SIN.

He who sins against men may fear discovery; but he who sins against God, is sure of it.-Jones.

Few love to hear the sins they love to act. -Shakespeare.

The worst effect of sin is within, and is manifest not in poverty, and pain, and bodily defacement, but in the discrowned faculties, the unworthy love, the low ideal, the brutalized and enslaved spirit.-E. H. Chapin.

Our sins, like our shadows when day is in its glory, scarce appear; toward evening, how great and monstrous they are !-Suckling.

Sin is never at a stay; if we do not retreat from it, we shall advance in it; and the further on we go, the more we have to come back.-Barrow.

Use sin as it will use you; spare it not, for it will not spare you; it is your murderer, and the murderer of the world: use it, therefore, as a murderer should be used. Kill it before it kills you. You love not death; love not the cause of death.Baxter.

Respectable sin is, in principle, the mother of all basest crime.-Follow it to the bitter end, and there is ignominy as well as guilt eternal.-Horace Bushnell.

If you would be free from sin, fly temptation: he that does not endeavor to avoid the one cannot expect Providence to protect him from the other. If the first sparks of ill were quenched, there would be no flame, for how can he kill, that dares not be angry; or be an adulterer in act, who does not transgress in thought; or be perjured, that fears an oath; or defraud, that does not allow himself to covet?-Palmer.

The deadliest sin were the consciousness of no sin.-Carlyle.

Most sins begin at the eyes; by them commonly, Satan creeps into the heart: that man can never be in safety that hath not covenanted with his eyes.

The wages that sin bargains for with the sinner, are life, pleasure, and profit; but the wages it pays him, are death, torment, and destruction. To understand the falsehood and deceit of sin, we must compare its promises and payments together.South.

When we think of death, a thousand sins, which we have trodden as worms beneath our feet, rise up against us as flaming serpents. Walter Scott.

I fear nothing but doing wrong.-Sterne. As sins proceed they ever multiply; and

like figures in arithmetic, the last stands for more than all that went before it.-Sir T. Browne.

Guilt, though it may attain temporal splendor, can never confer real happiness. The evident consequences of our crimes long survive their commission, and, like the ghosts of the murdered, forever haunt the steps of the malefactor.- Walter Scott.

It is as supreme a folly to talk of a little sin as it would be to talk of a small decalogue that forbids it, or a diminutive God that hates it, or a shallow hell that will punish it.-C. S. Robinson.

No man becomes fully evil at once; but suggestion bringeth on indulgence; indulgence, delight; delight, consent; consent, endeavor; endeavor, practice; practice, custom; custom, excuse; excuse, defence; defence, obstinacy; obstinacy, boasting; boasting, a seared conscience and a reprobate mind.

Sin may open bright as the morning, but it will end dark as night.-Talmage.

Bad men hate sin through fear of punishment; good men hate sin through their love of virtue.-Juvenal.

What is human sin but the abuse of human appetites, of human passions, of human faculties, in themselves all innocent? -R. D. Hitchcock.

The course of evil begins so slowly, and from such slight source, an infant's hand might stem the breach with clay; but let the stream get deeper, and philosophy, aye, and religion too, shall strive in vain, to turn the headlong current.

There are some sins which are more justly to be denominated surprises than infidelities. To such the world should be lenient, as, doubtless, Heaven is forgiving. -Massillon.

There is no sin we can be tempted to commit, but we shall find a greater satisfaction in resisting than in committing.

We are saved from nothing if we are not saved from sin. Little sins are pioneers of hell.-Howell.

There are three things which the true Christian desires in respect to sin: Justification, that it may not condemn; sanctification, that it may not reign; and glorification, that it may not be.-Cecil.

He that hath slight thoughts of sin never had great thoughts of God.-Owen.

There is a vast difference between sins of infirmity and those of presumption, as vast as between inadvertency and deliberation. -South,

SIN.

Every gross act of sin is much the same thing to the conscience that a great blow is to the head; it stuns and bereaves it of all use of its senses for a time.-South.

Whatever disunites man from God disunites man from man.-Burke.

It is not only what we do, but also what we do not do, for which we are accountable. -Molière.

No sin is small.-It is against an infinite God, and may have consequences immeasurable. No grain of sand is small in the mechanism of a watch.-Jeremy Taylor.

Every sin is a mistake, as well as a wrong; and the epitaph for the sinner is, "Thou fool!"-A. Maclaren.

If I were sure God would pardon me, and men would not know my sin, yet I should be ashamed to sin, because of its essential baseness.-Plato.

The sin that now rises to your memory as your bosom sin, let this be first of all withstood and mastered.-Oppose it instantly by a detestation of it, by a firm will to conquer it, by reflection, by reason, by prayer. Channing.

How immense appear to us the sins that we have not committed.-Mad. Necker.

