Christian graces and virtues they cannot be unless fed, invigorated, and animated by universal charity. ATTERBURY.

Goodness answers to the theological virtue charity, and admits no excess but error: the desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall; but in charity there is no excess: neither can angel or man come into danger by it.

LORD BACON.

Because men believe not Providence, therefore they do so greedily scrape and hoard. They do not believe any reward for charity, therefore they will part with nothing. BARROW.

Nothing seems much clearer than the natural direction of charity. Would we all but relieve, according to the measure of our means, those objects immediately within the range of our personal knowledge, how much of the worst evil of poverty might be alleviated! Very poor people, who are known to us to have been decent, honest, and industrious, when industry was in their power, have a claim on us, founded on our knowledge, and on vicinity and neighbourhood, which have in themselves something sacred and endearing to every good heart. One cannot, surely, always pass by, in his walks for health, restoration, or delight, the lone wayside beggar without occasionally giving him an alms. Old, care-worn, pale, drooping, and emaciated creatures, who pass us by without looking beseechingly at us, or even lifting up their eyes from the ground, cannot often be met with without exciting an interest in us for their silent and unobtrusive sufferings or privations. A hovel, here and there, round and about our own comfortable dwelling, attracts our eyes by some peculiar appearance of penury, and we look in, now and then, upon its inmates, cheering their cold gloom with some small benefaction. These are duties all men owe to distress: they are easily discharged; and even such tender mercies are twice blessed. DR. T. CHALMERS. Poplicola's doors were opened on the outside, to save the people even the common civility of asking entrance; where misfortune was a powerful recommendation, and where want itself was a powerful mediator. DRYDEN.

My errors, I hope, are only those of charity to mankind; and such as my own charity has caused me to commit, that of others may more easily excuse. DRYDEN.

If we can return to that charity and peaceable-mindedness which Christ so vehemently recommended to us, we have his own promise that the whole body will be full of light, Matth. vi; that all other Christian virtues will, by way of recommittance or annexation, attend them. HAMMOND.

Here is another magistrate propounding from the seat of justice the stupendous nonsense that it is desirable that every person who gives alms in the streets should be fined for that offence.

This to a Christian people, and with the New Testament lying before him-as a sort of dummy, I suppose, to swear witnesses on. Why does my so-easily-frightened nationality not take shadows; why does it amble so quietly past offence at such things? My hobby shies at these advertising-vans of Blockheads seeking notoriety? Household Words.

Charity is an universal duty, which it is in every man's power sometimes to practise; since every degree of assistance given to another, upon proper motives, is an act of charity; and there is scarcely any man in such a state of imbecility as that he may not, on some occasions, benefit his neighbour. He that cannot relieve the poor may instruct the ignorant; and he that cannot attend the sick may reclaim the vicious. He that can give little assistance himself may yet perform the duty of charity by inflaming the ardour of others, and recommending the petitions which he cannot grant, to those who have more to bestow. The widow that shall give her mite to the treasury, the poor man who shall bring to the thirsty a cup of cold water, shall not lose their reward.

He that rightly understands the reasonableness and excellency of charity will know that it can never be excusable to waste any of our money in pride and folly. LAW.

All men ought to maintain peace and the common offices of humanity and friendship in LOCKE. diversity of opinions.

The little I have seen of the world and know of the history of mankind teaches me to look upon the errors of others in sorrow, not in anger. When I take the history of one poor heart that has sinned and suffered, and represent to myself the struggles and temptations it has passed-the brief pulsations of joy-the feverish inquietude of hope and fear-the tears of regret-the feebleness of purpose-the pressure of want-the desertion of friends-the scorn of the world, that has little charity-the desolation of the soul's sanctuary, and threatening voices from within— health gone-happiness gone-even hope, that stays longest with us, gone,-I have little heart for aught else than thankfulness that it is not so with me, and would fain leave the erring soul it came. of my fellow-man with Him from whose hands LONGFELLOW: Hyperion.

It is another's fault if he be ungrateful; but it is mine if I do not give. To find one thankful man, I will oblige many that are not so. SENECA.

