrolled?
Giant of air! we bid thee hail!

How his gray skirts toss in the whirling gale!
How his huge and writhing arms are bent

To clasp the zone of the firmament,

And fold, at length, in their dark embrace, From mountain to mountain, the visible space!

IV.

Darker still darker! the whirlwinds bear

The dust of the plains to the middle air:

And hark to the crashing, long and loud,

Of the chariot of God in the thunder-cloud!

You may trace its path by the flashes that start
From the rapid wheels wherever they dart,
As the fire-bolts leap to the world below,
And flood the skies with a lurid glow.

V.

What roar is that?-'tis the rain that breaks
In torrents away from the airy lakes,
Heavily poured on the shuddering ground,
And shedding a nameless horror round.

Ah! well-known woods, and mountains, and skies,
With the very clouds, ye are lost to my eyes.
I seek ye vainly, and see in your place

The shadowy tempest that sweeps through space,—
A whirling ocean that fills the wall
Of the crystal heaven, and buries all.
And I, cut off from the world, remain
Alone with the terrible hurricane.

W. C. BRYANT.

A

XC.-CHEERFULNESS.

CHEERFUL man is pre-eminently a useful man. He knows that there is much misery, but that misery is not the rule of life. He sees that in every state people may be cheerful; the lambs skip, birds sing and fly joyously, puppies play, kittens are full of joyance, the whole air is full of careering and rejoicing insects-that everywhere the good outbalances the bad, and that every evil that there is has its compensating balm.

2. Then the brave man, as our German cousins say, possesses the world, whereas the melancholy man does not even possess his share of it.

3. Exercise, or continued~ployment of some kind, will make a man cheerful; but sitting at home, brooding and thinking, or doing little, will bring gloom. The reaction of this feeling is wonderful. It arises from a sense of duty done, and it also enables us to do our duty.

4. Cheerful people live long in our memory. We rememher joy more readily than sorrow, and always look back with tenderness on the brave and cheerful.

5. We can all cultivate our tempers, and one of the employments of some poor mortals is to cultivate, cherish, and bring to perfection, a thoroughly bad one; but we may be certain that to do so is a very great error and sin, which like all others, brings its own punishment; though, unfortunately, it does not punish itself only.

6. Addison says of cheerfulness, that it lightens sickness, poverty, affliction; converts ignorance into an amiable simplicity, and renders deformity itself agreeable; and he says no more than the truth.

7. "Give us, therefore, oh! give us"-let us cry with Carlyle "the man who sings at his work! He will do more in the same time,—he will do it better, he will persevere longer. One is scarcely sensible of fatigue whilst he marches to music. The very stars are said to make harmony as they revolve in their spheres. Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness, altogether past calculation its powers of endurance. Efforts, to be permanently useful, must be uniformly joyous,—a spirit all sunshine, graceful from very gladness, beautiful because bright."

8. Such a spirit is within everybody's reach. Let us but get out into the light of things. The morbid man cries out that there is always enough wrong in the world to make a man miserable. Conceded; but wrong is ever being righted; there is always enough that is good and right to make us joyful.

9. There is ever sunshine somewhere; and the brave man will go on his way rejoicing, content to look forward if under a cloud, not bating one jot of heart or hope if for a moment cast down; hono:g his occupation, whatever it may be; rendering even ras respectable by the way he wears them; and not only being happy himself, but causing the happiness of others.

J. H. FRISWELL.

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