THE WAY TO HEAVEN.

If the way to heaven be narrow, it is not long; and if the gate be strait, it opens into endless life.

Bishop Beveridge.

KEEPING THE BANKS OF THE SABBATH.

The streams of religion run deeper or shallower, as the banks of the Sabbath are kept up or neglected.

Calcott.

THE UNHAPPY DIVISION OF FAITH AND works.

'Twas an unhappy division that has been made between faith and works. Though in my intellect I may divide them, just as in the candle I know there is both light and heat; but yet, put out the candle, and they are both gone, one remains not without the other; so it is with faith and works.

Selden.

58

LIP-LABOUR.

In the Old Scripture I have often read,
The calf without meal ne'er was offer'd;
To figure to us nothing more than this,
Without the heart, lip-labour nothing is.

Herrick.

*

PROGRESS IS NOT ALWAYS PROSPERITY.

* Craft wrapp'd still in many comberments, With all her cunning thrives not though it speed.

Daniel.

APPEARANCES DECEITFUL.

Nothing seen fearful, we the most should fear;
Great amistes rise before the greatest rain:
The water deep'st where we'll not murmur hear;
In fairest cups men temper deadliest bane.
The nearer night, the air more clear and still;
The nearer to one's death's, least fearing ill.

Drayton.

LABOUR.

While ease abounds, it's death to do amiss,
But who his limbs with labours, and his mind
Behoves with cares, cannot so easy miss:

Abroad in arms, at home in studious kind,

Who seeks with painful toil, shall honour soonest find.

Spenser.

EXPERIENCE.

These days' example hath deep written here,
Deep written in my heart with iron pen,
That bliss may not abide with mortal men.

Spenser.

REASON OF INFIDELITY.

I observed to Mr Hall, that in the course of my experience in society, I had never met with an instance where a man took up the argument as an unbeliever in the truth of Christianity, but it might be traced to an irregularity in his moral conduct; thus confirming a frequent remark of his, "When a man is opposed to Christianity, it is because Christianity is opposed to him.”

Green's Reminiscences of Rev. Robert Hall.

THE OLIVE GARLAND.

Most sacred peace

Doth nourish virtue, and fast friendship breeds,
Weak she makes strong, and strong things doth increase:

Till it the pitch of highest praise exceeds.
Brave be her wars, and honourable deeds,
By which she triumphs over ire and pride,
And wins an olive garland for their meeds.

Spenser.

MUCH SEED AND A LIGHT HARVEST.

What an astonishing mass of pabulum is consumed to sustain an individual human being! How much nourishment I have consumed by eating and drinking; how much air by breathing; how much of the element of affection

my heart has claimed, and has sometimes lived in luxury, and sometimes starved! Above all! what an infinite sum of those instructions which are to feed the moral and intellectual man have I consumed, and how poor the consequence! What a despicable, dwarfish growth I exhibit to myself and to God at this hour!

Yes, how much it takes in this last respect to grow how little! Millions of valuable thoughts, I suppose, have passed through my mind. How often my conscience has admonished me! How many thousands of pious resolutions! How all nature has preached to me! How day and night, and solitude and the social scenes, and books and the Bible, the gravity of sermons and the flippancy of fools, life and death, the ancient world and the modern, sea and land, and the Omnipresent God! have all concurred to instruct me! and behold the miserable result of all!! I wonder if the measure of effect be a ten-thousandth part of the bulk, to call it so, of this vast combination of causes. How far is this strange proportion between moral effects and their causes necessary in simple nature (analogically with the proportion between cause and consequence in physical pabulum), and how far is it the indication and the consequence of nature being depraved? However this may be, the enormous fact of the inefficacy of truth shades with melancholy darkness, to my view, all the hopes, for myself and for others, of any grand improvements in this world.

Foster.