THERE are two books from which I collect my divinity-the one, written of God; the other of his servant Nature, that universal manuscript which He has expanded to the eyes of all. But I never so forget God as to adore the name of Nature. The effects of Nature are the works of God, whose hand and instrument only she is; and, therefore, to ascribe His actions unto her, is to devolve the honour of the principal agent upon the instrument. If we may do this with reason, then let our hammers rise up and boast that they built our houses; and let our pens receive the honour of our writing.BROWNE. A FATHER'S ADVICE TO HIS SON. THE following letter was written by Sir Henry Sidney to his son Philip, then twelve years of age, at school, in Shrewsbury. The original is kept at Penshurst: "I have received two letters from you; which I take in good part; and, since this is my first letter that ever I did write to you, I will not that it be empty of some advices, which my natural care of you provoketh me to wish you to follow, as documents to you in this your tender age. "Let your first action be the lifting up of your mind to Almighty God by hearty prayer; and feelingly digest the words you speak in prayer, with continual meditation, and thinking of Him to whom you pray, and of the matter for which you pray; and use this at an ordinary hour, whereby the time itself will put you in remembrance to do that which you are accustomed to do in that time. "Apply your study to such hours as your discreet master doth assign you, earnestly; and the time, I know, he will so limit as shall be both suf ficient for your learning, and safe for your health. "And mark the sense and the matter of that you read, as well as the words, so shall you both enrich your tongue with words, and your wit with matter; and judgment will grow as years groweth in you. "Be humble and obedient to your frame master; for, unless you yourself to obey others, yea, and feel in yourself what obedience is, you shall never be able to teach others how to obey you. "Be cautious of gesture, and affable to all men, with diversity of reverence, according to the dignity of the person. There is nothing that winneth so much with so little cost. "Use moderate diet, so as, after your meat, you may find your wit fresher and not duller, and your body more lively, and not more heavy. "Seldom drink wine, and yet sometimes do; lest being enforced to drink upon the sudden, you should find yourself inflamed. "Use exercise of body, but such as is without peril of your joints or bones; it will increase your force and enlarge your breath. "Delight to be cleanly, as well in all parts of your body as in your garments; it shall make you grateful in each company, and otherwise, loathsome. "Give yourself to be merry; for you degenerate from your father, if you find not yourself most able in wit and body to do anything when you be most merry. But let your mirth be ever void of all scurrility and biting words to any man; for a wound given by a word is oftentimes harder to be cured than that which is given with the sword. "Be you rather a hearer, and bearer away of other men's talk, than a beginner or procurer of speech; otherwise you shall be counted to delight to hear yourself speak. "If you hear a wise sentence, or an apt phrase, commit it to your memory, with respect to the circumstance when you shall speak it. "Let never oath be heard to come out of your mouth, nor word of ribaldry; detest it in others, so shall custom make to yourself a law against it in yourself. "Be modest in each assembly; and rather be rebuked of light fellows for maiden-like shamefacedness, than of your sad friends for pert boldness. "Think upon every word that you will speak before you utter it, and remember how nature hath rampired up, as it were, the tongue with teeth, lips, yea, and hair without the lips, and all betokening reins or bridles for the loose use of that member. "Above all things, tell no untruth; no, not in trifles. The custom of it is naught; and let it not satisfy you, that, for a time, the hearers take it for a truth; for, after, it will be known as it is, to your shame; for there cannot be a greater reproach to a gentleman than to be accounted a liar. "Study and endeavour yourself to be virtuously occupied; so shall you make such a habit of well-doing in you, that you shall not know how to do evil though you would. "Remember, my son, the noble blood you are descended of by your mother's side, and think that only by virtuous life and good action, you may be an ornament to that illustrious family; and otherwise, through vice and sloth, you shall be counted labes generis, one of the greatest curses that can happen to man. "Well, my little Philip, this is enough for me, and too much, I fear, for you. But, if I shall find that this light meal of digestion nourish anything the weak stomach of your young capacity, I will, as I find the same grow stronger, feed it with tougher food. "Your loving father, so long as you live in the fear of God. "H. SIDNEY." The little Philip of this beautiful letterwas afterwards Sir Philip Sidney. I WILL suppose that you have no friends to share, or rejoice in your success in life, that you cannot look back to those to whom you owe gratitude, or forward to those to whom you ought to afford protection; but