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1858.]

A Merchant Turned Farmer.

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A MERCHANT TURNED FARMER.

A successful merchant, after ten years' business, retired to a farm, to the astonishment of his friends, who knew, at the moment of his breaking away from his mercantile profession, that he was in the midst of prosperity. On requesting his reasons for so singular a move, he replied. that the cares, anxieties, and risks of a mercantile business are destructive of comfort, security, tranquiltiy, and also of health; that the cultivation of fruit and field crops is much more favorable to health and comfort, both of body and of mind; that business pursuits tend to concentrate the whole energies of the mind in one direction, thus producing mental and moral deformity and disease; and that the impossibility of bringing up children in a city, without running all the risks of the contaminating and corrupt influences of silly, foolish, fashionable and vicious company and customs, is sufficient to counterbalance all the educational advantages which some claim for the city over the country; and, in a letter to one of his old city friends, writes as follows: "You seem to think that the society of farmers and rural residents must be exceedingly dull and stupid. I can assure you it is not so. My neighbors in the country may not be so quick and ready in conversation as my old friends in the city, and their attention may not have been directed to so great a diversity of subjects, but their knowledge is less superficial, and their judgment far more sound and reliable. But even if intellectually inferior, which I do not admit, they are certainly morally superior. Take a hundred individuals without any picking, from my new neighbors, and a like number from the old, and there will be found more among the former and the latter who deserve and might command your moral respect and approbation-more who are honest, sincere, reliable, and of good moral habits and worth of character. For my own part, I take more pleasure in the society of the good than in that of the roguish and unprincipled, be the latter ever so smart. Then, again, I can be more with my family than when keeping store, and can more easily keep my children from the contamination of evil companions. But the crowning recommendation of my farming pursuits is this, I feel that I am working together with God in providing for the primary wants of his human family."

TEARS AND BLUSHES.-The poet Goethe, being once in the company of a mother who had occasion to reprove her young daughter, just budding into womanhood, when he saw the young girl blush and burst into tears, said: "How beautiful your reproof has made your daughter. The crimson hue and those silver tears become her better than any ornaments of gold or pearls. These may be hung on the neck of a wanton; but those are never seen disconnected with moral purity. A full blown rose, besprinkled with the purest dew, is not so beautiful as this child blushing beneath her parent's displeasure, and shedding tears of sorrow for her fault. A blush is the sign which nature hangs out to show where chastity and honor dwells.

BOOK NOTICES.

JANE EATON; OR, THE SUNDAY SCHOOL. A poem in four Books. By A Superintendent. Philadelphia: Joseph M. Wilson, 1858. pp. 84.

Though this poem is published modestly anonymous, yet we happen to have been in a position to peep behind the curtain, and know a thing or two" about its author. He deserves to be exposed; but as he has given us such a chaste and truly christian poem, and thus lets his light shine, we agree that his name shall be unknown. This we say, however, he has no reason to be ashamed of his production. The poem describes the introduction of the Sunday School into a neglected region, and the happy effects wrought out by its merciful help in this spot by other means unblest." The poem is well sustained throughout. The author speaks not only from the mind but from the heart. His has felt what he sings. We know that his own youth was blest by the Sunday School; and this poem is a worthy offering of gratitude to this institution. The Book is beautifully gotten up on solid white paper and printed on large clear type. We must earnestly recommend it to our readers, who have any taste for a truly christian and beautiful poem on this interesting subject. Call at 111 South Tenth-st., and procure a copyand be sure, when you have read it, to present it to some Sunday School.

