Yea, let the heathen be thy teacher, who adoreth many gods,

For there is no wide-spread error that hath not truth for its beginning.
Be content; thine eye cannot see all the sides of a cube at one view,
Nor thy mind in the self-same moment follow two ideas:

There are now many marvels in thy creed, believing what thou seest, Then let not the conceit of intellect hinder thee from worshipping mystery.

OF THINKING.

REFLECTION is a flower of the mind, giving out wholesome fragrance,
But reverie is the same flower, when rank and running to seed.
Better to read little with thought, than much with levity and quickness
For mind is not as merchandise, which decreaseth in the using,
But liker to the passions of man, which rejoice and expand in exertion:
Yet live not wholly on thine own ideas, lest they lead thee astray,
For in spirit, as in substance, thou art a social creature;

And if thou leanest on thyself, thou rejectest the guidance of thy betters,
Yea, thou contemnest all men,-Am I not wiser than they?

Foolish vanity hath blinded thee, and warped thy weak judgment;

For, though new ideas flow from new springs, and enrich the treasury of knowledge,

Yet listen often, ere thou think much; and look around thee ere thou

judgest.

Memory, the daugter of Attention, is the teeming mother of Wisdom, And safer is he that storeth knowledge, than he that would make it for himself.

Imagination is not thought, neither is fancy reflection :

Thought paceth like a hoary sage, but imagination hath wings as an eagle: Reflection sternly considereth, nor is sparing to condemn evil,

But fancy lightly laugheth, in the sun-clad garden of amusement.

For the shy game of the fowler the quickest shot is the surest;

But with slow care and measured aim the gunner pointeth his cannon:

So for all less occasions, the surface thought is best,

But to be master of the great take thou heavier metal.

It is a good thing, and a wholesome, to search out bosom sins,

But to be the hero of selfish imaginings, is the subtle poison of pride:
At night, in the stillness of thy chamber, guard and curb thy thoughts,
And in recounting the doings of the day, beware that thou do it with prayer,
Or thinking will be an idle pleasure, and retrospect yield no fruit.

Steer the bark of thy mind from the syren isle of reverie,

And let a watchful spirit mingle with the glance of recollection :

Also, in examining thine heart, in sounding the fountain of thine actions, Be more careful of the evil than of the good; and humble thyself in thy sin.

The root of all wholesome thought is knowledge of thyself,

For thus only canst thou learn the character of God toward thee.
He made thee, and thou art; he redeemed thee, and thou wilt be:
Thou art evil, yet he loveth thee: thou sinnest, yet he pardoneth thee.
Though thou canst not perceive him, yet is he in all his works,
Infinite in grand outline, infinite in minute perfection;
Nature is the chart of God, mapping out all his attributes;
Art is the shadow of his wisdom, and copieth his resources.
Thou knowest the laws of matter to be emanations of his will,
And thy best reason for aught is this, thou, Lord, would have it so.

Yea, what is any law but an absolute decree of God?

Or the properties of matter and mind, but the arbitrary fiats of Jehovah ? He made and ordained necessity; he forged the chain of reason ;

And holdeth in his own right hand the first of the golden links.

A fool regardeth mind as the spiritual essence of matter,
And not rather matter as the gross accident of mind.
Can finite govern infinite, or a part exceed the whole,

Or the wisdom of God sit down at the feet of innate necessity?
Necessity is a creature of his hand: for He can never change;
And chance hath no existence where every thing is needful.

Canst thou measure Omnipotence, canst thou conceive Ubiquity,
Which guideth the meanest reptile, and quickeneth the brightest seraph,
Which steereth the particles of dust, and commandeth the path of the

comet ?

To Him all things are equal, for all things are necessary.

The smith is weary at his forge, and weldeth the metal carelessly,

And the anchor breaketh in its bed, and the vessel foundereth with her

crew:

A word of anger is muttered, engendering the midnight murder :

The sun bursteth from a cloud, and maddeneth the toiling husbandman. Shall these things be, and God not know it?

Shall he know, and not be in them? shall he see, and not be among them? And how can they be otherwise than as he knoweth ?

Truly, the Lord is in all things; verily, he worketh in all.

Think thus, and thy thoughts are firm, ascribing each circumstance to

Him;

Yet know surely, and believe the truth, that God willeth not evil :

For adversities are blessings in disguise, and wickedness the Lord abhorreth :

That he is in all things is an axiom, and that he is righteous in all;
Ascribe holiness to Him, while thou musest on the mystery of sin,
For infinite can grasp that which finite cannot compass.

In works of art, think justly: what praise canst thou render unto man?
For he made not his own mind, nor is he the scource of contrivance.
If a cunning workman maketh an engine that fashioneth curious works,
Which hath the praise, the machine or its maker,—the engine, or he that
framed it?

