There cannot be a more glorious object in creation than a human being replete with benevolence, meditating in what manner he might render himself most acceptable to his Creator by doing most good to his creatures.-Fielding. The office of liberality consisteth in giving with judgment.-Cicero. No sincere desire of doing good need make an enemy of a single human being; that philanthropy has surely a flaw in it which cannot sympathize with the oppressor equally as with the oppressed.-Lowell. A beneficent person is like a fountain watering the earth, and spreading fertility; it is, therefore, more delightful and more honorable to give than receive.—Epicurus. Good, the more communicated, more abundant grows.-Milton. The difference of the degrees in which the individuals of a great community enjoy the good things of life has been a theme of declaration and discontent in all ages; and it is doubtless our paramount duty, in every state of society, to alleviate the pressure of the purely evil part of this distribution, as much as possithe lower links in the chain of society from dragging in dishonor and wretchedness. The lower a man descends in his love, the ble, and, by all the means we can devise, secure higher he lifts his life.-W. R. Alger. He is good that does good to others. If he suffers for the good he does, he is better still; and if he suffers from them to whom he did good, he is arrived to that height of goodness that nothing but an increase of his sufferings can add to it; if it proves his death, his virtue is at its summit, - it is heroism complete.Bruyère. We should do good whenever we can, and do kindness at all times, for at all times we can. Joubert. Time is short, your obligations are infinite. Are your houses regulated, your children instructed, the afflicted relieved, the poor visited, the work of piety accomplished ?-Massillon. You are so to put forth the power that God has given you; you are so to give, and sacrifice to give, as to earn the eulogium pronounced on the woman, "She hath done what she could." Do it now. It is not a safe thing to leave a generous feeling to the cooling influences of a cold world. If you intend to do a mean thing, wait till to-morrow; if you are to do a noble thing, do it now, now-Rev. Dr. Guthrie. - Rare benevolence, the minister of God.Carlyle. There is scarcely a man who is not conscious of the benefits which his own mind has received from the performance of single acts of benevolence. How strange that so few of us try a course of the same medicine!—J. F. Boyes. The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident.-Lamb. My God, grant that my bounty may be a clear and transparent river, flowing from pure charity, and uncontaminated by self-love, ambition, or interest. Thanks are due not to me, but thee, from whom all I possess is derived. And what are the paltry gifts for which my neighbor forgets to thank me, compared with the immense blessings for which I have so often forgotten to be grateful to thee!—Gotthold. Herschel. Benevolence is allied to few vices; selfishness to fewer virtues.-Henry Home. The true source of cheerfulness is benevolence. The pursuits of mankind are commonly frigid and contemptible, and the mistake comes, at last, to be detected. But virtue is a charm that never fades. The soul that perpetually overflows with kindness and sympathy will always be cheerful.-Parke Godwin. BEREAVEMENT. There is this pleasure in being bereaved, · the thought that time, which sadly overcometh all things, can alone restore the separated, and bring the mutually beloved together. Time, which plants the furrow and sows the seed of death, stands, to the faithful spirit, a messenger of light at that mysterious wicket-gate from whence we step and enter upon the vast unknown.-W. G. Clark. I will answer for it, the longer you read the Bible, the more you will like it; it will grow sweeter and sweeter; and the more you get into the spirit of it, the more you will get into the spirit of Christ.-Romaine. I am of the opinion that the Bible contains more true sublimity, more exquisite beauty, more pure morality, more important history, and finer strains of poetry and eloquence, than can be collected from all other books, in whatever age or language they have been written. Sir William Jones. As the moon, though darkened with spots, gives us a much greater light than the stars that seem all luminous, so do the Scriptures afford more light than the brightest human authors. In them the ignorant may learn all requisite knowledge, and the most knowing may learn to discern their ignorance.