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Resignation.

Let us be patient! These severe afflictions

Not from the ground arise,

But oftentimes celestial benedictions

Assume this dark disguise.

We see but dimly through the mists and vapours ;
Amid these earthly damps,

What seem to us but sad, funereal tapers,

May be Heaven's distant lamps.

There is no Death! What seems so is transition;

This life of mortal breath

Is but a suburb of the life Elysian,
Whose portal we call Death.

She is not dead,—the child of our affection,-
But gone unto that school

Where she no longer needs our poor protection,
And Christ Himself doth rule.

In that great cloister's stillness and seclusion,
By guardian angels led,

Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution,
She lives whom we call dead.

Day after day, we think what she is doing
In those bright realms of air:

Year after year, her tender steps pursuing,

Behold her grown more fair.

Thus do we walk with her, and keep unbroken

The bond which nature gives,

Thinking that our remembrance, though unspoken,
May reach her where she lives.

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Not as a child shall we again behold her;
For, when with raptures wild,

In our embraces we again enfold her,
She will not be a child;

But a fair maiden in her Father's mansion,
Clothed with celestial grace;

And beautiful with all the soul's expansion
Shall we behold her face.

And though at times impetuous with emotion
And anguish long suppress'd,

The swelling heart heaves moaning like the ocean
That cannot be at rest,-

We will be patient, and assuage the feeling

We may not wholly stay;

By silence sanctifying, not concealing,

The grief that must have way.

The Wilderness shall Blossom as the Rose.

DUET.

J. E. CARPENTER.-Music by Stephen Glover.

'HE wilderness shall be made glad

THE

And blossom like the rose;

The desert shall rejoice for them

Who on His word repose;

They who have own'd the mighty power

And excellence of Him,

Before whose face the stars are pale,

The sun itself is dim!

The Marriage Portion.

And they the beauty shall behold
Of Lebanon restored,

And with loud joy and singing praise
The glory of the Lord!

And the lame man shall leap as the hart,
The eyes of the blind be made clear,
And the dumb in the song shall take part,
The ears of the deaf made to hear;
And o'er the parch'd and thirsty earth
The living well shall pour,

And all things have a brighter birth
Henceforth and evermore ;
And the ransom'd of the Lord
He to Zion shall restore,
In joy to praise His holy word
With gladness evermore!

The Marriage Portion.

Num. vi. 24-26.

J. E. CARPENTER.—Music by M. T. Paradis.

LORD and Father of creation!

From Thy heavenly throne above,
Make Thy face to shine upon them,

Deign to bless their plighted love;
Through the world to bless and keep them,
Though the evil way be wide,
Give them strength as on they journey,
With Thy light their footsteps guide.

To the bride, beyond her beauty,
Give her still Thy grace to know;
To the bridegroom, for her portion,

On her heavenly gifts bestow.

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So their bridal gifts shall never
Fade, as earthly things decay,
But the bride and bridegroom ever
Walk together in Thy way.

Like Morning, when her Early Breeze.

L"

T. MOORE.-Air, Beethoven.

IKE morning, when her early breeze
Breaks up
the surface of the seas,

That in those furrows, dark with night,
Her hand may sow the seeds of light-

Thy grace can send its breathings o'er
The spirit, dark and lost before,
And freshening all its depths, prepare
For Truth divine to enter there.

Till David touch'd his sacred lyre,
In silence lay the unbreathing wire;
But when he swept its chords along,
Even angels stoop'd to hear that song.

So sleeps the soul, till Thou, O Lord,
Shalt deign to touch its lifeless chord-
Till, waked by Thee, its breath shall rise
In music worthy of the skies!

I

Magdalen's Hymn during the Plague.

The Dying Christian.

Phil. i. 23.

J. E. CARPENTER.—Air, German.

HAVE a desire to depart, obeying

The heavenly call that bids me fly to rest ;
Tired and weary, through the darkness straying,
Fain would I be with angels ever bless'd;
Worn is my pilgrim's staff,-my days expended;
The home I lived for distant cannot be ;
Why should I cling to earth? its ties are ended;
It is the grave that sets the Christian free.

What is the earth to me, with all its errors?

Long have I struggled with its empty show;
But to the sinful heart the grave has terrors,
Not to the righteous ones, prepared to go;
Farewell, ye friends whose tears so fast are falling,
Weep not that I so soon must take my flight;
Oh, may ye hear, like me, the angels calling,
And long to join them in the realms of light.

Magdalen's Hymn during the Plague.
JOHN WILSON.

HE air of death breathes through our souls,

TH

The dead all round us lie;

By day and night the death-bell tolls,

And says, "Prepare to die.”

The face that in the morning sun

We thought so wondrous fair, Hath faded, ere his course was run, Beneath its golden hair.

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