WATCH therefore for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come. MATT. xxiv. 42.

DEATH finds us midst our playthings, snatches us,
As a cross nurse might do a wayward child,
From all our toys and baubles; the rough call
Unlooses all our favorite toys on earth,

And well if they are such as may be answered
In yonder world, where all is judged of truly.
SIR WALTER SCOTT.

As in a voyage when the ship has come to anchor, if you have gone out to find water, you may amuse yourself with picking up a little shell or bulb, but you must keep your attention steadily fixed upon the ship in case the captain should call, and then you must leave all such things; so in life, if the captain call, run to the ship, and leave such possessions behind you, not looking back. But if you be an old man, take care not to go a long distance from the ship at all, lest you should be called and come too late.

SENECA.

THE Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? — Ps. xxvii. I.

THANK God for life: life is not sweet always;
Hands may be heavy-laden, hearts care full,
Unwelcome nights follow unwelcome days,
And dreams divine end in awakenings dull;
Still it is life, and life is cause for praise.
This ache, this restlessness, this quickening sting,
Prove me no torpid and inanimate thing;
Prove me of Him who is of life the spring.

I am alive! - and that is beautiful.

IN every earnest life there are many flats to tread, with the heavens out of sight, no sun, no moon, and not a tint of life on the path below; when the only guidance is the faith of brighter hours, and the secret Hand we are too dumb and dark to feel. But to the meek and faithful it is not always so. Now and then something touches the dull dream of sense and custom, and the desolation vanishes away; the spirit leaves its witness with us. The mystery of life and the grievousness of death are gone; we know now the little from the great, the transient from the eternal; we can possess our souls in patience; and neither the waving palms and scattered flowers of triumph can elate us, nor the weight of any cross appear too hard to bear.

JAMES MARTINEAU.

NEVERTHELESS He left not Himself without

witness.

ACTS xiv. 17.

His testimony all the time is sure;

The smallest star that keepeth in the night
His silver candle bright,

And every deed of good that anywhere
Maketh the hands of holy women white;
All sweet religious work, all earnest prayer
Of uttered or unutterable speech;
Whatever things are peaceable and pure,
Whatever things are right,

These are his witnesses, ay, all and each.

ALICE CARY.

So the spiritual world becomes slowly natural ; and, what is of all but equal moment, the natural world becomes slowly spiritual. Nature is not a mere image or emblem of the spiritual. It is a working model of the spiritual.

HENRY DRUMMOND.

THOU hast sinned against thy soul. — HAB.

ii. 10.

THE Wounds I might have healed,
The human sorrow and smart!
And yet it never was in my soul
To play so ill a part;

But evil is wrought by want of thought

As well as want of heart!

THOMAS HOOD.

THIS, after all, is the tragical feature of life,

that it is linked with so much failure in character; that it is given for wisdom, and yet we are not wise; for goodness, and we are not good; for overcoming evil, and evil remains; for patience and sympathy and love, and yet we are fretful and hard and weak and selfish. There is nothing a right-minded man desires so much as entire right-mindedness. We are keyed not to attainment, but to the hope of it by struggle toward it.

THEODORE T. MUNGER.

FOR I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. ROM. viii. 18.

No more in heaven than earth will he find God
Who does not know His loving mercy swift,
But waits the moment consummate and ripe
Each burden from each human soul to lift.

H. H.

OH, blessed, blessed Eternity, and blessed are they who rightly ponder it! All we do here for a brief uncertain time is but as child's play. It were less than worthless, save that it is the passage to eternity.

SAINT FRANCIS DE SALES.