Without thy presence, wealth is bags of care; Wisdom but folly; joy, disquiet sadness; Friendship is treason, and delights are snares; Pleasures but pain, and mirth but pleasing

madness.

Without Thee, Lord, things be not what they be, Nor have their being when compared with Thee.

In having all things and not Thee, what have I? Not having Thee, what have my labours got? Let me enjoy but Thee, what further crave I? And having Thee alone, what have I not? I wish not sea nor land; nor would I be Possessed of heaven, heaven unpossessed of Thee. FRANCIS QUArles.

Wisdom.

"LOVE God, love truth, love virtue, and be

happy;"

These were the words first uttered in the ear
Of every being rational made, and made
For thought, or word, or deed accountable.
Most men the first forgot, the second none.
Whatever path they took, by hill or vale,
By day or night, the universal wish,

The aim and sole intent was happiness.

But, erring from the heaven-appointed path, Strange tracks indeed they took through barren wastes,

And

up the sandy mountain climbing toiled,

Which pining lay beneath the curse of God,
And nought produced. Yet did the traveller look
And point his eye before him greedily,

As if he saw some verdant spot, where grew
The heavenly flower, where sprang the well of life,
Where undisturbed felicity reposed;

Though Wisdom's eye no vestige could discern,
That happiness had ever passed that way.

Wisdom was right, for still the terms remained Unchanged, unchangeable-the terms on which True peace was given to man, unchanged as God, Who, in His own essential nature, binds Eternally to virtue happiness,

Nor lets them part through all His universe.

ROBERT POLLOK.

Where Two or Three are Gathered together.

T is the Sabbath bell, which calls to prayer,

IT

Even to the House of God, the hallowed dome, Where He who claims it bids his people come To bow before his throne, and serve Him there With prayers, and thanks, and praises. Some there are

Who hold it meet to linger now at home,

And some o'er fields and the wide hills to roam, And worship in the temple of the air!

For me, not heedless of the lone address,

Nor slack to greet my Maker on the height, By wood, or living stream; yet not the less Seek I his presence in each social rite Of his own temple: that He deigns to bless, There still he dwells, and there is his delight. BISHOP MANT.

Where art Thou, Mighty One? WHAT art Thou, mighty One? and where

thy seat?

Thou broodest on the calm that cheers the lands,

And thou dost bear within thy awful hands The rolling thunders and the lightnings fleet; Stern on thy dark-wrought car of cloud and wind Thou guid'st the northern storm at night's dread noon,

Or on the red wing of the fierce monsoon
Disturb'st the sleeping giant of the Ind.
In the drear silence of the polar span

Dost Thou repose? or in the solitude
Of sultry tracks, where the lone caravan

Hears nightly howl the tiger's hungry brood? Vain thought! the confines of his throne to trace, Who glows through all the fields of boundless

space.

HENRY KIRKE WHITE.

Watching for the Son of Man.

VEN thus, amid thy pride and luxury,

EVEN

O earth! shall that last coming burst on thee,

That secret coming of the Son of Man,

When all the cherub-thronging clouds shall shine Irradiate with his bright advancing sign:

When that great Husbandman shall wave his fan,

Sweeping like chaff, thy wealth and pomp away: Still to the noontide of that nightless day,

Shalt thou thy wonted dissolute course maintain.

Along the busy mart and crowded street,
The buyer and the seller still shall meet,
And marriage feasts begin their jocund strain :
Still to the pouring out the cup of woe;
Till earth, a drunkard, reeling to and fro,
And mountains molten by His burning feet,
And heaven His presence own, all red with
furnace heat.

The hundred-gated cities then,

The towers and temples named of men
Eternal and the thrones of kings;

The gilded summer-palaces,

The courtly bowers of love and ease,

Where still the bird of pleasure sings;

Ask ye the destiny of them?

Go, gaze on fallen Jerusalem!

Yea, mightier names are in the fatal roll, 'Gainst earth and heaven God's standard is unfurled,

The skies are shrivelled like a burning scroll, And the vast common doom ensepulchres the world.

Oh! who shall then survive?

Oh! who shall stand and live?
When all that hath been is no more:
When for the round earth hung in air,
With all its constellations fair,

In the sky's azure canopy;

When all the breathing earth and sparkling sea,
Is but a fiery deluge without shore,
Heaving along the abyss profound and dark,
A fiery deluge, and without an ark.

Lord of all power, when Thou art there alone,
On thy eternal, fiery wheelèd throne,

That in its high meridian noon

Needs not the perished sun nor moon: When Thou art there in Thy presiding state, Wide-sceptered monarch o'er the realm of doom,

When from the sea-depths, from earth's darkest womb,

The dead of all the ages round Thee wait;
And when the tribes of wickedness are strown,

Like forest leaves in the autumn of Thine ire: Faithful and true! Thou still wilt save Thine own! The saints shall dwell within th' unharming

fire,