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fall! Alas! what has he lost; and what has he found? What has gone, and what has remained? He has lost beatitude, for which he was made! He has found misery, for which he was not made! That without which he is unhappy, is gone; and that by himself he cannot be but miserable, remains! Before, man ate the bread of angels, which now he hungers for! Now, he eats the bread of sorrow, which, before, he knew not! Alas! the common sorrow of men; the universal groan of the sons of Adam! He revelled in abundance; we sigh in hunger! He abounded; we beg! He happily held and miserably abandoned; we, unhappily, want, pitiably abandon, and, alas, remain empty. Why did he not, since easily he might, keep for us what we so severely need? Wherefore did he conjure light from us, and envelop us in darkness? Why did he take from us life, and inflict upon us death? Whence are we wretchedly expelled, and whither driven? From what are we pushed headlong; and to what consigned? From our fatherland into exile! From the vision of God to our own blindness! From the joy of immortality into the bitterness and horror of death. Miserable change, from so great good to so great evil! Heavy curse, heavy grief, heavy every thing! But, alas, wretched one that I am, among other sons of Eve, far removed from God, what have I attempted? What have I effected? Whither was I reaching? To what have I arrived? After what was I aspiring; and for what do I sigh? I sought good, and, behold, trouble! I reached out toward God, and stumbled on myself! I sought rest in my solitude, and found grief in my closest retirement! I wished to exile laugh from the joy of my mind, and am compelled to cry from the groaning of my heart! Joy was hoped for, and, lo, from whatever quarter, sighs block up the way. And O, Thou, Lord, how long? How long, O Lord, wilt Thou not be mindful of us? How long wilt Thou turn Thy face from us? When wilt Thou look upon us and hear us? When wilt Thou enlighten our eyes and show us Thy face? Restore Thyself to us, that it may be well with us, who are so miserable without Thee! Have compassion upon us, whose labors and endeavors towards Thee are of no worth without Thee! Draw us, and aid us, I beseech Thee, O Lord, lest I despair in sighing for Thee! But I take breath again in hope. I beseech Thee, O Lord, for my heart is bitter in its desolation, sweeten Thou it with Thy consolation! I beseech Thee, O Lord, (for hungering I have attempted to seek Thee,) that fasting I may not depart from Thee! Famished, I have come to Thee, that I may not go away unfed! Poor, I have approached the rich; miserable, I have come to the merciful, that I may not return empty and despised: and, if I sigh before eating, grant that after sighing I may eat. O Lord, cast down, I cannot but look downward! Raise me up, that I may strive towards heaven. My iniquities have risen above my head; they overwhelm me; and, with heavy weight, they burden me. Roll them off, and free. me from my load; lest the pit close its mouth upon me; I look up to Thy light either from afar or from the deeps. Teach me to seek Thee, and show Thyself to me, seeking; for I cannot seek Thee unless Thou teachest, nor can I find Thee, unless Thou showest Thyself! In desiring I must seek Thee, and in seeking I must desire Thee! In loving I can find Thee, and in finding I can love Thee! I confess, O Lord, and give Thee thanks, that Thou has created in me this, Thy image, that I am mindful of Thee, and can think of Thee and love Thee; but it has been

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so destroyed by the opposition of vices, and so dimmed by the mists of sins, that it cannot do that for which it was made, unless Thou dost renew it and reform it. I do not strive, O Lord, to penetrate Thy height, for in no way can my understanding reach unto it; but I desire to know somewhat of Thy truth, which my heart believes and loves; neither, indeed, do I seek to understand that I may believe, but, I believe that I may understand; for this I believe, that unless I shall have believed, I cannot understand."

THE MARRIAGE RELATION.

In a true marriage, there must exist a chaste complacency in each other, originating in the choice which brings together the wedded pair. Forced or constrained marriages seldom or never confer domestic enjoyment. This is one reason to explain how it comes to pass, that among heathen people matrimony is, in general, first a farce and then a tragedy. Among them wives are bought and sold. And the parties in interest commonly have nothing to do in making the bargain. Among the Zulus, in Africa, a young ox is considered a fair price for a wife, who is very likely to be treated not so well as the ox. In China, the young people never see each other until the contracts have been signed. In India, among the Hindoos, the custom among parents is to betroth their children when but seven years of age. At the proper time, the young man goes laden with gifts to the house of his father-in-law, and exchanges his gifts, whatever they may be, for his bride.

