librarians. The prophecies were in their custody, and are read in all their copies of the Old Testament, as well as in ours. They have made many attempts to explain them away, but none to question their authenticity. It remains, then, that these are all real predictions, all centring in our Saviour, and in him only, and delivered many centuries before he was born. As no one but God has the foreknowledge of events, it is from him these prophecies must have proceeded; and they show, of course, that Christ was the person whom he had for a great length of time pre-determined to send into the world, to be the great Deliverer, Redeemer, and Saviour of mankind. BISHOP PORTEOUS. HYMN BEFORE SUNRISE IN THE VALLEY OF [SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, eminent as a poet, an essayist, and a philosopher, was born at Bristol in 1772, and died in 1834. He was educated at Jesus College, Cambridge, where he greatly distinguished himself as a classical scholar. His poems, both lyric and dramatic, are replete with beautiful imagery, profound thought, and sublime feeling. His prose works embrace many subjects interesting to mankind-theology, history, politics, literature, logic, and metaphysics.] HAST thou a charm to stay the morning star In his steep course? So long he seems to pause On thy bald awful head, O sovran Blanc ! O dread and silent Mount! I gazed upon thee, * The valley of Chamouni on the north-west of Mont Blanc, is the most celebrated in the Alps for its picturesque sites and the wild grandeur of its glaciers. Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer I worshipped the Invisible alone. Yet, like some sweet beguiling melody, So sweet we know not we are listening to it, Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my thought, Yea, with my life and life's own secret joy, Till the dilating Soul, enrapt, transfused, Into the mighty vision passing-there, As in her natural form, swelled vast to Heaven! Awake, my Soul! not only passive praise Thou first and chief, sole sovran of the vale! And you, ye five wild torrents, fiercely glad! Who called you forth from night and utter death, From dark and icy caverns called you forth, Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks, For ever shattered, and the same for ever? Who gave you your invulnerable life, Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy, Unceasing thunder and eternal foam? And who commanded (and the silence came), "Here let the billows stiffen and have rest?" Ye ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow Adown ravines enormous slope amain— Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty Voice, Who made you glorious as the gates of Heaven. Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost! Once more, hoar Mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks, To rise before me. Rise, oh, ever rise! COLERIDGE. REST AND MOTION. A Adjacent, (ad, iaceo, L.) lying near; the L., from kentron, G., and fugio, L.) B с THE LAWS OF MOTION. THREE brief maxims, known as the laws of motion, have embodied, since the days of Sir Isaac Newton, the fundamental principles by which all motion is regulated. They have been expressed in various forms, but have remained substantially unchanged. I. The first is simply an assertion of the property of inertia. It declares that every body must persevere in a state of rest, or of uniform motion in a straight line, unless compelled to change that state by some force impressed upon it. This has already been sufficiently explained.* II. The second law may be stated thus:-Every motion, or change of motion, must be proportional to the force impressed, and in the direction of that force. It is important to notice the application of this law to the case of a body acted on by two or more forces simultaneously. If two forces act on a body in the same direction, it is clear that the velocity communicated to the body in that direction will be equal to the sum of the velocities which they would communicate to it by their separate action. If, on the other hand, they act in opposite directions, the result will be equal to the difference between the same velocities, and in the direction of the greater. Thus, if two men pull a boat in the same direction, the one imparting a velocity of six miles an hour, and the other a velocity of four miles an hour, the real velocity of the boat will be ten miles an hour. * Page 225. If, however, they pull against each other, the boat will move at the rate of two miles an hour in the direction in which the stronger man pulls. FIG. 22. Still more important is the case of forces acting on a body in different, but not opposite directions. Suppose two forces acting on the body A, impelling it in the directions A B and A C, as indicated by the arrows. If, in a given time, these forces, by their separate action, D would carry the body A to B and C respectively, then, at the end of that time, the body will be found neither b B at B nor C, but at D, the opposite angle of the parallelogram ABCD, of which AB and AC are adjacent sides. If each of the forces be such as to produce a uniform velocity, the body will have moved with a uniform velocity along the diagonal A D. A few examples will render this more intelligible. If a swimmer direct his course right across a river, he will be carried down, ere he reach the opposite bank, exactly as far as a floating log would be in the same time. He will move, like the body A, along the diagonal of a parallelogram, of which one side is the breadth of the river, and the adjacent side is a line marking the distance he has been carried down. His real course will thus be much longer than the breadth of the river, but it will be completed in the same time as if it were the breadth of the river only. If he wishes to swim right across, he must make for a point further up the stream, and the singular result will be, that the space his body passes over will now be less, while the time and effort necessary to accomplish the passage will be much greater than in the former case. Suppose, again, a ball dropped from the top of a tall mast, while the ship is moving rapidly. It falls exactly at the bottom of the mast. It might be supposed, indeed, that the ship would have moved away, so to speak, before the ball could reach the |