Poor I hear they call thy mother,Poor, my gentle child, they call thee.Artthou poor, thou little maiden,Art thou poor as people think thee?Out before thy mother’s cottageBlossom meadows, flourish forests;Every mead has brooks of silver,Every wood its broad lake-mirror,Over all the sun is smiling,Pouring forth its golden glory.Art thou poor, thou little maiden,Art thou poor as people think thee?When thou hear’st thy mother singing,Softly close thy tender eyelids,—Lids which hide thy soul’s pearl-treasures;Straight thereafter cometh slumber,Slumber followed by dream’s angel,Soft and still dream’s angel takes thee,Lifts thee on his wings so gently,Bears thee forth among the meadows,There to bloom among the flowers,Bears thee to the birds and forests,There to fill thy breast with singing,—Leaves thy soul in purest waters,Bathes thee in the joyous sunshine.Artthou poor, thou little maiden,Art thou poor as people think thee?When again thy eyelids open,Thou art on thy mother’s bosom,Feelest in thy tender senses,Thinkest in thy darksome thinking:Sweet it was upon the meadows,Blithe it was with birds and woodlands,Good beside the lake’s clear waters,Warm that bathing in the sunlight,—Yet best is it on this bosom.
Poor I hear they call thy mother,Poor, my gentle child, they call thee.Artthou poor, thou little maiden,Art thou poor as people think thee?Out before thy mother’s cottageBlossom meadows, flourish forests;Every mead has brooks of silver,Every wood its broad lake-mirror,Over all the sun is smiling,Pouring forth its golden glory.Art thou poor, thou little maiden,Art thou poor as people think thee?When thou hear’st thy mother singing,Softly close thy tender eyelids,—Lids which hide thy soul’s pearl-treasures;Straight thereafter cometh slumber,Slumber followed by dream’s angel,Soft and still dream’s angel takes thee,Lifts thee on his wings so gently,Bears thee forth among the meadows,There to bloom among the flowers,Bears thee to the birds and forests,There to fill thy breast with singing,—Leaves thy soul in purest waters,Bathes thee in the joyous sunshine.Artthou poor, thou little maiden,Art thou poor as people think thee?When again thy eyelids open,Thou art on thy mother’s bosom,Feelest in thy tender senses,Thinkest in thy darksome thinking:Sweet it was upon the meadows,Blithe it was with birds and woodlands,Good beside the lake’s clear waters,Warm that bathing in the sunlight,—Yet best is it on this bosom.
Poor I hear they call thy mother,Poor, my gentle child, they call thee.Artthou poor, thou little maiden,Art thou poor as people think thee?
Poor I hear they call thy mother,
Poor, my gentle child, they call thee.
Artthou poor, thou little maiden,
Art thou poor as people think thee?
Out before thy mother’s cottageBlossom meadows, flourish forests;Every mead has brooks of silver,Every wood its broad lake-mirror,Over all the sun is smiling,Pouring forth its golden glory.
Out before thy mother’s cottage
Blossom meadows, flourish forests;
Every mead has brooks of silver,
Every wood its broad lake-mirror,
Over all the sun is smiling,
Pouring forth its golden glory.
Art thou poor, thou little maiden,Art thou poor as people think thee?
Art thou poor, thou little maiden,
Art thou poor as people think thee?
When thou hear’st thy mother singing,Softly close thy tender eyelids,—Lids which hide thy soul’s pearl-treasures;Straight thereafter cometh slumber,Slumber followed by dream’s angel,Soft and still dream’s angel takes thee,Lifts thee on his wings so gently,Bears thee forth among the meadows,There to bloom among the flowers,Bears thee to the birds and forests,There to fill thy breast with singing,—Leaves thy soul in purest waters,Bathes thee in the joyous sunshine.
When thou hear’st thy mother singing,
Softly close thy tender eyelids,—
Lids which hide thy soul’s pearl-treasures;
Straight thereafter cometh slumber,
Slumber followed by dream’s angel,
Soft and still dream’s angel takes thee,
Lifts thee on his wings so gently,
Bears thee forth among the meadows,
There to bloom among the flowers,
Bears thee to the birds and forests,
There to fill thy breast with singing,—
Leaves thy soul in purest waters,
Bathes thee in the joyous sunshine.
Artthou poor, thou little maiden,Art thou poor as people think thee?
Artthou poor, thou little maiden,
Art thou poor as people think thee?
When again thy eyelids open,Thou art on thy mother’s bosom,Feelest in thy tender senses,Thinkest in thy darksome thinking:Sweet it was upon the meadows,Blithe it was with birds and woodlands,Good beside the lake’s clear waters,Warm that bathing in the sunlight,—Yet best is it on this bosom.
When again thy eyelids open,
Thou art on thy mother’s bosom,
Feelest in thy tender senses,
Thinkest in thy darksome thinking:
Sweet it was upon the meadows,
Blithe it was with birds and woodlands,
Good beside the lake’s clear waters,
Warm that bathing in the sunlight,—
Yet best is it on this bosom.
[To be continued.]
By C. E. BISHOP.
You remember Franklin’s story of the speckled axe; how he turned the grindstone to polish it up nice, and, tiring of the revolutions, concluded he “liked a speckled axe best.” There was a king of England who had a very speckled character and the people of England (who turned the grindstone for him) long liked their king’s speckled character best of all the kings that they had known.
When Prince of Wales he “cut up” so that he got the name of “Madcap Harry,” some of the most amusing of his pranks being highway robbery and burglary, for all which he was admired in his day and immortalized, along with Jack Falstaff, by Shakspere. One of the light spots on this character is his obedience to the commitment by Chief Justice Gascoigne; and although it belongs to the realm of tradition, it is so pleasant to believe and is so quaintly told by Lord Campbell that we’ll e’en accept it: One of the Prince’s gang of cut purses had been captured and imprisoned by Gascoigne, and the Prince came into court and demanded his release, which was denied. The Prince, says the chronicle, “being set all in a fury, all chafed and in a terrible maner, came up to the place of jugement, men thinking that he would have slain the juge, or have done to him some damage; but the juge sitting still without moving, declaring the majestie of the king’s place of jugement, and with an assured and bolde countenance, had to the Prince these words following: ‘Sir, remember yourself. I kepe here the place of the kinge, your soveraine lorde and father, to whom ye owe double obedience: wherefore eftsoones in his name I charge you desiste of your wilfulness and unlawfull enterprise, and from hensforth give good example to those whiche hereafter shall be your propre subjectes. And nowe, for your contempte and disobedience, go you to the prison of the Kinge’s Benche, whereunto I committe you, and remain ye there prisoner untill the pleasure of the kinge, your father, be further knowen.’”
