Third, in its relation to the person of man; and, Fourth, in its relation to Christ himself. He used his manuscript freely, but not servilely; and, indeed, his manner was just of that sort to suit a manuscript. Whether his eye was on or off the paper, he went straight on, without a perceptible change in his tones. No deep emotion swelled his voice or choked his utterance -no lightning flashed from his eye-no thunder startled his audience. Nor was there anything remarkable in the sermon, considered as a composition, which might have been set over against these defects of manner. In vain I waited for something redeeming-cogency of argument, wealth of imagination, or power of appeal. There was nothing of the kind. And yet the audience was interested-myself among the rest. There was, after all, something very serious in his monotonous voice, and a deep concern for the souls of his hearers was depicted in his countenance. Yet who would have thought that this manquiet, and meek, and peaceful as he appeared in the pulpit—had bearded Cardinal Wiseman and his master the Pope, and had challenged all the knights of Rome to single combat? on I stayed to the communion, for which they gave me a token-something I had never before seen. It was of pewter, about the size of the American half-dollar one side were the words, "Scottish National Church, Crown-court;" on the other, the figures of a loaf of bread and a communion cup, encircled with the inscription, "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." As it was the first thing of the kind I had seen, I had determined to keep it; but afterward repented, and gave it up. The church was not fine, and the congregation was plain in dress, and devout in its behavior. Over the pulpit I noticed a window of stained glass, with the device of a tree, its foliage intensely green, and its branches in many places inwrapped with flames; above it was the inscription, Nec tamen consumitur; the whole representing the struggle and disruption of the Scotch Church, which had resulted in the establishment of the Free Church of Scotland. With the certainty of such a glorious issue, we should be willing to see every national church in the world on fire. (To be continued.) OUR ATMOSPHERIC OVERCOAT. WHAT HATEVER may be our lot, high or low, miserable or contented, we all have to wear the same coat from the moment of our coming into the world to that of our going out of it. And a wonderful coat it is! It never wears out, it keeps us either warm or cool, it fills our tea-pot and waters our garden, it blows our fire and prepares our food, besides making itself useful in other ways-and all gratis. The coat is one in universal demand, and yet it costs nothing. Extraordinary as these facts may appear, they can all be proved; and perhaps the proofs will be none the less acceptable if presented in a light form, as indeed best befits certain parts of the subject, which, as will be seen, are the very levity of lightness. Some philosophers talk of our being surrounded by a "spherical atmospheric shell," but the term overcoat appears to me to be much more appropriate, and for the time I shall take leave to use it. It is rather a thick coat-from forty to fifty miles: some maintain that it is much more-another fifty miles at least, where the substance becomes looser and looser in texture, till at last it cannot grow any finer, and there it ends with nothing beyond it. I rather hold with those who believe that the overcoat has a definite limit at the thickness first mentioned. Who would believe that this inwraps us with a pressure of fifteen pounds on every square inch of our bodies?—altogether from seventy to one hundred tons, according to our size; hence the taller and more portly the individual, the greater the weight he has to bear. Yet how freely we move about in this heavy wrappage! There are times when we are altogether unconscious of its presence. At times it scarcely stirs the film of gossamer hanging on autumnal hedgerows, or shakes the delicate harebell; at others, it lashes the ocean into mountainous waves, that toss the stateliest ships like walnut-shells; or with a fierce. blast it lays low the tallest trees in the forest. Well may we look upon the method which produces such effects as little less than marvelous; but we find other causes for admiration as we go on. Though we cannot see this overcoat, we can weigh it: place an exhausted receiver in a balance, and admit air-the scale will descend as be overcome without an effort. Perhaps the most famous experiment with a vacuum was that made by Otto Guericke, two hundred years ago. He made two large bowls, or hollow hemispheres, to fit together at the edges, and shut as a box, thus forming a globe. He pumped out all the air, and then, in presence of the Imperial Diet at Ratisbon, he had the em to each hemisphere, and set them to pull. But although the animals strained and tugged with all their might, the atmosphere proved stronger than they, and they were unable to separate the two hemispheres. How this experiment must have astonished the stout old warriors and crafty politicians who went to that diet! the invisible matter finds its way in. But