it is no less incumbent on you to move steadily in the path of duty; for your active exertions are due not only to society, but in humble gratitude to the Being who made you a member of it, with powers to serve yourself and others. -SIR WALTER SCOTT. A LITTLE error of the eye, a misguidance of the hand, a slip of the foot, a starting of a horse, a sudden mist, or a great shower, or a word undesignedly cast forth in an army, has turned the stream of victory from one side to another, and thereby disposed of empires and whole nations. No prince ever returns safe out of a battle, but may well remember how many blows and bullets have gone by him that might easily have gone through him; and by what little odd unforeseen chances death has been turned aside, which seemed in a full, ready, and direct career to have been posting to him. All which passages, if we do not acknowledge to have been guided to their respective ends and effects by the conduct of a superior and a divine Hand, we do by the same assertion cashier all providence, strip the Almighty of his noblest prerogative, and make God, not the Governor, but the mere Spectator of the world.-SOUTH. that while actions are always to be judged by the immutable standard of right and wrong, the judgment which we pass upon men must be qualified by considerations of age, country, situation, and other incidental circumstances; and it will then be found, that he who is most charitable in his judgment, is generally the least unjust.-SOUTHEY. EARLY RISING. Whoever has Ir behoves us ever to bear in mind, tasted the breath of morning, knows, that the most invigorating and most delightful hours of the day, are commonly spent in bed; though it is the evident intention of nature, that we should enjoy and profit by them. Children awake early, and would be up and stirring long before the arrangements of the family permit them to use their limbs. We are thus broken in from childhood to an injurious habit; that habit might be shaken off with more ease than it was first imposed. We rise with the sun at Christmas; it were but continuing so to do till the middle of April, and, without any perceptible change, we should find our-high value: "it is good to be zeaselves then rising at five o'clock, at which hour we might continue till September, and then accommodate ourselves again to the change of season.-SOUTHEY. As the pleasures of the future will be spiritual and pure, the object of a good and wise man in this transitory state of existence, should be to fit himself for a better, by controlling the unworthy propensities of his nature, and improving all his better aspirations; to do his duty first to God, then to his neighbour; to promote the happiness and welfare of those, who are in any degree dependent upon 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. THERE is no quality of the mind, by which men, even good men, are more apt to be misled than zeal; particularly zeal in religion, “zeal of God," as St.Paul terms it. Where the object is good, the quality is of lously affected always in a good thing;" and beyond controversy, no object can be better than the promotion of God's glory, and the furtherance of his religion. But it ought not to carry us beyond the bounds of moderation. It ought to be regulated by a correct knowledge of the nature and character of the religion which we profess, and which we are desirous of furthering; and it ought to be brought into subjection to the dictates of that religion: a religion, not furious, fiery, implacable, cruel; but "peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy." They who act for the furtherance of that religion, in a manner inconsistent with its dictates, show that, however sincere be their "zeal of God," it is "not according to knowledge," or, " that they know not what manner of spirit they are of." Every deviation from the rules of charity and brotherly love, of gentleness and forbearance, of meekness and patience, which our Lord prescribes to his disciples, however it may appear to be founded on an attachment to him and zeal for his service, is in truth a depar ture from the religion of Him, "theness, is not required of us. Son of Man," who came not to destroy men's lives, but to save them."-BISHOP MANT. PERSONS have perhaps been sometimes found, who, from their attachment to pursuits of science, and to the acquisition of general knowledge, have appeared sceptical upon the subject of Divine Revelation. It may not, therefore, be inexpedient to be furnished with the remark, that others, at least equally endowed with intellectual powers, and equally rich in intellectual acquirements, have been serious, rational, and conscientious believers. Amongst these may be ranked the great apostle St. Paul, who has been rarely surpassed in strength of understanding, or in the treasures of a cultivated mind; and in connexion with him it may be added, that "Luke the beloved physician," "whose praise is in the gospel," was professionally acquainted with the operations of nature, and the effects of secondary causes, and thus qualified to appreciate the miraculous and supernatural character of the works which he has recorded as foundations of our belief.-BISHOP MANT. Ix most quarrels there is a fault on both sides.