WHEN He giveth quietness, who then can make trouble?-JOB Xxxiv. 29.

POOR Soul, the centre of my sinful earth,
Fooled by those rebel powers that thee array,
Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,
Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?

Why so large cost, having so short a lease,
Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?
Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,

Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body's end?

Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss,
And let that pine to aggravate thy store;
Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;
Within be fed, without be rich no more.

So shalt thou feed on death, that feeds on men;
And death once dead, there's no more dying then.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

THE peculiarity of ill temper is that it is the

vice of the virtuous. It is often the one blot on an otherwise noble character. This compatibility of ill temper with high moral character is one of the strangest and saddest problems of ethics. Souls are made stout, not by taking the acid fluids out, but by putting something in,— a great love, a new spirit, the spirit of Christ. HENRY DRUMMOND.

IN Thy light shall we see light. Ps. xxxvi. 9.

THEN sorrow, touched by Thee, grows bright
With more than rapture's ray,

As darkness shows us worlds of light

We never saw by day.

THOMAS MOORE.

THROUGH the dark night lie still. God's faithful grace
Lies hid, like morning, underneath the sea;

Let thy slow hours roll, like these mazy stars,
Down to the level ocean patiently,

Till His loved hand shall touch the eastern bars,
And His full glory shine upon thy face.

WILLIAM CALDWELL Roscoe.

OH that my lot may lead me in the path of holy innocence of word and deed, the path that august laws ordain,— laws that in the highest empyrean had their birth, of which heaven is the father alone. Neither did the race of mortal men beget them, nor shall oblivion ever put them to sleep. The power of God is mighty in them, and groweth not old.

SOPHOCLES.

O YE of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt? - LUKE xii. 28.

SOME idle day, when least we look for grace,
Shall we see stand upon the shore indeed
The visible Master and the Lord of us.

EDWARD Dowden.

FEAR is a greater pain than pain itself. O thou of little faith, what dost thou fear? God will not let you perish while you are steadfast in resolution. Let the world be turned upside down, let it be in utter darkness, in smoke, in tumult, so long as God is with us.

SAINT FRANCIS DE SALES.

Ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may JOHN xvi. 24.

be full.

ASK and receive, 't is sweetly said;
Yet what to plead for know I not,

For wish is worsted, hope o'ersped,

And aye to thanks returns my thought.
If I would pray,

I've naught to say

But this, that God may be God still;

For Him to live

Is still to give,

And sweeter than my wish His will.

DAVID A. WASSON.

THIS, then, is the reason why we need to pray, because we need to be delivered from ourselves. This is the reason why we may pray, because God is willing to deliver us from ourselves if we be willing.

CHARLES KINGSLEY.

Joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody. — ISA. li. 3.

As I am coming to that holy room

Where with the choir of saints forevermore
I shall be made thy music, as I come

I tune the instrument here at the door,
And what I must do then think here before.

DR. DONNE.

THE soul is like a musician sitting at his organ and drawing from it delicate and delicious music. But the instrument grows old, the musician can no longer play as before. At last the organ refuses to give a sound. It stops. Do you infer from that that the musician is dead, or that he is only a property of the organ? No. Give him. a new instrument and you will see that his power is as great as ever. So when the human body grows old the brain becomes feeble, and we cannot recollect as we once could, we cannot think as we once could. Give the soul a new instrument, a spiritual body, and it will be seen that its power is the same as ever.

JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE.