WE then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves. - ROM. XV. I.

THERE Souls by nature pitched too high,
By sufferings plunged too low,
Meet in the church's middle sky
Half-way 'twixt joy and woe,

To practise there the soothing lay
That sorrow best relieves,
Thankful for all God takes away,
Humbled by all He gives.

JOHN KEBLE.

WE are all different in the amount and quality of the sympathy that we require. Some stand alone quite contentedly in joy and sorrow; others want to call together their friends and neighbors when the piece of silver is found," Rejoice with me" is their cry.

ONLY supporting supports.

LUCY SMITH.

FOR the wages of sin is death; but the gift of ROM. vi. 23.

God is eternal life.

OUR acts our angels are, or good or ill
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.
BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.

AND so I think that the last lesson of life, the choral song which rises from all elements and all angels, is a voluntary obedience, a necessitated freedom. Man is made of the same atoms as the world is; he shares the same impressions, predispositions, and destiny. When his mind is illuminated, when his heart is kind, he throws himself joyfully into the sublime order, and does by knowledge what the stones do by structure.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

WITH great mercies will I gather thee. — ISA.

liv. 7.

WHEN winter fortunes cloud the brows

Of summer friends, when eyes grow strange,
When plighted faith forgets its vows,

When earth and all things in it change,

O Lord, thy mercies fail me never;
When once Thou lovest, Thou lovest ever.

JOHN QUARLES.

WHEN the time comes for us to wake out of the dreams of the world's sleep, why should it be otherwise than out of the dreams of the night? Singing of birds, first broken and low, as not to

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dying eyes," but to eyes that wake to life," the casement slowly grows a glimmering square,” and then the gray and then the rose of dawn; and last the light, whose going forth is to the ends of heaven.

JOHN RUSKIN.

CASTING all your care upon Him; for He careth for you. · —1 Peter v. 7.

O THOU God of old!

Grant me some smaller grace than comes to these ;
But so much patience as a blade of grass
Grows by contented through the heat and cold.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

BUT these cares are all in ourselves and of ourselves, and not in things at all, — things are not cares; cares are only cravings of that immortal hunger which the swine's food of earthly things cannot satisfy.

HORACE BUSHNELL.

LOOKING for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ. TITUS iii. 13.

O BEAUTEOUS God! uncircumscribed treasure

Of an eternal pleasure!

Thy throne is seated far

Above the highest star,

Where Thou preparest a glorious place

Within the brightness of Thy face,

For every spirit

To inherit

That builds his hopes upon Thy merit.

JEREMY TAYLOR.

WHEN I open the Gospels and read the words of Jesus, I find myself in sunshine. Light and warmth are united in his teachings inseparably. He makes goodness lovely, natural, simple, easy. He makes God seem near, and heaven close by, and life full of good opportunity, and every soul capable of goodness. He is my friend, my

teacher, my brother; and his thought seems to

become a part of mine.

JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE.