MARTYRS.

will have weight to drag thee down.-Tennyson.

An uncertain marriage law is a national calamity.

Marriage with a good woman is a harbor in the tempest of life; with a bad woman it is a tempest in the harbor.-J. P. Senn.

What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined for life to strengthen each other in all labor, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent, unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting. George Eliot.

MARTYRS.-It is the cause and not merely the death that makes the martyr.Napoleon.

Christianity has made martyrdom sublime, and sorrow triumphant.-E. H. Chapin.

To die for the truth is not to die merely for one's faith, or one's country; it is to die for the world.

Their blood is shed in confirmation of the noblest claim-the claim to feed upon immortal truth, to walk with God, and be divinely free.-Cowper.

He that dies a martyr proves that he was not a knave, but by no means that he was not a fool; since the most absurd doctrines are not without such evidence as martyrdom can produce. A martyr, therefore, by the mere act of suffering, can prove nothing but his own faith.-Colton.

Those who completely sacrifice themselves are praised and admired; that is the sort of character men like to find in others. -Rahel.

It is admirable to die the victim of one's faith; it is sad to die the dupe of one's ambition.-Lamartine.

God discovers the martyr and confessor without the trial of flames and tortures, and will hereafter entitle many to the reward of actions which they never had the opportunity of performing.-Addison.

Even in this world they will have their judgment-day; and their names, which went down in the dust like a gallant banner trodden in the mire, shall rise again all glorious in the sight of nations.-Mrs. Stowe.

It is more difficult, and calls for higher energies of soul, to live a martyr than to die one.-Horace Mann.

For some not to be martyred is a martyr

dom.-Donne.

The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.-Jerome.

MASTER.

They lived unknown, till persecution dragged them into fame, and chased them up to heaven. Their ashes flew no marble tells us whither. With their names no bard enbalms and sanctifies his song: and history, so warm on meaner themes, is cold on this.-Cowper.

The way of the world is, to praise dead saints, and persecute living ones. -) - N. Howe.

No language can fitly express the meanness, the baseness, the brutality, with which the world has ever treated its victims of one age and boasts of them in the next. Dante is worshiped at that grave to which he was hurried by persecution. Milton, in his own day, was "Mr. Milton, the blind adder, that spit his venom on the king's person"; and soon after, "the mighty orb of song." These absurd transitions from hatred to apotheosis, this recognition just at the moment when it becomes a mockery, saddens all intellectual history.-E. P. Whipple.

Two things are necessary to a modern martyr, some to pity, and some to persecute, some to regret, and some to roast him. If martyrdom is now on the decline, it is not because martyrs are less zealous, but because martyr-mongers are more wise.Colton.

When we read, we fancy we could be martyrs; when we come to act, we cannot bear a provoking word.-Hannah More.

The martyrs to vice far exceed the martyrs to virtue, both in endurance and in number. So blinded are we by our passions, that we suffer more to be damned than to be saved.-Hannah More.

O, how much those men are to be valued who, in the spirit with which the widow gave up her two mites, have given up themselves! How their names sparkle! How rich their very ashes are How they will count up in heaven!-E. H. Chapin.

Who falls for the love of God, shall rise a star.-Ben. Jonson,

Fools love the martyrdom of fame.Byron.

MASTER.-It is a common law of nature, which no time will ever change, that superiors shall rule their inferiors.-Dyonysius.

Such it hath been, and shall be, that many still must labor for the one; it is nature's doom.-Byron.

It is not only paying wages, and giving commands, that constitutes a master of a family; but prudence, equal behavior, with

MATHEMATICS.

a readiness to protect and cherish them, is what entitles man to that character in their very hearts and sentiments.-Steele.

The eye of the master will do more work than both of his hands: not to oversee workmen, is to leave your purse open.Franklin.

If thou art a master, sometimes be blind; if a servant, sometimes be deaf.-Fuller.

We must truly serve those whom we appear to command; we must bear with their imperfections, correct them with gentleness and patience, and lead them in the way to heaven.-Fénelon.

The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men round to his opinion twenty years later.-Emerson.

There is nothing so good to make a horse fat, as the eye of his master.-Diogenes.

Such master, such man.-Tusser.

Men, at some time, are masters of their fates.-Shakespeare.

MATHEMATICS.-Pure mathematics do remedy and cure many defects in the wit and faculties of individuals; for if the wit be dull, they sharpen it; if too wandering they fix it; if too inherent in the sense, they abstract it.-Bacon.

The study of the mathematics is like climbing up a steep and craggy mountain ; when once you reach the top, it fully recompenses your trouble, by opening a fine, clear, and extensive prospect.

