And thou, good God, vouchsafe in gree to take

This woful plaint,

Wherein I faint,

Before the ward that waits therefore alway, My soul, my sense, my secret thought, my sprite,

I'LL praise my Maker with my breath;
And when my voice is lost in death,

Praise shall employ my nobler powers;
My days of praise shall ne'er be past,
While life and thought and being last,
Or immortality endures.

Why should I make a man my trust?
Princes must die and turn to dust:

Vain is the help of flesh and blood:
Their breath departs, their pomp and power,
And thoughts all vanish in an hour;

Nor can they make their promise good.

Happy the man whose hopes rely
On Israel's God: he made the sky,

And earth, and seas, with all their train ;
His truth forever stands secure :
He saves the opprest, he feeds the poor,
And none shall find his promise vain.

The Lord hath eyes to give the blind; The Lord supports the sinking mind ;

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He sends the laboring conscience peace; He helps the stranger in distress, The widow and the fatherless,

And grants the prisoner sweet release.

He loves his saints, he knows them well;. But turns the wicked down to hell:

Thy God, O Zion, ever reigns: Let every tongue, let every age, In this exalted work engage:

Praise him in everlasting strains.

I'll praise him while he lends me breath; And when my voice is lost in death,

Praise shall employ my nobler powers: My days of praise shall ne'er be past, While life and thought and being last, Or immortality endures.

1719.

ISAAC WATTS, D. D.

WORSHIP.

"Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the widows and the fatherless in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world." — JAMES i. 27.

THE Pagan's myths through marble lips are spoken,

And ghosts of old Beliefs still flit and moan Round fane and altar overthrown and broken, O'er tree-grown barrow and gray ring of

stone.

Blind Faith had martyrs in those old high places,

The Syrian hill grove and the Druid's wood, With mothers' offering, to the Fiend's embraces,

Bone of their bone, and blood of their own

blood.

Red altars, kindling through that night of error, Smoked with warm blood beneath the cruel

eye

Of lawless Power and sanguinary Terror,
Throned on the circle of a pitiless sky;

Beneath whose baleful shadow, overcasting
All heaven above, and blighting earth below.
The scourge grew red, the lip grew pale with
fasting,

And man's oblation was his fear and woe!

Then through great temples swelled the dismal moaning

Of dirge-like music and sepulchral prayer ;

Pale wizard priests, o'er occult symbols droning,

Swung their white censers in the burdened air:

As if the pomp of rituals, and the savor Of gums and spices could the Unseen One please;

As if his ear could bend, with childish favor, To the poor flattery of the organ keys!

Feet red from war-fields trod the church aisles holy,

With trembling reverence and the oppressor there,

Kneeling before his priest, abased and lowly, Crushed human hearts beneath his knee of

prayer.

Not such the service the benignant Father Requireth at his earthly children's hands: Not the poor offering of vain rites, but rather The simple duty man from man demands.

For Earth he asks it: the full joy of Heaven Knoweth no change of waning or increase; The great heart of the Infinite beats even,

Untroubled flows the river of his peace.

He asks no taper lights, on high surrounding
The priestly altar and the saintly grave,
No dolorous chant nor organ music sounding,
Nor incense clouding up the twilight nave.

For he whom Jesus loved hath truly spoken: The holier worship which he deigns to bless Restores the lost, and binds the spirit broken, And feeds the widow and the fatherless!

Types of our human weakness and our sorrow! Who lives unhaunted by his loved ones dead?

Who, with vain longing, seeketh not to borrow From stranger eyes the home lights which have fled?

O brother man! fold to thy heart thy brother;
Where pity dwells, the peace of God is there;
To worship rightly is to love each other,
Each smile a hymn, each kindly deed a
prayer.

Follow with reverent steps the great example

Of Him whose holy work was "doing good"; So shall the wide earth seem our Father's temple,

Each loving life a psalm of gratitude.

Then shall all shackles fall: the stormy clangor

Of wild war music o'er the earth shall cease; Love shall tread out the baleful fire of anger, And in its ashes plant the tree of peace! JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.

1 LOVE TO STEAL AWHILE AWAY. MRS. PHOEBE HINSDALE BROWN was born at Canaan, N Y., in 1783, and died at Henry, Ill., Oct. 10, 1861. Her son, the Rev. S. R. Brown, D D., missionary at Yokohama, relates that the hymn below arose from the habit of Mrs. Brown of retiring some distance from her house every day at a certain hour for meditation and prayer. The well-beaten path to the woods was discovered, and she was ridiculed by some thoughtless neighbor. She was a woman of great influence, and besides doing many other good deeds, educated three Chinese youths who became valuable members of society.

