of two youthful personages who have made the most distinguished figure in the Christian, and the literary world: Henry Martyn, the missionary, and Lord Byron, the poet.

3. Martyn was richly endowed with ardent feelings, keen susceptibilities, and superior intellect. He was the object of many affections, and in the principal University of Great Britain, won the highest honors, both in classic literature and mathematical science. He was flattered, caressed, and admired; the road to fame and honor lay open before him, and the brightest hopes of youth seemed ready to be realized.

4. But the hour came when he looked upon a lost and guilty world, in the light of eternity; when he realized the full meaning of the sacrifice of our incarnate God; when he assumed his obligations to become a fellow worker in recovering a guilty world from the dominion of sin, and all its future woes.

5. "The love of God constrained him; " and without a murmur, for wretched beings, on a distant shore, whom he never saw, of whom he knew nothing but that they were miserable and guilty, he relinquished the wreath of fame, forsook the path of worldly honor, severed the ties of kindred, and gave up friends, country, and home. With every nerve throbbing in anguish at the sacrifice, he went forth alone, to degraded heathen society, to solitude and privation, to weariness and painfulness, and to all the trials of missionary life.

6. He spent his days in teaching the guilty and degraded the way of pardon and peace. He lived to write the law of his God in the wide-spread character of the Persian nation, and to place a copy in the hands of its king. He lived to contend with the chief Moullahs of Mohammed in the mosques of Shiras, and to kindle a flame in Persia, more undying than its fabled fires.

7. He lived to endure rebuke and scorn, to toil and suffer in a +fervid clime, to drag his weary steps over burning sands, with the daily dying hope, that at last he might be laid to rest among his kindred, and on his native shore. Yet even this last earthly hope was not attained, for after spending all his youth in. ceaseless, labors for the good of others, at the early age of thirty-two, he was laid in an unknown and foreign grave.

8. He died alone, a stranger in a strange land, with no friendly form around to sympathize with and soothe him. Yet this was the last record of his dying hand: "I sat in the orchard, and thought with sweet comfort and peace of my God! in solitude, my company! my friend! my comforter!"

9. And in reviewing the record of his short, yet blessed life, even if we forget the exulting joy with which such a benevolent

if

upirit must welcome to heaven the thousands he toiled to save; we look only at his years of self-denying trial, where were accumulated all the sufferings he was ever to feel, we can find more evidence of true happiness, than is to be found in the records of the youthful poet, who was gifted with every susceptibility of happiness, who spent his days in search of selfish enjoyment, who had every source of earthly bliss laid open, and drank to the very dregs.

10. We shall find that a mind which obeys the law of God, is happier when bereft of the chief joys of this world, than a worldly man can be when possessed of them all. The remains of Lord

Byron present one of the most mournful exhibitions of a noble mind in all the wide chaos of ruin and disorder. He, also, was naturally endowed with overflowing affections, keen sensibilities, quick conceptions, and a sense of moral rectitude. He had all the fconstituents of a mind of first-rate order. But he passed through existence amid the wildest disorder of a ruined spirit.

11. His mind seemed utterly unbalanced, teeming with rich thoughts and overbearing impulses, the sport of the strangest fancies, and the strongest passions; bound. down by no habit, restrained by no principle; a singular combination of great conceptions and fantastic caprices, of manly dignity and childish folly, of noble feeling and babyish weakness.

12. The Lord of Newstead Abbey, the heir of a boasted line of ancestry, a peer of the realm, the pride of the social circle, the leading star of poesy, the hero of Greece, the wonder of the gaping world, can now be followed to his secret haunts. And there the veriest child of the nursery might be amused at some of his silly weaknesses and ridiculous conceits. Distressed about the cut of a collar, fuming at the color of his dress, intensely anxious about the whiteness of his hands, deeply engrossed with monkeys and dogs, he flew about from one whim to another, with a reckless earnestness as ludicrous as it is disgusting.

13. At times, this boasted hero and genius, seemed naught but an overgrown child, that had broken its leading strings and overmastered its nurses. At other times, he is beheld in all the rounds of dissipation and the haunts of vice, occasionally filling up his leisure in recording and disseminating the disgusting minutiae of his weakness and shame, and with an effrontery and stupidity equaled only by that of the friend who retails them to the insulted world.

+

14. Again we behold him philosophizing like a sage, and *moralizing like a Christian; while often from his bosom burst forth the repinings of a wounded spirit. He sometimes seemed to

gaze upon his own mind with wonder, to watch its disordered powers with curious inquiry, to touch its complaining strings, and start at the response; while often with maddening sweep he shook every chord, and sent forth its deep wailings to entrance a wondering world.

MISS BEECHER.

QUESTIONS.-What truths have we gained by reasoning from the known laws of the mind? What else furnishes us with evidence of the same truth, and what two characters are given as examples? What is said of Henry Martyn? Why did he give up all the honors and pleasures of life? Do you suppose he was happier in this life, than he would have been if he had lived for his own pleasure? Will he be happier in heaven, for the sacrifices he has made on earth? Which had the most of this world to enjoy, Martyn or Byron? What is said of Byron ?

