For the N. C. Repository.
TRANSLATED FROM THE HEBREW BY THE EDITOR.
1. Honor the doctor before you have need of him. 2. Eat the bone which falls to your lot.
3. As gold needs beating, so does a boy whipping.
4. Wo to the wicked and to their adherents.
5. An old man in a house is a good sign in a house.
6. Keep your affairs to yourself as long as you live, and divulge them not to heirs.
7. No matter how good a soul your wife, tell her not how much you are worth.
8. No matter how many friends you have, divulge your secret to but one of a thousand.
9. Lay no cause of sorrow deeply to heart; sorrow is a slayer of thousands.
10. A wise man is to be corrected with a rod; a fool with a stake. 11. He that sows brambles must not go barefoot.
12. A fire kindled consumes many heaps of corn.
13. Contention ceases over a well-spread table.
14. Though you have sixty counsellers, do not give up your own opinion.
15. A man's business, if near at hand, feeds him; if far off, it devours him.
16. Do good to your neighbor, though he may not be good; for it may happen that in your day of trial, he may bear witness in your favor.
17. Simon, the Just, said that the world rested upon three things— Law, Religion, and Beneficence.
18. Let your house be a conventicle of wise men. of their feet, and drink in their words with delight.
19. Let the door of your house be open toward the street. (That
20. Let the poor be the domestics of thy house.
21. Be not over communicative with a woman.
22. Weigh every thing in the balance of equity. 23. Fly a neighboring evil.
24. In adversity do not despair.
25. Hate a doctorate.
26. He that accumulates not, loses.
27. Quit not the church.
28. He that neglects to learn, is unworthy to live.
29. Who is for me, unless I am for myself? And even when I do for myself, who am I? And if I act not now, when?
30. Glory follows the flying, and flies the following.
31. Say not what cannot be understood, when you wish to be intelligible.
32. A foolish desperado dreads not the penalty of sin.
33. He that is immersed in business is not the man to become wise.
34. Show yourself a man where men are not.
35. He that multiplies flesh-meats, multiplies worms.
36. He that has many servants, has many thieves.
37. As many maids, so many mischiefs.
38. He that multiplies justice, multiplies peace.
39. He that multiplies law, multiplies life.
40. He that multiplies schools, multiplies wisdom.
41. He that consults much, is wise much.
42. He that lays up for himself the words of the law, lays up the life
43. He that gets a good name for himself, gets it also for his family.
44. Speak little and do much.
45. Receive every man with a pleasant countenance.
46. Be equally exact in observing a light precept as a weighty one, for you know not what the reward will be.
47. A wise man without the fear of God is like an artist without implements.
THE ARGUMENT.-The proposition; popular errors exploded; the world not made of nothing; Atheists, the fabled Titans and modern Infidels; the invocation; the great egg of the universe; its parturition; birth of the seven planets; the orrery, a lyre of seven strings; description of the solar system.
I sing earth's origin-a vestal theme,
Of which few ancient bards presumed to dream;
And the first step we take in search of truth,
Should crush the errors planted in our youth;
And this is one that this terraqueous ball
Was made of nothing-so our teachers all
In terms maintained; and so we all believed;
And acted on the falsehood thus received.
He who created all things, had no need
To form a world of nothing-'tis a creed
Unauthorized by Scripture-stranger far
Than the wild dreams of Epicurus are.*
*The wild dreams of Epicurus.
This philosopher taught that the universe consisted of atoms, or puscles, of various forms, magnitudes and weights, which having been dispersed at random through the im
mense space, fortuitously concurred into innumerable systems.
God works by means which he himself creates,
"He spake and it was done!" the Scripture states,
And reason and philosophy, indeed,
Both say-from nothing, nothing can proceed.
By His creative Word were all things made,
And all subsist dependent on His aid.
But this is innocent, compared with those
Pernicious Upas brambles, which oppose
The sovereignty of Heaven, those germs of hell,
Which human nature knew not till it fell.
For there 'tis thus recorded in the Word,
The earth became corrupt before the Lord,
And filled with violence and wicked ways;
And there were giants, also, in those days,
For impious atheists first existed then,
Those direful demons in the shape of men,
Who dared assault Jehovah on His throne,
As ancient poets have, in legends, shown;
It is no fable what these legends tell,
Of Jove assailed by giants--fiends of hell,
But a prediction of that holy war
Which wrought redemption-when the Saviour " saw
Satan, as lightning, fall from heaven," for then
The powers of darkness lost their hold on men,
And human freedom was at last restored;
For man could be converted to the Lord.
But a new race of Titans, in our day,*
Assail high Heaven in a more covert way,
And, by condemning marriage, clearly show
That they, at virtue, aim the deadliest blow,
And, in the specious name of science, are
Recruiting levies for the unholy war:
Those prisoners of Satan's restless host,
Self-rendered illegitimates, who boast
They have no Father, yet, with craven dread
Shrink from His justice on a dying bed;
Trembling in heart, at what their lips deny,
The Being whom they flout at and defy.
Moral abortions from the womb of chance,
Licked into shape by hoodwink'd circumstance;
Whose toad-like lips dispense corroding bane,
With no redeeming jewel in the brain.†
Cursed with a doubt no reasoning can control,
The ague, plague, and palsy of the soul;
Heirs to the plagues Pandora's Box contains, t
Without the balm of Hope to ease their pains.
* But a new race of Titans in our day,
Assail high Heaven in a more covert way.
The wars of the Titans against the gods, are very celebrated in mythology. They were all of a gigantic stature, and endowed with proportionate strength.
With no redeeming jewel in the brain.