What are styled among us marriages of convenience or of interest, are but civilized forms of actual barbarism. The annual auction of females at Saratoga, and other kindred places of convocation, is not a great remove from the practices of China or Japan. There are also marriages of despair, when the heart has loved, and has been defrauded of its love, when the victim of falsehood is compelled to drink the bitter draught which treachery has prepared. That is indeed a living sacrifice. The wreath may be around the head, but the fire burns into the soul, and eats without consuming. Unless, then, the choice of mutual complacency precedes the holy vow and the immutable pledge, marriage is but a vulgar provision for a settlement, or a reckless venture, in which the consequences of rashness are almost always fatal.

It is of the essence of a true marriage that there should be a mutual guardianship and deferential care exercised over each other by the wedded pair, and this not merely for food and raiment and physical comfort. The soul cannot be fed or warmed by these, nor raised to its high dignity. Marriage is a school wherein husband and wife are reciprocally teacher and pupil. In every moral and intellectual and Christian sense, they are required to be mutual helpers of each other's joy, and promoters of each other's highest welfare. Each has gifts to impart which the other has not. Woman's nice and quick perceptions, her aptitude for patient trust, her delicate appreciation of what is pure and lovely, if supplemented by a reli

gious feeling, will render her a living conscience, a tender monitor, and the truest of earthly friends. Withdrawn, as she is, in a measure from the rugged and rough world, where avarice and pleasure and ambition rule, she judges of life and conduct as surveyed through the tranquil and hallowed light of the affections. But in turn, she needs the sympathy of courage, and of a bravery of purpose and pursuit which her more fragile nature may not possess. The rose will shed its fragrance and display its beauty in the soft sunlight, but when the storm comes, and tempests of trial sweep by, it clings to the supporting trellis. So, in the rugged and storm-beaten paths of life, woman looks for support to the resolute will and lofty courage of her husband.

In marriage, woman risks most; nay, she risks all. The nuptial hour is a parting from her home, her parents, her brothers, her friends. She gives up all for one. She ventures out alone with him into the pathway of love and duty. If that one be true, manly, faithful, she feels a recompense for her loss; but if he be false, cowardly, and treacherous, she can only pine in secret, and lament the hour when first she listened to the heartless words with which he deceived her young and trusting heart.

Habitual respect for each other, as moral and accountable to God's laws, are essential to a true marriage. No one should ever enter into the relation under the advice of mere sentiment alone. Reason, conscience, understanding, will, should all have something to say, as well as the affections, which at the best are blind. Marriage is too sacred, it involves too much of obligation, it pledges too much either of good or evil, to be undertaken without thought, and even most serious questioning as to motive.

Unhappy marriages are many. They desolate society. They corrupt public morals. They disgrace religion. But they might have been avoided in most instances, if not in all, had the parties to them paused and contemplated each other's fitness; had they made even a decent effort to look deeper than the mere surface of transient desire.

They who purpose to enter, or who have already entered into the matrimonial estate, ought to recognise, first of all, the moral attitude in which they are placed toward each other. What expectations can be formed of the happiness of that pair who have never even so much as reflected upon the possible influence which they will exert over each other's moral condition and religious welfare? If the thought of accountability to God, as well as accountability to each other, does not enter into their conception of nuptial duties, it will be strange if they are not soon numbered with those godless families whom the Lord hath cursed with a curse. Instances are not rare, in which marriage becomes an almost instant apostacy from all previous Christian training. The husband is beguiled by a vain, giddy, irreligious wife, perhaps into paths of bewildering pleasure, and led, step by step, from all former habits of serious thinking and of sober living, into the dark and damp of a sensual life. Or, what is more common, an unprincipled husband artfully and steadily persists in attempts to undermine the Christian principles of his bride. He laughs at her scruples, derides her prudish notions, caricatures religion, and very likely makes her believe, at length, that a theatre is better than a church, a lively dance preferable to a prayer-meeting, and the artificial gayeties of the fashionable world more to be desired than personal virtue or domestic tranquillity. It is in this way that marriage often becomes an actual damnation to those who thus

recklessly play the part of destroyers to each other. They sow to the wind, and when the whirlwind comes, in their stupid folly, they wonder what can be its cause. But no man or woman can trifle with God's laws or their own moral being, without sooner or later discovering their shocking mistake.

Brightest among all the bright scenes which sin has spared to our world, is that home where husband and wife, by sweet consent and ever-increasing love, nurse the flame of piety in each other's hearts by examples of reciprocal faith and in the one great hope. When religion sits like an angelic presence by the fire-side; when content is nursed in the lap of simple trust; when the world is conquered by the love that bears all and endures all; when the board is sanctified by gratitude, and the raiment is desired with modesty; when all home duties are cheerfully performed, and the everlasting home is kept ever in view-then it is that marriage rises to a sublime type of the union that exists between Christ and his own body, which is his Church.