The prince’s better nature, and a sense of his family’s precarious situation before the law perhaps, induced him to accept the sentence and go to jail. On hearing this the king is recorded as saying: “O merciful God, how much am I bound to your infinite goodness, especially for that you have given me a juge who feareth not to minister justice, and also a sonne, who can suffre semblably and obeye justice.”
In keeping with this wonderful “spasm of good behavior” is the sudden change that came over the Madcap as soon as he became King Henry V. He became as remarkable for his austere piety as he had been for his wickedness. Unfortunately, his piety took the shape of burning Lollards (the shouting Methodists of that day), and he signed the warrant under which the brave and innocent Sir John Oldcastle, his old friend and boon companion, was hung up in chains over a slow fire.
There could be but two outlets in those days for such a degree of piety as Henry had achieved: as whatever he undertook must be bloody and cruel, the choice lay between a crusade or an invasion of France. As the latter promised the most booty and least risk he seemed to have a call in that direction. The attempt seemed about equal to an able bodied man attacking a paralytic patient in bed. The king of France was insane: his heir was worthless and lazy; the queen regent was an unfaithful wife and an unnatural mother, who took sides with the faction that was trying to dethrone the king and destroy his and her son. The kingdom was torn to pieces by civil strife between the Orleanists and the Burgundians, each vying with the other in cruelty, treachery, violence and plundering the government and outraging the people. There was an awful state of affairs—just the chance for a valiant English king.
Henry put up a demand for the French crown, under the pseudo claim of Edward III., whose house his father had deposed. A usurper claiming a neighbor’s crown by virtue of the usurped title of an overturned and disinherited dynasty; as if one stealing a crown got all the reversions of that crown by right. Henry would have made a good claim agent in our day! And the English people, with the remembrance of Cressy and Poictiers, of the Black Prince, and the captive King of France, and all the booty and cheap glory that made England so rich and vain sixty years before, fell in with Henry’s amiable designs on France. It was perfectly clear to the whole nation, from the chief justice down to the clodhopper, that Henry’s claim to the crown of France was a clear and indefeasible one; that the war would be for a high and holy right—and could not fail to pay.
And this was the main object of Henry after all: to divert the kingdom’s attention from his own usurped title by a foreign war; to fortify usurpation at home by attempted usurpation abroad. His father had enjoined upon him this policy, in Shakspere’s words—
“Be it thy course to busy giddy mindsWith foreign quarrels; that action, hence borne out,May waste the memory of the former days.How I came by the crown, O God, forgive;And grant it may with thee in true peace live.”
“Be it thy course to busy giddy mindsWith foreign quarrels; that action, hence borne out,May waste the memory of the former days.How I came by the crown, O God, forgive;And grant it may with thee in true peace live.”
“Be it thy course to busy giddy mindsWith foreign quarrels; that action, hence borne out,May waste the memory of the former days.How I came by the crown, O God, forgive;And grant it may with thee in true peace live.”
“Be it thy course to busy giddy minds
With foreign quarrels; that action, hence borne out,
May waste the memory of the former days.
How I came by the crown, O God, forgive;
And grant it may with thee in true peace live.”
So in July, 1415, Henry and 30,000 more patriots, sailed across the channel on 1,500 ships and landed unopposed at the mouth of the Seine. It took them six weeks and cost half the army to reduce the Castle of Harfleur, surrounded by a swamp, and then his generals advised him to abandon the campaign. But he dare not go back to his insecure throne with failure written on his very first attempt at glory; the expedition had cost too much money and he must have something to show for it. So boldly enough he struck for the heart of France.
This whole campaign was a close copy after the invasion by Edward III. in 1346. There was the same unopposed march to the walls of Paris, almost over the same ground; the retreat before a tardy French host; the lucky crossing of the river Somme, over the identical Blanchetacque Ford, and the bringing to bay of the English by many times their own number of French, were all faithfully repeated; while the battle of Agincourt took place only a short distance from the field of Cressy, and in its main features was a repetition of that engagement. But in one respect, honorable to him, Henry didnotcopy after Edward and the Black Prince. He forbade all plundering and destruction; a soldier who stole the pix from a church at Corby was instantly executed.
The description of the scenes before the battle, when,
“Proud of their number and secure in soul,The confident and over-lusty FrenchDo the low-rated English play at dice;”
“Proud of their number and secure in soul,The confident and over-lusty FrenchDo the low-rated English play at dice;”
“Proud of their number and secure in soul,The confident and over-lusty FrenchDo the low-rated English play at dice;”
“Proud of their number and secure in soul,
The confident and over-lusty French
Do the low-rated English play at dice;”
the contrary despondency of the English, the lofty, heroic tone of Henry with his men, when he declared gaily he was glad there were no more of them to share the honor of whipping ten to one of the French; and his proclamation that any man who had no stomach for this fight might depart; we “could not die in that man’s company that fears his fellowship to die with us.” But his humble prostration in the solitude of his own tent when he prayed piteously,—
“O, God of battles! steel my soldiers’ hearts;Possess them not with fear; take from them nowThe sense of reckoning, if the opposed numbersPluck their hearts from them. Not to-day, O Lord,O, not to-day, think not upon the faultMy father made in compassing the crown!”
“O, God of battles! steel my soldiers’ hearts;Possess them not with fear; take from them nowThe sense of reckoning, if the opposed numbersPluck their hearts from them. Not to-day, O Lord,O, not to-day, think not upon the faultMy father made in compassing the crown!”
“O, God of battles! steel my soldiers’ hearts;Possess them not with fear; take from them nowThe sense of reckoning, if the opposed numbersPluck their hearts from them. Not to-day, O Lord,O, not to-day, think not upon the faultMy father made in compassing the crown!”
“O, God of battles! steel my soldiers’ hearts;
Possess them not with fear; take from them now
The sense of reckoning, if the opposed numbers
Pluck their hearts from them. Not to-day, O Lord,
O, not to-day, think not upon the fault
My father made in compassing the crown!”
