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LESSON XLIV.

Defence of the Puritans.-T. B. MACAULAY.

THE Puritans were men whose minds had derived a peculiar character from the daily contemplation of superior beings and external interests. Not content with acknowledging, in general terms, an overruling Providence, they habitually ascribed every event to the will of the Great Being, for whose power nothing was too vast, for whose inspection nothing was too minute. To know him, to, serve him, to enjoy him, was with them the great end of existence. They rejected with contempt the ceremonious homage which other sects substituted for the pure worship of the soul. Instead of catching occasional glimpses of the Deity through an obscuring veil, they aspired to gaze full on the intolerable brightness, and to commune with him face to face. Hence originated their contempt for terrestrial distinctions. The difference between the greatest and meanest of mankind seemed to vanish, when compared with the boundless interval which separated the whole race from Him on whom their own eyes were constantly fixed. They recognised no title to superiority but his favour; and, confident of that favour, they despised all the accomplishments and all the dignities of the world.

If they were unacquainted with the works of philosophers and poets, they were deeply read in the oracles of God. If their names were not found in the registers of heralds, they felt assured they were recorded in the Book of Life. If their steps were not accompanied by a splendid train of menials, legions of ministering angels had charge over them. Their palaces were houses not made with hands; their diadems crowns of glory which should never fade away! On the rich and the eloquent, on nobles and priests, they looked down with contempt; for they esteemed themselves rich in a more precious treasure, and eloquent in a more sublime language; nobles by the right of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand.

The very meanest of them was a being to whose fate a mysterious and terrible importance belonged-on whose

slightest actions the spirits of light and darkness looked with anxious interest-who had been destined, before heaven and earth were created, to enjoy a felicity which should continue when heaven and earth have passed away. Events, which short-sighted politicians ascribed to earthly causes, had been ordained on his account. For his sake empires had risen, flourished. and decayed. For his sake the Almighty had proclaimed his will by the pen of the Evangelist and the harp of the prophet. He had been rescued by no common deliverer, from the grasp of no common foe. He had been ransomed by the sweat of no vulgar agony, by the blood of no earthly sacrifice. It was for him that the sun had been darkened, that the rocks had been rent, that the dead had arisen, that all nature had shuddered at the sufferings of her expiring God!

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Thus the Puritan was made up of two different men: the one all self-abasement, penitence, gratitude, passion; the other proud, calm, inflexible, sagacious. He prostrated himself in the dust before his Maker; but he set his foot on the neck of his king. In his devotional retirement, he prayed with convulsions, and groans, and tears. was half-maddened by glorious or terrible delusions. He heard the lyres of angels, or the tempting whispers of fiends. He caught a gleam of the Beatific Vision, or woke screaming from dreams of everlasting fire. Like Vane, he thought himself intrusted with the sceptre of the miliennial world; like Fleetwood, he cried in the bitterness of his soul that God had hid his face from him.

But when he took his seat in the council, or girt on his sword for war, these tempestuous workings of the soul had left no perceptible trace behind them. People who saw nothing of the godly but their uncouth visages, and heard nothing from them but their groans and their whining hymns, might laugh at them. But those had little reason to laugh, who encountered them in the hall of debate or in the field of battle. These fanatics brought to civil and military affairs a coolness of judgment and an immutability of purpose, which some writers have thought inconsistent with their religious zeal, but which were in fact the necessary effects of it. The intensity of their feelings on one subject made them tranquil on every other. One overpowering sentiment had subjected to itself pity

and hatred, ambition and fear. Death had lost its terrors and pleasure its charms. They had their smiles and their tears, their raptures and their sorrows, but not for the things of this world.

Enthusiasm had made them stoics, had cleared their minds from every vulgar passion and prejudice, and raised them above the influence of danger and of corruption. It sometimes might lead them to pursue unwise ends, but never to choose unwise means. They went through the world like Sir Artegale's iron man, Talus, with his flail, crushing and trampling down oppressors, mingling with human beings, but having neither part nor lot in human infirmities; insensible to fatigue, to pleasure, and to pain; not to be pierced by any weapon, not to be withstood by any barrier.

