determined as he is, is soon enticed, is suspected, is weakened in his confidence of incorruptibility, but not softened in the tones of his censure or impaired in the ingenuity of self-excuse. He has erred when strongly tempted, and others seem to him to have erred without inducement. He even sees those who do not blush to own their iniquities, and who, regardless of reputation, are abandoned to intemperance, to sensuality, and to what he suspects but knows not-always suspecting a little more than he knows of evil in others. His sins are smaller and cleaner things; and if they are not suspected or exposed, he has surely too much regard for virtue to make them known or to repeat them openly. He has no glorying in them; his glorying is in the credit of better things. He can however talk of others' sins without thinking of his own. He can witness their falls without a fear of stumbling. He can injure their reputation without infidelity to his He can distress their households while he has the satisfaction and the virtue of providing for his own. He is as selfish a man as ever lived, and more selfish than any that ever lived by honesty; and yet selfishness in his view is no crime; it is too common to be regarded as a blemish of character; it is a wrinkle indeed, but like those of the face, it is the work of a universal and inexorable law which he had no concern in making and which he rather obeys than approves. Selfishness no great defect! Selfishness not a thing to be detested! the very leaven that works us into all the moral deformities we ever exhibitthe very thing in which our difference from excellence, from God and angels, and ourselves as by creation we were, is most clearly seen! Is

own.

this the harmless creature the man seems to think it? This is his production in a sense in which he never made any thing else. He seems to have produced it out of his own material. But how does his offspring work with him? Why, it helps him to learn that many sins and some vices may consist with reputation of virtue, and that honesty may be too exact to consist with the quickest and greatest gain. And he soon sees a fortune, an offer, a pleasure, to be gained by some act of treachery, fraud or robbery, and he looks at it he makes the trial, and is thrown aside in regard to the affections and confidence of men— a subject, in turn, of surprise and warning to those who are going the same round, and will come, if the grace of God does not prevent, to the same end.

IMPROVEMENT.

NONE are so apt to love strongly, as those who gain hardly; none so apt to be eager for more, as those who unduly value what is gotten; none so apt to clap the wings of scorn and victory, as those who think they are rising in their own strength; and those who, in that strength, have fallen unobserved. None are so apt to strike the bell of astonishment at the unkindness and injustice of others, as those who have been unkind and unjust without detection; and none so apt to pursue with severity those who are not skilfully dishonest, as those who are habitually and remorselessly benignant to defraud.

THE SENSE OF HAPPY CHANGE.

As the transition from the dark chamber of a long and painful malady to vernal air, when the soft gold of day falls sweetly on the eyelids, and the gentle wind raises and animates the sadlysmoothed and uninstinctive locks, making a man humbly glad, and attentive to every thing—even the little fly on the sunny wall, and the slightest murmur of creeping waters; so is the sense of happy change from the uncertain and painful dreams of sinful life, to the opening day-light of Heaven, that renders us, as before, alive to the least duty, and fills with the same humility, as the expectancy of hope.

And thus the beautiful graces by every combination are linked together: descending from above in a comely chain, they take man by the hand, and having untied the dismal bonds wherewith he was left bound to the chariot-wheels of God's smoking indignation, draw him in their own living assured chain, toward and up to the golden throne of Heaven. There is the fullness of love, to which every other grace hath become an element of beauty: here a faint and imperfect manifestation, there a full development under all the colours of Heaven.

As from the blue-barred and cloudy skies of morn, may fly forth the meridian with wide wings of sunshine and breezy shadows; as from the motionless and retired chrysalis beneath the eaves, springs the painted butterfly, personified element of the summer's beauty, catching the colours of the sun, and wavering away in the blue liquid noon; so from its birth on Earth is the perfection of love in Heaven.

DILIGENCE IN PUSINESS-A CHRISTIAN DUTY.

IT cannot from any reason be argued, that the Christian must be deficient in the necessary business of every-day life, more than his worldly neighbour. Far from being undiligent as at a post which he may despise, and a duty which may be dispensed with ;—like the little hireling maid, who redoubles her exertions near the close of her term, that her services may be approved, and her wages paid without grudge, and the glad liberty be hers again to revisit her delightful home, so does the Christian the work of his life, more assiduously and with greater care, the higher his final hope.

To a man without the first principle of religion, there lacks, however prudent the constitution of his habits and economy of life, the sense of this world in proper subordination to religion, which gives zest to every thing: a vagueness of enjoyment is implied in the very possibility of his renovation, the dim consciousness of something postponed, not the less depressive because indistinct; unlike the pure satisfaction of him in any amusement, who has provided for the one thing needful; as the diligent school-boy enters upon his evening play with unqualified alacrity, his task against the morrow prepared.

OPPOSITE EFFECTS OF AFFLICTION.

AFFLICTIONS to the good man, are means that unbind him gradually from this life, and draw his heart toward another. To the bad man are they provocative of peevishness, of hardness of heart, and dislike of the chastener. To the one

overflowing, they have yet a peculiarity of blessing, like the inundations of the Nile, to fertilize what they overflow; to the other, they bear the usual consequences of flooding waters, sand and sterility.

STAIRS OF SAND.

O! WHETHER in youth, or whether in old age, when the heart hath become the sepulchre of youth's desires, the delights of this mere life are but "stairs of sand," and a man cannot mount by them into Heaven: tired and struck by the wand of Experience, they are crumbled into a heap of friable dust: The one end of that wand is Time, and the other is Truth.

THE WORK AND DEFINITION OF DECISION.

No characteristic of man, no exhibition of his mind, takes such a striking and splendid illustration, as this quality of decision, from the history of our species. It must indeed be strongly marked, because by it have been brought about the most wonderful changes on our globe. It draws the boundaries of kingdoms as distinctly as by a chain of mountains or the walling sea. It levels hills and raises up valleys. It built the Chinese wall and the pyramids of Djezza. It was the magnificent attribute of the Barbarian soldierking who subdued a thousand nations, and left in last command to turn the course of a river, and make his grave beneath its channels, that it might no more be found beneath the returning waters. In a single mind it hath controlled half the world; stayed the clogged wheels of society with blood;