hand that made and feeds it: life springs with a power ever new, food springs up as plentifully to sustain it, and sunshine and joy are poured over all from the invisible throne of God, as the poetry of the existence He has given. If there come seasons of dearth1or of failure, they come but as warnings to proud and tyrannic man. The potato is smitten, that a nation may not be oppressed forever; and the harvest is diminished, that the laws of man's unnatural avarices may be rent asunder. And then again the sun shines, the rain falls, and the earth rejoices in a renewed beauty, and in a redoubled plenty. HOWITT. II. 78. THE DAY OF THE LORD. [A Selection from the Prophecy of JOEL.] LOW ye the trumpet in Sion, sound an alarm in my holy because the day of the Lord comèth, because it is nigh at hand. 2. A day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and whirlwinds a numerous and strong people, as the morning spread upon the mountains: the like to it hath not been from the beginning, nor shall be after it even to the years of generation and generation. 3. Before the face thereof a devouring fire, and behind it a burning flame: the land is like a garden of pleasure before it, and behind it a desolate wilderness, neither is there any one that can escape it. 4. The appearance of them is as horses, and they shall run as horsemen. They shall leap like the noise of chariots upon the tops of mountains, like the noise of a flame of fire destroying the stubble, as a strong people prepared to battle. 5. At their presence the people shall be in grievous pain; all faces shall be made like a kettle. 1 Dearth, a scarcity of food. 2 Tý rǎn'nic, unjustly severe in government; oppressive; cruel. 8 Av'a rice, undue love of money; greediness of gain, 4 Pēo'ple, a great number of individuals taken as one; the people here meant are probably locusts or grasshoppers, laying waste a land accursed by sin. 6. They shall run like valiant men; like men of war they shall scale the wall; the men shall march every one on his way, and they shall not turn aside from their ranks. 7. No one shall press upon his brother, they shall walk every one in his päth: yea, and they shall fall through the windows and shall take no harm. They shall enter into the city, they shall run upon the wall; they shall climb up the houses, they shall come in at the windows as a thief. 8. At their presence the earth hath trembled, the heavens are moved the sun and the moon are darkened, and the stars have withdrawn their shining. 9. And the Lord hath uttered His voice before the face of His army; for His armies are exceedingly great, for they are strong and execute His word; for the day of the Lord is great and very terrible, and who can stand it? III. 79. AVENGING ARMY OF LOCUSTS. A DAY of darkness and of gloom; A day of clouds at morning spread 1 In lurid 1 gleams, presaging 2 doom, 3 3. Swift as an Ar'ab's charger 5 reels In thundering flight o'er desert ground, 4. Before their face the people mourn; Before their breath the grănary stored, 1 Lū'rid, ghastly pale; gloomy; dismal. 2 Pre sa'ging, foreshowing. ishment on evil-doers. 4 Sěr a phĭm, angels of the highest order. 5 Charger, a horse used in battle. 5. Like mighty men they eager run; Like men of war they climb the wall; Can break those ranks; and, though they fall Yea, through the city shall they go 7. The earth shall quake beneath their tread, His day what mortal shall abide ? IV. JAMES DAVIS 80. DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB: HE Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold, TH And his cohorts were gleaming in pûrple and gold; And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea, When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee. 2. Like the leaves of the forest when summer is green, That host with their banners at sunset were seen; Like the leaves of the forest when autumn hath blown, That host on the morrōw lay withered and strewn. 1 Pěs'ti lence, the plague; any contagious or infectious disease that is epidemic. 2 Văn, the front of an army. This lesson, as will be readily observed, is a poetical version of that passage of Holy Scripture which forms the preceding one. 3 Sen nǎch' e rib, an Assyrian monarch who, in the days of Ez'eehi'as, King of Jerusalem, besieged that city. At the prayer of Eze chias, God, whom the Assyrian had blasphemed, undertook the defence of His people. In the words of Holy Scripture, "It came to pass that night that an angel of the Lord came, and slew in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred and eighty-five thousand. And when Sennacherib, King of the Assyrians, arose early in the morning, he saw all dead bodies, and departing went away," 3. For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blåst, But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride; 5. And there lay the rider distorted and pale, With the dew on his brow and the rust on his mail;1 6. And the widows of Ashur2 are loud in their wail, BYRON. SECTION XXII. I. 81. HOME OF THE HOLY FAMILY. IT T was the 4th of April-the 25th of March had fallen on Good Friday, so that the great festival of the Incarnation had been remitted to that day. From the earliest dawn the beautiful Church of the Annunciation, with its high altar, raised on a double flight of steps, and its beautiful shrine below, leading to the house of the Blessed Virgin, had been thronged with kneeling figures. The women were unveiledfor Nazareth, like Bethlehem, is essentially a Christian town. They were all dressed in gay colors and holiday costume, with strings of gold coins round their necks or wound in their dark hâir. They covered every inch of the steps leading to the sacred subterranean shrine, above which a star marks the spot where 1 Mail, armor. Ash'ur, Assyria. The Word was made flesh." A broken column suspended from the roof indicates1 the supposed place where the Blessed Virgin was kneeling when Gabriel-God's chosen messengerappeared before her. 2. Here were spoken those words in which she accepted her sacred mission, and with it her share in the sufferings of the redemption: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done unto me according to thy word." Words as fruitful as the first "Fiat "2 pronounced by the Creator when, in His omnipotence, He made the world; for by her humble acquiescence in the divine will, she consented to the conception by the Holy Ghost in her immaculate womb of the Creator Himself, made man. Here lived St. Joachim and St. Anne; here St. Joseph; here, in a word, was the home of the Holy Family. Here our Lord, after His return from Egypt, lived thirty years of that sacred hidden life; here "He was subject to them," living in the profoundest submission to His virgin mother and His supposed father. And this place, where the great mystery of the Incarnation was accomplished-what was it but a poor humble home in a quiet village of a land reduced to the condition of a petty province of the great Roman empire? Nay, mōre, even in this land Nazareth had become a by-word of contempt and reproach! 3. High Måss was over, when the Father Guardian came to propose to our travelers to visit the other spots which make Nazareth a place of such deep and thrilling interest to every reader of the Sacred Gospels. Their first visit was to the synagogue, where our divine Lord, having read in the Book of the Prophet Isaias the words regarding Himself, sat down and expounded them to the people, who "wondered at the gracious words which proceeded from His mouth." This synagogue is now converted into a Greek church, supposed to have been built by Tancred, who was Prince of Galilee during the temporary Christian occupation of the Holy Land. From the synagogue they passed on to St. Joseph's workshop, now a little chapel rudely furnished, but where Mass is daily said by one of 1 In'di cātes, points out; shows; denotes. 2 Fi'at, let it be done. mission; compliance. 4 Syn'a gogue, a building or place appropriated to the religious wor 3 Ac qui ěsícence, cheerful sub- ship of the Jews. |