after I shall have lighted it, be made to burn my
neighbor's house; am I not in some degree participant or accessary to the
consequence if I persist in the intention? Why is man to be made subject
to consequences more direful to him than if he had never been born at all
into this world of evil? He has had no voice in determining his mission
into it, nor has his will been consulted in the creation of his spirit,
nor in the qualities with which that spirit is endued; his existence also
in a state of indulgence of wicked impulse, how short and limited it has
been; and how frequently mingled with the disposition if not with repeated
Effort toward goodness; shall he for twenty years of vice, be subjected to
_everlasting_ punishment? how can this consist with Divine Justice and
Mercy? You say that he has had the free option of good and evil; possibly
so; but he has not chosen the good, he has not adopted the course that
leads to everlasting happiness, and his everlasting misery might have been
prevented; why then should he have been called into being? Is not this
misery ordained to him, since it is not prevented, and since it has always
been apparent as the result of life to the creative power which must know,
and which could prevent, and has yet determined to create?

Now these doubts were weighing on my heart when I first stood before that
board; and when I had left the church, they were all removed. They had
made themselves--air, into which they vanished. My hands were clasped
together in pleasure at the relief; and when I awoke, a sensation, the
purest perhaps that life affords, had entire possession of my heart, my
mind, my soul. It was that gentle, yet etherial sensation--that
yellow-green of the ransomed spirit--when gratitude that has never drawn a
chain behind it, gratitude free as joy, gratitude beautiful as hope, melts
into love toward HIM, 'who first hath loved us!'

'Parent of Heaven! great Master of mankind!
Where'er Thy providence directs, behold
My steps with cheerful resignation turn!
Fate leads the willing, drags the backward on.
Why should I mourn, when grieving I must bear;
Or take with guilt what, guiltless, I might share!'

JOHN WATERS.

LINES TO BLUMINE.

When day gives place to sweeter night,
And twinkling stars come out on high,
Like sentinels in armor bright,
To watch amid the ebon sky;

High in the n