by which we illuminate our streets and houses. | And the inflammable gases which are constantly escaping from mineral coal, and produce the explosions of fire-damp in the mines, always contain carbonic acid, carbureted hydrogen, nitrogen, and olefiant gas. It is the disengagement of all these that gradually transforms bituminous into anthracite coal. When the mountains were elevated the disturbance occasioned to the strata was very unequal and dissimilar. Most generally the coal occupies its original horizontal position, and retains all its bituminous and oily properties; but in the anthracite regions, and throughout the eastern slope of the Alleghanies, the measures have been very much bent, twisted, and distorted, and the disturbance thus occasioned, together with the overlying and lateral pressure, allowed the elements of the coal to escape, and thereby converted it into anthracite. The elevation of the mountains caused the waters of the sea to withdraw, at the same time that it refrigerated the atmosphere, thus preparing it for a new and higher order of animal life. upon the soft mud in which they were buried, that the faintest lines of their delicate structure can be traced. We append a few specimens of the most common forms from the collection of the Scientific Association at Pottsville. The Almighty has thus written upon the rocks of the earth the history of his own sublime work. Every formation, in ascending order, has stamped upon it, in the silent but comprehensive language of nature, the memorials of whatever creatures or incidents may have characterized it. And it is no less curious than true, as betraying the design of the divine author, that every step exhibits a progressive development-a constantly advancing movement to a higher, a nobler, a more perfect scale of organic life. The world, from the early primitive to the close of the tertiary period, was seemingly but undergoing preparations for the reception of man. One after the other of our vast and varied mineral treasures, "which subject all nature to our use and pleasure," were deposited, and they were, without doubt, designed for the future comfort and happiness of the human family: I "Wherefore did Nature pour her bounties forth SHIPED. As to the vegetable origin of coal, Sir Charles Lyell has remarked that the microscopic examinations instituted in England, some years ago, settled this long-disputed theory forever. "After cutting off a slice so thin that it should transmit light, it was found that in many parts of the pure and solid coal, in which geologists had no suspicion that they should be able to detect any TEMPLES IN WHICH I HAVE WORvegetable structure, not only were the annular rings of the growth of several kinds of trees beautifully distinct, but even the medullary rays; and what is still more remarkable, in some cases even the spiral vessels could be discovered. But besides these proofs from observing a vegetable structure in the coal itself, there are found in the shales or slates accompanying the coal, fern leaves and branches in innumerable variety and quantity; and when we find the trunks of trees and bark converted into this same coal, no one will dispute the overwhelming evidence of its vegetable origin." Many of these fossil impressions occur in a compact aggregated mass, and are so perfectly impressed AM a free-thinker. Not one of that small and woe-cursed class of men whose sorrowful countenances are the indices to sad souls oppressed with one fearful thought, and who, in the vain attempt to escape the terror of that thought, call themselves free-thinkers. I am no infidel, atheist, or deist. Though I worship God-the God of Abraham and my father-I am nevertheless as free of thought as the bird is free of wing, and I worship Him in His temples every where. It is the perfection of travel-enjoyment that freedom of worship, that needs no chapel with orientated altar, no dim light from window, "All garlanded with carven imageries," I return to the point at which I began, and repeat that I am a free-thinker. I am a Presbyterian, of the strait sect known as Old School. I believe in Apostolical succession, and a regular ordination through a line of Presbyters. I have strong-not very well-defined, I confess it-notions of the doctrine of election, and I am thoroughly convinced of every thing you may choose to assert concerning original sin. Yet I am a free-thinker; for in this I rejoice that, without thought of Church or creed, I am able to worship God humbly and heartily in painted cathedral of Rome, ruined temple of Paganism, mosque of Moslem, or no voice of priest or deacon, no Gregorian tones, no written, printed-nay, no uttered prayer. It is, I say, the utmost enjoyment of travel, that ability to find God present every where, a listener and an answerer of the devout heart; for there is to every wanderer an hour in each day when the loneliness of his situation overcomes him with heavy thought. There are times when the miles, and mountains, and seas that lie between him and the beloved ones of earth seem like the distances that stretch from earth to stars-yea, seem vastly greater, for he then remembers those who have gone to the country he has been accustomed to consider as lying on the other side of the "sapphire floor;" and then they seem nearer to him than do those who yet travel the beaten and well-known, well-located paths of exist-But I can not deny that there are places where ence. And believing them to be in the presence of God, he then believes God near to him, and rejoices with keen joy in the might and majesty of those two words, "My Father," which reach the Almighty ear, whether they be uttered on plains of Orient or in the close-ples reared by human hands to the praise and curtained room at home where the dear circle gathers at prayer. "That cathedral, boundless as our wonder, Whose quenchless lamps the sun and moon supply; Its choir the winds and waves, its organ thunder, Its dome the sky." devotion, if not more sincere, is more humble, and where I worship more as a child than in others. For I can not, nor can any man, resist the pride of human nature which stirs his soul when he stands in one of those vast tem glory of God, whose gorgeous walls, lofty columns, magnificent capitals and windows of Iris splendor, half satisfy him with the belief that man can, after all, build a house worthy the residence of the Great King. But when I sit down, as I have sometimes sat down, among the shattered fragments of columns and architraves, where the chaotic ruin of a once mighty house of worship attests