29

cult-the conquest more certain-and the prize Bearer attainment. And the prize of victory over the thoughts is far more valuable, and more lasting in its result, than that in the Olympic games."

There is no mystery, no transcendentalism in these views, or in the words that clothe them. They are truths that every one whom God has endowed with an immortal mind should lay up and act upon.

A very easy matter it is to forget the power within us, the mighty instrument for good or evil that works always, and though unseen is never unfelt. A man must master his own thoughts or they will master him. The wild imagination of the young, the reckless imagination of the vicious, the dark tide of passion that swells in the bosom of the malignant, lead their several victims on to pleasure, sin and ruin, while a steady helm in the morning of their career would have guided them safely to honor and peace.

Even in solitude, which some great men and some good men have thought favorable to the cultivation of virtue, the mind has sought out evil, and rioted in the indulgence of a depraved appetite, at the very hour when an external observer might have fancied that the soul was holding high and holy communion with spotless purity itself. The aspirations were after base and earthborn gratifications, while the eye and perhaps the lips were seeking for God, and the hallowed influences that gird the throne on which He reigns.

Hence, in the very spring-time of the affections, when the smile of beauty lures, and the blandishments of sin entice the feet astray, it is no small matter that the light-hearted youth is warned to set a guard over his soul; to put a chain and clog on his thoughts; to fasten his imagination upon those things that are lovely and pure and of good report, while he restrains his wanderings after the vanities that flatter to destroy.

In Pearl street, New York, a young clerk, the son of pious and doating parents in Connecticut, entering upon business with bright hopes and no fears, was accustomed to dwell in secret upon the indulgences of which he had heard as congenial to the tastes of youth, and, although, among his companions he found no difficulty in denouncing vice and commending virtue, so that he was looked upon as one above suspicion, yet in the secret of his own unrenewed heart, there was a constant longing after sin, a longing that at last gained the victory, drove him upon the

outer verge of a vortex that caught him in its mighty whirl, and swallowing him, body and soul, in its remorseless and returnless depths. Before his friends dreamed that he was in danger, his own heart had made a covenant with hell, and heaven had yielded hin, to his chosen doom.

He is not safe then who harbors a bad thought. Out of the heart comes death. Think of it, ye, who now drink iniquity like water; who love to be esteemed as models by the admiring world, and applauded for excellences that ye do not possess, think that in your own bosom may be a fountain of pollution whose streams would make the earth a desert. Purify that fountain and have the blessed consciousness of being what you seem to be, of being loved in heaven as well as here.

Great is the power of thought over one's-self, great when from his mind it escapes in the form of words. It goes with the image of its author to stamp the same image on the minds perhaps of millions of millions yet to live and yet to die. Somebody has spoken of thought moving around the earth unceasingly from mind to mind, wielding its circle daily, moving thousands and thousands whom its first projector never embraced within the sphere of his imaginings, until the whole race of civilized men are brought under its influence and impressed with its power. I would not ask that this shall be the actual result of a spoken word, in order to convince me that spoken words have power that no finite mind can estimate. Follow in the foul train of one of the obscene thoughts of the latest imported novel of the French school. See its effects in the snow-white breast of her whose hands tremble as her heart, never tainted with the thought before, now heaves with emotion as the thrilling passage comes beneath her languid eye! The poison is at work; sweet it was to the taste, and to be desired like the fruit that was first forbidden, but there is agony yet to come when the poison works, as it will, and the fair victim writhes under its power. Follow the same thought on and on from one heart to another, one family to another, one land to another, for oceans are no barriers, till millions of just such bosoms have been pierced, and the same virus has been planted, and the same windingsheet has been woven around the deathless spirit.

Thought, the image of its author! There is something in this worth looking at a moment. A bad man, like Bulwer or Sue, perpetuates himself by sending out his thoughts, the world over; they are like him, and those who adopt

them become like him; the image is in the soul, and the likeness speaks not to the outward eye, but is vivid to him who sees with him who sees within. And when the guilty author of these thoughts meets in the world of spirits those whom he has ruined by his licentious pen, may it not be one of the keenest tortures of that just doom that he meets his own image haunting him, like ghosts of murdered friends, whichever way he turns his eyes in that dungeon of despair? And if each lost spirit thus destroyed were armed with scorpions, and long eternity employed in scourging him who brought it there, justice would never suffer, though every stroke were laid in blood and fire. Nor would justice be reproached if those who aid in this work of ruin were doomed to bear a part of this fearful penalty.

