Sanders' Union Fourth Reader / Embracing a Full Exposition of the Principles of Rhetorical Reading; with Numerous Exercises for Practice, Both in Prose and Poetry, Various in Style, and Carefully Adapted to the Purposes of Teaching in Schools of Every Grade

by Charles W. Sanders

A. ALEXANDER.

Oh, precious gospel! Will any merciless hand endeavor to tear away from our hearts, this last, this sweetest consolation? Would you darken the only avenue through which one ray of hope can enter? Would you tear from the aged and infirm poor the only prop on which their souls can repose in peace? Would you deprive the dying of their only source of consolation? Would you rob the world of its richest treasure? Would you let loose the flood-gates of every vice, and bring back upon the earth the horrors of superstition, or the atrocities of atheism? Then endeavor to subvert the gospel; throw around you the firebrands of infidelity; laugh at religion, and make a mockery of futurity; but be assured that for all these things, God will bring you into judgment.

VIII.

THE LIGHT OF HOPE.

O.W.B. PEABODY.

1. Oh, who that has gazed, in the stillness of even,
On the fast-fading hues of the west,
Has seen not afar, in the bosom of heaven,
Some bright little mansion of rest,
And mourned that the path to a region so fair
Should be shrouded with sadness and fears;—
That the night-winds of sorrow, misfortune, and care,
Should sweep from the deep-rolling waves of despair,
To darken this cold world of tears?
2. And who that has gazed, has not longed for an hour,
When misfortune forever shall cease;
And Hope, like the rainbow, unfold, through the shower,
Her bright-written promise of peace?
And, oh! if that rainbow of promise may shine
On the last scene of life's wint'ry gloom,
May its light in the moment of parting be mine;
I ask but one ray from a source so divine,
To brighten the vale of the tomb.

IX.

PAMPERING THE BODY AND STARVING THE SOUL.

EDWARD EVERETT.

1. What`! feed a child's body, and let his soul hunger'? pamper his limbs, and starve his faculties'? Plant the earth, cover a thousand hills with your droves of cattle, pursue the fish to their hiding-places in the sea, and spread out your wheat-fields across the plain, in order to supply the wants of that body which will soon be as cold and as senseless as the poorest clod, and let the pure spiritual essence within you, with all its glorious capacities for improvement, languish and pine'?