-Boyle. Men cannot be well educated without the Bible. It ought, therefore, to hold the chief place in every situation of learning throughout Christendom; and I do not know of a higher service that could be rendered to this republic than the bringing about this desirable result.Dr. Nott. There never was found, in any age of the world, either religion or law that did so highly exalt the public good as the Bible.-Bacon. How admirable and beautiful is the simplicity of the Evangelists! They never speak injuriously of the enemies of Jesus Christ, of his judges, nor of his executioners. They report the facts without a single reflection. They comment neither on their Master's mildness when he was smitten, nor on his constancy in the hour of his ignominious death, which they thus describe: "And they crucified Jesus."Racine. In morality there are books enough written both by ancient and modern philosophers, but the morality of the Gospel doth so exceed them all, that to give a man a full knowledge of true morality, I shall send him to no other book than the New Testament.-Locke. The Bible is a precious storehouse, and the Magna Charta of a Christian. There he reads of his Heavenly Father's love, and of his dying Saviour's legacies. There he sees a map of his travels through the wilderness, and a landscape, too, of Canaan.-Berridge. The Bible is the most betrashed book in the world. Coming to it through commentaries is much like looking at a landscape through garret windows, over which generations of unmolested spiders have spun their webs.-Beecher. I use the Scriptures, not as an arsenal to be resorted to only for arms and weapons, but as a matchless temple, where I delight to contemplate the beauty, the symmetry, and the magnificence of the structure, and to increase my awe and excite my devotion to the Deity there preached and adored.-Boyle. The Scriptures teach us the best way of living, the noblest way of suffering, and the most comfortable way of dying.-Flavel. Many will say "I can find God without the help of the Bible, or church, or minister." Very well. Do so if you can. The Ferry Company would feel no jealousy of a man who should prefer to swim to New York. Let him do so if he is able, and we will talk about it on the other shore; but probably trying to swim would be the thing that would bring him quickest to the boat. So God would have no jealousy of a man's going to heaven without the aid of the Bible, or church, or minister; but let him try to do so, and it will be the surest way to bring him back to them for assistance.— Beecher. As the profoundest philosophy of ancient Rome and Greece lighted her taper at Israel's altar, so the sweetest strains of the pagan muse were swept from harps attuned on Zion's hill.Bishop Thomson. There are no songs comparable to the songs of Zion, no orations equal to those of the Prophets, and no politics like those which the Scriptures teach.-Milton. A man may read the figure on the dial, but he cannot tell how the day goes unless the sun shines on the dial; we may read the Bible over, but we cannot learn to purpose till the Spirit of God shine into our hearts.-Rev. T. Watson. The Bible begins gloriously with Paradise, the symbol of youth, and ends with the everlasting kingdom, with the holy city. The his tory of every man should be a Bible.-Novalis. The pure and noble, the graceful and dignified, simplicity of language is nowhere in such perfection as in the Scriptures and Homer. The whole book of Job, with regard both to sublimity of thought and morality, exceeds, beyond all comparison, the most noble parts of Homer.-Pope. Every leaf is a spacious plain; every line a flowing brook; every period a lofty mountain.Hervey. BIGOTRY. Bigotry murders religion, to frighten fools with her ghost.-Cotton. Show me the man who would go to heaven alone if he could, and in that man I will show you one who will never be admitted into heaven.-Feltham. A man who stole the livery of the court of heaven to serve the devil in.-Pollok. There is no tariff so injurious as that with which sectarian bigotry guards its commodities. It dwarfs the soul by shutting out truths from other continents of thought, and checks the circulation of its own.-Chapin. BIOGRAPHY. Biography is the home aspect of history.- As it often happens that the best men are but little known, and consequently cannot extend the usefulness of their examples a great way, the biographer is of great utility, as, by communicating such valuable patterns to the world, he may perhaps do a more extensive service to mankind than the person whose life originally afforded the pattern.-Fielding. A life that is worth writing at all is worth writing minutely.