Such we believe to have been the character of the Puritans. We perceive the absurdity of their manners. We dislike the sullen gloom of their domestic habits. We acknowledge that the tone of their minds was often injured by straining after things too high for mortal reach. we know that, in spite of their hatred of Popery, they too often fell into the worst vices of that bad system, intolerance and extravagant austerity-that they had their anchorites and their crusades, their Dunstans and their De Montforts, their Dominics and their Escobars. Yet, when all circumstances are taken into consideration, we do not hesitate to pronounce them a brave, a wise, an honest, and a useful body.

LESSON XLV.

Glenara.-CAMPBELL.

OH! heard ye yon pibroch sound sad in the gale,
Where a band cometh slowly with weeping and wail?
'Tis the chief of Glenara laments for his dear;
And her sire and her people are called to her bier.
Glenara came first, with the mourners and shroud;
Her kinsmen they follow'd, but mourn'd not aloud;
Their plaids all their bosoms were folded around;
They march'd all in silence-they look'd to the ground.

In silence they march'd over mountain and moor,
To a heath, where the oak-tree grew lonely and hoar,
"Now here let us place the gray-stone of her cairn-
Why speak ye no word?" said Glenara the stern.

"And tell me, I charge you, ye clan of my spouse,
Why fold ye your mantles? why cloud ye your brows?"
So spake the rude chieftain: no answer is made,
But each mantle unfolding, a dagger display'd.

"I dream'd of my lady, I dream'd of her shroud,”
Cried a voice from the kinsmen, all wrathful and loud;
"And empty that shroud, and that coffin did seem:
Glenara! Glenara! now read me my dream!"

Oh! pale grew the cheek of that chieftain, I ween,
When the shroud was unclos'd, and no body was seen :
Then a voice from the kinsmen spoke louder in scorn-
'Twas the youth that had lov'd the fair Ellen of Lorn-

"I dream'd of my lady, I dream'd of her grief,
I dream'd that her lord was a barbarous chief;
On a rock of the ocean fair Ellen did seem:
Glenara! Glenara! now read me my dream!"
In dust low the traitor has knelt to the ground,
And the desert reveal'd where his lady was found;
From a rock of the ocean that beauty is borne:
Now joy to the house of fair Ellen of Lorn!

LESSON XLVI.

The Seen and the Unseen.-EPHRAIM PEABODY.

THERE is a spiritual element interfused through the whole material world, and which lies at the source of all action. It is this which lifts the world out of chaos, and clothes it with light and order. The most ordinary act springs out of the soul, and derives its character from the soul. It seems trifling, only because its spiritual origin is forgotten. While on the surface of life all may be calm, it is startling to think what mysteries of passion and affec

tion may be beneath. Though heedless of it, we move in a universe of spiritual life. It is with us as with men that lie dreaming in their beds at sea, between whom and the ocean is but a single plank: cabined, cribbed, confined in our narrow, individual existence, there is all the time rushing by us, its moanings in our ears, its tremblings reaching to our hearts, the mystic tide of spiritual life.

"The spirit giveth life." We need not go far, if we will but open our eyes, to see how the most ordinary acts of man are penetrated by a spiritual element. And where this is, nothing can be tame or common-place. Nothing, at first sight, is more worldly and unspiritual than a commercial newspaper. It deals solely with the affairs of the day, and with material interests. Yet when we come to consider them, its driest details are instinct with human hopes, and fears, and affections; and these illuminate what was dark, and make the dead letter breathe with life.

For example:-in the paper of to-day, a middle-aged man seeks employment in a certain kind of business. The advertisement has, in substance, been the same for weeks. For a time, he sought some place, which presupposed the possession of business habits and attainments. Then there was a change in the close of the advertisement, indicating that he would do any thing by which he could render himself useful to an employer. And, this morning, there is another change: he is willing to commence with low wages, as employment is what he especially wants.

All this is uninteresting enough; yet what depths of life may lie underneath this icy surface of business detail! It is easy for the fancy to seek out and make the acquaintance of this man. He is a foreigner, in poverty, with a family, brought to this country by the hopes which have brought so many hither, only that they might be overwhelmed with disappointment. He is a stranger, and finds all places of business full. Already his family is parting with every superfluous article of dress and furniture; their food grows daily more scanty and meagre; broken down in heart and hopes, he seeks, through all the avenues of business, some employment, and cannot find it. The decent pride, and the desire to enter that business for which his previous habits had fitted him, have kept him up for a time; but these are fast departing under the

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