'Twas God, my child, who made them all,
By his Almighty skill;

He keeps them, that they do not fall,
And guides them as He will.
That glorious God, who lives afar

In heaven, beyond the highest star.

HYMN.

My little eye can never reach
Beyond the distant star;

But God my Father's eye can stretch
A thousand times as far.

But more than that, thro' endless space
His mighty power is known;
No mortal can, nor angel, trace
The wonders of His throne.

But though He is so great and wise,
And I but weak and poor,

His kind compassion never dies—

His promise is secure.

And every morning, when the sun

Shall bid my slumber cease,

I'll bow the knee before His throne,
And ask His saving peace.

(See also Hymn 112, Martineau's Hymn Book.)

Psalm cxiii. 4, 5.-The Lord is high above all nations, and His glory above the heavens. Who is like unto the Lord our God, who dwelleth on high, who humbleth Himself to behold the things that are in heaven, and on the earth?

Psalm cxv. 3.-Our God is in the heavens; He hath done whatever He hath pleased.

Psalm cxxiii. 1.-Unto Thee lift I up mine eyes, O Thou that dwellest in the heavens!

PART OF MRS. BARBAULD'S ELEVENTH HYMN.

The golden orb of the sun is sunk behind the hills, the colours fade away from the western sky, and the shades of evening fall fast around me.

Deeper and deeper they stretch over the plain; I look at the grass, it is no longer green; the flowers are no more tinted with various hues; the houses, the trees, the cattle are all lost in the distance. The dark curtain of night is let down over the works of God; they are blotted out from the view, as if they were no longer there.

Child of little observation! canst thou see nothing

because thou canst not see grass and flowers, trees and cattle? Lift up thine eyes from the ground, shaded with darkness, to the heavens that are stretched over thy head; see how the stars one by

one appear and light up the vast concave.

There is the moon bending her bright horns, like a silver bow, and shedding her mild light, like liquid silver, over the blue firmament.

There is Venus, the evening and the morning star; and the Pleiades, and the Bear that never sets, and the Pole star that guides the mariner over the deep.

Now the mantle of darkness is over the earth; the last little gleam of twilight is faded away; the lights are extinguished in the cottage windows, but the firmament burns with innumerable fires; every little star twinkles in its place. If you begin to count them, they are more than you can number; they are like the sands on the sea shore.

The telescope shows you far more, and there are thousands and ten thousands of stars which no telescope has ever reached.

If you were to travel as swift as an arrow from a bow, and to travel on further and further still, for millions of years, you would not be out of the creation of God.

New suns in the depth of space would still be burning round you, and other planets fulfilling their appointed course.

Lift up thine eyes, child of earth, for God has given thee a glimpse of heaven.

The light of one sun is withdrawn that thou mayest see ten thousand. Darkness is spread over the earth, that thou mayest behold, at a distance, the regions of eternal day.

LESSON XI.

THE HEAVENS DECLARE THE GLORY OF GOD.

Mrs. Barbauld's Summer Evening's Meditation.

JUST as Walter's mother finished saying the last line of the hymn, a faint whitish light went waving across the sky, and made them look out again eagerly. In a minute they saw it again; and then the light seemed to shoot upwards from the earth, in many gentle rays. Again and again they saw it, and each time it seemed a little different from the time before. Sometimes it had a delicate tinge of pink: sometimes of lilac or violet colour; sometimes of bluish green; but oftenest it was pale yellow; and almost before they could say what colour it was, it was gone again—or it had darted nearly to the opposite side of the sky there it trembled for a moment or two, half showing itself, and half hiding itself again, and then all at once it covered nearly half the sky, in faint, wandering, flickering, rosy streaks or stripes. Oh ! it was very, very beautiful! and Walter was so delighted that he felt as if he wanted to leap up into the sky himself.

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