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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 Avas moved at the presence of God, at 
the presence of the God of Israel.” 
“Why leap ye, ye high hills? This is the hill Avhich God 
desireth to dwell in ; yea, the Lord Avill dwell in it foreA'er.” 
The 114th Psalm, supposed to have been composed by a dif- 
ferent 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. 
“ Wliat ailed thee, 0 thou sea, that thou fleddest? Thou Jor- 
dan, 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 
