very small, which has produced any perceptible effect on the mass of human character. By far the greater part have been, even by their contemporaries, unnoticed and unknown. Not many a one has made its little mark upon the generation that produced it, though it sunk with that generation to utter forgetfulness. But after the ceaseless toil of six thousand years, how few have been the works, the adamantine basis of whose reputation has stood unhurt amid the fluctuations of time, and whose impressions can be traced through successive centuries on the history of our species.

7. When, however, such a work appears, its effects are absolutely incalculable; such a work is the ILIAD' of Homer. Who can estimate the results produced by this incomparable effort of a single mind! Who can tell what Greece owes to this first-born of song! Her breathing marbles, her solemn temples, her unrivaled elegance, and her matchless verse, all point us to that transcendent genius, who, by the very splendor of his own effulgence, woke the human intellect from the slumber of ages.

8. It was Homer who gave laws to the artist; it was Homer who inspired the poet; it was Homer who thundered in the senate, and, more than all, it was Homer who was sung by the people; and hence a nation was cast into the mold of one mighty mind, and the land of the Iliad became the region of taste,— the birth-place of the arts. Nor was this influence confined within the limits of Greece. Long after the scepter of empire had passed westward, genius still held her court on the banks of the Ilissus, and, from the country of Homer, gave laws to the world.

2

9. The light which the blind old man of Scio3 had kindled in Greece, shed its radiance over Italy; and thus did he awaken a second nation to intellectual existence. And we may form some idea of the power which this one work has, to the present day, exerted over the mind of man, by remarking that “nation after nation, and century after century has been able to do little more than transpose his incidents, new-name his characters, and paraphrase his sentiments."

10. But considered simply as an intellectual production, who will compare the poems of Homer with the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament? Where in the Iliad shall we find simplicity and pathos to vie with the narrative of Moses, or maxims of conduct to equal in wisdom the Proverbs of Solomon, or sublimity which does not fade away before the conceptions of Job or David, of Isaiah or St. John. But I can not pursue this comparison. I feel that it is doing wrong to the mind which dictated the Iliad, and to those other mighty intellects, on whom the light of the holy oracles never shone.

11. Who that has read his poem has not observed how he strove in vain to give dignity to the mythology of his time? Who has not seen how the religion of his country, unable to support the flight of his imagination, sunk powerless beneath him? It is in the unseen world that the master-spirits of our race breathe freely and are at home; and it is mournful to behold the intellect of Homer, striving to free itself from the conceptions of materialism, and then sinking down in hopeless despair, to weave idle fables about Jupiter and Juno, Apollo and Diana. But the difficulties, under which he labored, are abundantly illustrated by the fact, that the light which he poured upon the human intellect, taught other ages how unworthy was the religion of his day of the man who was compelled to use it.

12. If then so great results have flowed from this one effort of a single mind, what may we not expect from the combined efforts of several, at least his equals in power over the human heart? If that one genius, though groping in the thick darkness of absurd idolatry, wrought so glorious a transformation in the character of his countrymen, what may we not look for from the universal dissemination of those writings, on whose authors was poured the full splendor of eternal truth? If unassisted human nature, spell-bound by a childish mythology, has done so much, what may we not hope from the supernatural efforts of pre-eminent genius, which spake as it was moved by the Holy Ghost?

13. If then we would see the foundations laid broad and

deep, on which the fabric of this country's liberties shall rest to the remotest generations; if we would see her carry forward the work of political reformation, and rise the bright and morning star of freedom over a benighted world; let us elevate the intellectual and moral character of every class of our citizens, and especially let us imbue them thoroughly with the principles of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

LESSON CLXXII.

THE VALUE OF TIME.

1. YOUTH is not rich in time; it may be poor. Part with it as with money, sparing; pay No moment, but in purchase of its worth ;

YOUNG,

And what its worth? Ask death-beds,-they can tell.
Part with it as with life, reluctant.

2. On all-important time, through every age,

3.

Though much and warm the wise have urged, the man
Is yet unborn, who duly weighs an hour.

"I've lost a day!"--the prince who nobly cried,
Had been an emperor without his crown.

Of Rome? say, rather, lord of human race;

He spoke as if deputed by mankind.

So should all speak,

‚——so reason speaks in all.

Time is eternity;

Pregnant with all eternity can give,

Pregnant with all that makes archangels smile.
Who murders time, he crushes in the birth
A power ethereal, only not adored.
Ah! how unjust to nature and himself
Is thoughtless, thankless, inconsistent man!
Like children babbling nonsense in their sports,
We censure nature for a span too short,-
That span too short we tax as tedious too,—
Torture invention, all expedients tire,

est

To lash the lingering moments into speed,

And whirl us, happy riddance!—from ourselves.
Art, brainless art! our furious charioteer,

Drives headlong toward the precipice of death,-
Death most our dread,—death thus more dreadful made.
4. Time, in advance, behind him hides his wings,
And seems to creep, decrepit with his age.
Behold him when passed by,-what then is seen
But his broad pinions swifter than the winds?
And all mankind, in contradiction strong,
Rueful, aghast, cry out on his career.
Time wasted is existence; used, is life;
And bare existence man, to live ordained,
Wrings and oppresses with enormous weight.
And why? since time was given for use, not waste,
Enjoined to fly with tempest, tide, and stars,
To keep his speed, nor ever wait for man.

5. Time's use was doomed a pleasure; waste, a pain;
That man might feel his error if unseen,
And, feeling, fly to labor for his cure.

Life's cares are comforts,-such by Heaven designed;
He that has none, must make them, or be wretched.
Cares are employments, and without employ
The soul is on a rack, the rack of rest,
To souls most adverse,-action, all their joy.

6. O the dark days of vanity! While here

How tasteless! and how terrible when gone!

Gone? they ne'er go; when past, they haunt us still;
The spirit walks of every day deceased,

And smiles an angel, or a fury frowns.
Nor death nor life delights us.

If time past

And time possessed both pain us, what can please?
That which the Deity to please ordained,―

TIME USED.

The man who consecrates his hours
By vigorous effort and an honest aim,

At once he draws the sting of life and death,—
He walks with nature, and her paths are peace.

LESSON CLXXIII.

ADVERTISEMENT OF A LOST DAY.

1. LOST! lost! lost!

A gem of countless price,
Cut from the living rock,

And graved in Paradise.

MRS. SIGOURNEY.

Set round with three times eight
Large diamonds, clear and bright,
And each with sixty smaller ones,
All changeful as the light.

2. Lost, where the thoughtless throng
In fashion's mazes wind,

Where trilleth folly's song,
Leaving a sting behind;
Yet to my hand 'twas given
A golden harp to buy,

Such as the white-robed choir attune

To deathless minstrelsy.

3. Lost! lost! lost!

I feel all search is vain;
That gem of countless cost
Can ne'er be mine again;

I offer no reward,

For till these heart-strings sever,
I know that Heaven-intrusted gift
Is reft away forever.

4. But when the sea and land,

Like burning scroll have fled,
I'll see it in His hand,

Who judgeth quick and dead;
And when of scathe and loss,
That man can ne'er repair,
The dread inquiry meets my soul,
What shall it answer there?