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. With an Outline Treatise on Logic. By Rev. E. V. Gerhart, D. D., President of Franklin & Marshall College. Philadelphia: Lindsay & Blakiston. 1858. pp. 357. This book is designed more immediately to be used as a Text Book in High Schools and Colleges, for which also it is well adapted in size, style, arrangment and substance. It will, however, be found interesting to the general reader. We say interesting, because notwithstanding the rigid thought according to which the discussion proceeds, the reader is drawn along from section to section, and from subject to subject, by a clear style and a natural arrangment-or rather development-of the matter in hand. It is properly called "an introduction to the study of Philosophy," and we are sure that he who carefully reads this book before he enters upon the wide field of philosophical study will fare the better from such an introduction. The book takes it for granted that as christianity is "the salt of the earth" in a general way, so it is also the salt of philosophy in particular-a fact which it is very strange philosophers find it so hard to discover! The majority of philosophers remind us of a certain class of novelists whose heroes and heroines never eat breakfast or dinner, but always "take tea," the other meals being vulgar, are never mentioned! Philosophy seems afraid of Jesus Christ, and studiedly avoids mentioning Him, we suppose because it would not be philosophic so to do! Dr. Gerhart, we are glad to see begins at the very point which others seem to avoid. Rightly he makes God, in Christ, the key to God himself, to man, and the world. Never, especially, have we seen the gates by which many earnest philosophic thinkers pass into pantheism or materialism so excellently well shut up. We acknowledge ourselves deeply indebted to Dr. Gerhart for this book. It is gotten up in the usual fine style of Lindsay & Blakiston's publications.

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How great is this prayer! Its author was accounted unworthy of life, despised by Jews and Romans, and sent out of the world shamefully between two thieves. Yet this simple and sublime prayer has outlived the glory of Judaism, and the proud power of imperial Rome. The Cæsars and their edicts, which the world then heard with trembling reverence from the Euphrates to Gaul, and in fear of which the christians only uttered this prayer in caves and catacombs, are buried in the past; their temples are in ruins, and the oracles of their divinities are silent forever, whilst this prayer lives in ever-increasing honor and power, and millions meekly bow down to utter it. The Jews are dispersed into all nations as a by-word and an astonishment-strangers in all lands; but wherever they go and stay as strangers they find this prayer at home, the joy of hearts and families.

It has been repeated for eighteen centuries by kings and queens, by lords and nobles, by beggars and slaves, by young men and maidens, old men and children, by the learned and ignorant. It is prayed in cathedrals and chapels, in colleges and cottages, at altars and at the mother's knee, by the joyful saint and by the weeping penitent, by the child going to bed and by the culprit going to the gallows, by the martyr in the flames and the dying christian on his peaceful couch. It is prayed by land and by sea, in the Old World and the New-and not with the least devotion by the pilgrim as he walks among the broken columns and dilapidated arches of mighty Rome and polished Greece, or stands in holy silence on the very spot where its divine author "hung bleeding, three dreadful hours in pain."

With reverence and humility would we attempt a brief analysis of this sublime prayer. It stands before us as a tree of life on which millions have fed. We cannot exhaust its riches of blessed fruit; we may, however, invoke the spirit, like a friendly wind, to shake its branches and gratefully nourish our souls by what falls for us.

We wish, in this article, only to view the Prayer as a whole-examine its organism, and look at its outward position and history.

The Lord's Prayer occurs twice in the Gospels. In Math. 6: 8–13, as against the "vain repetitions" of heathen prayers; and in Luke 11: 2-4, in answer to one of His disciples, who, after our Saviour had prayed, asked Him to teach them to pray as John had also taught his disciples.

No one could be so able as He to give either the spirit, the matter, or the form of a true and perfect prayer. He came forth from the bosom of the Father. Hence He could give, as He has done in this prayer, the key to the Father's heart. As the Father was in the Son, so He hears in this prayer the echo of his own words-the return to Him of His own spirit and will. "That the Son taught it," says Tertullian, "commends it to the Father."

This prayer is wonderfully comprehensive. It is a spiritual microcosm -a world of devotion; as Jeremy Taylor says, "Like the treasures of the spirit, full of wisdom and latent senses." It sums up all the wants of man, and asks for all the gifts of God. It is a perennial, exhaustless fountain of doctrine and devotion, precept and piety. Like a tree which God has planted and blessed, though its branches are not many, yet its blossoms send fragrance like incense throughout all the church, its leaves fall as healing over the nations, and its food is as manna in every age and on every shore. It is to be valued like a gem, not according to its size, but according to its inward and inherent worth. It resembles a many-sided diamond which, in what way soever you turn it, gives forth. an ever new glory of light. It contains every kind of prayer. The holy apostle Paul mentions four: prayer, supplication, intercession, and giving of thanks. 1 Tim. 2: 1. Prayer is asking for good: "Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done. Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our debts." Supplication is asking God to ward off evils: "Lead us not into temptation. Deliver us from evil." Intercession is asking in behalf of others. This lies in the word "us," by which others are included. Thanksgiving is grateful praise to God for mercies promised and received. This is the spirit of doxology: "Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever."

