Panting for his immolation;
She, in priestess' holy station,
Weeping words of consecration,
While God smiled His approbation,
Blessed the boy's self-abnegation,
Cheered the mother's desolation,
When the sacrifice was done.

Forth like many a noble other,

66

Went he, whispering soft and low:
Good-bye-pray for me, my mother;
Sister! kiss me-farewell, brother;"
And he strove his grief to smother.
Forth, with footsteps firm and fearless,
And his parting gaze was tearless,
Though his heart was lone and cheerless,
Thus from all he loved to go.

Lo! yon flag of freedom flashing
In the sunny Southern sky:
On, to death and glory dashing,

On, where swords are clanging, clashing,
On, where balls are crushing, crashing,
On, 'mid perils dread, appalling,
On, they're falling, falling, falling,
On, they're growing fewer, fewer,
On, their hearts beat all the truer,
On, on, on, no fear, no falter,

On, though round the battle-altar
There were wounded victims moaning,
There were dying soldiers groaning:
On, right on, death's danger braving,
Warring where there their flag was waving,

While Baptismal-blood was laving

All that field of death and slaughter;

On, still on; that bloody lava

Made them braver and made them braver, On, with never a halt or waver,

On in battle-bleeding-bounding, While the glorious shout swept sounding, "We will win the day or die!"

And they won it: routed-riven—
Reeled the foemen's proud array!
They had struggled hard, and striven,
Blood in torrents they had given,
But their ranks, dispersed and driven,
Fled, in sullenness, away.

When the twilight sadly, slowly

Wrapped its mantle o'er them all,
Thousands, thousands lying lowly,
Hushed in silence deep and holy,
There was one, his blood was flowing
And his last of life was going,
And his pulse faint, fainter beating
Told his hours were few and fleeting;
And his brow grew white and whiter,
While his eyes grew strangely brighter;

There he lay-like infant dreaming,
With his sword beside him gleaming,
For the hand in life that grasped it,
True in death still fondly clasped it;
There his comrades found him lying
'Mid the heaps of dead and dying,

And the sternest bent down weeping
O'er the lonely sleeper sleeping:

'Twas the midnight; stars shone round him,
And they told us how they found him
Where the bravest love to fall.

Where the woods, like banners bending,
Drooped in starlight and in gloom,
There, when that sad night was ending,
And the faint, far dawn was blending
With the stars now fast descending;
There they mute and mournful bore him,
With the stars and shadows o'er him,
And they laid him down-so tender-
And the next day's sun, in splendor,
Flashed above my brother's tomb.

EARNEST VIEWS OF LIFE.

Adapted.

YHRISTIAN earnestness in life has for its most

CHRI

obvious element a conscientious estimate of the worth of time. In no other one thing does a man who takes life in earnest disclose what manner of man he is more quickly than in this. Life is not a day too long; no man ever has a day to lose. Fragments of time are like sands of gold. Go into the United States Mint, and you will find the gold-room constructed with double floors. The upper one acts like a sieve, and the lower one catches and retains the infinitesimal particles of gold which are sifted through. In a single year, the value of the golden dust thus saved was thirty thousand

dollars. Every human life needs some such contrivance for the economy of fragments of time.

He is more than an unwise man who does not cultivate the virtue of punctuality. Lord Nelson once said: "I have always been fifteen minutes before the time, and it has made a man of me." Napoleon once said to the pupils of a military school: "Remember, that every lost moment is a chance of future misfortune." Sir Walter Scott, when inquired of what was the secret of the marvelous fertility of his pen, replied: "I have always made it a rule never to be doing nothing." An intruder upon the morning study hours of Baxter apologized: "Perhaps I interrupt you." Baxter answered rudely, but honestly: "To be sure you do." The spirit of such men, refined by Christian culture, is the spirit with which, in the Christian view of life, time is to be valued. Every life is made of moments; a kingdom could not purchase one of them.

Men say that time is money. That is a wretched burlesque. It would be as truthful to say that light is money, that air is money, that sleep is money. Time is thought; time is knowledge; time is character; time is power; time is the threshold of eternity. An earnest man will often reckon time as if he were on a death-bed. There are hours in every man's life in which the tick of a watch is more thrilling to an earnest spirit than the roll of thunder. There will come in the lives of us all moments in which the beat of a pulse will be more awful than the roar of Niagara.

Even in life's common routine, when our sensibilities are not lifted into tremulous excitement, a serious view of life will put weight into our reckoning of time. A young man soon shows the world what he is good for, by

his thrifty economy of hours. A downright Christian earnestness which makes a religious principle of this thing is a pledge of a young man's success. He is sure

to redeem it.

Another element we find in the Christian theory of life, which consists in abstinence from frivolity of speech. Do we often revere adequately the sacredness of language? Our mother-tongue we call it. Are we grateful enough for it as a gift of God? If elephants could talk, would not their marvelous instincts use the power more wisely than some men do? Is not the hum of a beehive often a rebuke to men who talk idly?

No man who looks at life soberly will esteem it a little thing to be able to regulate wisely his habits of conversation. The Scriptures pronounce him a great man who can rule his own spirit; but the chief element in that power is the power to govern his tongue. Many times one word has saved life. Peace and war between rival nations have often trembled in dancing scales which the utterance of one word has decided. It was but one word uttered at the Court of Berlin which kindled the Franco-German War of 1871, in which a hundred thousand lives were sacrificed. A certain man is now in heaven who attributed his salvation to one word in a sermon preached by Whitefield. "A word spoken in good season, how good is it!"

Is this view an extreme? Yes; but it is the extreme of a truth; and we need to see truth in its extremes, to enable us to do justice to it in even balance. There are men who specially need this to correct the enormous overgrowth of risibility in their habits. They make a pet of frivolous speech. Their conversation is made up of kickshaws. They make a study of their jests, and