All this makes up one of Shakspere’s most moving scenes. The action and the result of this battle are as inexplicable as those of Cressy and Poictiers. We know that now, as then, the sturdy English archers did their fearful execution on the massed French. France had learned nothing in seventy years of defeats and adversity; she had no infantry, entrusted no peasantry with arms: still depended on gentlemen alone to defend France—and again the gentlemen failed her. Sixty thousand were packed in a narrow passage between two dense forests. On this mass the bowmen fired their shafts until these were exhausted. Then throwing away their bows, swinging their axes and long knives, and planting firmly in the earth in front of them their steel-pointed pikes, they waited the charge of the French chivalry. The mud was girth-deep. The horses stumbled under their heavily-armored riders. Such as reached the English line struck the horrid pikes and were hewn down by the stalwart axmen. They break and retreat, carrying dismay and confusion to the main body. The pikes are pulled up, and the line advanced. A charge of English knights is hurled upon the broken mass of French, and their return is covered by the axmen, who advance and form another line of pikes to meet the countercharge of French. So it goes on, until the French host is a mob, and the English are everywhere among them, hewing, stabbing, and thrusting. “So great grew the mass of the slain,” said an eye-witness, “and of those who were overthrown among them, that our people ascended the very heaps, which had increased higher than a man, and butchered their adversaries below with swords and other weapons.” It all lasted three hours before the French could be called defeated, for they were so numerous and were packed so closely that even retreat was long impossible. Before the battle had been decided, every Englishman had four or five prisoners on his hands, whom he was holding for ransoms. This was the grand chance to recoup all their losses and sufferings and grievous denial of plunder. This was a predicament for a victorious army, and if a small force of the French had made a rally they might then have reversed their defeat on the scattered English. Henry tried to avert such a catastrophe by sounding the order for every man to put all his prisoners to death: but cupidity saved many, nevertheless.
The flower of the chivalry of France perished on this field, greatly to the relief and benefit of France. Seven of the princes of the blood royal, the heads of one hundred and twenty of the noble families of France, and eight thousand gentlemen were counted among the 30,000 slain. The feudal nobility never recovered from the blow,—but France did, all the sooner for lack of them.
The victorious army made its way to Calais, and Henry returned to England, “covered with glory and loaded with debt.” But there was unlimited exultation when Henry came marching home, into London, under fifteen grand triumphal arches, insomuch that an eye-witness says, “A greater assembly or a nobler spectacle was not recollected to have been ever before in London.”
Campaign after campaign into France followed; she being plunged deeper and deeper into civil war, anarchy, and mob-rule. Rouen fell in 1419, and the two kings arranged a peace and a marriage between Henry and the princess Catherine. (The courtship in Shakspere is racy.) In 1420 the two kings, side by side, made a triumphant entry into Paris, and Henry was acknowledged as successor to the French crown after Charles VI. should die. Another great demonstration was seen in London when the French Catherine was crowned Queen of England (1421). Ah! there was a fearful Nemesis awaiting this newly-married pair in the insanity of their son, inherited from Catherine’s father. And England was to pay dearly for her French glory in the miseries of the reign of Henry VI. and the dreadful Wars of the Roses. Indeed, she was already paying dearly in the load of taxation and the loss of life those wars had entailed, insomuch that even now there was a scarcity of “worthy and sufficient persons” to manage government affairs in the boroughs and parishes.
The English army in France met with a sudden reverse, the commandant, the Duke of Clarence, being slain. More troops had to be raised and taken to France, and in the effort to keep his grasp on the prostrate kingdom, Henry himself was prostrated in the grasp of an enemy he could not resist. So, on the 31st of August, 1422, in the midst of his campaign, Henry died.
The priests came to his bedside and recited the penitential psalm: when they came to “Thou shalt build up the walls of Jerusalem,” the dying man said: “Ah, if I had finished this war I would have gone to Palestine to restore the Holy City.” He was the last of the crusade dreamers, and the last of the great invaders of France among English kings. In a few years all that he had won, and all that the greatest English generals and the prowess of her archers could avail were scattered by a mere girl creating and leading to victory new French armies.
And this bauble of war was all there was of Henry Fifth’s reign, the pride of the House of Lancaster. So we can hardly join in the lamentation of the Duke of Bedford:
“Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night,Comets, importing change of time and states,Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky,And with them scourge the bad revolting starsThat have consented unto Henry’s death!King Henry the Fifth, too famous to live long!England ne’er lost a king of so much worth.”
“Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night,Comets, importing change of time and states,Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky,And with them scourge the bad revolting starsThat have consented unto Henry’s death!King Henry the Fifth, too famous to live long!England ne’er lost a king of so much worth.”
“Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night,Comets, importing change of time and states,Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky,And with them scourge the bad revolting starsThat have consented unto Henry’s death!King Henry the Fifth, too famous to live long!England ne’er lost a king of so much worth.”
“Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night,
Comets, importing change of time and states,
Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky,
And with them scourge the bad revolting stars
That have consented unto Henry’s death!
King Henry the Fifth, too famous to live long!
England ne’er lost a king of so much worth.”
The historian, White, pretty well sums up this “speckled character:”
“His personal ambition had been hurtful to his people. In the first glare of his achievements, some parts of his character were obscured which calm reflection has pointed out for the reprobation of succeeding times. He was harsh and cruel beyond even the limits of the harsh and cruel code under which he professed to act. He bought over the church by giving up innovators to its vengeance; he compelled his prisoner, James I. of Scotland, to accompany him in his last expedition to France to avenge a great defeat his arms sustained at Beaugé at the hands of the Scotch auxiliaries, and availed himself of this royal sanction to execute as traitors all the Scottish prisoners who fell into his hands. His massacre of the French captives has already been related, and we shall see how injuriously the temporary glory of so atrocious a career acted on the moral feelings of his people when it blunted their perception of those great and manifest crimes and inspired the nobles with a spirit of war and conquest which cost innumerable lives and retarded the progress of the country in wealth and freedom for many years.”
[To be continued.]
It is hard in this world to win virtue, freedom, and happiness, but still harder to diffuse them. The wise man gets everything from himself, the fool from others. The freeman must release the slave—the philosopher think for the fool—the happy man labor for the unhappy.—Jean Paul F. Richter.