LESSON LXXV.

ARTICULATE distinctly.-Dif-fer-ent, not dif-f'rent: con-so-la-tion, not con-s'la-tion: in-com-pre-hens-i-bly, not in-com-pr'en-si-bly: glo-rious, not glo-r'ous: mis-er-a-ble, not mis-r'a-ble: am-or-ous, not amr'ous: av-a-ri-cious, not av'ri-cious: pre-dom-i-nates, not pre-dom' nates: mem-o-ry, not mem'ry: com-pa-ny, not com-p'ny; fir-ma-ment, not firm'ment.

3. Prank'-ish, a. frolicsome.

4. Pre-dom'-in-ate, v. to have the most influence, to prevail.

Baf'-fled, p. defeated.

turning with the revolution of the year.

7. Com-pla'-cen-cy, n. pleasure, satis

faction.

[to come.

An-ni-vers'-a-ry, n. a stated day re- 8. Men'-ace, n. the threatening of evil

MARTYN AND BYRON.-(CONTINUED.)

1. BOTH Henry Martyn and Lord Byron shared the sorrows of life, and their records teach the different workings of the Christian and the worldly mind. Byron lost his mother, and when urged not to give way to sorrow, he burst into an agony of grief, saying, "I had but one friend in the world, and now she is gone!" On

the death of some of his early friends, he thus writes: "My friends fall around me, and I shall be left a lonely tree before I am withered. I have no + resource but my own reflections, and they present no prospect here or hereafter, except the selfish satisfaction of surviving my betters. I am indeed most wretched."

2. And thus Henry Martyn mourns the loss of one most dear: "Can it be that she has been lying so many months in the cold grave? Would that I could always remember it, or always forget it; but to think a moment on other things, and then feel the remembrance of it come, as if for the first time, rends my heart +asunder. O my gracious God, what should I do without Thee! But now thou art manifesting thyself as 'the God of all consolation.' Never was I so near thee. There is nothing in the world for which I could wish to live, except because it may please God to appoint me some work to do. O thou incomprehensibly glorious Savior, what hast thou done to alleviate the sorrows of life!"

3. It is recorded of Byron, that, in society, he generally appeared humorous and prankish; yet, when rallied on his melancholy turn of writing, his constant answer was, that though thus merry and full of laughter, he was, at heart, one of the most miserable wretches in existence.

4. And thus he writes: "Why, at the very hight of desire, and human pleasure, worldly, amorous, ambitious, or even avaricious, does there mingle a certain sense of doubt and sorrow, a fear of what is to come, a doubt of what is? If it were not for hope, what would the future be? A hell! As for the past, what predominates in memory? Hopes baffled! From whatever place we commence, we know where it must all end. And yet what good is there in knowing it? It does not make men wiser or better. If I were to live over again, I do not know what I would change in my life, unless it were for not to have lived at all. All history and + experience teach us, that good and evil are pretty equally balanced in this existence, and that what is most to be desired, is an easy passage out of it. What can it give us but years, and these have little of good but their ending.",

5. And thus Martyn writes: "I am happier here in this remote land, where I seldom hear what happens in the world, than I was in England, where there are so many calls to look at things that are seen. The precious Word is now my only study, by means of translations. Time flows on with great rapidity. It seems as if life would all be gone before any thing is done. I sometimes rejoice that I am but twenty-seven, and that, unless God should ordain it otherwise, I may double this number in constant and + successful labor. But I shall not cease from my happiness, and scarcely from my labor, by passing into the other world." !

6. And thus they make their records at anniversaries, wken the mind is called to review life and its labors. Thus Byron writes: "At twelve o'clock I shall have completed thirty-three years! I go to my bed with a heaviness of heart at having lived so long and to so little purpose. * It is now three minutes

past twelve, and I am thirty-three!

*

'Alas, my friend, the years pass swiftly by.'

But I do not regret them so much for what I have done, as for what I might have done."

+

7. And thus Martyn: "I like to find myself employed usefully, in a way I did not expect or foresee. The coming year is to be a perilous one, but my life is of little consequence, whether I finish the Persian New Testament or not. I look back with pity on myself, when I attached so much importance to my life and labors. The more I see of my own works, the more I am ashamed of them, for coarseness and clumsiness mar all the works of man. I am sick when I look at the wisdom of man, but am relieved by reflecting, that we have a city whose builder and maker is God. The least of his works is refreshing. A dried leaf, or a straw, makes me feel in good company, and complacency and admiration take the place of disgust. What a momentary + duration is the life of man! It glides along, rolling onward forever,' may be affirmed of the river; but men pass away as soon as they begin to exist. Well, let the moments pass!

They waft us sooner o'er

This life's tempestuous sea,

Soon we shall reach the blissful shore

Of blest eternity!'"

8. Such was the experience of those who in youth completed their course. The poet has well described his own +

career:

9. In holy writ we read of those who are "raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever." The lips of man may not apply these terrific words to any whose doom is yet to