ARTICLE IV.

POETRY.

THE following lines are from the pen of a young lady of Massachusetts. They are her first printed effusion. We have sought permission to insert them as a rather remarkable specimen of skill in the management of verse. The lines refer to an excursion which took place just one year preceding the day on which they were written.

EDS.

OUR SEA-SHORE.

How we loved that rock-bound sea-shore, and that ocean of delight! How we loved to watch the dashing of the waters gay and bright! To see each little wavelet, so full of life and play,

With a laugh up spring so lightly, to catch a moon-lit ray,

And then, with a gleeful, brilliant smile, dash onward to the shore, Close to our feet to bring his prize, and haste away for more!

Many a heart in time beat lightly,

Smiling faces beamed as brightly,

While the gushes of our gladness made the rocky shore resound; For we laid aside all sorrow,

All care, till the coming morrow,

Since Nature, in her bounty, spread such beauty all around.

Ay, we loved our own fair sea-shore, dipping its feet in ocean

blue,

Each moss-bound rock, or smooth, or rough, or by th' wave tearstained, we knew ;

Yet

Gun Rock" loved we most of all, such welcomes glad it gave, As in the yawning chasm dashed the waters wild and brave! We loved that wide-spread ocean page, each fair unfolded shell, Where Nature's purest type revealed, "He doeth all things well.” Then we sat us still and listened,

When the Sea's moist eyes soft glistened,

As she sang so clear her cherished lay of beauty, love, and light; And then, her breast upheaving,

With a heart of quickened beating,

Joined Ocean's richer chorus of majesty and might.

How we loved that speaking sea-shore! how we loved to linger there,
To drink deep draughts of beauty, with the moonlight and sea-air!
And those moments of rare pleasure, into rich, ripe hours grew,
As still the rhyme and song flew on, over the liquid blue;
But when the farewell "Home, sweet home" quivered on lip, I
sighed,

For I felt we might not meet again, all, on that ocean's side.
And methought I heard the sighing

Of the waves, as if replying,

Quick from the rock I bent me low to catch the dying tone;
Then from out the waters' gurgling

Came a sweetly sad, low murmuring:

"One is gliding, gliding, gliding, one is gliding, gliding home!"

And the waves dash on that sea-shore as they dashed a year ago; But the glad, warm life-blood through one heart has ceased fore'er

to flow;

Safe o'er life's changeful ocean one gallant barque has crossed; Deep down below the horizon those white, spread sails are lost. But we know that from the mountain-tops of faith, and hope, and

love,

Is seen that shore of beauty which bounds the "Home" above. Oh, there the waves touch lightly,

Where the golden sands gleam brightly!

But the angels' steps are lighter, and brighter far each smile;
For they hear the dipping of Death's slight oar,

Bringing that barque to their radiant shore,

And so by the waves they cluster, and hush their harps awhile.

List! over that beautiful sea-shore, where the waters in melody

play,

As an ocean of harmony full and strong, now rolls the welcoming

lay;

And the sands of that beautiful sea-shore bestrewn by many a

flower,

Dropped lightly in the hasty flight from Eden's loveliest bowerNow again by a stranger's feet are pressed,

And again by the snowy robes caressed,

As they hover, these fair ones, around their brother, and show him

the gates of rest.

All hushed the waves of sorrow,

If, on some brighter morrow,

One and another shall cross that shore till all are welcomed home. Then we'll list Heaven's arches ringing

With a rare melodious singing,

And we, too, will join the harpers wreathing praises round the throne.

ARTICLE V.

ACCIDENTS OR PROVIDENCES, WHICH?

It is said that in his flight for Mecca, Mohammed sought concealment and rest in a cave by the way-side. After his entrance a spider spread its net across the mouth of the cave. His pursuers, intent on his death and examining every covert, paused at this one. But, seeing the insect-net, they judged that he could not have entered there, and so passed on. Some say that thus an accident saved the entire and vast Mohammedan power from being destroyed in its infancy. Was this insect trifling an accidental preservation of the Moslem power in its germ? Or shall we say that God thus wrapped up and protected in cobwebs a force that would break up armies and nations?