-A quarrel may be compared to a spark, which cannot be produced without a flint, as well as a steel; either of them may hammer on wood for ever, no fire will follow. FINE sense, and exalted sense, are not half so valuable as common sense. There are forty men of wit for one man of sense; and he that will carry nothing about him but gold, will be every day at a loss for want of ready change. INSENSIBILITY, in return for acts of seeming, even of real, unkind But whilst we feel for such acts, let our feelings be tempered with forbearance and kindness. Let not the sense of our own sufferings render us peevish and morose. Let not our sense of neglect on the part of others induce us to judge of them with harshness and severity. Let us be indulgent and compassionate towards them. Let us seek for apologies for their conduct. Let us be forward in endeavouring to excuse them. And if, in the end, we must condemn them, let us look for the cause of their delinquency, less in a defect of kind intention, than in the weakness and errors of human nature. He who knoweth of what we are made, and hath learned, by what he himself suffered, the weakness and frailty of our nature, hath thus taught us to make compassionate allowances for our brethren, in consideration of its manifold infirmities.-BISHOP MANT. HOWEVER vauntingly men may bear themselves in the hour of prosperous villany, proofs enough have existed of the fears of guilt, when the hour of calamity approaches. Why did our first parents hide themselves after their sin, when they heard the voice of the Lord in the Garden? Why did Cain alarm himself at being pursued by the people of the earth? Why shrunk Belshazzar from the hand-writing on the wall? Adam had before heard the voice of the Lord, and trembled not: Cain knew that no witness of the murder of his brother existed: Belshazzar understood not the meaning of the writing upon the wall:-and yet they all, after the commission of their several deeds of sin, trembled at the voices that were heard, and the signs that were seen. Whence, then, was this? It was because conscience told them, that there is an Eye to which all hearts are open, and whispered the important truth, | EXTRACTS FROM JEREMY which has since been proclaimed TAYLOR. aloud to all the world, that, "doubt- No obligation to justice does force less, there is a God, that judgeth the earth."-MATHEW. I GRIEVE that great virtues are exposed to such severe trials. Reason, religion, and time, when they come to operate, do wonders-such wonders as the sufferer, in the first attack of sorrow, has no conception of. Yet one cannot but lament that persons of the best sense and most piety suffer more, perhaps, from the first assaults of affliction than any others; and those who bear distress with the most dignity, I am persuaded, feel it with the greatest intenseness. This good family possess the only consolation which can mitigate such distress a deep sense of the truth and efficacy of the Christian religion; yet I am going to say a bold thing, I never could observe that nature suffered the less, because grace triumphed the more. And hence arises (as I take it) the glory of the Christian sufferer-he feels affliction more intensely than a bad man, or grace would not have its perfect work; as it would not be difficult to subdue that which is not difficult to endure.-HANNAH MORE. AN Indian forest is the most picturesque scene that can be imagined. The trees seem perfectly animated. The fantastic monkeys give life to the stronger branches, and the weaker sprays wave over your head, charged with vocal and various-plumed inhabitants.-PEN NANT. GOOD sense, and Christian principle, must be in a very languid state, when a disrelish or weariness of life is the predominant feeling.-Private Life. a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence. A just man does justice to every man and to every thing; and then, if he be also wise, he knows there is a debt of mercy and compassion due to the infirmities of man's nature; and that is to be paid: and he that is cruel and ungentle to a sinning person, and does the worst to him, dies in his debt, and is unjust. Pity, and forbearance, and long-sufferance, and fair interpretation, and excusing our brother, and taking in the best sense, and passing the gentlest sentence, are as certainly our duty, and owing to every person that does offend and can repent, as calling to account can be owing to the law, and are first to be paid; and he that does not so is an unjust person. II. EVERY man rejoices twice when he has a partner of his joy; a friend shares my sorrow and makes it but a moiety; but he swells my joy and makes it double. For so two channels divide the river and lessen it into rivulets, and make it fordable and apt to be drunk up by the first revels of the Sirian star; but two torches do not divide but increase the flame; and, though my tears are the sooner dried up, when they run on my friend's cheeks in the furrows of compassion, yet when my flame hath kindled his lamp, we unite the glories and make them radiant, like the golden candlesticks that burn before the throne of God, because they shine by numbers, by unions, and confederations of light and joy. III. In the morning, when you awake, accustom yourself to think first upon God, or something in order to his service; and at night also let Him |