graph may quench or kindle the celestial spark in a human soul-in myriads of souls. HOW TO RISE. MANY indolent men find fault with their birth, or station, or employment, as hindering their advancement in society. But if any man has capacity, and industry, he can't be kept down. He must rise, and outstrip in progress men of higher birth or larger wealth, who are deficient in energy of will. In the "Art of Doing our Best," is the following sketch of Dr. Carey: "William Carey had been brought up in the church of England; but various causes induced him to become a Baptist, and he was immersed, in 1783, at the age of twenty-two, in the River Nan, by Dr. Ryland, who afterwards assisted him in the formation of missions. He devoted himself entirely to Scripture; and, to understand it better, studied, as best he could, Latin, Greek and Hebrew. Yet he was still a journeyman shoemaker, who would have mended your boots, had you lived in those days, for a shilling or so, and would have been glad of the job. When his master died he married his sister, and took up the business. This step was unfortunate; for the said sister cared as little for the things which interested Carey as any of the Hindus he afterwards sought to convert; and proved, in time, no slight obstacle in the way, His trade, too, diminished; and while in the capacity of a Baptist minister he was preaching on Sundays to his congregation, he had to travel many a long mile, in spite of ill-health, on the week-days, to sell his boots and shoes, that he might buy bread. Yet he was patient and true, and not ashamed of his poverty. Thirty USEFUL MAXIMS. BE very deliberate in the choice of a friend. In civility, follow the many; in piety, the few; in all things, the good. Let another's passion be a lecture to thy reason. Never insult misery, deride infirmity, nor despise deformity. Look not upon sin, lest it tempt thee; taste it not, lest it wound thee; touch it not, lest it kill thee. If you would be wise, learn justly to estimate heaven and earth, the soul and the body, time and eternity. If you can say nothing wisely, hold your peace. When you do not know what to do, do nothing. Where God is silent none but fools speak. When you lose a friend, take heed that you do not lose your affection also. Do with trials, as men do with new hats; put them on and wear them till they become easy. To do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God; to be diligent in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord; to be afraid of a little sin, thankful for a little mercy, and mindful for a little duty, are nine excellent properties of true piety. The Letter Box. FRIENDLY ADMONITION TO THE UNCONVERTED. MEN AND BRETHREN-You have passed through another year, during which you have been all the while on trial for eternity. You have been in the world where this is the great purpose for which it was made, and is preserved. You have lived in the world where the Son of God became incarnate and died to make an atonement for sin; where the offer of salvation is made to all human beings; where the Holy Spirit comes to apply salvation to the hearts of transgressors; where many have been prepared for heaven. You have passed the year amidst great privileges and advantages; in a Christian land, with nothing to hinder you from becoming a Christian if you chose; and where, perhaps, during the whole year you have regularly heard the Gospel. You have spent the year without religion. You began it without religion; you have gone through all its changes without it; you have closed it without it. Neither at its commencement, or during its progress, or at its close, have you had any true love to God, or repentance for sin, or faith in the Redeemer. At no period during the year have you been prepared to die. At no period, if you had died, would you have entered heaven. The year to you has been, in regard to the great purposes of life, a wasted year; and were it stricken out now from the list of your years, you would suffer no loss by it in regard to the salvation of the soul. You do not yourself believe that you are any better prepared to meet God than you were when the year began. Many whom I address have gone through the year without having taken one step, or even cherished one sincere desire, to secure their salvation. In all that year you have not penitently and seriously kneeled, and ask God to have mercy on your soul. You have not once sat down to read the Bible with a desire to know what you must do to be saved. You have not listened to the Gospel with a deep personal interest a sincere wish to know what the truth is, and what a man must do if he would be happy when he dies. You have not formed a distinct plan or purpose ever to make this a serious matter; and amidst all the schemes of which the year has been prolific; all the subjects of inquiry -commercial, financial, political, scientific, or moral, which have occupied your attention, the question how a sinner may be saved, and an immortal soul made happy, has come in for no share of your investigations. Whatever you may have gained, you have gained nothing on this the most important of all subjects on which the mind of men can ever be employed. You may have gained a friend; you may have gained property; you may have done something towards establishing a reputation which will not at once be forgotten when you are dead. But, in this great matter of salvation, you are as poor as you were when you began the year, and have done nothing to secure the treasures where "moth and rust do not corrupt," or to make clear your "title to mansions in the skies." With some of you, the year has been passed in