—Longfellow." Biography admonishes pride, when it displays Salmasius, the champion of kings, shivering under the eye and scourge of his wife; or bids us stand at the door of Milton's academy, and hear the scream and the ferule up stairs. It steals on the poet and the premier in their undress, Cowley in dressing-gown and slippers, and Cecil with his treasurer's robe on the chair.— Willmott. Biography is the most universally pleasant, universally profitable, of all reading.-Carlyle. Of all studies, the most delightful and the most useful is biography. The seeds of great events lie near the surface; historians delve too deep for them. No history was ever true. Lives I have read which, if they were not, had the appearance, the interest, and the utility of truth.-Landor. Custom forms us all; our thoughts, our morals, our most fixed belief, are consequences of our place of birth.-Aaron Hill. Biography, especially the biography of the great and good, who have risen by their own exertions from poverty and obscurity to emi- High birth is a gift of fortune which should nence and usefulness, is an inspiring and en- never challenge esteem towards those who renobling study. Its direct tendency is to repro-ceive it, since it costs them neither study nor duce the excellence it records.-Horace Mann. labor.-Bruyère. In reading the life of any great man you will always, in the course of his history, chance upon some obscure individual who, on some particular occasions, was greater than he whose life you are reading.-Colton. The birth of a child is the imprisonment of a soul.—Simms. Called to the throne by the voice of the people, my maxim has always been, A career open to talent without distinction of birth. It There is properly no history, only biogra- is this system of equality for which the Europhy.-Emerson. pean oligarchy detests me.-Napoleon. My advice is, to consult the lives of other Birth is a shadow. Courage, self-sustained, men as we would a looking-glass, and from outlords succession's phlegm, and needs no anthence fetch examples for our own imitation.-cestors.-Aaron Hill. Terence. I was born so high, our aerie buildeth in the One anecdote of a man is worth a volume of cedar's top, and dallies with the wind, and biography.-Channing. scorns the sun.-Shakespeare. BIRTHPLACE. Whatever strengthens our local attachments is favorable both to individual and national character. Our home, our birthplace, our native land, think for a while what the virtues are which arise out of the feelings connected with these words, and if you have any intellectual eyes, you will then perceive the connection between topography and patriotism. Southey. Those who wish to forget painful thoughts do well to absent themselves for a while from the ties and objects that recall them; but we can be said only to fulfil our destiny in the place that gave us birth.-Hazlitt. BLESSEDNESS. True blessedness consisteth in a good life sign of her shame, - when she has once ceased and a happy death.-Solon. to blush, it is because she has too much to blush for.-Talleyrand. Nothing raises the price of a blessing like its removal; whereas it was its continuance which should have taught us its value. There are three requisitions to the proper enjoyment of earthly blessings, a thankful reflection on the goodness of the Giver, a deep sense of our unworthiness, a recollection of the uncertainty of long possessing them. The first would make us grateful; the second, humble; and the third, moderate.-Hannah More. The man that blushes is not quite a brute.- How beautiful your reproof has made your daughter! That crimson hue and silver tears become her better than any ornament of gold and pearls. These may hang on the neck of a wanton, but those are never seen disconnected with moral purity. A full-blown rose, besprinkled with the purest dew, is not so beautiful Blessedness is a whole eternity older than as this child blushing beneath her parent's disdamnation.-Richter. Blessings we enjoy daily; and for most of them, because they be so common, most men forget to pay their praises; but let not us, because it is a sacrifice so pleasing to Him that made the sun and us, and still protects us, and gives us flowers and showers and meat and content.-Izaak Walton. pleasure, and shedding tears of sorrow for her fault. A blush is the sign which nature hangs out to show where chastity and honor dwell.— Gotthold. Give me the eloquent cheek, where blushes burn and die.-Mrs. Osgood. Bid the cheek be ready with a blush, modest as Morning when she coldly eyes the youthful The wise man starts and trembles at the Phoebus.