Where the pastures greenly grow, Where the waters gently flow, And beneath the sheltering ROCK With the shepherd rests the flock. Oh, let us be gathered there Richly of Thy love to share; With the people of Thy choice Live and labor and rejoice, Till the toils of life are done, Till the fight is fought and won, And the crown, with heavenly glow, Sparkles on the victor's brow! Hear the prayer we lift to Thee-- _Miserere Domine_! THE KINGDOMS OF NATURE PRAISING GOD: A SHORT ESSAY ON THE 148TH PSALM. BY REV. C.A. BARTOL. Surrounded as we are with the art and handicraft of man--almost everything we see bearing the mark of his finger, the house and the street, the market and exchange, every instrument and utensil--it is well, occasionally, to look forth from this little world of custom and convenience we ourselves have constructed, into that which bears the impress of the Almighty's hand--is still as it was left from His forming strength, and brings us into immediate communion with His Infinite mind. Let us, at least, listen to the notes of David's lyre on the creative Majesty. After an invocation to the heavenly host, the Psalmist calls first on the forms of inanimate and inorganic existence. These things, of which he enumerates a few, praise the power of God. The crags and headlands, jarred and worn by the billows they breast; the granite peaks, bald and grey, under light and tempest, with the silent host of rocky boulders, swept, we know not by what convulsions, from their native seat, stand up as the first rank in the choir of the Maker's worship; and infidelity and atheism are hushed and abashed by their lofty praise. Organized, but still unconscious existence takes the next station in this universal chorus. The solemn grove lifting its green top into the heavens, beside that motionless army of ancient stones, adds a sweeter note than they can give to the great harmony. It is a note, speaking not alone of the Creator's power, but of His wisdom too. Here is life and growth. Here are adaptations and stages of progress. From the minutest germination, from the slenderest stem, from the smallest trembling leaf to the hugest trunks and the highest overshadowing branches, this vegetable organization, verdant, pale, crimson, in changeable colors, runs; stopping short only with Alpine summits or polar posts, swiftly and softly clothing again the rents and gashes in the ground made by the stroke of labor or the wheels of war--blooming into the golden and ruddy harvest on the stalk and the bough, even overpassing the salt shore, to line the dismal and unvisited caves of the deep with peculiar varieties of growth; and forth into our hands from the foaming brine delicate and strangely beautiful leaves and slight ramifications of matchless tints and proportions.