That charity alone endures which flows from a sense of duty and a hope in God. This is the charity that treads in secret those paths of misery from which all but the lowest of human

wretches have fled: this is that charity which no labour can weary, no ingratitude detach, no horror disgust; that toils, that pardons, that suffers; that is seen by no man, and honoured by no man, but, like the great laws of nature, does the work of God in silence, and looks to a future and better world for its reward.

REV. SYDNEY SMITH.

When thy brother has lost all that he ever had, and lies languishing, and even gasping under the utmost extremities of poverty and distress, dost thou think to lick him whole again only with thy tongue? SOUTH.

The measures that God marks out to thy charity are these: thy superfluities must give place to thy neighbour's great convenience; thy convenience must yield to thy neighbour's necessity; and, lastly, thy very necessities must yield to thy neighbour's extremity. SOUTH.

That charity is bad which takes from independence its proper pride, from mendicity its salutary shame. SOUTHEY.

In all works of liberality something more is to be considered besides the occasion of the givers; and that is the occasion of the receivers.

God is pleased with no music below so much as in the thanksgiving songs of relieved widows, of supported orphans, of rejoicing, and comforted, and thankful persons. This part of our communication does the work of God and of our neighbours, and bears us to heaven in streams made by the overflowing of our brother's comfort. JEREMY TAYLOR.

Let the women of noble birth and great fortunes visit poor cottages and relieve their necessities. JEREMY TAYLOR.

It is no great matter to live lovingly with good-natured and meek persons; but he that can do so with the froward and precise, he only hath true charity. JEREMY TAYLOR.

Charity taken in its largest extent is nothing else but the sincere love of God and our neighbour. WAKE.

Free converse with persons of different sects will enlarge our charity towards others, and incline us to receive them into all the degrees of unity and affection which the word of God requires. DR. I. WATTS.

CHARLES THE SECOND.

thou knowest what it is to be banished thy Thou hast tasted of prosperity and adversity; native country, to be over-ruled, as well as to rule and sit upon the throne; and, being oppressed, thou hast reason to know how hateful the oppressor is both to God and man: if after all these warnings and advertisements thou dost not turn unto the Lord with all thy heart, but forget him who remembered thee in thy distress, and give up thyself to follow lust and vanity, surely great will be thy condemnation. ROBERT BARCLAY :

To the King: preface to An Apology for the True Christian Divinity, 25th Nov. 1675.

The person given to us by Monk was a man without any sense of his duty as a prince, without any regard to the dignity of his crown, without any love to his people,-dissolute, false, venal, and destitute of any positive good quality whatsoever, except a pleasant temper, and the manners of a gentleman. Yet the restoration of our monarchy, even in the person of such a prince, was everything to us; for without monarchy in England, most certainly we never can enjoy either peace or liberty.

BURKE:

Letter to a Member of the National Assembly, Jan. 19, 1791.

Then came those days, never to be recalled without a blush, the days of servitude without loyalty and sensuality without love, of dwarfish talents and gigantic vices, the paradise of cold hearts and narrow minds, the golden age of the coward, the bigot, and the slave. The King cringed to his rival that he might trample on his people, sank into a viceroy of France, and pocketed with complacent infamy her degrading insults and her more degrading gold. The caresses of harlots, and the jests of buffoons, regulated the policy of the state. The government had just ability enough to deceive, and just religion enough to persecute. The principles of liberty were the scoff of every grinning courtier, and the Anathema Maranatha of every fawning dean. In every high place, worship was paid to Charles and James, Belial and Moloch; and England propitiated those obscene and cruel idols with the blood of her best and bravest children. Crime succeeded to crime, and disgrace to disgrace, till the race, accursed of God and man, was a second time driven forth, to wander on the face of the earth, and to be a by-word and a shaking of the head to the nations.

LORD MACAULAY: Milton, Aug. 1825.

sion of high and vivid sensations of pleasure is an idea of happiness perfectly chimerical. Calm and temperate enjoyment is the utmost that is allotted to man. Beyond this we struggle in vain to raise our state; and in fact depress our joys by endeavouring to heighten them. Instead of those fallacious hopes of perpetual festivity with which the world would allure us, religion confers upon us a cheerful tranquillity. Instead of dazzling us with meteors of joy which sparkle and expire, it sheds around us a calm and steady light, more solid, more equal, and more lasting. HUGH BLAIR.