It is hard in this world to win virtue, freedom, and happiness, but still harder to diffuse them. The wise man gets everything from himself, the fool from others. The freeman must release the slave—the philosopher think for the fool—the happy man labor for the unhappy.—Jean Paul F. Richter.
Our last article gave us a complete description of the human organization. In the present number we will inquire how we move this complex system of bones, nerves, flesh, and tissues.
We will take a particular motion and see if we can understand that. For instance, you bend your arm. You know that when your arm is lying on the table you can bend the forearm on the upper arm (or part above the elbow) until your fingers touch your shoulder. How is this done?
Look at the arm in a skeleton; you will see that the upper part is composed of one large bone, called the humerus, the fore part of two bones, the radius and ulna. If you look carefully you will see that the end of the humerus, at the elbow, is curiously rounded, and the end of the ulna, at the elbow, is scooped out in such a way that one fits loosely into the other. If you try to move them about, one on the other, you will find that you can easily double the ulna very closely on the humerus, without their ends coming apart; and as you move the ulna you will notice that its end and the end of the humerus slide over each other. But they will slide only one way—up and down. If you try to slide them from side to side they get locked. At the elbows, then, we have two bones fitting into each other, so that they will move in a certain direction; their ends are smoothed with cartilage, kept moist with a fluid and held in place by ligaments, and this is all called a joint.
In order that this arm may be bent some force must be used. The radius and ulna (the two move together) must be pushed or pulled toward the humerus, or the humerus toward the radius and ulna. How is this done in your arm? Imagine that a piece of string were fastened to either the radius or ulna, near the top: let the string be carried through a little groove, which there is at the upper end of the humerus, and fastened to the shoulder-blade. Let the string be just long enough to allow the arm to be straightened out, so that when the arm is straight the string will be just about tight. Now draw your string up into a loop and you will bend the fore-arm on the humerus. If this string could be so made that every time you willed it so, it would shorten itself, it would pull the ulna up and would bend the arm; every time it slackened the arm would fall back into a straight position.
In the living body there is not a string, but a band of tissues placed very much as our string is placed, and which has the power of shortening itself when required. Every time it shortens the arm is bent, every time it lengthens again the arm falls back into its straight position. This body, which can thus lengthen and shorten itself, is called a muscle. If you put your hand on the front of your upper arm, half way between your shoulder and elbow, and then bend your arm, you will feel something rising up under your hand: this is the muscle shortening or, as we shall now call it, contracting.
But what makes the muscle contract? You willed to move your arm, and moved it by making the muscle contract; but how did your will accomplish this? If you should examine, you would find running through the muscle soft white threads, or cords, which you have already learned to recognize as nerves. These nerves seem to grow into and be lost in the muscle. If you trace them in the other direction you would find that they soon join with other similar nerves, and the several cords joining together form stouter nerve-cords. These again join others, and so we should proceed until we came to quite stout white nerve-trunks, as they are called, which pass between the vertebræ of the neck into the vertebral column, where they mix in the mass of the spinal cord. What have these nerves to do with the bending of the arm? Simply this: If you should cut through the delicate nerves entering the muscle, what would happen? You would find that you had lost all power of bending your arm. However much you willed it, the muscle would not contract. What does this show? It proves that when you will to move, something passes along the nerves to the muscle, which something causes the muscle to contract. The nerve, then, is a bridge between your will and the muscle—so that when the bridge is broken the will can not get to the muscle.
If, anywhere between the muscle and the spinal cord, you cut the nerve, you destroy communication between the will and the muscle. If you injure the spinal cord in your neck you might live, but you would be paralyzed; you might will to bend your arm, but could not.
In short, the whole process is this: by the exercise of your will a something is started in your brain. That something passes from the brain to the spinal cord, leaves the spinal cord and travels along certain nerves, picking its way along the bundles of nervous threads which run from the upper part of the spinal cord, until it reaches the muscle. The muscle immediately contracts and grows thick. The tendon pulls at the radius, the radius with the ulna moves on the fulcrum of the humerus at the elbow-joint, and the arm is bent.
Why does the muscle contract when that something reaches it? We must be content to say that it is the property of the muscle. But it does not always possess this property. Suppose you were to tie a cord very tightly around the top of the arm close to the shoulder. If you tied it tight enough the arm would become pale, and would very soon begin to grow cold. It would get numb, and would seem to be heavy and clumsy. Your feeling in it would be blunted, and soon altogether lost. You would find great difficulty in bending it, and soon it would lose all power. If you untied the cord, little by little the cold and clumsiness would pass away, the power and warmth would come back, and you would be able to bend it as you did before. What did the cord do to the arm? The chief thing was to press on the blood-vessels, and so stop the blood from moving in them. We have seen that all parts of the body are supplied with blood-vessels, veins and arteries. In the arm there is a very large artery, branches from which go into all parts of the muscle. If, instead of tying the cord about the arm, these branches alone were tied, the arm, as a whole, would not grow cold or limp, but if you tried to bend it, you would find it impossible. All this teaches that the power which a muscle has of contracting may be lost and regained as the blood is stopped in its circulation, or allowed to circulate freely.
Our next question is, What is there in the blood that thus gives to the muscle the power of contracting, or that keeps the muscle alive? The answer is easy. What is the name given to this power of a muscle to contract? We call itstrength. Straighten out your arm upon the table and put a heavy weight in your hand; then bend your arm. Find the heaviest weight that you can raise in this way, and try it some morning after your breakfast, when you are in good condition. Go without dinner, and in the evening when tired and hungry, try to raise the same weight in the same way. You will not be able to do so. Your muscle is weaker than it was in the morning, and you say that the want of food makes you weak; and that is so, because the food becomes blood. The things which we eat are changed into other things which form part of the blood, and this blood going to the muscle gives it strength. What is true of the relations of the blood to the muscles is true of all other parts of the body. The brain and nerves and spinal cord have a more pressing need of pure blood. The faintness which wefeel from want of food is quite as much weakness of the brain and of the nerves as of the muscles, perhaps even more so.
The whole history of our daily life is, briefly told, this: The food we eat becomes blood; the blood is carried all over the body, round and round, in the torrent of the circulation; as it sweeps past them or through them, the brain, nerves, muscles and skin pick out new food for their work, and give back the things they have used or no longer want; as they all have different work, some pick up what others have thrown away. There are also scavengers and cleansers to take up things which are wanted no longer, and to throw them out of the body.