I LOVE to steal awhile away

From every cumbering care,
And spend the hours of setting day
In humble, grateful prayer.

I love in solitude to shed
The penitential tear,
And all his promises to plead

Where none but God can hear.

I love to think on mercies past,
And future good implore,
And all my cares and sorrows cast
On him whom I adore.

I love by faith to take a view

Of brighter scenes in heaven; The prospect doth my strength renew, While here by tempests driven.

Thus, when life's toilsome day is o'er,
May its departing ray

Be calm as this impressive hour,
And lead to endless day.

PHOEBE HINSDALE BROWN.

WHILE THEE I SEEK.

MISS HELEN MARIA WILLIAMS, born near Berwick, Eng. land, in 1762, went to Paris to live, shortly after the Revolu tion, where she was imprisoned for writing in favor of the Girondists, but was released on the fall of Robespierre. She died in Paris, in December. 1827. Miss Williams was the author of a number of volumes, some of which treated the

subject of French affairs. She died at Paris, Dec. 14, 1827
WHILE thee I seek, protecting Power,
Be my vain wishes stilled!
And may this consecrated hour
With better hopes be filled.

Thy love the power of thought bestowed;
To thee my thoughts would soar :
Thy mercy o'er my life has flowed,
That mercy I adore.

In each event of life, how clear

Thy ruling hand I see!
Each blessing to my soul more dear,
Because conferred by thee.

In every joy that crowns my days,
In every pain I bear,

My heart shall find delight in praise,

Or seek relief in prayer.

When gladness wings my favored hour, Thy love my thoughts shall fill ; Resigned, when storms of sorrow lower, My soul shall meet thy will.

My lifted eye, without a tear,

The gathering storm shall see;

My steadfast heart shall know no fear; That heart shall rest on thee.

HELEN MARIA WILLIAMS.

A SONG OF PRAISE.

PHILIP SKELTON, a learned English clergyman, whose sermons were warmly commended by John Wesley, was born in Ireland in 1707, and educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He died in 1767.

To God, ye choir above, begin
A hymn so loud and strong,
That all the universe may hear,
And join the grateful song.

Praise him, thou sun, who dwells unseen
Amidst transcendent light,

Where thy refulgent orb would seem
A spot as dark as night.

Thou silver moon, ye host of stars,
The universal song

Through the serene and silent night
To listening worlds prolong.

Sing him, ye distant worlds and suns,
From whence no travelling ray
Hath yet to us, through ages past,
Had time to make its way.
Assist, ye raging storms, and bear

On rapid wings his praise,
From north to south. from east to west,
Through heaven, and earth, and seas.

Exert your voice, ye furious fires,
That rend the watery cloud,
And thunder to this nether world
Your Maker's words aloud.

Ye works of God, that dwell unknown Beneath the rolling main;

Ye birds, that sing among the groves,
And sweep the azure plain;

Ye stately hills, that rear your heads,
And towering pierce the sky;
Ye clouds, that with an awful face
Majestic roll on high;

Ye insects small, to which one leaf
Within its narrow sides

A vast extended world displays
And spacious realms provides;

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Ye race, still less than these, with which
The stagnant water teems,

To which one drop, however small,
A boundless ocean seems;

Whate'er ye are, where'er ye dwell,
Ye creatures great or small,
Adore the wisdom, praise the power,
That made and governs all.

And if ye want or sense or sounds,
To swell the grateful noise,
Prompt mankind with that sense, and they
Shall find for you a voice.

From all the boundless realms of space
Let loud hosannas sound;
Loud send, ye wondrous works of God,
The grateful concert round!

PHILIP SKELTON.

ON A PRAYER-BOOK SENT TO
MRS. M. R.

Lo, here a little volume, but great book!
A nest of new-born sweets,
Whose native fires, disdaining
To lie thus folded, and complaining
Of these ignoble sheets,
Affect more comely bands,
Fair one, from thy kind hands,
And confidently look

To find the rest

Of a rich binding in your breast.

It is in one choice handful, heaven; and all
Heaven's royal hosts encamped, thus small
To prove that true, schools use to tell,
A thousand angels in one point can dwell.
It is love's great artillery,

Which here contracts itself, and comes to lie
Close couched in your white bosom ; and from

thence,