Give us, O give us the man who sings at his work! Be his occupation what it may, he is equal to any of those who follow the same pursuit in silent sullenness. He will do more in the same time-he will do it better-he will persevere longer. One is scarcely sensible of fatigue whilst he marches to music. The very stars are said to make harmony as they revolve in their spheres. Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness, altogether past calculation its powers of endurance. Efforts, to be permanently useful, must be uniformly joyous-a spirit all sunshine-graceful from very gladness -beautiful because bright. CARLYLE.

Be cheerful, no matter what reverse obstruct your pathway, or what plagues follow you in your trail to annoy you. Ask yourself what is to be gained by looking or feeling sad when troubles throng around you, or how your condition is to be alleviated by abandoning yourself to despondency. If you are a young man, nature designed you to "be of good cheer;" and should you find your road to fortune, fame, or respectability, or any other boon to which your young heart aspires, a little thorny, consider it all for the best, and that these impediments are only thrown in your way to induce greater efforts and more patient endurance on your part. Far better spend a whole life in diligent, aye, cheerful and unremitting toil, though you never attain the pinnacle of your ambitious desires, than to turn back at the first appearance of misfortune, and allow despair to unnerve your energies, or sour your naturally sweet and cheerful disposition. If you are of the softer, fairer portion of humanity, be cheerful; though we know full well that most affections are sweet to you when compared with disappointment and neglect, yet let hope banish despair and ill forebodings. Be cheerful: do not brood over fond hopes unrealized, until a chain, link after link, is fastened on each thought and wound around the heart. Nature intended you to be the fountain-spring of cheerfulness and social life, and not the travelling monument of despair and melancholy.

SIR ARTHUR HELPS.

This gamesome humour of children should rather be encouraged, to keep up their spirits and improve their strength and health, than curbed or restrained. LOCKE.

Whatever we do, we should keep the cheerfulness of our spirits, and never let them sink below an inclination at least to be well pleased. The way to this, is to keep our bodies in exercise, our minds at ease. That insipid state wherein neither are in vigour, is not to be accounted any part of our portion of being. When we are in the satisfaction of some innocent

pleasure, or pursuit of some laudable design, we are in the possession of life, of human life. Fortune will give us disappointments enough, without our adding to the unhappy side of our account by our spleen or ill humour.

SIR R. STEELE: Spectator, No. 143. Cheerfulness is always to be supported if a man is out of pain, but mirth to a prudent man should always be accidental. It should naturally arise out of the occasion, and the occasion seldom laid out for it: for those tempers who want mirth to be pleased are like the constitutions which flag without the use of brandy. Therefore I say, let your precept be, "Be easy.' That mind is dissolute and ungoverned which must be hurried out of itself by loud laughter or sensual pleasure, or else be wholly inactive.

SIR R. STEELE,

It is of the last importance to season the passions of a child with devotion, which seldom dies in a mind that has received an early tincture of it. Though it may seem extinguished for a while by the cares of the world, the heats of youth, or the allurements of vice, it gener. ally breaks out and discovers itself again as soon as discretion, consideration, age, or misfortunes have brought the man to himself. The fire may be covered and overlaid, but cannot be entirely quenched and smothered.

ADDISON: Spectator, No. 201.

When I see the motherly airs of my little daughters when playing with their puppets, I cannot but flatter myself that their husbands and children will be happy in the possession of such wives and mothers. ADDISON.

Who can look at this exquisite little creature seated on its cushion, and not acknowledge its

prerogative of life-that mysterious influence which in spite of the stubborn understanding masters the mind, sending it back to days long past, when care was but a dream, and its most serious business a childish frolic? But we no longer think of childhood as the past, still less as an abstraction; we see it embodied before us, in all its mirth, and fun, and glee, and the grave man becomes again a child, to feel as a child, and to follow the little enchanter through all its wiles and never-ending labyrinth of pranks. What can be real if that is not which so takes us out of our present selves that the weight of years falls from us as a garment; that the freshness of life seems to begin anew; and the heart and the fancy, resuming their first joyous consciousness, to launch again into this moving world, as on a sunny sea whose pliant waves yield to the touch, sparkling and buoyant, carry them onward in their merry gambols? Where all the purposes of reality are answered, if there be no philosophy in admitting, we see no wisdom in disputing it. ALLSTON.