utter frivolity. Its chronicle would be a sorry record, on which you yourself would blush to look, of time spent at the toilet, in trifling conversation, in frivolous amusements, in reading that which did nothing to improve the understanding, or to purify the heart; in idleness, in gossip, in needless slumber, in pastimes whose only object was to make you forget that there was such a thing as time. You had already forgotten that there was an eternity; and the aim of living has been to make the whole of existence a blank. Perchance, also, some whom I address have spent the year in scenes whose recollection in days to come will only pour burning sulphur on a conscience laid bare to the wrath of God. You are then, lastly, now nearer the grave, but not nearer heaven, than you were when you began the year. You have a harder heart; you are more under the influence of the world; you are bound to this life by more attractive ties; you are less accessible to the Gospel; you are more disposed to turn away from the counsels of wisdom. There was more hope of your salvation human view at the beginning of the year than there is now. "Hope deferred," in regard to your salvation, has "made the heart" of many a friend "sick;" and already a father and a mother begin to look upon the prospect that you will be saved with despair. to Think, then, how short life is at best; how few are its active years; how important a portion a single year may be, and is, of your earthly existence; and then think of a whole year more, now absolutely wasted in regard to the great purpose for which God placed you in the world. Think how little you have gained that is worth living for, even on the lowest principles of calculation about the value of things, and how soon even that little may be taken away; and then think what you have lost. To-day, you might have been a Christian. The light of salvation, with the cheering light of this beautiful morning, might have shone on your path; the peace which results from reconciliation with God might have taken up its permanent abode in your heart; and the last sun of the year, which has just " hastened to its setting," might have gone down on you as a child of God, and an heir of salvation. Though it had been the last time that you were to behold him, and this morning's sun might have greeted other eyes, but not yours, your souls would have had peace; for you would have gone where there are brighter skies, and where there is no need of "the light of the sun or the moon." A. B. The Miscellany. THE HORSE AND THE LION. THERE were some horses on board belonging to Major Kemball, the Consul-General at Bagdad, one of which got loose and leaped overboard just at dawn. The steamer was then about half-way to Bagdad, and getting under weigh after anchoring as usual for the night. The horse was not missed for halfan-hour, but was then descried ashore, in what seemed very unpleasant proximity to a splendid lion. The lion circled round and round him, always closing in. The horse remained motionless, beyond turning his head sufficiently to watch the lion's movements. Suddenly the latter gave a tremendous bound, but the horse was too quick for him, and escaped with a slight scratch; but instead of galloping away, he only went a hundred yards, and again stood still. The lion commenced his former tactics with a similar result, only his bound was less vigorous this time. The horse did not even yet take completely to his heels; he seemed either tied by some strange fascination, or inclined to tantalise an enemy, from whom a few minutes' canter would have entirely freed him. Again the lion commenced his circles; but ere they were narrowed to springing distance a party had landed from the steamer, and the instant the horse descried them he came galloping down as fast as he could, while the lion stalked break fastless away towards the jungle-The Persian War of 1856 57. A SCOTTISH SABBATH. I HAVE seen Sabbath sights, and joined in Sabbath worships, which took the heart with simplicity and ravished it with sublime emotions. I have crossed the hills in the sober and contemplative autumn to reach the retired, lonely church betimes, and as we descended toward the simple edifice, whither every heart and every foot directed itself from the country around, we beheld, issuing from every vale and mountain glen, its little train of worshippers, coming up to the church, around which the bones of their fathers reposed; in so holy a place the people assembled under a roof where ye of the plentiful south would not have lodged the porter of your gate. But under that roof the people sat, and sung their Maker's praise, "tuning their hearts, by far the noblest aim," and the pastor poured forth to God the simple wants of the people, and poured into their attentive ears the scope of Christian doctrine and duty; and having filled the hearts of his flock with his consolations, parted with them after much blessing and mutual congratulation, and the people went on their way rejoicing. Oh, what. meaning there was in the wholewhat piety what intelligence what simplicity! The men shepherds, and came up in their shepherd's guise; and the very brute, the shepherd's servant and companion, rejoiced to come at his feet. Oh, it was a Sabbath, a Sabbath of rest! The body and the soul equally refreshed. Edward Irving. were - were SHUT YOUR MOUTH. MEN who have been jostled about among the vicissitudes of a long life amid their fellow-men, will have observed that all nervousness commerces in the mouth. Men who lack the courage to meet their fellow-men in physical combat are afraid, not of their enemy, nor from a conviction of their own