Sin is to be overcome, not so much by direct opposition to it as by cultivating opposite principles. Would you kill the weeds in your garden, plant it with good seed; if the ground be well occupied there will be less need of the hoe.-A. Fuller.

There is more bitterness in sin's ending than there ever was sweetness in its acting. -If you see nothing but good in its commission, you will suffer only woe in its conclusion.-Dyer.

Sins are like circles in the water when a stone is thrown into it; one produces another. When anger was in Cain's heart, murder was not far off.-Philip Henry.

If I grapple with sin in my own strength, the devil knows he may go to sleep.-H. G. J. Adams.

I could not live in peace if I put the shadow of a wilful sin between myself and God.-George Eliot.

Man-like it is, to fall into sin; fiend-like it is, to dwell therein; Christ-like it is, for sin to grieve; God-like it is, all sin to leave.-Longfellow.

There is no fool equal to the sinner, who every moment ventures his soul.-Tillotson.

Sins of the mind have less infamy than those of the body, but not less malignity.— Whichcote.

It is not true that there are no enjoyments in the ways of sin; there are, many and various.-But the great and radical defect of them all is, that they are transitory and unsubstantial, at war with reason and conscience, and always leave a sting behind. We are hungry, and they offer us bread; but it is poisoned bread. We are thirsty, and they offer us drink; but it is from deadly fountains. They may and often do satisfy us for the moment; but it is death in the end. It is only the bread of heaven and the water of life that can so satisfy that we shall hunger no more and thirst no more forever.-Tryon Edwards.

SINCERITY.-Sincerity is to speak as we think, to do as we pretend and profess, to perform what we promise, and really to be what we would seem and appear to be.Tillotson.

Sincerity is the face of the soul, as dissimulation is the mask.-S. Dubay.

Sincerity, a deep, genuine, heart-felt sincerity is a trait of true and noble manhood.

Inward sincerity will of course influence the outward deportment; where the one is wanting, there is great reason to suspect the absence of the other.-Sterne.

Sincerity is the indispensable ground of all conscientiousness, and by consequence of all heartfelt religion.-Kant.

Sincerity is no test of truth--no evidence of correctness of conduct.-You may take poison sincerely believing it the needed medicine, but will it save your life?- Tryon Edwards.

Sincerity, thou first of virtues, let no mortal leave thy onward path, although the earth should gape, and from the gulf of hell destruction rise, to take dissimulation's winding way.-Home.

The shortest and surest way to live with honor in the world, is to be in reality what we would appear to be; all human virtues increase and strengthen themselves by the practice and experience of them.-Socrates.

Sincerity is like travelling on a plain, beaten road, which commonly brings a man sooner to his journey's end than by-ways, in which men often lose themselves. Tillotson.

The whole faculties of man must be exerted in order to call forth noble energies; and he who is not earnestly sincere lives in but half his being, self-mutilated, selfparalyzed.-Coleridge.

His words are bonds, his oaths are oracles; his love sincere, his thoughts immaculate; his tears, pure messengers sent

SINGULARITY.

from his heart; his heart as far from fraud, as heaven from earth.-Shakespeare.

Sincerity and truth are the basis of every virtue.-Confucius.

It is often said it is no matter what a man believes if he is only sincere. But let a man sincerely believe that seed planted without ploughing is as good as with; that January is as favorable for seed-sowing as April; and that cockle seed will produce as good a harvest as wheat, and is it so?H. W. Beecher.

You know I say just what think, and nothing more nor less.-I cannot say one thing and mean another.-Longfellow.

SINGULARITY.-Let those who would affect singularity with success, first determine to be very virtuous, and they will be sure to be very singular.-Colton.

He who would be singular in his apparel had need have something superlative to balance that affectation.-Feltham.

Singularity is laudable, when in contradiction to a multitude, it adheres to the dictates of morality and honor. In concerns of this kind it is to be looked upon as heroic bravery, in which a man leaves the species only as he soars above it.-Addison.

SLANDER.-(See "SCANDAL," "REPU

TATION.")

Slander is a vice that strikes a double blow, wounding both him that commits, and him against whom it is committed.Saurin.

Believe nothing against another, but on good authority; nor report what may hurt another, unless it be a greater hurt to some other to conceal it.-Penn.

The worthiest people are the most injured by slander, as it is the best fruit which the birds have been pecking at.Swift.

Slander is the revenge of a coward, and dissimulation his defence.-Johnson.

When will talkers refrain from evil-speaking? When listeners refrain from evilhearing. Hare.

Diogenes being asked, "What is that beast, the bite of which is the most dangerous?" replied, "Of wild beasts, the bite of a slanderer; and of tame beasts, that of the flatterer."

Plato, hearing that some asserted he was a very bad man, said, "I shall take care so to live that nobody will believe them."Guardian.

Slander as often comes from vanity as from malice.

Slanderers are like flies, that pass all over a man's good parts to light only on his sores.-Rule of Life.

