Jesus Christ, the most glorious title the Almighty bears, is that of the Father of eternity! From eternity, down to the youngest second, all ages, and years, and seasons, and months, and weeks, and days, and nights, and hours, and minutes are His messengers, intrusted with His richest benefits, and commissioned to bear them to man. My mission, like that of my predecessors, is ended. Before their departure, they reminded you of God's goodness. Before my departure, I remind you of the same. My office has been one of ceaseless love. If you marvel that I am encompassed by such a host, I have only to inform you, that they have been my faithful assistants, as well as my affectionate children; and that the reason of their multitude is the multitude of God's benefits to man. A smaller number would fail to distribute his abounding mercies. There is not one, in all this array, who has not been thus employed."

"Ere I die," he continued, "I will question them in your presence; and you must report their testimony to the worshippers in the sanctuary: "SEASONS! what have you given to man?" And the four Seasons answered, "God's benefits!"

"MONTHS! what have you given to man?" And the twelve Months answered, "God's benefits!"

WEEKS! what have you given to man?" And the fifty-two Weeks answered, "God's benefits!"

"DAYS! what have you given to man?" And the three hundred and sixty-five Days answered, "God's benefits!"

NIGHTS! What have you given to man?" And the three hundred and sixty-five Nights answered, "God's benefits!"

"HOURS! what have you given to man?" thousand Hours answered, "God's benefits!"

And the nearly nine

"MINUTES! what have you given to man?" And the half-million Minutes answered, "God's benefits!"

"SECONDS! what have you given to man?" And the thirty million Seconds answered, "God's benefits!"

"Servant of God," said he, "minister of Christ! you have heard their uniform answers. With my own fast-failing breath I confirm their truth. I have superintended their toil. I know that our whole mission has been occupied in the distribution of 'God's benefits.' Return to your charge! The chapel will be open and illumined. The people will be assembled. You anticipate the solemnity of the occasion; and honestly and earnestly desire their profit. Tell them that you have seen the dying Year. Tell them that they themselves must die. Tell them that when their own death-time shall come, the world will be withered around them, as it is now withered around me! Tell them that they, too, must lie down on the dead leaves of their summer prosperity! Tell them that every garden of pleasure will then be as desolate to them as are now these fields of nature to me the verdure all wasted, the trees all stripped, the streams all frozen, and the air crisp, and cold, and still! Tell them that they will then have but one hope, as I have now! See!" said the weary and dying pilgrim, lifting his kindling eye, and pointing with thin finger to the heavens, "see! though the sphere of my labor on earth is all blighted and drear, no change is there! Or if, in that high place of reward, there be any change, it is only for the better!

Behold! the blue skies are bluer now, and the bright stars brighter now, than they were in mid-summer. Nothing withers or declines there! There is the inheritance which is incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away! That is my hope; that is their hope; that is our only hope. But, thank God, it is a sufficient and glorious hope.

"Go, and tell them that 'God's benefits' begin with life, but do not end with death; that they commence on earth only to multiply in heaven; and that, while they enrich us in time, they will endure throughout eternity. Go, and tell them that the Old Year, looking back from his pallet of dry leaves to scenes of freshest beauty and bliss, and looking up from this wasted world to a universe of imperishable grace, glory, and rapture, breathes out his last prayer in their behalf-that every one among them may immediately and solemnly consider the great and pressing question, asking, with the Psalmist, What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits towards me?' and answering with the Psalmist also, 'I will take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows unto the Lord, now, and in the presence of all his people!""