The study of mathematics cultivates the reason; that of the languages, at the same time, the reason and the taste. The former gives grasp and power to the mind; the latter both power and flexibility. The former, by itself, would prepare us for a state of certainties, which nowhere exists; the latter, for a state of probabilities, which is that of common life. Each, by itself, does but an imperfect work in the union of both, is the best discipline for the mind, and the best mental training for the world as it is. -Tryon Edwards.

If a man's wits be wandering, let him study the mathematics; for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away ever so little, he must begin again.-Johnson.

MAXIMS.-(See "PROVERBS" and 66 APOTHEGMS.")

Maxims are the condensed good sense of nations.-Sir J. Mackintosh.

A maxim is a conclusion from observation of matters of fact, and is merely speculative a principle carries knowledge within itself, and is prospective.-Coleridge.

Precepts and maxims are of great weight; and a few useful ones at hand, do more toward a wise and happy life, than whole volumes of cautions that we know not where to find.-C. Simmons.

Pithy sentences are like sharp nails which force truth upon our memory.-Diderot.

Precepts or maxims are of great weight; and a few useful ones at hand do more toward a happy life than whole volumes that we know not where to find.-Seneca.

:

The value of a maxim depends on four things its intrinsic excellence or the comparative correctness of the principle it embodies; the subject to which it relates; the extent of its application; and the comparative ease with which it may be applied in practice.-Charles Hodge.

Asa malicious censure, craftily wordedand pronounced with assurance, is apt to pass with mankind for shrewd wit, so a virulent maxim in bold expressions, though without any justness of thought, is readily received for true philosophy.-Shaftesbury.

Maxims are to the intellect what laws are to actions; they do not enlighten, but guide and direct, and though themselves blind, are protecting.-Joubert.

It is hard to form a maxim against which an exception is not ready to start up: as "where the minister grows rich, the public is proportionably poor"; as "in a private family the steward always thrives the fast- . est when the lord is running out."-Swift.

All maxims have their antagonist maxims; proverbs should be sold in pairs, a single one being but half a truth.-W. Matthews.

I would fain coin wisdom,-mould it, I mean, into maxims, proverbs, sentences, that can easily be retained and transmitted. -Joubert.

The two maxims of any great man at court are, always to keep his countenance, and never to keep his word.-Swift.

General observations drawn from particulars are the jewels of knowledge, comprehending great store in a little room.Locke.

MEANS.-There can be no end without means and God furnishes no means that exempt us from the task and duty of joining our own best endeavors. The original stock, or wild olive tree of our natural powers, was not given us to be burnt or blighted, but to be grafted on.-Coleridge.

The end must justify the means.—Prior. We put things in order; God does the rest. Lay an iron bar cast and west,-it is

MEANNESS.

not magnetized. Lay it north and south, and it is.-Horace Mann.

The means heaven yields must be embraced, and not neglected; else, if heaven would, and we will not; heaven's offer we refuse.-Shakespeare.

Mahomet hearing one of his soldiers say, "I'll turn my camel loose and trust him to God," said to him, "Tie your camel, and then trust him to God."-And Cromwell's charge to his soldiers, on the eve of battle, was, "Trust in Providence, but keep your powder dry."

Means without God cannot help.-God without means can, and often doth.-I will use good means, but not rest in them.Bp. Hall.

How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done!-Shakespeare.

Some men possess means that are great, but fritter them away in the execution of conceptions that are little; others, who can form great conceptions, attempt to carry them into execution with little means. These two descriptions of men might succeed if united, but kept asunder, both fail. It is a rare thing to find a combination of great means and of great conceptions in one mind.-Colton.

All outward means of grace, if separate from the spirit of God, cannot profit, or conduce, in any degree, either to the knowledge or love of God. -All outward things, unless he work in them and by them, are in vain.-John Wesley.

MEANNESS.-Superior men, and yet not always virtuous, there have been; but there never has been a mean man, and at the same time virtuous.-Confucius.

Whoever is mean in his youth runs a great risk of becoming a scoundrel in riper years; meanness leads to villainy with fatal attraction.-V. Cherbuliez.

I have so great a contempt and detestation for meanness, that I could sooner make a friend of one who had committed murder, than of a person who could be capable, in any instance, of the former vice. Under meanness, I comprehend dishonesty under dishonesty, ingratitude; under ingratitude, irreligion; and under this latter, every species of vice and immorality.-Sterne.

I have great hope of a wicked man; slender hope of a mean one. A wicked man may be converted and become a prominent saint. A mean man ought to be converted six or seven times, one right after the other, to give him a fair start and put

him on an equality with a bold, wicked man.-H. W. Beecher.

To dally much with subjects mean and low, proves that the mind is weak or makes it so.-Cowper.

MEDICINE. (See "PHYSIC.")

Physic is, for the most part, only a substitute for temperance and exercise.-Addison.

