beautiful flowers on one soil, nor has he made all animals and insects indigenous to one country; hence the naturalist in order to complete his scientific arrangement of flowers, animals or insects, must visit every country or depend upon the investigations of others. Now who would dare to say because the flowers are so widely scattered over the surface of the whole earth, that there is no system of botany in Nature. Now just as we find things arranged in the physical world, so they are in the spiritual and moral. God is uniform in all his works: the same principle of order and harmony runs through the Bible. And we have no more right to expect to find a scientific arrangement of the truths of God in the Bible than we have in the works of Nature. The Bible is a very large book; it contains an immense amount of knowledge, and will require a lifetime to understand it. Yea, we may spend half our time in the future world in studying the Bible. The Bible, as received by all Protestant churches contains, according to a curious calculation, 66 books, 1,189 chapters, 31,173 verses, 773,697 words, and 3,566,480 letters! To learn all these 31,173 verses would require a long time. A few simple truths can save the soul. The more we know of the Bible the better; but a small portion can bring peace and comfort to the heart. The man ignorant of science might say, in looking at the great world around him: this is unnecessary, and that is useless, like a fly sitting in judgment upon the magnificent proportions of St. Peter's Church at Rome, whose contracted vision could not take in at one glance that grand structure. The Creator and Redeemer are one God; hence in the work of redemption are seen evident traces of that hand which is so conspicuous throughout the works of creation. In creation the scale is magnificent; and on every side appear things useful, pleasant, wondrous, in boundless profusion and infinite variety. Of this some contracted spirit might say, to "what purpose is this waste." But to the enlightened mind there appears in this exuberance not only the goodness, but also the wisdom that is divine, which produces riches out of poverty, plenty out of want. Thus from simplest elements, for all creatures, in all their kinds are brought forth means of life, sustenance, protection and enjoyment. So in the Scriptures; amid the rich profusion nothing is useless, nothing unimportant, nothing superfluous. It is the Book of God. Like the great Book of Nature, it bears the impress of its great original; it has none of the imperfections of man's methodical system about it. It is a book for all-the rich, the poor, the ignorant and the learned. We can joyfully exclaim with the poet: Here may the wretched sons of want Riches above what earth can grant, Here the Redeemer's welcome voice Attend the blissful sound. O may these heavenly pages be Let the young study the Bible, it is able to make them wise unto salvation. It is the best companion for the young man, and the best protector of the young woman; it will be a crutch for the decrepitude of old age to go down the declivity of life with; it will be a bridge across the river of death, and a passport into the mansions of Heaven. LET US BE HAPPY. BY ELIZA COOK. O, let us be happy when friends gather round us, Let the cold chains of earth be despised and forgot; That Truth and Devotion are blessings unknown, Has something unsound at the core of his own. Have brought to our presence the dearest and best, When Love and Good-will sweep the strings of the breast. O, let us be happy, when moments of meeting Bring those to our side who illumine our eyes; As the hum of the bee o'er the midsummer flowers, Have brought to our presence the dearest and best, When Love and Good-will sweep the strings of the breast. Let us plead not a spirit too sad and too weary To yield the kind word and the mirth-lighted smile, Where the robin of hope will not warble awhile. Helps to pay our great debt to the Father of All. Have brought to our presence the dearest and best, When Love and Good-will sweep the strings of the breast. OUR FOREFATHERS. BY JUNIOR. Ir has often been my privilege to attend the literary exercises of the Academy of the town in which I live. A peculiar interest belongs to these schools as we generally find them in the country villages of Pennsylvania and some neighboring States; and the village to which reference is made, being one of these, it may lay rightful claim to their common merit. Such villages appear to be a sort of compromise between the retired farm-house and the manymansioned city; being neither the one nor the other, yet receiving shape from both. Streets and pavements like the city; gardens and orchards like the country. So, the people unite largely the commendable refinement, taste and courtesy of the one, with the substantial habits, industry and vigorous sense of the other. Their direct connection with the country around keeps them in full sympathy with its life, while, on the other hand, sources are not wanting to prevent overgrown rusticity and give them more of a literary and cultivated caste. "God has made the country but man has made the city," some one has well remarked. As civilization, however, of necessity calls into existence the latter, it would seem the towns we speak of mediate happily between the uncultivated regions of the no-made or savage, and the thickly-populated metropolis which presents scarce one untouched remnant of the Creator's workmanship. It is a fact, becoming gradually well understood, that form our rural hamlets and inland vallies, come a majority of the men called to fill the posts of highest honor and responsibility in both church and state; the men, too, whose names are most esteemed by the nation, and heard at every family hearth. Impressed with a lively sense of this truth I have, for years, already, deemed it a privilege, as before said, to attend the common or special literary exercises of Institutions in which the country youths, fresh from their native hills and vallies, are taught the elements of knowledge and science. We will single out one afternoon which we spent in such a school. It was Friday-the time for reading original compositions. No part of school exercises can have more interest