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to pass. His written Word is only a different form of instructing his rational creatures what to do and what not to do to secure their highest happiness. It comes in aid of their experience as to the effects of actions on their happiness or misery. It is kind advice given by a most affectionate father: Do this, and be happy-avoid that, or be miserable. It nowhere says that God's will or determination is that we shall not disobey. This advice, like the pain we experience from transgression, or even from the thought of transgression, is intended not to hinder us from the transgressions which we actually commit, but from those we would commit without the aid of this advice. God has determined that we shall commit no more transgressions than we actually do commit, and He has taken effectual means to insure that result. I think, also, we may safely conclude, from the means which we see in operation, that it is his determination that we shall commit fewer and fewer transgressions the longer we continue to exist, until finally, when we become perfectly wise, transgression will become impossible. In this process our free agency will all the time remain unimpaired. Our liability to sin will evidently diminish with the increase of our wisdom and goodness, whilst our free agency will constantly remain the same. Nor is it necessary that man should become infinitely wise to render transgression in him impossible; it is enough that his wisdom be coëxtensive with his sphere of action, so that nothing should be presented to his mind leading to action beyond his sphere of knowledge. Now, as man's sphere of action is limited, we may well conceive that his knowledge, which is constantly increasing in this world, and will probably increase much faster in the next, will become so extensive in millions of years that no proposition could then be proposed to him which he could not determine as to its evil or good consequences; and as God never will, to all eternity, cause happiness to be the result of the transgression of his laws, this knowledge is all that is necessary to render transgression impossible—especially when we consider that man never can have his nature so changed that he can prefer misery to happiness; and to prefer the known causes of misery to the known causes of happiness would be the same as preferring the misery itself.

Perhaps it may be objected that I have based all my reasonings, in this paper, on the supposition that man is a purely intellectual

being, and that all his volitions arise from the dictates of the understanding, whereas it is manifest that he is not purely intellectual, and that very many of his volitions are chiefly influenced by his passions, and still more by his habits- and that, too, so suddenly that his rational powers have no time to act before the volition is made; and hence it is inferred that man may still be liable to transgress the law of God, even after he becomes perfect in knowledge, if that time should ever arrive. This objection, however plausible, is easily answered. I acknowledge that many of our volitions are influenced by our passions, and many depend on our habits, as completely as the volitions of beasts depend on instinct; and I have no doubt that we are formed by the Creator with the capacity of acquiring habits, and being influenced by them, for the wisest purposes. Without such a capacity man would be in many respects inferior to the beasts, and, indeed, would be altogether unfitted for an inhabitant of this world. But habits themselves may be examined by reason, and approved or condemned as they shall appear useful or injurious to our happiness; and there is no bad habit, however confirmed by long use, that can not be corrected by long continued and repeated efforts. I will not say that the converse of this proposition is true that good habits, when once confirmed by long use, can be changed to bad; for good habits, when examined by reason, will be approved, and, of course, no efforts will be made to change them. Thus they will remain forever as parts of our very self, eternally ready to lead us to make proper volitions on all subjects within the sphere of their influence. Hence, it is manifestly true, if you bring up a child in the way he should go, when he is old he will not depart from it. But Solomon nowhere says, Bring up a child in he should not go, and when he is old he will not depart

the way from it.

[To be Continued. ]

DEVOTION.

DEVOUTLY look, and naught

But wonders shall pass by thee;

Devoutly read, and then

All books shall edify thee;

Devoutly speak, and men

Devoutly listen to thee;

Devoutly act, and then

The strength of God acts through thee.

-Ruckert (Wisdom of the Brahmin).

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Written on seeing one at a bird-fancier's, in one of our large eastern cities, restlessly endeavoring to force its way through the roof of its cage.

AGAINST thy prison bars still fiercely beating
With tireless wings, striving to find thy way
Out from thy gloomy cell, and give thy greeting
Triumphant to the broad and glorious day,-
In vain endeavor thus thy short, and fleeting,
And cheerless life thou here wilt wear away.

Poor alien can it be that thou art haunted
By visions such as the sad exile sees,
Of some deep, amethystine gulf enchanted,
Far in the bosom of the Pyrenees,

Where, by no hand of mortal ever planted,
Wild blooms are reddening for the golden bees?

Or maddening dreams-of some blue lakelet lying
'Mid the white Alps, mirroring but the sun,
A star, or warbling skylark o'er it flying
To meet the mornor, when the day was done,
Sinking unto his mate, and sweetly trying
His vespers o'er his nest so nearly won!