"Sweet are th' uses of adversity;
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet, a precious jewel in his head."-Shakspeare.
Heirs to the plagues Pandora's box contains.
According to the opinion of the ancient poet Hesiod, Pandora was the first mortal female that ever lived. She was made of clay, by Vulcan, at the request of Jupiter, who
Our Father in the heavens, now to thee,
In humble reverence, I bend the knee,
To ask for light-for I the word believe
Which thou hast uttered-" Ask ye,
and receive."
Illume my darkened mind with wisdom's rays,
Thou First and Last, and thine shall be the praise.
Teach me to venerate thy holy name,
In faith and love, in word and deed, the same;
Thy kingdom come within my heart and soul,
And reign thou there, supreme in thy control;
Thy will be done in action as in thought,
As in thy Word thou hast divinely taught.
Oh, free my soul from every selfish aim,
The love of mammon, and the love of fame,
From such temptation, save me, Lord, I pray,
And every
evil that besets my way;
Inspire my heart with love of thee alone,
And a desire to make thy glory known.
So shall thy heavenly blessing crown my task,
With usefulness to man-'tis all I ask.
In the beginning, when the Eternal One
Had spoken into life the glorious sun,
An image of Himself, whose heat and light,
Like Love and Wisdom, banished ancient Night
From this high-arch'd, illimitable space,
And in its centre, still retains His place;
Bright exhalations, from His orb dispensed;
Shot into space, and so became condensed;
When, hurried back by His attractive power,
They thick enshrine Him in a vapory bower,
Thus constituting, as old legends tell,
"The soul of nature" in its secret cell;
Whose opaque walls no solar ray
could pierce;
The teeming egg of this vast universe;
Which latent heat occasioned soon to swell,
Until the egg, exploding, burst its shell,
And thus at once, excluded into birth
The planetary system, with the earth,
A goodly offspring, who the sun revere
As their great common parent, ever dear;
For all, alike, His fostering bounty share,
And each confesses His paternal care.
He cheers them with His life-imparting heat,
And yearly gives them, too, a birth-day treat
Of such attire-and nourishment supplies,
To feed their tenants as each planet flies.
Their great progenitor the whole surveys,
As his own children fostered by his ways;
wished to punish the impiety and an artifice of Prometheus, by giving him a wife. She
derived her name Pandora, from the charms with which the gods endowed her. Jupi
ter, after this, gave her a beautiful box, which she was ordered to present to the man
who married her; and by the commission of the god, Mercury conducted her to Prome-
theus. The artful mortal was sensible of the deceit, and as he had always distrusted Jupi
ter, as well as the rest of the gods, since he had stolen fire away from the sun to animate
his man of clay, he sent away Pandora without suffering himself to be captivated with her
charms. His brother Epinetheus was not possessed of the same prudence and sagacity,
He married Pandora, and when he opened the box which she presented him, there issued
from it a multitude of evils and distempers, which dispersed themselves all over the world,
and which, from that fatal moment, have never ceased to afflict the human race.
was the only one which remained at the bottom of the box.
As every being its subsistence owes
To the same source whence its existence flows.*
Huge, shapeless masses, in their first escape,t
Each without form, till nourished into shape;
Devoid of motion, on Sol's verge they pressed,
All fondly clinging round the parent's breast;
Who, presently expanding all his pores,
Opened, for egress into space, the doors,
Through which, swift, fiery emanations found
A passage out, and wheeled the planets round;
This first impetus to his offspring given,
Attends them still through all the vault of heaven
Hence ether rose-widely diffused around
About the sun, throughout the arch profound;
A subtle fluid, clear, transparent sea,
In which the planets floated, light and free;
Each molten yet, by solar heat dissolved,
Now on its centre equipoised, revolved;
And swift projected, in a spiral course, ‡
Around its parent, with relentless force,
Enlarging, still, its narrow orbit's size,
As circling now, it wheel'd along the skies;
Assuming, as through space they rolled afar,
More perfect forms, compact and globular.
Our earth was, for a while, content to run,
In a small orbit, close around the sun-
Perhaps the same where Mercury now appears,
And hence the shortness of its early years;
For Noah's grandsire, says the book divine,
Lived till he told nine hundred sixty-nine.
Terra, within her own small orbit, soon
Received her fond attendant, called the moon,
Who serves her still with the soft, mellow light
She borrows from bright Phoebus in her flight.
'Tis thus the solar system sprang to life,
With gravitation and attraction rife;
'Twas thus the heavenly lyre, by Phoebus strung
With seven sonorous chords, as bards have sung,
*For every being its subsistence owes
To the same source whence its existence flows.
In the Swedish philosopher's treatise on the Worship and Love of God, he says, " Every effect is a continuity of causes from the first cause; and the cause by which anything subsists is continued to the cause by which it exists, since subsistence is a kind of perpetual existence."-L. and W. of God, No. 7.
† Huge, shapeless masses, in their first escape,
Each without form, till nourished into shape.
And swift projected in a spiral course.
When these masses were now carried round the sun into their first periods, and by hasty and short circuits accomplished their annual spaces, according to the perpetual gyrations of the heavenly bodies, in the manner of a running spiral or winding line, they also cast themselves outward, into new circumferences; and thus, by excursions resembling a spiral, removed themselves from the centre, and at the same time, from the very heated bosom of their parent, but slowly, and by degrees; thus being, as it were, weaned, they began to move in another direction.-L. and W. of God, Nos. 11 and 12.
§ And hence the shortness of its early years.
Its years, at first, if measured by the periods of our time, would scarcely equal as many months.-L. and W. of God, No. 11.
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