And could he frame it so subtly as to give it a will and freedom,
Endow it with complicated powers, and a glorious living soul,
Who, while he admireth the wondrous understanding creature,
Will not pay deeper homage to the Maker of master minds?

Otherwise, thou art senseless as the pagan, that adoreth his own handi

work;

Yea, while thou boastest of thy wisdom, thy mind is as the mind of the

savage,

For he boweth down to his idols, and thou art a worshipper of self,
Giving to the reasoning machine the credit due to its Creator.

The keystone of thy mind, to give thy thoughts solidity,

To bind them as in an arch, to fix them as a world in its sphere,

Is to learn from the book of the Lord, to drink from the well of his wisdom.
Who can condense the sun, or analyze the fullness of the Bible,

So that its ideas be gathered, and the harvest of its wisdom be brought in?
That book is easy to the man who setteth his heart to understand it,
But to the careless and profane it shall seem the foolishness of God;
And it is a delicate test to prove thy moral state;

To the humble disciple it is bread, but a stone to the proud and ur believing :

A scorner shall find nothing but the husks, wherewith to feed his hunger
But for the soul of the simple, it is plenty of full-ripe wheat.
The Scripture abideth the same in the sober majesty of truth;
And the differing aspects of its teaching proceed from diversity in minds.
He that would learn to think may gain that knowledge there;
For the living word, as an angel, standeth at the gate of wisdom,
And publisheth, This is the way, walk ye surely in it.
Religion taketh by the hand the humble pupil of repentance,
And teacheth him lessons of mystery, solving the questions of doubt;
She maketh man worthy of himself, of his high prerogative of reason,
Threadeth all the labyrinths of thought, and leadeth him to his God.

Come hither, child of meditation, upon whose high fair forehead
Glittereth the star of mind in its unearthly lustre,

Hast thou nought to tell us of thine airy joys,—

When borne on sinewy pinions, strong as the western condor, The soul, after soaring for a while round the cloud-capped Andes of reflection,

Glad in its conscious immortality, leaveth a world behind,

To dare at one bold flight the broad Atlantic to another?
Hast thou no secret pangs to whisper common men,

No dread of thine own energies, still active, day and night,
L'est too ecstatic heat sublime thyself away,

Or vivid horrors, sharp and clear, madden thy tense fibres ?
In half-shaped visions of sleep hast thou not feared thy flittings,
Lest reason, like a raking hawk, return not to thy call;
Nor waked to work-day life with throbbing head and heart,
Nor welcomed early dawn to save thee from unrest?

For the wearied spirit lieth as a fainting maiden,

Captive and borne away on the warrior's foam-covered steed,

And sinketh down wounded as a gladiator on the sand,

While the keen falchion of Intellect is cutting through the scabbard of the brain.

Imagination, like a shadowy giant looming on the twilight of the Hartz, Shall overwhelm Judgment with affright, and scare him from his throne: In a dream thou mayst be mad, and feel the fire within thee;

In a dream thou mayst travel out of self, and see thee with the eyes of

another;

Or sleep in thine own corpse; or wake as in many bodies:

Or swell, as expanded to infinity; or shrink, as imprisoned to a point; Or among moss-grown ruins may wander with the sullen disembodied, And gaze upon their glassy eyes until thy heart-blood freeze.

Alone must thou stand, O man! alone at the bar of judgment;

Alone must thou bear thy sentence, alone must thou answer for thy deeds:
Therefore it is well thou retirest often to secrecy and solitude,

To feel that thou art accountable separately from thy fellows:
For a crowd hideth truth from the eyes, society drowneth thought,
And, being but one among many, stifleth the chidings of conscience.
Solitude bringeth woe to the wicked, for his crimes are told out in his ear;
But addeth peace to the good, for the mercies of his God are numbered.
Thou mayst know if it be well with a man,-loveth he gayety or solitude?
For the troubled river rusheth to the sea, but the calm lake slumbereth
among the mountains.

How dear to the mind of the sage are the thoughts that are bred in loneliness,

For there is as it were music at his heart, and he talketh within him as

with friends:

But guilt maddeneth the brain, and terror glareth in the eye,

Where, in his solitary cell, the malefactor wrestleth with remorse.

Give me but a lodge in the wilderness, drop me on an island in the desert, And thought shall yield me happiness, though I may not increase it by imparting :

For the soul never slumbereth, but is as the eye of the Eternal,

And, mind, the breath of God, knoweth not ideal vacuity:

At night, after weariness and watching, the body sinketh into sleep,

But the mental eye is awake, and thou reasonest in thy dreams:

In a dream thou mayst live a lifetime, and all be forgotten in the morning: Even such is life, and so soon perisheth its memory.

OF SPEAKING.

SPEECH is the golden harvest that followeth the flowering of thought;
Yet oftentimes runneth it to husk, and the grains be withered and scanty.
Speech is reason's brother and a kingly prerogative of man,