If the affection or aptness of the children be extraordinary, then it is good not to cross it.

LORD BACON.

Had it pleased God to continue to me the hopes of succession, I should have been, according to my mediocrity and the mediocrity of the age I live in, a sort of founder of a family: I should have left a son, who, in all the points in which personal merit can be viewed, in science, in erudition, in genius, in taste, in honour, in generosity, in humanity, in every liberal sentiment and every liberal accomplishment, would not have shown himself inferior to the Duke of Bedford, or to any of those whom he traces in his line. His Grace very soon would have wanted all plausibility in his attack upon that provision which belonged more to mine than to me. He would soon have supplied every deficiency, and symmetrized every disproportion. It would not have been for that successor to resort to any stagnant, wasting reservoir of merit in me, or in any ancestry. He had in himself a salient, living spring of generous and manly action. Every day he lived he would have repurchased the bounty of the crown, and ten times more, if ten times more he had received. He was made a public creature, and had no enjoyment whatever but in the performance of some duty. At this exigent moment the loss of a finished man is not easily supplied.

But a Disposer whose power we are little able to resist, and whose wisdom it behoves us not at all to dispute, has ordained it in another manner, and (whatever my querulous weakness might suggest) a far better. The storm has gone over me; and I lie like one of those old oaks which the hurricane has scattered about me. I am stripped of all my honours, I am torn up by the roots, and lie prostrate on the earth. There, and prostrate there, I most unfeignedly recognize the Divine justice, and in some degree submit to it. But, whilst I humble myself before God, I do not know that it is forbidden to repel the attacks

of unjust and inconsiderate men. The patience of Job is proverbial. After some of the convulsive struggles of our irritable nature, he submitted himself, and repented in dust and ashes. But even so, I do not find him blamed for reprehending, and with a considerable degree of verbal asperity, those ill-natured neighbours of his who visited his dunghill to read moral, political, and economical lectures on his misery. I am alone. I have none to meet my enemies in the gate. BURKE: Letter to a Noble Lord on the Att li upon his Pension, 1796.

Be ever gentle with the children God has given you; watch over them constantly; reprove them earnestly, but not in anger. In the forcible language of Scripture, "Be not bitter against them." "Yes, they are good boys," I once heard a kind father say; "I talk to them very much, but do not like to beat my children -the world will beat them." It was a beautiful thought, though not elegantly expressed. Yes there is not one child in the circle round the table, healthful and happy as they look now, on whose head, if long enough spared, the storm will not beat. Adversity may wither them, sickness may fade, a cold world may frown on them, but amidst all let memory carry them back to a home where the law of kindness reigned, where the mother's reproving eye was moistened with a tear, and the father frowned "more in sorrow than in anger." ELIHU BURRITT.

Good Christian people! here lies for you an inestimable loan: take all heed thereof; in all carefulness employ it: with high recompense, or else with heavy penalty, will it one day be CARLYLE. required back.

I love these little people; and it is not a slight thing when they, who are so fresh from God, love us. DICKENS.

It always grieves me to contemplate the initiation of children into the ways of life when It checks they are scarcely more than infants. qualities that Heaven gives them, and demands their confidence and simplicity, two of the best that they share our sorrows before they are capable of entering into our enjoyments.

DICKENS.

A child is a man in a small letter, yet the best copy of Adam; and he is happy whose small practice in the world can only write his charac

ter.

He is Nature's fresh picture newly drawn in oil, which time and much handling dims and defaces. His soul is yet a white paper, unscribbled with observations of the world, wherewith at length it becomes a blurred note-book. He is purely happy, because he knows no evil, nor hath made means by sin to be acquainted with misery. He arrives not at the mischief of being wise, nor endures evils to come by foreseeing them. He kisses and loves all, and when the smart of the rod is past, smiles on his beater. Nature and his parents alike dandle him, and entice him on with a bit of sugar to a draught