it is lighter or heavier according to its locality if we could dig a shaft down in the earth to a depth of forty-two miles, the air at the bottom of it would be found as dense as quicksilver. What sort of lungs should we want for such a fluid medium as that, and how should we walk about in it? On the other hand, if we could go up to a height of four thou-peror's six coach horses harnessed, three sand miles, and there let loose a cubic inch of air, it would become so excessively rare, and so widely diffused, as to fill a space equal to Saturn's orbit. Saturn, be it remembered, is eight hundred and ninety million miles from the sun, and that distance is only half the diameter of his orbit; and this will give us an idea of the lightness and diffusibility of the air. What a wide range of adaptability is herein contained! But to descend from such impossible altitudes: at a height of eighteen thousand feet, the overcoat is only half as dense as it is down here at the surface of the earth; at thirty-six thousand feet, the density is reduced to one-fourth; and at fifty-four thousand feet to one-eighth. These facts are known as well from calculation as from observation; knowing them, we can tell beforehand to what height a balloon of a given weight and bulk will ascend: one of eight hundred pounds would rise to about two and a quarter miles. Some popular lecturers have begun to go about and make science the subject of familiar demonstration; most people are acquainted with the ways which these gentlemen have of bringing the air under subjection. They force a quantity into a small chamber attached to what appears to be a walking-stick; and with this, on letting it escape again, they send a bullet through a deal board: or they coerce and compress a still greater quantity into a cylinder mounted on wheels, and straightway it runs to and fro on the floor with the speed of a locomotive: or they take a bell-glass and pump all the air out of it, and you no longer hear the sound of the bell which is ringing within it; and you see that the cluster of thistle-down and the bullet which are let fall from the top, both reach the bottom of the glass precisely at the same moment. Lay your hand over the opening while the air is being exhausted, and you will feel how great is the pressure from without, not to By far the greatest portion of the atmosphere is contained in the strata nearest to us; we have seen that, owing to its thinness, there cannot be much in the upper regions. It grows colder, too, as we ascend, at the rate of one degree Fahrenheit for every three hundred and fifteen feet of elevation. This, however, is a beneficent fact, since it has very much to do with the distribution of sunshine and the regulation of climate, and with the due intermixture of the constituents of the overcoat themselves. These constituents not being, as is thought, chemically united, Dalton supposed that the oxygen portion extended to a height of thirty-eight miles, the nitrogen fifty-four miles, the aqueous vapor fifty miles, and the carbonic acid ten miles of the latter, there is more than enough to refill all our mines with coal. These elements, existing in the form of infinitely minute particles, have a power of dispersion which, as we shall see, is essential to our well-being. When the sun shines, his rays fall on these countless billions of floating particles, and are by them scattered in all directions; hence it is that we have light so equally distributed. Had we no overcoat, as is the case with. the moon, and supposing that we could live, how dreary would be our outlook! There would be no light except on the spot where the sun's rays fell; and as light rays always proceed in a direct line till they meet with something to turn them aside, there would not be the slightest illumination beyond the line. As soon as the sun had passed a window, the room within would be totally dark. There would be no light, no water, no vegetation! The earth would be a desert perpetually in all directions. Although the effect is dark, except the one glaring streak shone upon by the sun in its dayly course. The phenomena of light, though complicated, are singularly beautiful. The violet and the blue rays travel slower than the others, whereby time is afforded more or less for their absorption by the particles of the atmosphere in their passage from the sun; and hence we have an explanation of the blue appearance of the firmament. From the top of a high mountain it looks still bluer, and in some latitudes almost black, because at great elevations there is none of that loss of rays which takes place in the lower and denser strata of the atmosphere. Owing to that loss, our brightest days are never so bright as in the higher regions, and if we could go up some score of miles in a balloon, we should then perceive the difference. We should there receive light of a directer quality, while here we get it only by reflection; and in reflection every one knows there is a considerable loss, amounting, in this case, to a fifth or a fourth of the whole. One of the explanations given of the brilliant hues seen at sunrise and sunset is, that as the light then comes to us through a