"Amid all turbulence, agitation and danger, there is no other foundation upon which we can rest the welfare and peace of society. This is the only resort of every scheme of human elevation. This contains the primal lessons of all duty. Let reformers recollect this, and let us all gather around and protect this pillar of truth. Diffuse this 'blessed book,' as one of England's poets, when pressing it to his lips in his dying hour, called it. Wheel up this sun of light to the mid-heavens, and cause its rays to gleam in every land."
Rev. Mr. Goodell, missionary to Constantinople, remarked, that during thirty years residence in Mahomedan countries, he had learned something of the importance of that book. The nations of the East are all wrong in their conceptions of God. He had often stood upon the goodly mountain, Lebanon, and upon the heights around Constantinople, and raised his thoughts to God, asking, How long shall this darkness prevail? Without this book we could have effected little in our missionary work; but by it God hath done great things, whereof we are glad. The Bible was once found only in dead languages; now it is translated into the language of almost every people with whom we come in contact. Every friend of the Bible will rejoice to know that it is becoming the great book of the East. Before its translation into the Greco-Armenian, it was a mere outside book, kept and admired for its handsome binding, and from a superstitious reverence. Now it is an inside book; it has taken hold of the heart of the Armenian nation. Once it was looked at; now it is read. It has come to assume a great importance in the eyes of that people. They have a great anxiety to read. More than one hundred aged women are now engaged in learning to read, that they may read the New Testament for themselves.
Let religion create the atmosphere around a woman's spirit and breathe its life into her heart; refine her affections, sanctify her intellect, elevate her aims and hallow her physical beauty, and she is, indeed, to our race, of all the gifts of time, the last and best, the crown of our glory, the perfection of our life.
Original.
PROMISES.
"And though to his own hurt he swears,
Still he performs his word."
I was yet a boy, when one day a gentleman came into the lot where my father was superintending the in-gathering of his hay crop, and addressing himself to a mower in my father's employment, inquired whether he would assist him the following day. He replied, "Yes." "How is this," said my father; "are you not engaged to mow for me?" "O yes," said the man. "Why, then," continued my father, "do you promise to mow for Gen. K——?" "Why," said the man, "I wish to oblige him; I love to oblige everybody." "And so," said my father, "you are willing to incur the guilt of falsehood, for you cannot perform your promise to him and myself, and in the end you must disappoint one of us; and, maybe, seriously injure our interests and your reputation."
Nothing, surely, is more common, it is believed, than this heedless manner of making promises which cannot be fulfilled. The modes in which such promises are made are multitudinous, but it is not within the compass of this article to specify them. That they are utterly wrong, and indicate, on the part of those who make them, a light regard for truth, is obvious. Besides, they often lay the foundation for grievous disappointments, they thwart important plans, derange business calculations, give birth to vexatious feelings, cause distrust between man and man, and sap the foundations of morality and religion. Promises should always be made with due caution and due reservation: "If the Lord will," "if life is spared," "if unforeseen circumstances do not interpose to prevent." It is always easy to state some conditions, or make some such reservations. Or, rather, it would be easy, were it not that one is often urged beyond all propriety, to make the promise, as if the making of it, of course insured its fulfillment, although a thousand circumstances may interfere to prevent it.