So ending, the dying Year drew from his bosom a many-leafed scroll, You will find it and put it in my hand, saying: "Take this scroll. composed of hundreds of messages, severally addressed to your hearers. But see!" said Distribute them as a final token of my regard for them. the fainting Old Year, kindling again as he spoke, "see! they come." As he spoke, a pale, long-drawn light, as though the milky way were settling earthward, descended through the thin air, and rested, like a I rose, gazed, glimmering mist, on the dusky range of the horizon hills. and drew back from the coming One, glowing with angel glory, and yet with the countenance of a younger brother of the waiting pilgrim. He stooped by the humble pallet; and the leaves, and grass, and snow, and icicles, and frosted trees, and hills, all glittered with a golden sheen. Behind him, FAIRER seasons, and months, and weeks, and days, and nights, and hours, and minutes, and seconds, in far-gleaming perspective, I saw the New Year kiss the Old; and the Old · dimly waved their line. arose at that token, and stood by his brother's side, and acknowledged him as his successor, and resigned the sceptre to him, and embraced him, and blessed him, and bowed to his attendants, and then beckoned to his own, and ascended with them, softly and beautifully as the scintillations of the aurora, vanishing at last among the conscious and welcoming stars. The New Year and his host glanced, smiling, at the quick and happy transit; and then dispersed on errands of mercy through all the earth, to meet again, when another New Year shall hang out his signal in the sky, and come to enter on his reign.

SOME murmur when their sky is clear

And wholly bright to view,

If one small speck of dark appear

In their great heaven of blue;

And some with thankful love are filled,

If but one streak of light,

One ray of God's good mercy, gild

The darkness of their night.

THE SEASONS.

(See Frontispiece.)

REAL joy, it has well been said, exists only in circles where the individual gives up his own self, and makes it his main object to give pleasure to others. In Grecian mythology, therefore, the Graces-those charming goddesses who presided over all that is graceful and amiable in the domestic and social relations were never represented single or alone. In painting and in sculpture, the three were always shown in social attitudes, as dancing with themselves, or associating with other divinities. In the same manner, in the frontispiece of this volume of The Guardian, we think the artist has done well to represent the Seasons, not separated from each other, as is often done by their portrayers, but united in a friendly circle. Thus he has imparted to them a social grace. Not only that, but to set them off still more he has thrown in some additional, attendant figures. Over Spring a Cupid is hovering, and behind Summer, the mower or harvester, is seen a maiden with a rake the occupation of the Season, no doubt, having brought up to his mind such harvest stories as that of Obed and Ruth, and for the life of him he could not leave the maiden out. What a hospitable charm is given to Autumn-the vintager, in his interesting attitude of proffering to venerable old Frosty Beard, hanging over his coals, that cup of generous wine, which, when it has been taken by the old gentleman, we trust will cheer him up a little and do him good.

The Flora in Grecian mythology were not just the Seasons personified, but their adorners, being the goddesses which presided over the order of nature. They were beautiful nymphs, the ministers of Jove, promoting the fertility of the earth by the various kinds of weather they sent down. While the Graces imparted their charms to social life, the Flora had more to do with the decorations of outward nature. Still, like the former, they were represented by painters and sculptors in graceful attitudes, dancing with each other or with the Graces, or attending on some higher divinity. Thus we find they were social beings.

The representations of the Seasons, however, in social circles are properly restricted to painting and sculpture. We look in vain for them thus set forth by the poets. By these, time is made too much account of to crowd them together, even in the most interesting groups, so they represent them as following each other in succession. As a fine specimen of such descriptions, we select that of Spencer. It is nothing the worse for being old:

"So forth issew'd the Seasons of the yeare:

First, lusty Spring all dight in leaves of flowres,
That freshly budded and new bloosmes did beare,
In which a thousand birds had built their bowres
That sweetly sung to call forth paramours;
And in his hand a iavelin he did beare,
And on his head (as fit for warlike stoures)
A guilt engraven morion he did weare;

That as some did him love, so others did him feare.

"Then came the idly Sommer, being dight
In a thin silken cassock coloured greene,
That was unlyned all, to be more light;
And on his head a girlond well besceme
He wore, from which as he had chauffed been
The sweet did drop; and in his hand he bore
A bowe and shaftes, as he in forrest greene
Had hunted late the libbard or the bore,

And now would bathe his limbes with labor heated sore.