greater mass of the atmosphere than when the sun is overhead, more time is given for the absorption of the blue rays, and consequently the orange and red rays, which travel quickest, are those which fall on the eye. The splendors, however, of the dawning and of the dying day are phenomena not yet satisfactorily accounted for, and they will continue to tax the ingenuity of the world for some time longer before philosophers shall have agreed upon the explanation, as they have concerning the colors of the rainbow. Some have supposed the particles of the atmosphere to be opaque; but if they were so, the phenomena of refraction would be very different from those which prevail at present. Others hold that the particles, whatever they may be, are more fitted to reflect blue rays than red ones. Then, again, if there is nothing but mere empty space between the particles, does the light induce reflection in its passage across the vacuum from one particle to another? Or, seeing that the oxygen and the nitrogen do not form a homogeneous mass, they consequently reflect differently, and the light is thereby flung from one to the other but small with individual atoms, it is yet great for the whole sum of the atmosphere. Hence we see the blueness of the atmosphere, as we do that of the ocean, on the great scale or not at all. In a room full of air, or a bottle filled from the Atlantic, the color is alike invisible. Perhaps that explanation comes nearest to the truth which recognizes the presence of aqueous vapor in the atmosphere. Clouds, it is believed, are never formed beyond a height of ten miles; hence all the phenomena of reflection and refraction with which we are acquainted may take place within that distance. Vesicles of water, though infinitely minute, are hollow, the power which they exert on a ray of light passing through them is consequently double that of a flat layer of water. The incident light being white, the reflected light will be of another quality—more or less blue; and the transmitted light will be a complement of the reflected, and thus it is that we so often see orange tints in the sky, the intensity of the color varying with the angle at which the light falls. When the sun is overhead, it looks through comparatively few vesicles, and appears white; but when on the horizon, it looks through a far greater number, and thereby appears of a different and deeper color. There is much to be said about other properties belonging to our atmospheric overcoat, but we have no space left to notice more than its feeding properties. To do full justice to them would need a whole chapter. In few words, the atmosphere is the great feeder of animal and vegetable life. Plants are ceaselessly engaged in absorbing from the air the carbon, azote, and ammonia which they require for their sustenance, and the way in which plants contribute to the life of animals needs no explanation. Still, the reflection that the atmosphere contains in its simplest form all the food we eat, is one to excite within us feelings of reverential admiration. For the perpetual production of all this food, contrivances exist, which, though they appear very complicated to us, are doubtless the evolution of a very simple principle. The atmosphere is the grand distributer of moisture as well as of temperature, and the agricultural capacity of any place depends as much on the one as on the other. The winds sweep over the sea, and lick up thousands of tons of wa ter, enough to lower the level of the entire surface four feet in a year, were it not for the constant return. In the Arabian Sea alone, taking a breadth of fifteen leagues from the shore, thirty-nine cubic miles of water are taken up every year. In this mighty operation, we see how by the conversion of water into vapor a prodigious amount of heat is constantly passing from the sensible to the insensible form, and the reverse. The average depth of rain yearly for the whole of the land is five feet, all of which has been lifted up and let down again by the atmosphere. In this way the springs in the distant mountains are fed, and the flow of rivers is maintained. All the great rivers-one or two exceptions apart are in the northern hemisphere, and the largest extent of ocean in the southern. The south, therefore, may be likened to a great caldron, where, during our winter and part of spring and autumn, the sun is shining with intense heat, pumping up vapor, as it were, which is carried to the north, and there condensed. This view of the process is favored by the fact, that in the north temperate zone have thirty-seven inches of rain annually, while the same zone in the south has but twenty-six. we Light, heat, and the rotation of the earth have much to do with those greater distributory movements of the atmosphere. As it scatters light and diffuses warmth, so does it shower down fertilizing influences, and moreover it is the great chemical agent by which all decomposing processes are carried on, and by which the earth is kept in a habitable state. Were the constitution of the atmosphere other than it is, we should none of us be here to know anything at all about it-that is, with our present respiratory system. Our atmospheric overcoat, as thus appears, has no less claim on our attention than on our gratitude. We cannot do better than close with the words of a recent writer, who says: "It is only the girdling, encircling air that flows above and around us all, that makes the whole world kin. The carbonic acid with which to-day our breathing fills the air, to-morrow seeks its way round the world. The date-trees that grow by the falls of the Nile will drink it in by their leaves; the cedars of Lebanon will take of it to add to their stature; the cocoa-nuts of Tahiti will grow rapidly upon it; and the palms and bananas of Japan will change it into flowers. The oxygen we are breathing was VOL. IV., No. 3.