An event may take place without our foresight. It may come from an unknown cause. It may be a strange effect, to appearance, of a supposed known cause. It may be contrary to our earnest, waiting expectation. It may come so unawares that our every thought of it must be an after-thought. It may come as a sudden and terrible defeat of our most sacred desires, purposes, and labors. It may come full of surprising and mysterious mercies. The way of life to individuals and communities shows many of these events. They affect variously our treasures, hopes, plans, friends, and life.

Men divide these events into Providences and Accidents. The favor that comes through unforeseen and strange concurrence of circumstances is called a providence, while the calamity is called an accident.

Now if the term, accident, as thus used, were a softened and more grateful term for unexpected or sorrowful event, it would be well enough. But there is frequently glided under that word, the substance of the idea that the event did not share in the ordinary supervision of God. Nay, more. There is the feeling, often, that had God attended and brought his usual providence to bear, the event would have been otherwise.

Herein lies an error, and it is deep and wide-working. For it leaves men in the discussion of events to admit or dispense with the agency of God in them. In some terrible railroad casualty the life of one man is saved from imminent danger, and men call his escape a particular providence. Another, sitting beside him, is mutilated to a terrible death, and they call this event to him an accident. A third, whose home is in sight of the catastrophe, lives a life unmarked by any peculiar incident, and dies a common death, in a ripe old age, on the bed where he has slept nightly these fifty years; and they say nothing about providence in his case. The drift of which criticism is, that in some events God is very attentive, even to directing, toward others indifferent or inefficient, and of yet others as unobservant as if occurring outside the range of his dominion.

Such a feeling, and it is not uncommon, on the subject of accidents, limits the presence, shortens the arm, and restricts the supervision of God. This modern and popular theory of accidents is the outgrowth of a false theology. It is an old Arminian notion, whose advocates number more than would willingly and openly espouse this ancient heresy. It is a theology that concedes to God a limited monarchy over matter, and an elective monarchy over free agents. It ranks him among men as superintendent of contingencies. It allows him foreordination, but the plans in which it lies and is to be executed, are based on and made to be coincident with what he foresees his creatures will do. So God's decrees are but his indorsement or permission in advance of what he foresees must take place. It allows him foreknowledge of the actions of man; but he obtains this, not by knowing how the causes that he will ordain, connect, and make operative, will produce events; he divines what man, with a self-determining will,

and acting independently of all motives, will do. It allows him an election of men unto salvation, but it is an election following the person who is already predetermined in his own will, or by his own endeavors, to be saved. It is an election, not leading and causing, but pursuing and consenting, an election that does not cast, but only counts and declares the votes. Of course such a theology gives a large place for accidents, and for those unsupported sorrows that come with accidents to him believing in them. An accident, in the common and moral use of this word, means an event that has no divine mind designing and controlling it. It is fortuitous or hap-hazard as outside the circle of the divine power, or as a lawless marauder inside. Is there any such event under the government of God? Do the elements of his character and government allow us to suppose such an event as possible?

God is everywhere, at all times, and at the same time. He sees all that has been, all that is, all that shall be, and all that might be, yet never shall be. The arm of God is the only power that works a change in anything, at any time. There is no motion, no variation, in things animate or inanimate, but, directly or indirectly, it is of God. He keeps every He keeps every substance and being, be it mineral or vegetable, solid or fluid, brute, human, or angelic, from dissolving, and returning to primitive, chaotic atoms. God is of service for the world besides creating it and starting it with a system of forces. And we must not exile him under the delusion that we shall have anything remaining, abiding, and operative in what we call the constitution and course of Nature, natural forces, or natural laws. These are but the modes, the habits of God in his omnipresent and perpetual working. He is not, in creation, like a clockmaker, constructing his machine, winding it up, and then ever sitting idly by to see it run. "In Him we live and move and have our being," a fact equally at home in the outside field of philosophic truths and in the inside field of inspired truths.

Few learned delusions are more popular than that a law is a power. It is but a mode, the uniform manifestation of a power. It is the channel for the stream. The statute of a State is nothing except as it is filled, vitalized, and energized by the