satisfactory answer to Miss Talbot's question, "Can you bear to be put out of your own way, to accommodate your humour to the varieties of human life; and however your day is turned and interrupted, cheerfully make the best of it?" Many persons have such a tendency to assimilation as to take the tone of their spirits almost entirely from their company; and perhaps we are all, more or less, under this sort of influence. A pleasant observation naturally induces a similar reply; that person must be churlish indeed, who would wantonly cast down the light of another's countenance: but a petulant remark as naturally, and almost as generally, elicits its like. Is this shewing all meekness to all men? Is this doing all to the glory of God? Such irritable believers may indeed be "Epistles of Christ:" but the fair lines are so bespattered and blotted as to be illegible to common observers.

A bleak unkindly springtime offers an apt similitude of an individual whose mind is thus feebly and partially influenced by divine truth, and the comparison would perhaps hold good if extended to the present state of the whole visible church of God. The aspect of the country is still wintry, the trees and hedgerows are bare, and the hills covered with snow. There are many little patches of verdure among the meadows, some bright flowers, and green shrubs, and a few fruit tees opening their tinted blossoms, speak the cheerful language of

hope. The whole land has not yet felt the vivifying touch of spring; but before the advancing sun, the prospect will soon change into summer's luxuriant life and beauty. May the showers of blessing, and the beams of the Sun of Righteousness, fall with like effect upon the church!

"Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand. Be careful for nothing, but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus." Philippians iv. 5—7.

VII.-ON POVERTY.

ALL that is most valued in the world may be procured by means of wealth, and consequently poverty has in all times and places been generally considered a word of privation and dishonour.

By producing a scarcity or want of the luxuries and necessaries of life, it mortifies appetite, represses elegant taste, closes the fountain of knowledge, and freezes the stream of benevolence. The poor are commonly despised in a world which estimates the worth of people by their wealth.

Yet a very remarkable instance is related of a whole people's protestation against the sentiment from Euripides, which declares riches to be the sovereign happiness of mankind.

The Commonwealth of Rome too, enriched by the self-denying indigence of individuals, taught the world, that wealth was not even the heathen heart's best blessing.

An Agesilaus with his plain Lacædomonians, a Scipio Emelianus with his few attendants, won, even in the eyes of the commonality, more favour

than a Pharnabasus with his oriental state, and the Egyptian king with his pompous retinue. But though eminent merit will sometimes overcome the disadvantages of indigence, when moral and accidental superiority are brought into direct opposition; yet unknown and unsuspected, spiritual and intellectual excellence will continually be passed over, while the world arranges in its own order those things of its own which fall more especially under its domination.

It was only by effecting a national revolution of opinion that Lycurgus could hope to establish those frugal habits which were the basis of his policy. That being done, pride was engaged on the side of poverty, whose chief sting consists in its inducing contempt.

For a poor man who in solitude has compared the extraneous indications of station and fortune with the internal and proper distinctions of the mind and heart, and has comfortably settled his own high moral or intellectual dignity, it is easy to despise advantages which he does not possess ; but the same man in company will blush for his threadbare coat and scanty fare, and feel the need of Christian meekness to endure "the contempt of the proud." The harsher effects of poverty are best seen in those who were born poor, and have always lived poor, and whose sentiments and talents are correspondent with their place in society: on such the chisselling of that severe artist is most

discernible. Like the weather-beaten mariner's frame, the mind of the peasant and artisan becomes inured to hardship; it is the delicate nursling of prosperity, turned out into the bleak storm of adversity, who feels it most acutely.

But as in every country, persons may be found constitutionally different from the generality of its inhabitants, and there are in the world phlegmatic Italians, and excitable Germans, so are there vulgar patricians, and elegant plebeians.

Such men as Kirke White, and Henry Martyn, subjected to the rigorous discipline of indigence, afford beautiful examples of God's adaptation of providential circumstances to character. Possessing those keen sensibilities which are the almost invariable accompaniments of minds like their's, they felt on all occasions with an intensity of which only kindred souls can form an adequate idea. Obstacles when not apparently insurmountable, stimulate exertion, and are perhaps the means of drawing forth a strength and energy of talent which would otherwise have remained latent for ever. Thus probably it was with them; while by making them poor, providence checked the ambitious aspirings, and humbled the pride of genius. They learned to add liberality of sentiment to the exclusiveness of native refinement, by being accustomed from childhood to familiar intercourse with the vulgar, by the ordinary want of many things which an improved taste renders essential to com