Spirit of Love.

Ingratitude.

Southey says of Whitfield: "He spake as one conscious of his high credentials, with authority and power; yet there was a fervent and melting charity, an earnestness of persuasion, an outpouring of love, partaking the virtue of that faith from which it flowed, and it seemed to enter the heart which it pierced, and to heal it as with balm." This is at once the true and the only successful tone of controversy, whether political or theological.

It is well for us sometimes to meet with instances of ingratitude, to show us our motives, for, if they have been right, we shall not repent of our doing, though we lament the depravity of a fellow creature. In these instances also, as in a glass, we may see little emblems of ourselves; for what after all is the ingratitude of any one towards us, compared with our Hannah More. ingratitude to our infinite Benefactor.

Secret of
Infiuence.

Luther.

It is a universal law, whoever intrudes his own supposed superiority on another, raises a spirit of opposition in the minds of all around him whoever manifestly underrates his own accomplishments, without affectation, is secure of the tribute of admiration, even from his rivals.

He was a man of prodigious sagacity and acuteness, a man, if ever there was one, whom nothing could daunt or intimidate. When the cause of religion was concerned, he never

regarded whose love he was likely to gain, or whose displeasure to incur. He despised alike the Emperor's Edicts, and the Pope's Bulls.

Warton.

Grattan.

The very music of freedom, her first fresh Eloquence of matin song, after a long night of slavery, degradation, and sorrow; the bright offerings of which he brought to the shrine of his country, wisdom, genius, courage, and patience, invigorated and embellished by all those social and domestic virtues, without which the loftiest talents stand isolated in the moral waste around them, like the pillars of Palmyra towering in the wilderness.

Moore.

"I have taught myself," says Sir Samuel Maxim for Life. Romilly, in a letter to a friend, "a very useful lesson in practical philosophy, which is not to suffer my happiness to depend on my success. Should my wishes be gratified, I promise to employ all the talents, and all the authority I may acquire for the public good. Should I fail in the pursuit, I console myself with thinking, that the humblest situation in life has its duties, which one must feel a satisfaction in discharging; that at least my conscience will bear me the pleasing testimony of having intended well, and that true happiness is much less likely to be found in the high walks of ambition, than in the Secretum iter et fallentis semita vitæ.""

Party Spirit.

The Faithful
Minister.

Archbishop Whateley observes, that persons who will hear nothing against their party, say with the rat:

"This cat, if she murder the rat,

Must needs be a very great sinner;

But to dine upon mice can't be counted a vice,
I myself like a mouse for my dinner."

When he comes to die, he shall be soothed by the calm remembrance of having been enabled, by God's grace, to preserve his purpose inviolate, his efforts simple, his dependence stedfast; that he sought not the applause of men, but the divine approval; not his own interest or advancement, but the honour of his Master; that for the salvation of His people he was prepared to trample on everything besides, and to maintain that simplicity and godly sincerity which, though we find it now. so difficult to keep without contamination, could alone afford one ray of satisfaction in that solemn review. His work has been the most important and honorable, so shall be his recompense. In every trophy won by his faithfulness, he shall renew the memory of his toils and conflicts only to enhance the rapture of his reward. In every regenerate soul, the subject once of his imperfect ministry, he shall find a brother with whom to range through fields of unwithering joy. I see him on the couch of death, and a company of ransomed

immortals, the first-fruits of his travail, wait to conduct him to the habitations of peace.

We all of us complain of the shortness of Flight of Time. time, and yet have much more than we know what to do with. Our lives are spent either in doing nothing to the purpose, or in doing nothing that we ought to do. We are always complaining that our days are few, and acting as though there would be no end to them. It was said by Seneca: "Magna pars vitæ nobis elabitur male agentibus, maxima nihil agentibus, et tota aliud agentibus."

That a Miracle is contradictory to reason, is based on the assumption that there are no laws in the universe, but such as we can comprehend. So with regard to Prayer, there is the objection that it is incompatible with God's foreknowledge; that it is unreasonable to pray concerning things which have been already determined. . . . . The objection applies as much and as little to every one of our actions, and prayer is as truly a link of the predetermined course of events as anything else. The difficulty is diminished if we bear in mind that our conception of time may be only the consequence of our inability to think of events which are really co-existing, otherwise than as successive. . . . . It may be that as earthly parents wait to be asked before giving, so the Heavenly Father would quicken

Miracles.

in His children their love for Him; any how

the duty of Prayer follows from that sense of relation to a superior Power of which the positivist takes no account. For a Christian there is, besides, the special command and the Rev.I.G.Smith. special promise of his Incarnate Lord.

Trials of Life.

Judgment of
Motives.

Talleyrand.

TrueAmbition,

This motto is said to be on a sun-dial in the Jardin des Plantes at Paris: "Horas non numero nisi serenas ;" ("I count none but sunny hours;") the only course for a sun-dial, but neither the only nor the wisest one for man. They have little true knowledge who have never felt that the darkness which alternates with the daylight has benefits as great, if not as glorious, that the storm which sweeps over, and even threatens to destroy us, may, in fact save us from unseen danger. In the human heart, as in the bosom of the earth, there are seeds which only germinate in the winter of adversity, which yet may have an aftergrowth of beauty and utility, sufficient to repay the patience which has endured trustingly, and counted carefully the dark and chilly hours.

The

Experience teaches us Indulgence. wisest man is he who doubts his own judgment with regard to the motives which actuate his fellow-men.

Dr. Arnold, of Rugby, the night before his sudden death said: "I have no desire other