"Then came the Autumne all in yellow clad,

As though he ioyed in his plentious store,

Laden with fruits that made him laugh, full glad
That he had banished hunger, which to-fore

Had by the belly oft him pinched sore:

Upon his head a wreath, that was enrold
With ears of corne of every sort, he bore;
And in his hand a sickle he did holde

To reape the ripened fruits the which the earth had yold.

"Lastly, came Winter clothed in frize,

Chattering his teeth for cold that did him chill;
Whilst on his hoary beard his breath did freese
And the dull drops that from his purpled bill
As from a limbeck did adown distill;

In his right hand a tipped staffe he held,
With which his feeble steps he stayed still;

For he was faint with cold, and weak with eld,

That scarse his loose limbes he hable was to weld."

The likeness of the Seasons as represented in our frontispiece, we fancy, were taken in Germany. The scythe over the shoulder of Summer, in its shape, is decidedly German, and the vine-leaves around the thyrsus of Autumn, tell that he must have been among the vineyards and trodden the grapes; perhaps on the hills of the Rhine. Had he been drawn by an English painter he would have been made to resemble Summer more as seen in this picture, than a vintager. Clad in yellow he would have been, the bearded wheat in his hat, and the sickle in his hand, as may be seen from Spenser's English description of him above. In England the wheat harvest never comes off before September; and in Thomson's Seasons, therefore, the episode of Palemon and Lavinia, so much resembling the story of Boaz and Ruth, is placed in the midst of Autumn. The Seasons, then, as shown in the frontispiece of this number, are not English. They belong, no doubt, to Germany or France, where the harvest time, we believe, corresponds very nearly with that of our own land.

GRANDFATHER'S CHRISTMAS-TREE.

BY THE EDITOR.

"Hail, father Christmas! hail to thee!
Honored ever shalt thou be!
All the sweets that love bestows,
Endless pleasures wait on those,
Who, like vassals brave and true,
Give to Christmas homage due."

ANGLO-NORMAN CHORUS.

""Twas Christmas told the merriest tale;

A Christmas gambol oft would cheer

A poor man's heart through half the year." SCOTT.

ONE morning, about five weeks before Christmas, the Pastor's three children, Mary, Wilsie, and Maggie, were playing together in the diningroom of the parsonage. "Aha, I know something good," said Wilsie, the second of the group, jumping up and facing his two little sisters straight, and brave like a little soldier. "Wa' tis it?" asked Maggie quickly, in baby lispings, her eyes glistening the while with hope, and the dawning of joy in that hope, "Wa' tis it, Widdie?" Mary, quick too, but a little more deliberate, being the oldest, and thinking first whether she could not guess the good news, What is it, Wilsie?" "I heard mother read a letter from grand-pa, this morning, and what do you think he says? He says he will come to see us the last Saturday in Advent."

"Advent," said Mary, "when is that? Advent-that is one of grandpa's hard, old-fashioned words again. But that is his way."

"I just now heard pa come in at the front door," said Wilsie, "I will go up to the study and ask him what Advent is."

"I'll go along," said Mary. "Me go 'long, du," cried Maggie. In a moment they were all ranged around the pastor's arm-chair in the study.

"What now, children? You know you are not to disturb me in my study in the morning. You know I told you at the breakfast table that Christmas is coming, and that I am very busy preparing for it."

"But, pa," said Mary, "you told us that Christmas is a joyful holiday, and that we ought to be glad for it before it comes.'

"We are just beginning to be glad," said Wilsie, "because grand-pa is coming before Christmas."

"Des, pa, Maggie dlad, du," lisped the youngest.

"Mother read in the letter," said Wilsie, "that grand-pa is coming the last Saturday in Advent. When is that, pa?"

"Yes, what is that?" added Mary, with a desire to know the why as well as the when.

"I will tell you, children. Advent is a word which comes from two Latin words, which, put together, mean to 'come to.' You know Christmas is the time when our Saviour 'came to' the earth. Good Christians, in very old times already, began by suitable devotions to pre