It calls into exercise every grace and fruit of the spirit. In the words, "Our Father," there is faith, hope, love, and joy. In “Hallowed be thy name," there is purity and goodness. In "Thy kingdom come," there is zeal. In "Thy will be done," there is patience, meekness, and peace. In the prayer for bread, "day by day," there is temperance. In "our" and "us" there is brotherly kindness and charity. It is wonderfully adapted to all periods of life, to all circumstances of a christian, and to all degrees of piety, knowledge and experience. As Gregory the Great said of the Scriptures as a whole, so we may say of this prayer in particular, it is like a stream so deep that an elephant can swim in it, and at the same time so shallow that a lamb can safely wade in it. It is simple enough for a child, and profound enough for a philosopher.

It is only by close and careful study into its structure that we are led to see its admirable organism. Its first and most prominent divisions are three: The address or invocation; seven petitions, and the doxology. The petitions are again divided into two parts. The first three per

1858.]

The Lord's Prayer.

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tain directly to the glory of God. The last four pertain to the wants of man. In this particular the division is similar to that of the ten commandments, in which there are also two tables; the first four pertaining to our duty to God; and the last six to our duty to our fellow men. As He leaves for us in the decalogue the largest number of commandments, so here He gives us the largest number of petitions.

The first three bring God down to us; the last four raise us up to God. The first three remind us of all the riches of God; the last three of all the poverty of man.

There is an order to be observed in the first three-the second growing out of the first, and the third out of both the preceding. The glory of the Father's name is the beginning of all our worship. His name can only be hallowed by the revelation of His son, and the coming of His Kingdom. This kingdom can only come by the Holy Ghost, by whose effectual working His will is done among men. Here is the Trinity indicated, each person in His order and work. "God the Father," says Gerlach, "first reveals himself as a hidden, holy being: this hidden God goes forth from Himself and takes form in the kingdom of His son; and in this kingdom He dwells and acts by the Holy Ghost making all wills as His own will."

"On earth peace"-let the Son's kingdom come.

"Good

It has been well said that in these three petitons there is a marked resemblance to the angels' song by which our Saviour's advent was proclaimed. "Glory to God in the highest"-let the Father's name be hallowed. will to men"-let the spirit's work be fulfilled in the hearts of men. The second division of the petitions, containing four in number, are again divided into two parts. The first one has reference to our temporal need; the other three to our spiritual need.

That there is only one for the body and earth, and three for the soul and heaven has its design and lesson, as pointing out to us which is least and which greatest.

The location of the petition for earthly good, after the three which ask for the hallowing of His name, the coming of His kingdom, and the doing of His will, is significant. It rests on the divine word: seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you. It must also be noticed that this petition for bread stands in the middle between the three that pray for God's glory and the three that refer to man's spiritual wants. It does not sunder, but it binds the two parts together. Our Saviour Himself assumed the earthly, human, material, that through it He might bring the divine and heavenly into contact and communion with our spiritual need. As the creation of the kingdom of nature precedes the founding of the kingdom of grace, so the life of nature is in order unto the life of grace. The kingdom of grace does not ignore nature-for it saves the body as well as the spirit-but it uses the bodily and earthly as the basis and organ for the spiritual and heavenly. This petition for the temporal bodily life properly follows the first three, which pertain to God's glory, since it is for the promotion of that glory for the hallowing of His name, for the coming of His kingdom, for the doing of His will-that our bodily life is blessed and sustained. It properly precedes the last three petitions pertaining to our salvation because natural life is the initiation to the higher spiritual life.

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