Medicine has been defined to be the art or science of amusing a sick man with frivolous speculations about his disorder, and of tampering ingeniously, till nature either kills or cures him.

The disease and its medicine are like two factions in a besieged town; they tear one another to pieces, but both unite against their common enemy, Nature.-Jeffrey.

The poets did well to conjoin music and medicine, because the office of medicine is but to tune the curious harp of man's body. -Bacon.

The bitterness of the potion, and the abhorrence of the patient are necessary circumstances to the operation. It must be something to trouble and disturb the stomach that must purge and cure it.Montaigne.

The best of all medicines are rest and fasting.-Franklin.

We seem ambitions God's whole work to undo.--With new diseases on ourselves we war, and with new physic, a worse engine far.-Donne.

Doctor, no medicine.-We are machines made to live-organized expressly for that purpose. Such is our nature.-Do not counteract the living principle.-Leave it at liberty to defend itself, and it will do better than your drugs.-Napoleon.

Over the door of a library in Thebes is the inscription, "Medicine for the soul."Diodorus Siculus.

MEDIOCRITY.-We meet with few utterly dull and stupid souls; the sublime and transcendent are still fewer; the generality of mankind stand between these two extremes; the interval is filled with multitudes of ordinary geniuses, but all very useful, and the ornaments and supports of the commonwealth.-Bruyère.

Minds of moderate caliber ordinarily condemn everything which is beyond their range.-Rochefoucauld,

Mediocrity is not allowed to poets, either by the gods or men.-Horace.

Mediocrity is now, as formerly, dangerous, commonly fatal, to the poet; but

MEDITATION.

among even the successful writers of prose, those who rise sensibly above it are the very rarest exceptions.-Gladstone.

Mediocrity is excellent to the eyes of mediocre people.-Joubert.

Persevering mediocrity is much more respectable, and unspeakably more useful than talented inconstancy.-J. Hamilton.

The art of putting into play mediocre qualities often begets more reputation than is achieved by true merit.-Rochefoucauld. Mediocrity can talk; but it is for genius to observe.-Disraeli.

The highest order of mind is accused of folly, as well as the lowest. Nothing is thoroughly approved but mediocrity. The majority has established this, and it fixes its fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way.-Pascal.

Nothing in the world is more haughty than a man of moderate capacity when once raised to power.- Wessenburg.

The virtue of the soul does not consist in flying high, but walking orderly; its grandeur does not exercise itself in grandeur, but in mediocrity.-Montaigne.

There is a mean in all things; oven virtue itself has stated limits; which not being strictly observed, it ceases to be virtue.-Horace.

They are as sick that surfeit with too much, as they that starve with nothing. It is no mean happiness, therefore, to be seated in the mean. Superfluity comes soonest by white hairs, but competency lives longest.

There are circumstances of peculiar difficulty and danger, where a mediocrity of talent is the most fatal quality that a man can possibly possess. Had Charles the First, and Louis the Sixteenth, been more wise or more weak, more firm or more yielding, in either case they had both of them saved their heads.-Colton.

There are certain things in which mediocrity is not to be endured, such as poetry, music, painting, public speaking.— Bruyère.

MEDITATION.-Meditation is the soul's perspective glass, whereby, in her long removes, she discerneth God, as if he were nearer at hand.-Feltham.

Meditation is the life of the soul; action is the soul of meditation: honor is the reward of action: so meditate, that thou mayst do so do, that thou mayst purchase honor; for which purchase, give God the glory.-Quarles.

Meditation may think down hours to

moments. The heart may give most useful lessons to the head, and learning wiser grow without his books.-Cowper.

By meditation I can converse with God, solace myself on the bosom of the Saviour, bathe myself in the rivers of divine pleasure, tread the paths of my rest, and view the mansions of eternity.-Anon.

A man of meditation is happy, not for an hour or a day, but quite round the circle of all his years.-Isaac Taylor.

One of the rarest of all acquirements is the faculty of profitable meditation. Most human beings, when they fancy they are meditating, arc, in fact, doing nothing at all, and thinking of nothing.-Boyd.

No soul can preserve the bloom and delicacy of its existence without lonely musings and silent prayer, and the greatness of this necessity is in proportion to the greatness of evil.-Farrar.

"Tis greatly wise to talk with our past hours and ask them what report they bore to heaven, and how they might have borne more welcome news.- Young.

Meditation is the nurse of thought, and thought the food for meditation.-C. Şim

mons.

Meditation is the tongue of the soul and the language of our spirit; and our wandering thoughts in prayer are but the neglects of meditation and recessions from that duty; according as we neglect medita- . tion, so are our prayers imperfect,-meditation being the soul of prayer and the intention of our spirit.-Jeremy Taylor.