Thus the blood is kept pure as well as fresh. Thus it is through the blood brought to them, that each part does its work.
But what is blood? It is a fluid. It runs about like water, but while water is transparent, blood is opaque. Under a microscope you will see a number of little round bodies—the blood-discs, or blood-corpuscles. All the redness there is in blood belongs to these. These red corpuscles are not hard, solid things, but delicate and soft, yet made to bear all the squeezing they get as they drive around the body. Besides these red corpuscles, are other little bodies, just a little larger than the red, not colored at all, and quite round. These are all that one can see in blood, but it has a strange property which we will study. Whenever blood is shed from a living body, within a short time it becomes solid. This change is called coagulation. If a dish be filled with blood, and you were to take a bunch of twigs and keep slowly stirring, you would naturally think it would soon begin to coagulate; but it does not, and if you keep on stirring you find that this never takes place. Take out your bundle of twigs, and you will find it coated all over with a thick, fleshy mass of soft substance. If you rinse this with water you will soon have left nothing but a quantity of soft, stringy material matted among the twigs. This stringy material is, in reality, made up of fine, delicate, elastic threads, and is called fibrin; by stirring you have taken it out. If the blood had been left in the dish for a few hours, or a day, you would find a firm mould of coagulated blood floating in a colorless liquid. This jelly would continue shrinking, and the fluid would remain; this fluid is called serum, and it is the blood out of which the corpuscles have been strained by the coagulation. All these various things, fibrin, serum, corpuscles, etc., make up the blood. This blood must move, and how does it move? You have had the different organs which assist in its circulation described, but let us illustrate.
All over the body there are, though you can not see them, networks of capillaries. All the arteries end in capillaries, and in them begin all veins. Supposing a little blood-corpuscle be squeezed in the narrow pathway of a capillary in the muscle of the arm. Let it start in motion backward. Going along the narrow capillary it would hardly have room to move. It will pass on the right and left other capillary channels, as small as the one in which it moves; advancing, it will soon find the passage widening and the walls growing thicker. This continues until the corpuscle is almost lost in the great artery of the arm; thence it will pass but few openings, and these will be large, until it passes into the aorta, or great artery, and then into the heart. Suppose the corpuscle retrace its journey and go ahead instead of backward. It will go through passages similar to the other, and it would learn these passages to be veins. At last the corpuscle would float into the vena cava, thence to the right auricle, from there to the right ventricle, by the pulmonary artery to the lungs; there it, with its attendant white corpuscles, serum and other substances, would be purified, then sent by pulmonary vein to the left auricle and ventricle, and then pumped over the body again. Some one may ask, What is the force that drives or pumps the blood? Suppose you had a long, thin muscle fastened at one end to something firm, and a weight attached to it. Every time the muscle contracted it would pull on the weight and draw it up. But instead of hanging a weight to the muscle, wrap it around a bladder of water. If the muscle contract now, evidently the water will be squeezed through any opening in the bladder. This is just what takes place in the heart. Each cavity there, each auricle and ventricle is, so to speak, a thin bag with a number of muscles wrapped about it. In an ordinary muscle of the body the fibers are placed regularly side by side, but in the heart, the bundles are interlaced in a very wonderful fashion, so that it is difficult to make out the grain. They are so arranged that the muscular fibers may squeeze all parts of each bag at the same time. But here is the most wonderful fact of all. These muscles of the auricles and ventricles are always at work contracting and relaxing of their own accord as long as the heart is alive. The muscle of your arm contracts only at your will. But the heart is never quiet. Awake or asleep, whatever you are doing or not doing, it keeps steadily on.
Each time the heart contracts what happens? Let us begin with the right ventricle full of blood. It contracts; the pressure comes on all sides, and were it not for the flaps that close and shut the way, some of the blood would be forced back into the right auricle. As it is, there is but one way,—through the pulmonary artery. This is already full of blood, but, because of its wonderful elasticity, it stretches so that it holds the extra fluid. The valve at its mouth closes, and the blood is safely shut in, but the artery so stretched contracts and forces the blood along into the veins and capillaries of the lungs, in turn stretching them so that they must force ahead the blood which they already contain. This blood is forced into the pulmonary vein, thence to the left auricle; the auricle forces it into the ventricle, and the latter pumps it into the aorta; the aorta overflows as the pulmonary artery did, and the blood goes through every capillary of the body into the great venæ cavæ, which forces it into the right auricle; thence to the ventricle where we started. In this passage every fragment of the body has been bathed in blood. This stream rushing through the capillaries contains the material from which bone, muscle, and brain are made, and carries away all the waste material which must be thrown off.
The actual work of making bone or muscle is performed outside of the blood in the tissues. You say, the capillaries are closed, and how can the blood get to the tissues? It will be necessary here to speak of a certain property of membranes in order that you understand how the tissues are built up by the blood apparently closed within the veins. If a solution of sugar or salt be placed in a bladder with the neck tied tightly, and this placed in a basin of pure water, you will find that the water in the basin will soon taste of sugar or salt and after a time will taste as strong as the water in the bladder. If you substitute solid particles, or things that will not dissolve, you will find no change. This property which membranes, such as a bladder, have, is called osmosis. It is by osmosis chiefly that the raw, nourishing material in the blood gets into the flesh lying about the capillaries. It is by osmosis chiefly that food gets out of the stomach into the blood. It is by this property that the worn-out materials are drained away from the blood, and so cast out of the body. By osmosis the blood nourishes and purifies the flesh. By osmosis the blood is itself nourished and kept pure.
We must now understand how we live on this food we eat. Food passing into the alimentary canal is there digested. The nourishing food-stuffs are dissolved out of the innutritious and pass into the blood. The blood thus kept supplied with combustible materials, draws oxygen fromthe lungs, and thus carries to every part of the body stuff to burn and oxygen to burn it with. Everywhere this oxidation is going on, changing the arterial blood to venous.
From most places where there is oxidation, the venous blood comes away hotter than the arterial, and all the hot venous blood mingling, keeps the whole body warm. Much heat is given up, however, to whatever is touching the skin, and much is used in turning liquid perspiration into vapor. Thus, as long as we are in health, we never get hotter than a certain degree.
Everywhere this oxidation is going on. Little by little, every part of the body is continually burning away and continually being made anew by the blood. Though it is the same blood, it makes very different things: in the nerves it makes nerve; in the muscle, muscle. It gives different qualities to different parts: out of one gland it makes saliva, another gastric juice; out of it the bone gets strength and the muscle power to contract. But the far greater part of the power of the blood is spent in heat, or goes to keep us warm.
