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RURAL HOURS.

was transported to Mount Zion, there are two different passages in which this grand image occurs:

“The earth shook, the heavens also dropped, at the presence of God; even Sinai itself was moved at the presence of God, at the presence of the God of Israel.”

“Why leap ye, ye high hills? This is the hill which God desireth to dwell in; yea, the Lord will dwell in it forever."

The 114th Psalm, supposed to have been composed by a different prophetic writer, is a sublime ode, expressive throughout, in brief and noble language, of the power of God, as shown in the deliverance of the Israelites, and in the miraculous ministry of the earth herself, her floods and her hills, in their behalf:

“The sea saw it, and fled; Jordan was driven back.

“The mountains skipped like rams, and the little hills like lambs.

“What ailed thee, O thou sea, that thou fleddest? Thou Jordan, that thou wast driven back?

“Ye mountains, that ye skipped like rams, and ye little hills like lambs?

“Tremble, thou earth, at the presence of God; at the presence of the God of Sinai!”

The lowly hills about us are but the last surges of a billowy sea of ridges stretching hundreds of miles to the southward, where they rise to a much more commanding elevation, and attain to the dignity of mountains. But even standing upon the humble hills of our own county—all less than a thousand feet in height—we see some of the sights, we hear some of the sounds, we breathe the air, we feel the spirit of a mountain land; we have