-S distilled for us some short time ago by the magnolias of the Susquehanna, and the great trees that skirt the Orinoco and the Amazonthe giant rhododendrons of the Himalayas contributed to it, and the roses and myrtles of Cashmere, the cinnamon-tree of Ceylon, and the forest older than the flood, buried deep in the heart of Africa far behind the Mountains of the Moon. The rain we see descending was thawed for us out of the icebergs which have watched the Polar Star for ages, and the lotus lilies have soaked up from the Nile and exhaled as vapor, snows that rested on the summit of the Alps." THE THREE GENII. THERE came a maiden, fair and graceful, When fervid wax'd the noon, She sought a sheltering boon, Where winds that stirr'd the green leaves round her, In fancy's spells, like music bound her. "Memory, Hope, and Love are we, That cloud its fitful scene- "And mine," the voice of Memory warbled, 66 Where each delightful thing thou'lt treasure- And he laugh'd aloud for glee; And lo! the wound that did befall, H. B. M. A FRIENDLY letter is valuable in proportion to the picture it furnishes of the thoughts and employments of the writer. Here one is scarcely allowed to take a grave subject behind which to hide, but the familiar hand must appear and the feelings flow from the heart to the pen and speak along the page, or the great end of social correspondence is forgotten. WESTERN LIFE-REV. J. B. FINLEY. N our last number we followed our old If our last number we followeds of his youth in Kentucky-scenes which, by the Thus, with the hardiness of the Indian and the sensitiveness of the poet in his nature, he felt the inharmoniousness of his life. His father, who was the first teacher of the "classics" beyond the Alleghanies, educated him for the medical profession, but his spirit revolted from it. His life had educated him otherwise. He became religious-deeply 80. Happily Methodism presented in its heroic ministerial system the very sphere essential to a mind of his peculiar idiosyncrasies and training. One day, under a deep religious anxiety, "I went," he says, "at day-break to the woods to pray, and no sooner had my knees touched the ground than I cried aloud for mercy and salvation, and fell prostrate. My cries were so loud that they attracted the at tention of the neighbors, many of whom gathered around me. Among the number was a German from Switzerland, who He, under had experienced religion standing fully my condition, had me carried to his house and laid on a bed. The old Dutch saint directed me to look right away to the Saviour. He then kneeled at the bedside and prayed for my salvation most fervently, in Dutch and broken English. He then rose and sung in the same manner, and continued singing and praying alternately till nine o'clock, when suddenly my load was gone, my guilt removed, and presently the direct witness from heaven shone full upon my soul. Then there flowed such copious streams of love into the hitherto waste and desolate places of my soul that I thought I should die with excess of joy." He soon felt that it was his duty to preach the gospel; but refusing, relapsed into his former habits. Subsequently he resumed his religious duties, and was now determined to obey what he deemed the divine call. He describes his first preaching adventure. "I was sent," he says, "to hold a meeting at Straight Creek, fourteen miles distant. I dared not refuse; for my bitter experience before had taught me that if I refused to serve God in the gospel of his Son, the same awful darkness would surround me. Accordingly I put on my hunting-shirt and moccasins, and, leaving my hunting apparatus at home, I started before day through the woods. I arrived at the place of meeting, and was greeted by a vast concourse of people, who had congregated from all parts of the country to hear the backwoods preacher, or rather to hear the wild hunter preach. My soul sank within me at the sight, and I ran into the woods, and fell on my knees, invoking God, with all my heart, to grant me wisdom and strength for the great work before me. My prayer was, 'O Lord, thou hast sent me, and now I pray thee to help me; for I am nothing, and helpless as a child! Glorify thyself in my great weakness.' returned, and took the stand in the cabin, and announced my text as follows: 'Repent ye, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord.' Acts iii, 19. Although I knew little concerning the theory of repentance, yet I had a deep and pow I then |