LESSON XXXIV. Passage of the Red Sea.-HEBER. 'MID the light spray their snorting camels stood, With limbs that falter, and with hearts that swell, Yet not from Israel fled the friendly light, Or dark to them, or cheerless came the night, Blazed broad and fierce, the brandished torch of God. On the long mirror of the rosy wave: Showed his dread visage lightening through the storm; And brake their chariot-wheels, and marred their coursers' flight. 7 Fly, Misraim, fly!'-The ravenous floods they see, And, fiercer than the floods, the Deity. Fly, Misraim, fly!'-From Edom's coral strand Again the prophet stretched his dreadful wand:— With one wild crash the thundering waters sweep, And all is waves-a dark and lonely deepYet o'er these lonely waves such murmurs past, As mortal wailing swelled the nightly blast: And strange and sad the whispering breezes bore The groans of Egypt to Arabia's shore. LESSON XXXV. Belshazzar.-CROLY. HOUR of an empire's overthrow! The princes from the feast were gone— That night the feast was wild and high; The last deep cup of wrath was drained. 'Mid jewelled roof and silken pall, 'King of the east! the trumpet calls, 'A surge is in Euphrates bed, Shall load with death its haughty shore. 'Behold a tide of Persian steel- Belshazzar gazed-the voice was past- He listened-all again was still; He slept;-in sleep wild murmurs came- Sleep, Sultan! 't is thy final sleep; He started:mid the battle's yell, LESSON XXXVI. STORM on the midnight waters! The vast sky Cloud on cloud Reels heavily in the darkness, like a shroud Shook by some warning spirit from the high And terrible wall of Heaven. The mighty wave Tosses beneath its shadow, like the bold Upheavings of a giant from the grave, Which bound him prematurely to his cold And desolate bosom. Lo-they mingle now- And it is very terrible! The roar Ascendeth unto Heaven, and thunders back Of the strong man in peril, piercing through As the rent bark one moment rides to view, He stood upon the reeling deck-His form Told of a triumph man may never know- The great waves heard him, and the storm's loud tone Went moaning into silence at his will: And the thick clouds, where yet the lightning shone, Dread Ruler of the tempest! Thou, before The storm and darkness of man's soul, the same LESSON XXXVII. Great Effects result from Little Causes.-PORTER. THE same connexion between small things and great, runs through all the concerns of our world. The ignorance of a physician, or the carelessness of an apothecary, may spread death through a family or a town. How often has the sickness of one man, become the sickness of thousands? How often has the error of one man, become the error of thousands? A fly or an atom, may set in motion a train of intermediate causes, which shall produce a revolution in a kingdom. Any one of a thousand incidents, might have cut off Alexander of Greece, in his cradle. But if Alexander had died in infancy, or had lived a single day longer than he did, it might have put another face on all the following history of the world. A spectacle-maker's boy, amusing himself in his father's shop, by holding two glasses between his finger and his thumb, and varying their distance, perceived the weathercock of the church spire, opposite to him, much larger than ordinary, and apparently much nearer, and turned upside down. This excited the wonder of the father, and led him to additional experiments; and these resulted in that astonishing instrument, the Telescope, as invented by Galileo, and perfected by Herschell. On the same optical principles was constructed the Microscope, by which we perceive that a drop of stagnant water is a world teeming with inhabitants. By one of these instruments, the experimental philosopher measures the ponderous globes, that the omnipotent hand has ranged in majestic order through the skies; by the other, he sees the same hand employed in rounding and polishing five thousand minute, transparent globes in the eye of a fly. Yet all these discoveries of modern science, exhibiting the intelligence, dominion, and agency of God, we owe to the transient amusement of a child. It is a fact, commonly known, that, the laws of gravitation, which guide the thousands of rolling worlds in the planetary system, were suggested at first, to the mind of Newton, by the falling of an apple. The art of printing, shows from what casual incidents, the |