LESSON VI. 1 CURL' ER, a player at the game called curling, which consists in propelling by the hand a heavy weight, as a large stone or mass of iron, along the surface of the ice, so as to strike another heavy weight, and drive it in any given direction. THE OFFICES OF MEMORY. ISLAY BURNS. MAN of all He exists at once [AN alone, of all the creatures on the earth, carries about with him a three-fold life. at once in the past, in the present, and in the future. Memory, on the one hand, and hope, on the other, reveal, each of them, a world of its own, besides the world of real passing existence, and in all these worlds every one of us lives. The one looks backward, the other forward; the one lives in yesterday, the other in to-morrow. The one watches the setting sun of the past, the other salutes the dawning morn of the future. Hope, in short, sanguine and light-hearted, builds airy castles in the future sky; memory wanders, thoughtful and sad, amid the moldering ruins and withered leaves of the past. 2. You have all a great deal to do, my young friends, with memory. Every day you have to make use of it, if in no other way, at least, in the learning of those appointed tasks, in which now the main business of your life consists. You have, in fact, as much to do with your memory, as the workman has to do with his tools, and should, therefore, not only know a great deal about it, but be interested to know more. But it may be, that while daily using, you have not thought enough of this wondrous gift of God,of its nature, its uses, its reponsibilities, its blessings. What then is the memory ? 3. MEMORY IS AN HISTORIAN.Every human being, like every nation, has his history, and memory writes that history. Each of you has a history, and memory is writing it. It sits alone and silent within your bosom, and writes. With quick, observant eye it watches all that is passing around, hears every word, marks every deed, and, with busy hand, transfers it to its secret register. It makes no remark on what it sees or hears, gives no sign either of approval or of blame, but simply marks and records. It says nothing, but writes every thing. 4. Would you not start sometimes if you saw a silent stranger always watching you, a glistening eye always upon you, a quick hand writing all about you'? And yet this is what your own memory is doing every hour. Day after day it pursues this task unceasingly. Page after page is filled with the mystic writing, and the great volume grows, slowly but steadily. Each day completes a page, each year a chapter, each successive stage in life a volume, of the awful scroll. Sometimes it is written in faint dim lines, sometimes in broad glaring characters, sometimes in letters of light, and sometimes of inky blackness. 5. There are black days and white days,-days bright with blessing, and days dark with woe and sin, as in our real life, so in this its faithful register. How interesting, then, must this history be! What tale to me so absorbing and so instructive as that which is all about myself! What stirring incidents too, and thrilling scenes, does the life even of the humblest often present! what vicissitudes of joy and sorrow, light and darkness! what touches of pathos and bursts of passion! what agonies, and battles, and wounds! 6. MEMORY IS A PAINTER.—It not only makes notes of the past, but pictures of the past. It photographs the events and scenes of the passing hour, and preserves them in its faithful volume for evermore. The history of our life, which memory is writing, is an illustrated history,in which there are not only the printed words, but the living faces and forms of the men and things we read about. An illustrated history memory is now writing of you, only that in your history the facts are all true, and the pictures are all drawn fresh from the life. Or, I might say, that your mind is a chamber hung all round with pictures, and it is memory that drew those pictures, and is always standing by to explain them, and to tell you all about them. 7. Every one of you has already a great many of these pictures in his heart. Here is your mother's face, which you can still look at, when away from home, and see her looking at, and smiling on you. Here is a brother or a sister, now far away in a distant land, and whom you may never see, save in the heart's living pictures, in this world again. Here is your old school, and your old play-ground, and the merry faces and forms of your old playmates. 8. Here is the pleasant cottage on the coast, where you spent last summer,-with the fair wooded shore, the bright sea, the boats, and the ships. Here are the great snowwreaths of last winter, and the misty lake, and the skaters, and the curlers.1 (pl.) And here is your little brother's grave, and here is his own fair form as he lay silent in his coffin before its lid was closed forever! Yes; you can see him yet,—you can stand by once more, -you can lay your hand on the cold marble brow, and gently, rever ently, touch the golden locks that cluster around it! What a wonderful thing, then, is memory! How kind it is of God to bestow upon us such a faculty! 9. We have all of us our family Album, containing the faces and forms of those whom we know and love. But we sometimes forget that every one of us has his own per sonal album, too, laid up within the secret chamber of his heart, and which no hand can unclasp, no eye can look upon, but his own. Oh! it is pleasant sometimes to close one's eyes, and, in the calm, bright, holy light of the heart, look at those pictures one by one! 10. MEMORY IS A TREASURER. It is the soul's wise and careful store-keeper, gathering together from day to day all manner of precious and useful things, and safely keeping them. Useful facts, wise maxims and rules, precious and holy truths, improving examples, sacred memories of home and friends, and kind, loving looks and words, -all these this wondrous faculty catches up, and keeps, and stores away, that they may minister to the use or the blessing of future days. - 11. Thus we become truly rich, rich in the treasures and hived stores of the memory; and truly there is no kind of riches like them, except one, and that is better still, the treasures of the heart, the treasures of holy feeling and affection. Are you rapidly gathering such a treasure? Now is the time to do it. The great faculty of youth is the memory, and the great business of youth is the use of the memory. You are now taking in stock,- gathering all manner of valuable stores, which you will learn to arrange, and turn to use in after years. 12. MEMORY IS A COMFORTER, AND A REPROVER. — It is a most sweet comforter, and a most sharp and terrible. reprover. And how does it comfort or reprove? Just by opening its book again, and reading out what is written. there. When one page of the book is finished, it is turned over, and another is begun; but the folded page may be turned up again, and laid open before our eyes. I said there are bright pages and dark pages in memory's book. It comforts us by turning up the one, it rebukes us by turning up the other. 13. Make good use of your memory. Now is the time to do it. Youth is the time for remembering. In youth we remember most easily, and we longest retain what we have learned. Facts early learned, lessons early taught, impressions early received, solemn seasons and scenes early witnessed, live on in the memory through a lifetime, and retain all their vivid freshness and reality, when the things of intervening years are forgotten. 14. Never do anything which you would like to forget. There are things which people would fain forget, but can not; dark pages and frightful pictures in the book of memory, which they would fain cover up from sight forever, but which will not be covered up, but which keep turning up ever afresh before their eyes. The things we would fain forget, are those very things we are most sure to remember. And, even though it were not so in this world, there is a day coming, when all "the books shall be opened," and when "God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.” * LESSON VII 1 SYM' PA THIZE, (SYM, together or with; PATH, feeling; IZE, to make, have ;) to have a common feeling, or fellow-feeling. RETRO SPECT, (RETRO, back; SPECT, view; a looking;) a looking back on things past. THE MEMORY OF JOY. GREENWOOD. OW bountifully gifted is man! He lives not only in HOW the present, but in the past and future. The days of his childhood belong to him, even when his hair is white * Eccl., 12th chap., 14th verse. |