that have been stripped of their golden harvest, and through pastures embrowned by a scorching sun. The fruit trees are decayed. The shade trees have been uprooted by a storm, or their hollow trunks and dry boughs remain, vener able, but mournful witnesses to the truth, that the fashion of this world passeth away. More melancholy still are the witnesses that meet you as you enter your father's house. She, on whose bosom you hung in your infancy, and whom you had hoped once more to embrace, has long been sleeping in the dark and narrow house. Your father's form, how changed! Of the locks that clustered around his brow, how few remain! and those few, how thin! how white! His full toned and manly voice has lost its strength, and trembles as he inquires if this is indeed his son. The sister, whom you left a child, is now a wife, and a mother; the wife of one whom you never knew, one who looks upon you as a stranger, and one towards whom it is impossible for you to kindle up a brother's love, now that you have found so little in the scenes of your childhood, to satisfy the affectionate anticipations with which you returned to them. While you are contemplating these melancholy changes, and the chill of disappointment is going through your heart, the feeling comes upon you, in all its bitterness, that the mournful ravages, which time has wrought upon the scenes and the objects of your attachment, will not, and cannot be repaired by time, in any of his future rounds. Returning years can furnish you with no proper objects for the fresh and glowing affections of youth; and even if those objects could be furnished, it is too late, now, for you to feel for them the correspondent affection. The song of your mountain-stream can never more soothe your ear. The grove that you loved shall invite you to meditation and to worship no more. Another may, indeed, spring up in its place; but you shall not live to see it. It may shade your grave; but your heart shall never feel its charm. Your affections are robbed of the treasures, to which they clung so closely and so long, and that forever. The earth, where it had appeared most lovely, is changed. The things that were nearest to your heart, have changed with it. The n which the world was arrayed, when it took hold with the strongest attachment, has passed away; its us power to charm you has fled; all its holiest ennts are broken, and you feel that nothing remains s, but the abiding outline of its surface-its valleys, ne still waters find their way, and the stern visage erlasting hills. LESSON XIV. The same,-concluded. loes the fashion of the world pass away, in regard er-varying appearances of its exterior alone, its vegoductions, that flourish and fade with every year, or t endure for ages beyond the utmost limit of animal s, indeed, an eloquent commentary upon the apostle's to see the oak, that shaded one generation of men ther, even before it had attained its maturity, and, ness of its strength, had stretched forth its giant r many succeeding generations, yield to decay at fall, of its own weight, after having gloried in its for centuries. eloquent commentary, to see the fashion of those ssing away, in which the proudest efforts of human uman power have been displayed; to see the curiller inquiring and searching upon the banks of the s for the site of ancient Babylon, or measuring the ses of rock, that composed the temple of the sun ra, or digging in the valley of the Nile, to bring to stupendous relics of ancient architecture, that have, ands of years, been buried in the sands of the en an eloquent exposition of the apostle's remark, e towers that were raised by the power of feudal nd the abbeys and cathedrals that were the scenes tic devotion, now that they are crumbling and falltheir tottering walls curtained with ivy, and the bird of night, the only tenant of those forsaken abodes of a stern despotism, and of a still more stern superstition. But not the products of the earth, nor yet the works of man, alone change and pass away. In many particulars, the great mass of earth itself is liable to change, and has been moulded into different forms. the depths of the sea, and the turn, have been laid bare, or mountains. Of most of these wonderful changes, it is true, history gives us no account. Hills have been sunk beneath depths of the sea, in their thrown up into stupendous But that they have occurred, the deep places of the earth, its hardest rocks, its gigantic hills, alike bear witness. Many of us have seen, with our own eyes, those creatures, that were once passing "through the paths of the seas," taken from their marble beds in the mountain's bosom, hundreds of miles from those bars and doors, within which the sea is now shut up, and by which its proud waves are now stayed: we cannot say forever stayed; for the regions of the earth, that, by one mighty convulsion, have been rescued from the deep, may, by other mighty convulsions, be given back to its dominion; and those rich plains, that are now the theatre of vegetative life and beauty, may, in time, be sunk under the weltering deep, as other fertile plains have been before them. In a moral, not less than in a physical sense, the fashion of this world passeth away. The passions of mankind, it is true, remain the same in their general character; but in different ages and nations, under different systems of morals, philosophy and religion, they are subjected to a very different discipline, and are directed towards different objects. But, if we except his general moral nature, what is there in man, in which the caprices of fashion are not continually displayed? If, then, the beauties of the year are so fading, and its bounties so soon perish; if the loveliest scenes of nature lose their power to charm, and a few revolving years break the spell, that binds us to those whom we love best; if the very figure of the earth is changed by its own convulsions; rms of human government, and the monuments of power and skill, cannot endure; if nothing on "the neath, or the waters under the earth," preserves its changed, what is there that remains forever the same? there, over which autumnal winds and wintry ave no power? what, that does not pass away, are contending with wayward fortune, or struggling amity? what, that is proof against the fluctuations n opinion, and the might of ocean's waves, and the ons, by which mountains are heaved up from the thrown from their deep foundations? he God by whom these mighty works are done; by and this great globe was first moulded, and has ever en fashioned according to his will. "Hast thou not hast thou not heard, that the Everlasting God, JehoCreator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither ?" m, then, we can go, and to him let us go, in a filial ce that there is no variableness in him. Though the of the year fade, though our young affections are , and our expectations from this world are disapwe know that he has the power to make all these oly scenes of salutary influence, and conducive to ul's eternal health." Though the opinions of the nd our own opinions in respect to him, may change, no change in the love with which he regards and embraces us. God passeth not away, nor do his Those laws require, that we, and all that is around ld change and pass away. Those laws govern us, do so forever. They bind us to our highest good. t us yield them a prompt and a perpetual obedience. Creator of the ends of the earth fainteth not, neither " Nor does that faith in him grow weary, which nds and deserves from us; faith in his wisdom to id govern us, faith in his gracious promises to crown ts, in his service, with a reward that is glorious and g. Though "the mountain falling cometh to naught," the solid globe be shaken in its course, the hand that the mountains to the heavens, and upholds them ad that curbs the earth in its bright career, is est di ed to uphold all, who cast themselves upon it with the prayer that they may be protected, and with the belief that they shall be. LESSON XV. Passing away.-MARIA J. JEWSBURY. I ASKED the stars, in the pomp of night, "We have no light that hath not been given; "We shall fade in our beauty, the fair and bright, From the stars of heaven, and the flowers of earth, 'Passing away,' sing the breeze and rill, |