It is easier to go six miles to hear a sermon, than to spend one quarter of an hour in meditating on it when I come home.— Philip Henry.

It is not hasty reading, but seriously meditating upon holy and heavenly truths that makes them prove sweet and profitable to the soul. It is not the bee's touching on the flowers that gathers honey, but her abiding for a time upon them, and drawing out the sweet. It is not he that reads most, but he that meditates most on divine truth, that will prove the choicest, wisest, strongest Christian.-Bp. Hall.

It is not the number of books you read, nor the variety of sermons you hear, nor the amount of religious conversation in which you mix, but it is the frequency and earnestness with which you meditate on these things till the truth in them becomes your own and part of your being, that ensures your growth.-F. W. Robertson.

Reading and conversation may furnish us with many ideas of men and things, yet

MEEKNESS.

it is our own meditation that must form our judgment.- Watts.

Meditation is that exercise of the mind by which it recalls a known truth, as some kind of creatures do their food, to be ruminated upon till all the valuable parts be extracted.-Bp. Horne.

MEEKNESS.-(See "HUMILITY.”)

The flower of meekness grows on a stem of grace.-J. Montgomery.

Selfish men may possess the earth; it is the meek only who inherit it from the Heavenly Father, free from all defilements and perplexities of unrighteousness.- Woolman.

There will come a time when three words, uttered with charity and meekness, shall receive a far more blessed reward than three thousand volumes written with disdainful sharpness of wit.-R. Hooker.

Meekness is love at school, at the school of Christ. It is the disciple learning to know, and fear, and distrust himself, and learning of him who is meek and lowly in heart, and so finding rest to his soul.-J. Hamilton.

It

Meekness cannot well be counterfeited.It is not insensibility, or unmanliness, or servility; it does not cringe, or whine. is benevolence imitating Christ in patience, forbearance, and quietness.-It feels keenly, but not malignantly; it abounds in good will, and bears all things.-W. S. Plumer.

The anger of a meek man is like fire struck out of steel, hard to be got out, and when got out, soon gone.-The meek enjoy almost a perpetual Sabbath.-M. Henry.

Meekness is imperfect if it be not both active and passive, leading us to subdue our own passions and resentments, as well as to bear patiently the passions and resentments of others.-Foster.

The meek are not those who are never at all angry, for such are insensible; but those who, feeling anger, control it, and are angry only when they ought to be. Meekness excludes revenge, irritability, morbid sensitiveness, but not self-defence, or a quiet and steady maintenance of rights.Theophylact.

MEETING. The joy of meeting, not unmixed with pain.-Longfellow.

Absence, with all its pains, is, by this charming moment, wiped away--Thomson.

The joys of meeting pay the pangs of absence; else who could bear it?-Rowe.

Ah me! the world is full of meetings such

as this, a thrill, a voiceless challenge and reply, and sudden partings after!-N. P. Willis.

In life there are meetings which seem like a fate.-Owen Meredith.

But here she comes, in the calm harbor of whose gentle breast, my tempest beaten soul may safely rest.-0, my heart's joy, whate'er my sorrows be, they cease and vanish on beholding thee.-By this one view all my past pains are paid, and all I have to come, more easy made.-Dryden.

I have not joyed an hour since you departed, for public miseries, and for private fears; but this blest meeting has o'erpaid them all.-Dryden.

MELANCHOLY.-Melancholy, or low spirits, is that hysterical passion which forces unbidden sighs and tears. It falls upon a contented life, like a drop of ink on white paper, which is not the less a stain that it carries no meaning with it.-Lockhart.

Melancholy is a fearful gift; what is it but the telescope of truth, which brings life near in utter darkness, making the cold reality too real?—Byron.

Melancholy is a kind of demon that haunts our island, and often conveys herself to us in an easterly wind.-Addison.

The noontide sun is dark, and music discord, when the heart is low. -Young.

Melancholy spreads itself betwixt heaven and earth, like envy between man and man, and is an everlasting mist.-Byron.

Whatever is highest and holiest is tinged with melancholy. The eye of genius has always a plaintive expression, and its natural language is pathos. A prophet is sadder than other men; and He who was greater than all prophets was "a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief."-Mrs. L. M. Child.

The spirit of melancholy would often take its flight from us if only we would take up the song of praise.-P. B. Power.

I once gave a lady two-and-twenty receipts against melancholy: one was a bright fire; another, to remember all the pleasant things said to her; another, to keep a box of sugarplums on the chimney-piece and a kettle simmering on the hob. I thought this mere trifling at the moment, but have in after life discovered how true it is that these little pleasures often banish melancholy better than higher and more exalted objects; and that no means ought to be thought too trifling which can oppose it either in ourselves or in others.-Sydney Smith.