These are the thoughts that have forced themselves on me from the stirring text which the book has given me. The application shall be short and to the point. I would go into every CHRISTIAN PARLOR, and there whisper in the ear of every youth whose eye now rests on these lines," Keep thy heart with all diligence." Think only of that which conscience commends. Commune only with those minds and those books whose soul is purity and whose lessons are truth. So shall the morning of thy life be sweet as May, and the noontide of thy career be bright as summer, and the future that awaits thee pure as the breezes that fan the hill of heaven. For out of thy heart are the issues of life.

I WOULD write of the first of May in the good city of Gotham. But pens, ink, paper,—where are they to be found? Joyous May-day!— crowns, garlands, wreaths, sparkling eyes and happy faces-whither have they been banished? All the fairy scenes of my youth-gone, gone. It is not enough that winter has held the earth in its grasp, till not a flower can be gathered from the fields to form a roseate crown. It is not enough that we are pent up amid bricks and mortar, and that no balmy air invites to the open plain; but home itself has no attractions. Home! Why the home of one-half of our population is in the streets-ourselves and our household goods turned out, rain or shine, to find some new shelter. Our home last night in one place in the midst of direst confusion of carpets rolled up-dirt and dust-dishes packed in tubs and baskets-beds where we can catch them-to-night to be in confusion still worse confounded; and worse than all, having exchanged our own dirt which we could endure because we knew how it came, for other people's dirt which we can no how abide. And we shall scold and berate the filthiness of the house we enter, while our successors, we are perfectly conscious, are declaring us the vilest housekeepers that ever lived under a metal roof. And

to comfort us for the annoyance of the last night, and to prepare us to enjoy the coming evening, we see nothing the live-long day but carts, drays, wagons, hand-carts and hand-barrows, bearing from place to place the motley collections of every species of furniture that is doomed to seek a new resting place for the next twelve months-mothers scolding-children crying-husbands fretting-draymen cursing crockery breaking-beds in the guttersdrawers tumbling from their places--caps and laces stolen by the winds and worn by them in mockery of our grief-everything exposed to everybody's gaze-and the very things which we would most carefully conceal from prying eyes placed by carmen in broadest light- our choice furniture tossed on at one door and rattled over the rough pavement to be tumbled off at another. Oh! oh! Where is the Mayday of the poets? One of the fairy nine would not venture to perch on our highest steeple for a month after a Gotham May-day.

But suppose the gude man has been so lucky as to take his house for another year-dreading the turmoil of a move, he has submitted to such exactions as his landlord may have made upon him. He goes from home looking complacently on the troubles of his neighbors, and his heart

dancing at the thought of all the misery he is escaping. He returns at night rejoicing at the thought of his household all in quiet, and feeling that he will rest more sweetly at the very thought of his neighbors' troubles. Alas, poor short-sighted man! He enters his dwelling— chairs are piled on chairs and tables on tablescarpets huddled into corners-dust darkening one room, and scrubbers drowning another, and white-washers besmearing a third-place of safety or chair to sit on there is none-wife ordering children running, and everything just where it never was before. In the bitterness of his heart he wishes himself a bachelor, and escapes into the back yard for breath. But here he finds his condition not at all bettered. He

thought he saw everything that he had ever seen before piled up in the house-but, in the yard it seems as if some evil demon had suddenly turned everything that had ever been in the house out of doors. Unlucky being! He finds neither quiet nor resting-place on earth, and in his despair turns his eyes up to the moon riding so quietly in the heavens and looking as bright and calm and peaceful as if May-day with her was past. He wishes-and wishes, and wishes again that somebody would lend him a ladder to climb up to the good-natured planet, there to take up his abode, if he could only get some substantial office to insure him against the pains and terrors, not of a broken neck, but of May-days and house-cleaning.

· ces Pa