-Shakespeare. perils of a bliss.-Young. The beloved of the Almighty are the rich who have the humility of the poor, and the poor who have the magnanimity of the rich.—Saadi. And let me tell you that every misery I miss is a new blessing.-Izaak Walton. It is too generally true that all that is required to make men unmindful what they owe to God for any blessing is that they should receive that blessing often enough, and regularly enough.-Bishop Whately. Men blush less for their crimes than for their weaknesses and vanity.-Bruyère. O, call not to this aged cheek the little blood which should keep warm my heart!-Dryden. Blushing is the livery of virtue, though it may sometimes proceed from guilt; so it holds true of poverty, that it is the attendant of virtue, though sometimes it may proceed from mismanagement and accident.-Bacon. It is better for a young man to blush than to turn pale.-Cato. From every blush that kindles in thy cheeks ten thousand little loves and graces spring to revel in the roses.-Rowe. The hue given back by the clouds from the reflected rays of the sun or the purple morn, such was the countenance of Diana when she was discovered unclothed.-Qvid. What means, alas! that blood which flushes guilty in your face?-Dryden. The blush is nature's alarm at the approach of sin, and her testimony to the dignity of virtue.-Fuller. Like the last beam of evening thrown on a white cloud, just seen and gone.-Walter Scott. Though looks and words, by the strong mastery of his practised will, are overruled, the mounting blood betrays an impulse in its secret spring too deep for his control.-Southey. Like the faint streaks of light broke loose from darkness, and dawning into blushes.Dryden. Troubled blood through his pale face was seen to come and go, with tidings from his heart, as it a running messenger had been.Spenser. The inconvenience or the beauty of the blush, which is the greater ?-Madame Necker. Those that are the loudest in their threats are the weakest in the execution of them. In springing a mine, that which has done the most extensive mischief makes the smallest report; and again, if we consider the effect of lightning, it is probable that he that is killed by it hears no noise; but the thunderclap which follows, and which most alarms the ignorant, is the surest proof of their safety.-Colton. The empty vessel makes the greatest sound. A brave man is sometimes a desperado; a bully is always a coward.--Haliburton. To such as boasting show their scars a mock is due.-Shakespeare. Commonly they use their feet for defence, whose tongue is their weapon.-Sir P. Sidney. Lord Bacon told Sir Edward Coke when he boasted, "The less you speak of your greatness, the more I shall think of it." Mirrors are the accompaniments of dandies, not heroes. The men of history were not perpetually looking in the glass to make sure of their own size. Absorbed in their work they did it, and did it so well that the wondering world saw them to be great, and labelled them accordingly.— Rev. S. Coley. Who knows himself a braggart, let him fear this; for it will come to pass that every braggart shall be found an ass.-Shakespeare. The honor is overpaid when he that did the act is commentator.-Shirley. What art thou? Have not I an arm as big as thine? a heart as big? Thy words, I grant, are bigger, for I wear not my dagger in my mouth.-Shakespeare. Where boasting ends, there dignity begins. One man affirms that he has rode post a hundred miles in six hours: probably it is a lie; but supposing it to be true, what then? Why, he is a very good post-boy; that is all. Another asserts, and probably not without oaths, that he has drunk six or eight bottles of wine at a sitting; out of charity I will believe him a liar; for, if I do not, I must think him a beast. Chesterfield. We wound our modesty, and mak foul the clearness of our deservings, when of ourselves we publish them.-Shakespeare. Men of real merit, and whose noble and glorious deeds we are ready to acknowledge, are yet not to be endured when they vaunt their own actions.-Eschines. Conceit, more rich in matter than in words, brags of his substance, not of ornament; they are but beggars that can count their worth.— Shakespeare. Boasting and bravado may exist in the breast even of the coward, if he is successful through a mere lucky hit; but a just contempt of an enemy can alone arise in those who feel that they are superior to their opponent by the prudence of their measures.— -Thucydides. BODY. What! know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you which ye have of God; and ye are not your own? - Bible. |