Let the Christian wife, if she be joined to an unbelieving husband, never give over her importunities until she is able to espouse her partner in the common faith and hope of the gospel. And if the Christian husband has an unbelieving wife, let him strive to allure her to brighter worlds, and lead the way. Among all the many poems of Burns, upon which admiration has piled the language of eulogy, there is none of fairer fame than his "Cotter's Saturday Night." The last stanza of that poem affords a glimpse of the domestic felicity which reigned within his lovely home. Around the father sat the household, when the toils of the day were done and the frugal meal had been eaten. Open before him was the blessed book, from which he reverently read:

"Then kneeling down, to Heaven's Eternal King,
The saint, the father, and the husband prays;
'Hope springs exulting on triumphant wing,'.
That thus they all shall meet in future days;
There ever bask in uncreated rays,

No more to sigh or shed the bitter tear,

Together hymning their Creator's praise;"

In such society yet still more dear,

While circling time moves round in an eternal sphere."

What sacred joys! what blessed hopes! what exquisite delights! what animating pleasures fill the home where husband and wife walk together in religious faith. There woman is crowned with something of angelic purity and nobleness, and there man walks a priest ordained by the imposition of the Divine hand. Upon the family thus illumined and hallowed by light from heaven, there still rests something of that original splendor which fell upon Adam and Eve when they walked together in the paradise of purity and innocence, holding converse with their Maker.

But the marriage union must end. They whose souls have been knit into one in hours of vernal fragrance and in days of autumnal desolation, must part. No matter how long they may have journeyed together, there will come a time when death will claim his own. How blessed is it to feel and know that they who have walked together in the commandments of the Lord here, will meet together again in the bright mansions above, where sin cannot enter to mar their happiness, nor death sever the bond of union.-Christian Intelligencer.

THE HAIR.

"One of New York's fashionable daughters wore, at a soiree, the other day, one hundred and fifty dollars worth of gold-dust on her hair."

The above from one of our city journals, reminds us that we have seen it stated that Absalom powdered his hair with gold, which must have rendered his hair-dresser's bill, at the end of the year, (if they gave credit in those days,) a very expensive one; for Godwin, in his Moses and Aaron, says, that as Absalom's hair weighed two hundred shekels, after the king's weight, (2 Samuel, 14: 26,) i. e. the standard; the weight was consequently four pounds and two ounces; and yet Absalom polled it every year. In these days, such an annual crop would be more valuable than an acre of land; the finest hair now selling at thirty dollars an ounce.

Not only Absalom, but some of the Roman emperors powdered their hair with gold-dust, as Gallienus, Commodus, Nero, &c. The Israelites, it appears, wore their hair very long. Josephus says, that Solomon's life-guards had their hair floating down the shoulders, and that they every day powdered their hair with gold spangles, which glittered exceedingly in the sun. On the contrary, as we all know, long hair was forbidden among the Christians in the olden times.

Ausden, archbishop of Canterbury, ventured so far as to pronounce the then terrible sentence of excommunication against all who wore long hair. Serlo, a Norman bishop, acquired great honor, by a sermon which he preached before Henry I., in 1104, against long and curled hair, with which the king and all his courtiers were so much affected, that they consented to resign their flowing ringlets, of which they had been so vain. The prudent prelate gave them no time to change their minds; for, distrusting this their sudden compunction, he instantly pulled a pair of shears out of his pocket, and performed the operation with his own hand.

According to Lavater, the hair has a great deal to do with character. "You must," he says, "take care to distinguish the length of the hair, its quantity, quality, and color! It indicates a man's manner of feeling! and his mental faculties! It admits not of the least dissimulation! Long hair indicates weakness; a noble head of hair is of a golden yellow, with a soft gloss, &c. Lank black hair denotes poverty of intellect; but when thick and strong, assiduity and love of order. Hair black and thin, or a half bald-head, a sound clear judgment, but excluding invention and the sallies of wit." Lavater addresses Algernon Sydney thus: "With no other inducement than my hair, I should salute thee as an honest man, a zealous patriot, though, perhaps, over violent."

Serres, in his History of France, says, Queen Clotilda preferred having the heads of her young sons cut off, rather than that their hair should be cropped, which is wonderful, for the hair grows again, but the head never will.

In olden times, it was held as a mark of great politeness to pluck a hair

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