inferiority, but from the disarming nervousness of an open and tremulous mouth; the vibrations of which reach and weaken them, to the ends of their fingers and their toes. In public debates in the forum or the pulpit a similar alarm results in their certain defeat; and before a hive of bees, in the same want of confidence, the odour of fear which they emit is sure to gain them the sting In one of the exciting scenes of my roaming life, I recollect to have witnessed a strong illustration of the above remarks, while residing in one of the Sioux villages on the banks of the Upper Missouri. A serious quarrel having arisen between one of the Fur Company's men and a Sioux brave, a challenge was given by the Indian and accepted by the white man, who were to meet upon the prairie, in a state of nudity, and unattended, and decide the affair with their knives. A few minutes before this horrible combat was to have commenced, both parties being on the ground, and perfectly prepared, the factor and myself succeeded in bringing them to a reconciliation, and finally to a shaking of hands; by which we had the satisfaction of knowing, beyond a doubt, that we had been the means of saving the life of one of these men; and a short time afterward, while alone with the Indian, I asked him if he had not felt fears of his antagonist, who appeared much his superior in size and strength; to which he very promptly replied, "No, not in the least; I never fear harm from a man who can't shut his mouth, no matter how large or how strong he may be." I was forcibly struck with this reply, as well as with the conviction I had got in my own mind (and no doubt from the same symptoms) that the white man would have been killed, if they had fought. The proverb, as old and unchangeable as their hills among the North American Indians, "My son, if you would be wise, open first your eyes, your ears next, and last of all, your mouth, that your words may be words of wisdom, and give no advantage to thine adversary," might be adopted with good effect in civilized life; and he who would strictly adhere to it, would be sure to reap its benefits in his waking hours; and would soon find the habit running into his hours of rest, into which he would calmly enter; dismissing the nervous anxieties of the day, as he firmly closed his teeth and his lips, only to be opened after his eyes and his ears, in the morning; and the rest of such sleep would bear him daily and hourly proof of its value. And if I were to endeavour to bequeath to posterity the most important motto which human language can convey, it should be in three words Shut-your-mouth. In the social transactions of life, this might have its beneficial results, as the most friendly, cautionary advice, or be received, as the grossest of insults; but where I would point and engrave it, in every Nursery, and on every Bedpost in the Universe, its meaning could not be mistaken; and if obeyed, its importance would soon be realized.-Dr. Catlin. SMOOTH STONES TAKEN FROM ANCIENT BROOKS. As a poor man lives and deals upon the credit of others, so does a humble soul live and deal with God, for the strengthening of every grace, and for the supply of every mercy upon the credit of the Lord Jesus. He knows that since he broke with God in innocency, God will trust him no more, He will take his word no more; and therefore, when he goes to God for mercy, he brings his Benjamin, his Jesus, in his arms, and pleads for mercy upon the account of Jesus. Some Christians as are like to Pharaoh's lean kine, reproach three at once-God, the Gospel, and their teachers; and this age is full of such Christians. No saint so like a sinner, as a weak saint. None so much in the school of temptation as those who are most rich in grace. There are none who are such blocks, such mountains in Satan's way, as these; none are so active and so resolute in their oppositions against him as these; and therefore none so assaulted and tempted as these. A real sense of our own unworthiness renders us most fit for divine mercy. This objection, "I am unworthy," is an unworthy objection, and speaks out much pride and ignorance of the Gospel, and of the freeness and richness of God's grace. Carnal reason is an enemy to faith; it is ever crossing and contradicting it. It will never be well with thee, Christian, so long as thou art swayed by carnal reason, and reliest more upon thy five senses than on the four Evangelists. As the body lives by breathing,so the soul lives by believing. Though grace is a glorious creature, it is but a creature, and therefore must be upheld by its Creator. Though grace be a beautiful child, yet it is but a child, that must be upheld by the father's arms. This, Christians, you must remember, and give glory to God. Luther confesses that, before his conversion, he met not with a more displeasing word, in all the study of divinity, than the word "repent," but after the Lord had converted him and manifested himself to him, he delighted in this word; then he could sorrow for his sins, and rejoice in his sorrow. The number of difficulties makes the Christian conquest the more illustrious. A gracious man should be made up all of fire, overcoming and consuming all opposition, as fire does the stubble. All difficulties should be but whetstones to his fortitude. A humble soul is quick-sighted; he sees the rod in a father's hand; he sees the honey upon the top of every twig; and so can bless God; he sees the sugar at the bottom of the bitterest cup that God doth put in his hands; he knows that God's house of correction is a school of instruction; and so he can sit down and bless when the rod is upon his back. |