One thing more we have to note before we answer the question, why we move. We have seen that we move by reason of our muscles contracting, and that, in a general way, a muscle contracts because a something started in our brain by our will, passes through the spinal cord, through certain nerves, until it reaches the muscle, and this something we may call a nervous impulse. But what starts this?
All the nerves do not end in the muscles, but many in the skin. These nerves can not be used to carry nervous impulses from the brain to the skin. By no effort of yours can you make the skin contract. For what purpose then are these nerves? If you prick your finger, you feel the touch, or say that you have sensation in your finger. If you were to cut the nerve leading to the finger you would lose this power of feeling. These nerves, then, ending in the fingers have a different use from those ending in the muscles. The latter carry an impulse from the brain to the muscles, and are called motor nerves. The former carry impulses from the skin to the brain, and are called sensory nerves, or those which bring about sensations. Motor nerves are of but one kind, but there are several kinds of sensory nerves, each kind having a special work to do. The several works which these nerves do are called the senses. By means of these sensory nerves we receive impressions from the external world, sensations of heat, cold, roughness, good and bad odors, taste, sound, and the color and form of things. Thus impressions of the external world are made upon the brain, and it is these impressions that stimulate the brain to action. The brain worked on by them, through ways that we know not of, governs the muscles, sends commands by the motor nerves, and rules the body as a conscious, intelligent will.
By DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN.
Sweet bird, that sing’st away the early hours,Of winters past or coming void of care,Well pleased with delights which present are,Fair seasons, budding sprays, sweet-smelling flowers;To rocks, to springs, to rills, from leafy bowersThou thy Creator’s goodness dost declare,And what dear gifts on thee he did not spare,A stain to human sense in sin that lowers.What soul can be so sick which by thy songs,Attir’d in sweetness, sweetly is not drivenQuite to forget earth’s turmoils, spites, and wrongs,And lift a reverent eye and thought to heaven?Sweet artless songster, thou my mind dost raiseTo airs of spheres, yes, and to angels’ lays.
Sweet bird, that sing’st away the early hours,Of winters past or coming void of care,Well pleased with delights which present are,Fair seasons, budding sprays, sweet-smelling flowers;To rocks, to springs, to rills, from leafy bowersThou thy Creator’s goodness dost declare,And what dear gifts on thee he did not spare,A stain to human sense in sin that lowers.What soul can be so sick which by thy songs,Attir’d in sweetness, sweetly is not drivenQuite to forget earth’s turmoils, spites, and wrongs,And lift a reverent eye and thought to heaven?Sweet artless songster, thou my mind dost raiseTo airs of spheres, yes, and to angels’ lays.
Sweet bird, that sing’st away the early hours,Of winters past or coming void of care,Well pleased with delights which present are,Fair seasons, budding sprays, sweet-smelling flowers;To rocks, to springs, to rills, from leafy bowersThou thy Creator’s goodness dost declare,And what dear gifts on thee he did not spare,A stain to human sense in sin that lowers.What soul can be so sick which by thy songs,Attir’d in sweetness, sweetly is not drivenQuite to forget earth’s turmoils, spites, and wrongs,And lift a reverent eye and thought to heaven?Sweet artless songster, thou my mind dost raiseTo airs of spheres, yes, and to angels’ lays.
Sweet bird, that sing’st away the early hours,
Of winters past or coming void of care,
Well pleased with delights which present are,
Fair seasons, budding sprays, sweet-smelling flowers;
To rocks, to springs, to rills, from leafy bowers
Thou thy Creator’s goodness dost declare,
And what dear gifts on thee he did not spare,
A stain to human sense in sin that lowers.
What soul can be so sick which by thy songs,
Attir’d in sweetness, sweetly is not driven
Quite to forget earth’s turmoils, spites, and wrongs,
And lift a reverent eye and thought to heaven?
Sweet artless songster, thou my mind dost raise
To airs of spheres, yes, and to angels’ lays.
SELECTED BY THE REV. J.H. VINCENT, D.D.
ByRev.WILLIAM ARNOT.
These “ways,” as described by Solomon in the preceding verses, are certainly some of the very worst. We have here literally the picture of a robber’s den. The persons described are of the baser sort: the crimes enumerated are gross and rank: they would be outrageously disreputable in any society, of any age. Yet when these apples of Sodom are traced to their sustaining root, it turns out to begreed of gain. The love of money can bear all these.
This scripture is not out of date in our day, or out of place in our community. The word of God is not left behind obsolete by the progress of events. “All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away; but the word of the Lord endureth for ever” (1 Peter, i: 24, 25). The Scripture traces sin to its fountain, and deposits the sentence of condemnation there,—a sentence that follows actual evil through all its diverging paths. A spring of poisonous water may in one part of its course run over a rough, rocky bed, and in another glide silent and smooth through a verdant meadow; but, alike when chafed into foam by obstructing rocks, and when reflecting the flowers from its glassy breast, it is the same lethal stream. So from greed of gain—from covetousness which is idolatry, the issue is evil, whether it run riot in murder and rapine in Solomon’s days, or crawl sleek and slimy through cunning tricks of trade in our own. God seeth not as man seeth. He judges by the character of the life stream that flows from the fountain of thought, and not by the form of the channel which accident may have hollowed out to receive it.
When this greed of gain is generated, like a thirst in the soul, it imperiously demands satisfaction: and it takes satisfaction wherever it can be most readily found. In some countries of the world still it retains the old-fashioned form of iniquity which Solomon has described: it turns free-booter, and leagues with a band of kindred spirits, for the prosecution of the business on a larger scale. In our country, though the same passion domineer in a man’s heart, it will not adopt the same method, because it has cunning enough to know that by this method it could not succeed. Dishonesty is diluted, and colored, and moulded into shapes of respectability, to suit the taste of the times. We are not hazarding an estimate whether there be as much of dishonesty under all our privileges as prevailed in a darker day: we affirm only that wherever dishonesty is, its nature remains the same, although its form may be more refined. He who will judge both mean men and merchant princes requires truth in the inward parts. There is no respect of persons with him. Fashions do not change about the throne of the Eternal. With him a thousand years are as one day. The ancient and modern evil-doers are reckoned brethren in iniquity, despite the difference in the costume of their crimes. Two men are alike greedy of gain. One of them being expert in accounts, defrauds his creditors, and thereafter drives his carriage; the other, being robust of limb, robs a traveler on the highway, and then holds midnight revel on the spoil. Found fellow-sinners, they will be left fellow-sufferers. Refined dishonesty is as displeasing to God, as hurtful to society, and as unfit for heaven, as the coarsest crime.