Or yet of England's hills, and of the auroral
And crimson beams flushing the orient through,
Upon her highland-moors the rose-tints floral
Deepening on heath-bells wet with sweetest dew;
Longing, with longing vain, to join the choral
And exquisite chant far in those skies of blue!

Thy alien fellow-captives never greeting,

Gathered in this dim cell from many lands,
Thou wearest out thy little life and fleeting,
Striving all vainly with thy prison bands,—
Beating against them with a restless beating,

To gain that Temple grand not made with hands!

WHO DISCOVERED THE PLANET?

[We take the risk of publishing the following letter from a friend who might possibly have been too judicious to write it had he known that it would see the light. It is likely, however, that if any good name has been unjustly enclouded, it will have been cleared by the time this magazine reaches that vicinity, if it ever does; if justly, M. Vernet will have made every peak in Switzerland vocal with it.]

BESANÇON, February 4, 1860.

AFTER a violent oscillation between the beauties of France and the sublimities of Switzerland, as provocative of a rest for the spring and summer, I have selected the meadow rather than the eyrie, and have had a neat and pleasant room fitted up in the Humboldt hotel. From my window I look forth on the placid waters of the Doubs, which reminds me daily of our own beautiful Rappahannock, that sweetest of Virginia streams, which has long flowed in me as one of my own veins. .

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But I can not linger more amongst the sacred autographs which the Old Times wrote in stone within these ancient walls, ere they departed; for they seem to have said- these Old Times: We will take Besançon, whose fortification dates back to the time of Cæsar, heap our souvenirs in its museum, our books in its library, and make its cathedrals and dwellings a geologic architecture, recording the strata of past civilizations.

I must not close, however, without telling you of a strange tragedy and its attendant rumors, of which perhaps the least that is said the better, until their present nebulous condition shall recede before a nucleus of substantiated fact. It relates to the planet recently discovered by Dr. Lascarbault, to whom the honor of the discovery is not only due, but most cheerfully conceded by all. Henceforth, along with the thrilling stories of Humphrey Davy, the apothecary's apprentice, stealing chances to experiment with his master's broken phials, and with the pots and pans in the kitchen, of the young Faraday, binding books during the day, and experimenting in electricity with nothing better than an old bottle, of Herschel, playing the oboe for the Durham militia, and painfully constructing, what he could not buy, a five-foot reflector, which revealed to his eye the ring and satellites of Saturn, will be told that of the obscure Dr. Lascarbault, saving from his meagre earnings enough to purchase a poor telescope, costing only

$150, and noting the most important calculations of the age on a white plank !

You have probably heard that claims to a previous discovery by Scott, the Englishman, and others, have been made. These may be or may not be true-and, indeed, it makes very little difference whether such claims are just or not; they serve, however, to show that the announcement, made in the Cosmos long ago by Leverrier, of the perturbations of Mercury which led him to suspect the existence of a planet revolving between Mercury and the sun, had caused a determination of every telescope in Europe, small and great, to that one spot in the heavens.

Amongst those who patiently, and I believe successfully, watched and waited upon these perturbations, to discover their cause, was the young man of whom I have to write you, Marcel Vercanier. He was the President and leading spirit of the SaintPierre Friends. The story of these Friends must first be told. In 1849 twelve young men were graduated in the scientific schools of Paris, of whom some were Spanish, some Swiss, one German, and six French. These formed a club for the purpose of traveling on foot through the Jura, in order to make discoveries amongst its rich geologic phenomena, and its vegetable and animal fauna. They easily obtained a commission of survey from the government, which served to pay expenses, and plunged forth into a four-years' nomadic life. They took their tents with them; the rivers were their fish-barrels, the forests their meat-houses. They were taken by the grand old Jura to their heart, and in a year or so became shaggy enough to be mistaken by any of the bears which abound there for legitimate members of the feral fraternity. The survey was very fruitful of results, and in the spring of 1853 they found themselves on a mountain of Bern, commanding the entire prospect of the most beautiful Lake Bienne, their expedition fairly closed, their records not yet brought into shape. You have heard, doubtless, of the exquisite Isle de Saint-Pierre, which is the pride of Lake Bienne: its solitary claim to historic fame is, that there, in 1765, Jean Jacques Rousseau came to find rest. Here he lived and wrote. It is now rarely visited save by some devout admirer of the Contrat Social, or the Nouvelle Hèloïse. Of the extreme and delicate beauty of this quiet lake, and more quiet island, I can refer you to no delineation save one drawn in Dumas' most fascinating Impressions de Voyage. You must

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