“You do not love God; you do not even fear him but with a slave’s fear; it is hell and not God whom you fear.  Your religion consists but in superstitions, in petty superficialities.  You are like the Jews, of whom God said:  ’Whilst they honor me with their lips, their hearts are far from me.’ You are scrupulous upon trifles and hardened upon terrible evils.  You love only your own glory and comfort.  You refer everything to yourself as if you were the God of the earth, and everything else here created only to be sacrificed to you.  It is you, on the contrary, whom God has put into the world only for your people.”

POEMS.

BY MRS. GEORGE P. MARSH.

I.

EXCELSIOR.

    The earnest traveller, who would feed his eye
    To fullness of content on Nature’s charms,
    Must not forever pace the easy plain. 
    No! he must climb the rugged mountain’s side,
    Scale its steep rocks, cling to its crumbling crags,
    Nor fear to plunge in it’s eternal snows. 
    And yet, if he be wise, he will not choose
    To find the doubtful way alone, lest night
    O’ertake him wandering, and her icy breath
    Chill him to marble; not alone will risk
    His foot unwonted on the glassy bed
    Of rifted glacier, lest a step amiss
    Should hurl him headlong down some fissure dark,
    That yawns unseen—­thence to arise no more. 
    But, furnished with a trusty guide, he mounts
    From peak to peak in safety, though with toil. 
    Once on the lofty summit, he beholds
    A glory in earth’s kingdom all undreamed
    Till now.  The heavy curtains are withdrawn,
    That shut the old horizon down so close;
    And, lo! a world is lying at his feet! 
    A world without a flaw!  What late he held
    But as discordant fragments, now show forth,
    From this high vantage ground, the perfect parts
    Of a harmonious whole!  He would not dare
    To change one line in all that picture marvellous
    Of hill and vale, bright stream and rolling sea,
    O’erhung by the great sun that gildeth all.

    And thou!  If thou would’st truly feast thy soul
    Upon the things invisible of Him
    Who made the visible, fear not to tread
    The awful heights of Thought! not to thyself
    Sole trusting, lest thou perish in thy pride;
    But following where Faith enlightened leads,
    Thou shalt not miss or fall.  The way is rough,
    But never toil did win reward so rich
    As that she findeth here.  At every step
    New prospects open, and new wonders shine! 
    Mount higher still, and whatsoe’er thy pains,
    Thou’lt envy not the sleeper at thy feet! 
    Visions of truth and beauty shall arise
    So multiplied, so glorified, so vast,
    That thy enraptured soul amazed shall cry,
    “No longer Earth, but the new Heavens I see
    Lighted forever by the throne of God.”