This greed, when full grown, is coarse and cruel. It is notrestrained by any delicate sense of what is right or seemly. It has no bowels. It marches right to its mark, treading on everything that lies in the way. If necessary, in order to clutch the coveted gain, “it takes away the life of the owners thereof.” Covetousness is idolatry. The idol delights in blood. He demands and gets a hecatomb of human sacrifices.
Among the laborers employed in a certain district to construct a railway, was one thick-necked, bushy, sensual, ignorant, brutalized man, who lodged in the cottage of a lone old woman. This woman was in the habit of laying up her weekly earnings in a certain chest, of which she carefully kept the key. The lodger observed where the money lay. After the works were completed and the workmen dispersed, this man was seen in the gray dawn of a Sabbath morning stealthily approaching the cottage. That day, for a wonder among the neighbors, the dame did not appear at church. They went to her house, and learned the cause. Her dead body lay on the cottage floor: the treasure-chest was robbed of its few pounds and odd shillings, and the murderer had fled. Afterward they caught and hanged him.
Shocking crime!—to murder a helpless woman in her own house in order to reach and rifle her little hoard, laid up against the winter and the rent! The criminal is of a low, gross, bestial nature. Be it so. He was a pest to society, and society flung the troubler off the earth. But what of those who are far above him in education and social position, and as far beyond him in the measure of their guilt? How many human lives is the greed of gain even now taking away in the various processes of slavery? Men who hold a high place, and bear a good name in the world, have in this form taken away the life of thousands for filthy lucre’s sake. Murder on a large scale has been and is done upon the African tribes by civilized men for money.
The opium traffic, forced upon China by the military power of Britain, and maintained by her merchants in India, is murder done for money on a mighty scale. Opium spreads immorality, imbecility, and death through the teeming ranks of the Chinese populations. The quantity of opium cultivated on their own soil is comparatively small. The government prohibited the introduction of the deadly drug until England compelled them to legalize the traffic. British merchants brought it to their shores in ship-loads notwithstanding, and the thunder of British cannon opened a way for its entrance through the feeble ranks that lined the shore. Every law of political economy, and every sentiment of Christian charity, cries aloud against nurturing on our soil, and letting loose among our neighbors, that grim angel of death. The greed of gain alone suggests, commands, compels it. How can we expect the Chinese to accept the Bible from us while we bring opium to them in return? British Christians might bear to China that life for which the Chinese seem to be thirsting, were it not that British merchants are bearing to China that death which the best of her people loathe.
A bloated, filthy, half-naked laborer, hanging on at the harbor, has gotten a shilling for a stray job. As soon as he has wiped his brow, and fingered the coin, he walks into a shop and asks for whisky. The shopkeeper knows the man—knows that his mind and body are damaged by strong drink—knows that his family are starved by the father’s drunkenness. The shopkeeper eyes the squalid wretch. The shilling tinkles on the counter. With one hand the dealer supplies the glass, and with the other mechanically rakes the shilling into the till among the rest. It is the price of blood. Life is taken there for money. The gain is filthy. Feeling its stain eating like rust into his conscience, the man who takes it reasons eagerly with himself thus: “He was determined to have it; and if I won’t, another will.” So he settles the case that occurred in the market-place on earth, but he has not done with it yet. How will that argument sound as an answer to the question, “Where is thy brother?” when it comes in thunder from the judgment-seat of God?
Oh that men’s eyes were opened to know this sin beneath all its coverings, and loathe it in all its disguises! Other people may do the same, and we may never have thought seriously of the matter; but these reasons, and a thousand others, will not cover sin. All men should think of the character and consequences of their actions. God will weigh our deeds; we should ourselves weigh them beforehand in his balances. It is not what that man has said, or this man has done; but what Christ is, and his members should be. The question for every man through life is, not what is the practice of earth, but what is preparation for heaven. There would not be much difficulty in judging what gain is right and what is wrong if we would take Christ into our counsels. If people look unto Jesus when they think of being saved, and look hard away from him when they are planning how to make money, they will miss their mark for both worlds. When a man gives his heart to gain, he is an idolater. Money has become his god. He would rather that the Omniscient should not be the witness of his worship. While he is sacrificing in this idol’s temple, he would prefer that Christ should reside high in heaven, out of sight and out of mind. He would like Christ to be in heaven, ready to open its gates to him, when death at last drives him off the earth; but he will not open for Christ now that other dwelling-place which he loves—a humble and contrite heart. “Christ in you, the hope of glory;” there is the cure of covetousness! That blessed Indweller, when he enters, will drive out—with a scourge, if need be—such buyers and sellers as defiled his temple. His still small voice within would flow forth, and print itself on all your traffic,—“Love one another, as I have loved you.”
On this point the Christian Church is very low. The living child has lain so close to the world’s bosom that she has overlaid it in the night, and stifled its troublesome cry. After all our familiarity with the Catechism, we need yet to learn “what is thechiefend of man,” and what should be compelled to stand aside as a secondary thing. We need from all who fear the Lord, a long, loud testimony against the practice of heartlessly subordinating human bodies and souls to the accumulation of material wealth.
By the REV. W. JAY.
Who are they that principally occupy the pen of biographers, and allure the attention of readers? Travelers, painters, poets, scholars, writers, philosophers, statesmen, princes. All these have their respective and comparative claims, which we by no means wish to undervalue. But, my brethren, we are going to bring forward this evening a character often, indeed, like the original, “despised and rejected of men,” but superior to them all, and great where they are nothing,—great in the sight of the Lord,—great in the desolation of the universe, great in the annals of eternity: a Christian.
