a better by controlling the unworthy propensities of his nature and improving all his better aspirations; to do his duty to his God, then to his neighbor; to promote the happiness and welfare of those who are in any degree dependent on him or whom he has the means of assisting, never wantonly to injure the meanest thing that lives, to encourage as far as he may have the power whatever is useful and tends to refine and exalt humanity; to store his mind with such knowledge as it is fitted to receive and he is able to attain; and so to employ the talents committed to his care that, when the account is required, he may hope to have his stewardship approved. SOUTHEY.

LITTERING stones, and golden things,

Wealth and honors that have wings,

Ever fluttering to be gone,
I could never call my own;
Riches that the world bestows
She can take and I can lose ;
But the treasures that are mine
Lie afar beyond her line;
When I view my spacious soul,
And survey myself a whole,
And enjoy myself alone,

I'm a kingdom of my own.

WATTS.

XXVI.

ME

A Song of trust.

E know not, but Thou knowest
All things, Most Good and Wise!

The light is all about Thee,
The mists are in our eyes.
Thy children love this solace
In hours of strain and strife,
What we know not Thou knowest,
Oh, God of all our life!

Why sicknesses and sorrows

Should dare to touch Thine own, Why loving hearts are breaking, And weak ones sad and lone; Why those who cry for morning Are lost amid the night,

We know not, but Thou knowest,
And all Thy ways are right.

Why from the world that needs them
Thou call'st Thy best away,
Though hosts besiege Thee for them,
And they are fain to stay,

We ask, but find no answer,
We cannot understand,
But Thine is perfect knowledge,

And our times are in Thy hand.

From beat of stormy waters,

From waves of restless care,

From tumult of great trouble
And waste of wild despair;

XXVII.

Our souls find ample refuge

In faith, as in an ark,

We know not, but Thou knowest,
And light shines through the dark.

The Airs of Heaven.

The soul which Thou, O God, hast given me, is pure; Thou hast created it, formed it and breathed into my body; Thou wilt guard it till Thou wilt take it from me to restore it in futurity.-Ancient Hebrew Prayer.

IFE appears to me to be too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs. We are, and must be, one and all, burdened with faults in this world; but the time will come when, I trust, we shall put them off in putting off our corruptible bodies; when debasement and sin will fall from us with this cumbrous frame of flesh, and only the spark will remain the impalpable principle of life and thought, pure as when it left the Creator to inspire the creature : whence it came, it will return, perhaps to pass through gradations of glory. It is a creed in which I

delight, to which I cling. It makes eternity a rest, a vast home, not a terror and an abyss. Besides, with this creed, revenge never worries my heart; degradation never disgusts me too deeply; injustice never crushes me too low. I live in calm, looking to the end. CHARLOTTE BRONTÉ.

HE night is mother of the day,

The winter of the spring,

And ever upon old decay,

The greenest mosses cling.
Behind the cloud the star-light lurks,
Through showers the sunbeams fall;
For God, who loveth all His works
Hath left His hope with all.

XXVIII. Turning the Light Inward.

Let us search and try our ways and turn again to God.-Lamentations iii. 40.

HERE is no practice I know of more beautiful than that of passing each day under review; blessed is the sleep that follows such an examination of one's self! How calm, how lofty and free is the mind that acts as a spy and censor of its conduct, and privately approves or blames itself for its acts and character. Every night I take the opportunity of summoning myself before such a tribunal. As soon as the light is out and my wife, knowing my practice, has lapsed into silence, I run over and examine everything I have said and done throughout the day.

I hide nothing and pass over nothing; for why should I fear the sight of my faults, when I can pardon myself on condition of not transgressing in the same way again? Did I speak too warmly in such and such a

discussion? I resolve in future not to engage in debate with uneducated people; for those who have never learnt anything do not want to learn from me or any one else.

Did I warn such an one rather more freely than I ought? The result was that I only gave offence, and did him no good. I will take care in future, that what I say shall not only be true, but that he, to whom I say it, shall be able to bear the truth. A good man likes being warned; while a monitor is intolerable to the bad.

ITHOUT murmur, uncomplaining,

In His hand

Lay whatever things thou canst not
Understand;

Though the world thy folly spurneth
From thy faith in pity turneth,

Peace thy inmost soul shall fill—
Lying still.

SENECA.

XXIX. The Hidden Light and Life.

The night shineth as the day, the darkness and the light are both alike before Thee.—Psalms cxxxix. 12.

HE immortality of the soul is a thing which so deeply concerns, so infinitely imports us, that we must have utterly lost our feeling to be altogether cold and remiss in our inquiries about it. And all our