the grandeur of ancient adoration, but where the breath of the Almighty, over rank grass and clustering wallflowers, laughs at the temporal decay of an edifice built for the Eternal, then the heart beats less stoutly, the soul is humbled, and the blue sky is seen to be too low an arch for His abode, whose praises sound on the chords of distant starlight. of unknown men, women, and children have prayed and gone, to be succeeded by praying and decaying generations. This I speak not of such old cathedrals and churches as contain, in stones and monuments of brass, the attempts of those who lie in vaults below to retain names and places in the church above, but of such places as the temples of the ancients, where the very memory of a nation has disappeared-where the races of their kings and rulers are like the myths of tradition or poetry-where name, fame, and dust are all gone forever, as we count forever here on earth, and only the vacant temple and the cold altar remain. In Abou Simbal only, of all the temples that I know of only one instance in the history I have visited, the altar on which men sacriof the earth in which man has approached to- ficed remains, and behind the altar the statues ward the hewing out of a temple whose dura- of the gods they worshiped sit in profound sition should equal the duration of the world.lence waiting the return of their worshipers. That was in the remote province known to us as Nubia. It was a calm and glorious summer day when my Nile boat swung under the shattered fragments of the great mountain at Ipsamboul, better known as Abou Simbal. I have before this devoted no small space in the Magazine to a minute description of this temple of ancient worship, and my object at present is not to repeat those accounts. I desire only to illustrate my subject, by endeavoring to describe some of the emotions which I felt in this and other temples where others had worshiped before me, who were now gone to unknown dust. For, as I have said, there are some places where I worship as a child, and those are not only such places as exhibit the weakness of human efforts adequately to praise the Creator, but especially all places in which generations That altar is, therefore, one of the most curious stones that is to be seen by human eyes on the face of this earth. Fourteen hundred years before the birth of our Saviour, Remeses the Great, known to Grecian fame as Sesostris, hewed in the heart of the mountain a vast temple, and cutting down its front to the water's edge, left sitting before the entrance four giant statues of himself. Within the mountain were successive chambers. The first is that of which the reader has a view on page 470, the roof supported by eight colossal statues within, and in the third chamber beyond the altar stands. It, like all the rest-statues, gods, and walls-is of the solid rock of the mountain, and therefore is the altar at which Sesostris knelt. The gods he worshiped sit there now-the very gods there now, cold, calm, stones. What sacrifices have been offered on that altar! What prayers have gone up before it! Let no one think that I believe aught of that foolish heresy, weak as it is common, that earnest prayer to a stone god reaches the all-hearing ear as a prayer to Him. The idea that sincere prayer avails, no matter to what god addressed, is an error that is as false in theory as it is damning in results, both in religion and in daily practice. Poison is no less poison that the one who takes it believes it wholesome. "There is a way that seemeth to a man right, but the ends thereof are the ways of death." But the prayers that have echoed from these stone walls, and have gone no further, ring still in the cavern, and make its vaults more solemn and more awful. I know not what hoary heads have bowed here, I know not what maiden hearts have throbbed audibly in these dark chambers, I know not what human forms have writhed in the agonies of death on this altar; but this I know, that inasmuch as this is the place of ancient worship, where human beings sought intercourse with God, old heads have bowed here, young hearts have leaped madly here, tears have fallen on these stones, have sanctified these crumbling rocks, the voices of human emotion have sounded in these arches three thousand years ago, and somewhere above, below, in some part of this universe, are the souls of the millions who, in successive ages, wept and prayed here. Their bones and dust are here. Even as I write these lines the thin and ghastly face of one of those ancient worshipers looks on me from the glasscase in which I have kept it here in New York, and the hand of a woman reaches out its delicate fingers, with rings and jewels as of old, as if to take my warm hand in its clasp! The sunshine lay on the sand before the doorway as I entered the gloomy temple. In the first chamber it was light, but in the holy place, where the gods were sitting, the silence and the darkness were profound. Yet here, among the relics of pagan superstition, in the presence of the stone idols of a longlost race, here with earnest heart I worshiped God. In the still sunshine of the Sunday afternoon, in the soft twilight that came down on the river like a greater glory than the day itself, that wonderful twilight of Egypt that raises the mountains to heaven and makes the desert sweep away into measureless distance, and | shows stars in infinite space as thrones for angels; in the deep, dark, starry night, under which the swift river rushed downward by the silent statues to a distant sea, I worshiped that God whom the beloved ones at home worshiped in the Sunday morning service, the service that began just when my day ended, with the psalm of triumphant praise: "Oh! that men to the Lord would give A few months later I was in my own hired house on the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem. The morning was dark and threatening. We had an appointment with the Governor of Jerusalem to go into the Mosque of Omar, that inclosure long forbidden to Christian feet. It was certainly a privilege not to be neglected, that of offering up one prayer to God from the spot where his visible presence had so long made holy the place of worship, and where prayer had been so often heard and answered. A difficulty arose-which I care not to explain here-and I sent Abd-el-Atti, my faithful and always successful servant, to the Bim Pasha of the city, with the all-powerful interpreter and introduction, and a demand for a file of soldiers to conduct us through the temple inclosure. INTERIOR OF THE MOSQUE EL AKSA. |