belonging to it. So the youths themselves think. It affords an opportunity of showing what use they are able to make of that which they have learned. The idea at the bottom of this exercise, the very idea of which all likewise have some sense, is, that they have read to their listening compeers what is their own, drawn directly from their heads, not from the printed page. Their personal satisfaction cannot be as great when they recite a well-gotten lesson, for this is committed off the text-book-it is not altogether theirs. On the occasion to which we refer, a number of good compositions were read. One could not help thinking that some of them augured well for the future career of their authors. There was, as a matter of course, considerable variety in several respects; enough at any rate to remind one of Cowper's lines "Variety's the spice of life One of the compositions engaged our particular attention. It was among the best in the number, so far as its style and general merits were concerned. Its author treated of the hardships and sufferings, the trials and privations, which the original settlers of our country underwent. He tried to show, too, that there is a debt of gratitude due on our part to them for sacrifices of which we are now reaping the rich fruits. "Honor to whom honor is due." But read the following sentence, taken memoriter from this composition: "Such were the obstacles, such the labors, our English forefathers met and mastered." Our English forefathers, forsooth! We could not avoid looking around in the school-room to see what applicability this assertion had in the present case; for, as before intimated, we were not in the Eastern States, nor in the extreme Southern, but within the limits of that vast domain which may properly be called the heart of the country, and which is mainly inhabited by the descendants of settlers who never saw Albion's shore. There was not a single individual in the whole number, who, for aught we could tell, had one drop of English blood coursing in his veins. As well might you have sought for Italian blood in the hale youths within the walls of a district school in the valleys of Vermont. The boy-for such he was yet -who had written the composition, was in this respect as well off as were his companions. His name was German, and so was his parentage. His father's family, though among those who, generations ago, "met and mastered the obstacles and labors" which their grateful descendant rehearsed, still spoke their mother tongue (the German) with fluency. His grandfather, on the mother's side, closed his useful life in the village of which we speak, after having preached in the German language for more than a score and a half of years the Gospel of Peace. Some of the reflections naturally elicited by the sentence we have quoted, shall be stated here for the consideration of the reader. I. The most pleasing and happy remembrances of life are those which date back to the time when we were yet little boys and little girls; when, unconscious of the wide world, with its ups and downs, we enjoyed a miniature world at our father's home, amid parents' tender smiles and brothers' or sisters' affectionate favors. Then were instilled the principles which have since mostly governed our actions. The lessons learned on a mother's lap are never forgotten. VOL. VI.-22 Seeds there implanted afterward germinate and bring forth abundant fruit. Traditions, such as every family has, are at home handed down from one generation to another. These traditions, embracing interesting reminiscences of our ancestors, their deeds, incidents of their lives, fortunes and misfortunes, all told and retold with that peculiar pathos which belongs to the language of those who speak of that in which they are themselves concerned, we learn when young, we delight to tell when grown, and love to the end of life. Their influence upon ourselves is great; society owes its loveliest features to them, and the nation's existence is absolutely dependent upon them. At school and after leaving the parental roof, we come under influences and receive a kind of training to which we were not previously accustomed. Companions, teachers, books, the various relations of life, exercise an educational influence and make divers impressions upon us. No harm lies of necessity in all this; the process is needed, and may be productive of much good. The general influences of the school and those of life may differ and do differ from those we have learned to cherish at home. There is, however, a sanctuary within every family, the precincts of which may not be entered with unhallowed feet. From it issue streams in antagonism to which no outside current has a right to place itself. Humanity, as realized in us, derives from it deep significance. Sooty, education, books, opposing or falsifying its best breathings, violent and unrighteous, every way fraught with untold evils. II. We have spoken of general truths. Their particular applicability now aims attention. Take the instance of national descent as being directly to our pupose. The German, the Englishman, the Frenchman differ widely. So the citizens of every distinct nation. Difference here is not owing alone to language or climate, education or habits of life. They have their influence, but the root lies deeper. Remove these, and the difference, though perhaps lessened, still remains. The look of the eye, the form and features of the person, the soul of his actions, mark unmistakably the nation from which he is descended. You have been trimming the branches and changing the soil, while the tree itself remains the same. This is a general fact. A demonstration of its correctness has been furnished on the grandest scale in our own country. We are all living witnesses of it; and it becomes us as men and women, desirous of acting wisely, to bear it well in mind. Americans are not indigenous-sprung as by chance out of the earth-but it is their glory to have a lineage that grounds itself deep in the history of various nations of the Old World. This being the case, the difference of their ancestral descent should be honestly acknowledged without prejudice to one or another, whenever occasion calls for it. Right and duty demand it. Surely, also, the |