1. Let us consider thecommonness of the appellation. We may takethreeviews of the commonness of this name.
In one respectthe commonness is astonishing and should be convincing. We may say to an infidel, Pray how came this name to be so common as it now is? The founder (we now refer to his humanity; and the argument requires such a reference)—the founder was a poor man, a mechanic in a village. “Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air havenests; but the son of man hath not where to lay his head.” He had received no university education; he was trained up at the feet of no Gamaliel; the people therefore said, “How knoweth this man letters, never having learned?” It was said of him, not only that “the common people heard him gladly,” but that “many of the rulers believed on him.” The chief ministers in his new empire were a company of fishermen in the Lake of Galilee; and the kingdom itself was established on the overthrow of every worldly opinion and fashion. When we consider the nature of the doctrines they preached—the difficulties they had to overcome, in the profligacy of the multitude, in the subtlety of philosophers, in the covetousness of priests, in the opposition and edicts of magistrates and emperors,—and when we consider their natural resourcelessness in themselves, what can be more astonishing than that this name should be spread so rapidly from province to province, and from country to country, till before the termination of three centuries it had reached the boundaries of the unwieldy Roman empire. It has since far surpassed them, and is now advancing toward the ends of the earth. . . . “His name shall endure forever: his name shall be continued as long as the sun: and men shall be blessed in him: all nations shall call him blessed. Blessed be the Lord God, the God of Israel, who only doeth wondrous things. And blessed be his holy name for ever and ever, and let the whole earth be filled with his glory!” Amen and amen!
In another view,this commonness is reasonable:we wish it were more common; we wish it prevailed exclusively above every other; we wish no other ever obtained in the world; we wish that the Church could, evennow, fling off the world; and we hope that thiswillbe the case by and by, when the pristine glory of Christianity shall revive, and the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea; and we shall see eye to eye. They pay an idolatrous homage to any man who name themselves religiously after him; as Calvinists, after Calvin; Arminians, after Arminius; Baxterians, from Baxter. If Imusthave a human appellation, I will go back at once to the apostolic times; I will call myself a Johnite, after John, or a Paulite, after Paul. But, no; “who is Paul, and who is Apollos? was Paul crucified for you? or were you baptised in the name of Paul?” No; I will be called by no human name, not even if it be an inspired one: my name shall not be derived from the servant, but from the Master himself. I will remember his command: “Call no man Master, on earth; for one is your Master, even Christ, and all ye are brethren.”
In another view,the commonness of the name is lamentable. Let me explain: The wordChristianwas once very significant and distinguishing. But, alas! in numberless instances now, it is not distinguishable at all. Whom does it now comprehend? All the world, with the exception of pagans, Turks, Jews, and infidels: all others it takes in: it is now a kind of geographical distinction, rather than religious. France is aChristiancountry—Portugal is aChristiancountry—Spain is aChristiancountry—Italy is aChristiancountry—England is aChristiancountry; andthis, after all,isa Christian country, comparatively. But a Christian country is not a country of Christians; and, therefore, the term, even amongst us, includes numbers who are swearers, drunkards, and Sabbath-breakers, revilers, and multitudes who, though not distinguished by any grossness of life, yet are entirely opposite to the spirit and commands of Christianity in their principles and tendencies. Often, therefore, now it means nothing—yea, it isworsethan nothing—it is eveninjuriousby its indiscrimination. Men are easily deluded in their own opinions; they easily imagine that theyarewhat they arecalled;and havingthe name, they imagine that they havethe thing, especially when there is no one to dispute their title. Multitudes of these would be offended if you were to withhold from them the name of a Christian; and yet if you were to call themsaints, orthe sanctified, they would be still more surprised and mortified: and yetthe saintandthe Christianare the same person, according to the language of the New Testament; and the apostle assures us that “without holiness, no man shall see the Lord.”
Let us consider,
2.The real import of this title—a Christian.
A Christian isone who has a relation to Christ;not a professed, but arealrelation—not a nominal, but avitalrelation—yea, a very peculiar and pre-eminent relation, arising above every other you can mention; spiritual in its nature, and never-ending in its duration; and deriving the possession and continuance of every enjoyment from Christ.Beware of a Christianity without Christ:it is a stream without a fountain—a branch without a living root—a body without a soul. “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the godhead bodily. And ye are complete in him which is the head of all principality and power.”
A Christian isa lover of Christ’s doctrine. In all systems there are some common principles; but my receiving what iscommonin the system of a master does not entitle me to be named after him. My believing with a Socinian that there is a God, and that there will be a resurrection from the dead, does not render me a Socinian; but my believing what ispeculiarin his creed—that Christ was a mere man, that he was born in the ordinary way of generation, that he died only as a witness of the truth, and not as a sacrifice for sin. Deism hassomeprinciples in common with our Christianity: now my believing these will not constitute me a Christian, but my holding thosepeculiarto Christianity. These are to be found only in the Scriptures;therea Christian searches for them;therehe kneels before the oracle of divine truth;therehe takes up these principles, and says, these, however mysterious they may be to my reason, however humiliating they may be to the pride of my heart—these I take up on the authority of him who has revealed them. I sit with Mary at Jesus’ feet; I pray to be led by his spirit into all truth, and to be able to say with John, “We have an unction from the holy one, and we know all things.”
A Christian isa lover of Christ’s person. This attachment is deserved and demanded, by all that he has done and suffered for us. Paul describes the subjects of divine grace as those “who love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity:” and so far was he from supposing that a man can be a Christian without this love to Christ, that he says, “If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema maranatha.” Jesus himself was the essence of humility, and yet he had such a consciousness of his dignity, and of his claims to the supremacy of the human heart, that he made no scruple to say, “He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he that forsaketh not all that he hath and followeth me can not be my disciple.”
The Christian isa copier of Christ’s example. Without this in vain you contend for his truth, and talk of your regard to him. “He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked.” In all things, indeed, he has the preëminence. But Christians are said to be predestinatedto be conformed to his image, that he may be the first-born among many brethren. They are described now as “Beholding in a glass his glory,” and as being “Changed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the spirit of the Lord.” He indeed had the spiritwithoutmeasure; but the Christian possesses thesamespirit; for “If any man have not the spirit of Christ, he is none of his.” We must,therefore, if we are Christians, resemble him who went about doing good,—who said, “The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up,”—who pleased not himself,—who, “Though a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,” in the midst of the church sang praises to God. We are no further Christians than as we are like him, and have the same mind in us which was also in him.
A Christian isa dependent on Christ’s mediation. He rejoices in Christ Jesus, and has no confidence in the flesh. He says with the Church, “In the Lord have I righteousness and strength.”