1 V. Blessed is the man that heareth me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors.

2 V. For whoso findeth me, findeth life, and shall obtain favor of the Lord.

1 V. Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is.

2 V. For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh.

1 V. Blessed is that servant, whom his lord, when he cometh, shall find so doing.

2 V. Verily I say unto you, that he shall make him ruler over all his goods.

1 V. Blessed is the man that endureth temptation;

2 V. for, when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love Him.

1 V. Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from

henceforth:

2 V. Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors, and their works do follow them.

1 V. Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first res

urrection:

2 V. on such the second death hath no power.

1 V. Blessed are they that do His commandments; 2 V. that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.

1 V. Blessed be the Lord God of Israel from everlasting to everlasting.

2 V. AMEN, and AMEN!

LESSON XCII

1 KEPLER, see note, page 157.

2 BRAHE, TYCHO, a distinguished astronomer, was born Dec. 14, 1546; and died Oct. 24, 1601. The celebrated Observatory of Oranienberg, or the city of the heavens, was founded in 1576, and supplied with instruments. Within its walls, Tycho Brahe carried on those observations with which his name is inseparably connected. NEWTON, see note, page 94.

* POPE, ALEXANDER, a celebrated English poet, was born in London, 1688; and died 1744. He was deformed, and small in stature. The

principal of his poetical writings are entitled "Essay on Criticism," Essay on Man," "Moral Essays." He also translated the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer.

• ARCTURUS, a fixed star of the first magnitude in the constellation Boötes.

• NEPTUNE, a large planet beyond Uranus, discovered by Galle of Berlin, Sept. 23, 1846. Its mean distance from the sun is 2,850,000,000 miles, and its period of revolution is about 164 years.

TELL

THE PRIDE OF IGNORANCE.

S. W. TAYLOR.

me not of the pride of scientific men! We have, it is true, some few cases of the pride of learning, but a multitude of the pride of ignorance. The grossly ignorant man, imagining himself placed at the very center of the earth's fancied plane, and exactly beneath the highest point in heaven's arch, with arms akimbo, struts forth, as the principal occupant of the material universe. This is manifest to common observation. Something like this is also seen among the different classes in the same school, and in communities, among individuals of different grades of civilization.

2. An accurate knowledge of men and things, naturally represses pride and promotes humility. The diligent student of Nature, as he gains a deeper and deeper knowledge

of the great book of God's wisdom, goodness, and power, necessarily sees all finite glory dwindling and fading; he must see himself, too, depreciating in comparison with the extent and grandeur of the objects which successively occupy his vast and illuminated field of view. It is evident, that the more we learn of what other men have accomplished in pursuits and circumstances like our own, and the more clearly we discover how much we depend on others for what we possess and accomplish, the more effectually will our humility be cultivated.

3. The philosopher is in circumstances peculiarly favorable to make him feel and acknowledge his heavy indebtedness to his predecessors and contemporaries. He can not fail of being convinced, that, were any generation of men entirely destitute of transmitted knowledge, they could hardly, within the ordinary limits of human life, find time to clothe themselves, and erect permanent dwellings. They must commence life as savages, and, at death, have nothing better than blankets and wigwams to bequeath to their savage successors.

4. Had not Kepler1 inherited the avails of Tycho Brahe's labors in descriptive astronomy, it is certain he could never have been distinguished in physical astronomy, as the legislator of the skies. Without a legacy from his ancestors, even Newton3 must have been comparatively poor; and the scientific wealth amassed and transmitted by Newton and others, has been the making of their heirs, now the illustrious philosophers of Europe and America.

5. But if you chance to meet with a stubborn case of pride in a philosopher, do not hastily dismiss the case as incurable. He can be cured of any extraordinary degree of pride, if he has a breath of the spirit of true philosophy. But do nothing, I beseech you, to lessen his amount of sci

ence; rather follow the good old specific of Pope:1 Give him to drink more deeply. Direct his attention to the treasures of science already amassed.

6. Show him the schools, the laboratories, and observatories of Europe and the United States of America; show him their libraries, whose shelves are bending beneath ponderous tomes, the faithful records of literary and philosophical research; show him the rich gifts of science to agriculture, commerce, and the whole sisterhood of the arts of peace; show him not only what has been accomplished, but show him every enlightened part of the earth, at this moment busy as a bee-hive in all the departments of philosophy.

7. Then conduct him into those extensive fields of sober enterprise which sound philosophy has projected, and you give him the position which Newton held when under the conviction that all which philosophy has done, in comparison with what it is destined to accomplish in ages to come, amounts to nothing more than the examination of a few pebbles and pearls thrown upon the shore of a broad ocean, from the undiminished treasures of its immense bed.

8. If our patient is not yet recovered, immerse him in the great deep of space. Show him something of the extent of Jehovah's works. Bid him look at himself, and then at the earth, whose extended radius spreads the carth's surface into an apparent plain. Next, equip him with the quick wings of light, putting him upon a rate of traveling equivalent to twenty-four diameters of the carth in a single second. Within eight minutes he finds himself alighting upon the sun, compared with which, instead of the earth as a standard of bulk, he has the mortification to perceive that his body has shrunk from the dimensions of three cubic feet to the one two-hundredth part of a cubic. inch,―physically, a contemptible insect!

9. Here let him stop long enough to ask the question, which millions of years will not answer, "What wonders, what treasures, are contained in that deep ocean of light?” Thence let him, with undiminished velocity, speed his way to Sirius,* whose matchless orb, at the end, perhaps, of a three-years' flight, he beholds under his feet, exerting upon a splendid retinue of planets, in the powers of light, heat, and gravitation, the energy of fourteen suns, such as the one in whose light we are rejoicing.

10. If still there is any thing of our philosopher's pride or of himself remaining, let him range himself within the sublime circumference of the galaxy; let him, with the most powerful telescope in use, spy out some faint nebula most delicately fringing the absurdly imagined borders of infinity, and not unlike the subtle vapor which the keen-. eyed little girl can possibly discern issuing from the throat of the singing-sparrow. But send him not thither with only the speed of light; for, with that, thousands of years might not suffice for the journey. Give him, rather, the mysterious power of the imagination, by which he can assume, with equal facility, and in equal time, stations indefinitely near, and infinitely remote.

11. From the station first assumed, he sees that nebula resolved into brilliant points; from the next, he sees each of those points bright as Arcturus or Capella; and, from the next station, he beholds it a glorious sun! What had been deemed the center and circumference of the material universe, have reciprocated their positions; and, from one of those foreign suns, he looks back after the locality of his native earth; when, lo! the vast orbit of Neptune has closed in upon the focus occupied by our sun; the sun himself has dwindled to a point, that point has vanished,

* SIR ́ I US, the large, bright star called the Dog-star.

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