No one is safe from slander. The best way is to pay no attention to it, but live in innocence and let the world talk.-Molière.

Who stabs my name would stab my person, too, did not the hangman's axe lie in the way.-Crown.

The slanderer inflicts wrong by calumniating the absent; and he who gives credit to the calumny before he knows its truth, is equally guilty.-Herodotus.

No might nor greatness can censure escape; back-wounding calumny the whitest virtue strikes; what king so strong, can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue ?Shakespeare.

The slanderer and the assassin differ only in the weapon they use; with the one it is the dagger, with the other the tongue. -The former is worse than the latter, for the last only kills the body, while the other murders the reputation and peace.-Tryon Edwards.

Slander, whose edge is sharper than the sword; whose tongue outvenoms all the worms of Nile; whose breath rides on the posting winds, and doth belie all corners of the world.-Shakespeare.

Divines do rightly infer from the sixth commandment, that scandalizing one's neighbor with false and malicious reports, whereby I vex his spirit, and consequently impair his health, is a degree of murder.Sir W. Raleigh.

Slugs crawl and crawl over our cabbages, like the world's slander over a good name. You may kill them, it is true, but there is the slime.-Douglas Jerrold.

A slanderer felt an adder bite his side: What followed from the bite? The serpent died.

Curst be the tongue, whence slanderous rumor, like the adder's drop distils her venom, withering friendship's faith, turning love's favor.-Hillhouse.

Slander meets no regard from noble minds; only the base believe what the base only utter.-Bellers.

There would not be so many open mouths if there were not so many open ears.-Bp. Hall.

The man that dares traduce because he can with safety to himself, is not a man.— Cowper.

He, who would free from malice pass his days, must live obscure, and never merit praise.-Gay.

SLANDER.

Oh! many a shaft, at random sent, finds mark the archer little meant; and many a word, at random spoken, may soothe or wound a heart that's broken.- Walter Scott. Done to death by slanderous tongues.Shakespeare.

It is commonly unnecessary to refute slander and calumny, except by perseverance in well doing; they are sparks, which, if you do not fan them, will soon go out. If evil be said of thee, and it is true, correct it; if it be a lie, laugh at it.

That thou art blamed, shall not be thy defect; for slander's mark was ever yet the fair; so thou be good, slander doth but approve thy worth the greater.-Shake

speare.

Next to the slanderer, we detest the bearer of the slander to our ears.-M. H. Catherwood.

Life would be a perpetual flea-hunt if a man were obliged to run down all the innuendoes, inveracities, insinuations, and suspicions which are uttered against him. -H. W. Beecher.

The surest method against scandal is to live it down by perseverance in well-doing. -Boerhaave.

If slander be a snake, it is a winged one. It flies as well as creeps.-Douglas Jerrold.

How frequently are the honesty and integrity of a man disposed of by a smile or shrug! How many good and generous actions have been sunk into oblivion by a distrustful look, or stamped with the imputation of bad motives, by a mysterious and seasonable whisper!-Sterne.

There is nothing which wings its flight so swiftly as calumny, nothing which is uttered with more ease; nothing is listened to with more readiness, nothing dispersed more widely.-Cicero.

The slander of some people is as great a recommendation as the praise of others.--Fielding.

Listen not to a tale-bearer or slanderer, for he tells thee nothing out of good will; but as he discovereth of the secrets of others, so he will of thine in turn.-Socrates.

Calumny would soon starve and die of itself if nobody took it in and gave it lodging.-Leighton.

If any speak ill of thee, flee home to thy own conscience, and examine thy heart: if thou be guilty, it is a just correction; if not guilty, it is a fair instruction: make use of both; so shalt thou distil honey out of gall, and out of an open enemy create a secret friend.-Quarles.

When the tongue of slander stings thee, let this be thy comfort,-they are not the worst fruits on which the wasps alight.Burger.

Close thine ear against him that shall open his mouth secretly against another. If thou receivest not his words, they fly back and wound the reporter. If thou dost receive them, they fly forward, and wound the receiver.-Lavater.

The way to check slander is to despise it; attempt to overtake and refute it, and it will outrun you.-A. Dumas.

If any one tells you a person speaks ill of you, do not make excuse about what is said, but answer: "He was ignorant of my other faults else he would not have mentioned these alone."-Epictetus.

There is nobody so weak of invention that he cannot make up some little stories to vilify his enemy.-Addison.

Have patience awhile; slanders are not long-lived. Truth is the child of time; ere long she shall appear to vindicate thee. -Kant.

Slander cannot make the subject of it either better or worse.-It may represent us in a false light, or place a likeness of us in a bad one, but we are always the same.— Not so the slanderer, for calumny always makes the calumniator worse, but the calumniated never.-Colton.

We cannot control the evil tongues of others, but a good life enables us to despise them.-Cato.

SLAVERY.-Whatever makes man a slave takes half his worth away.-Pope.

Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, slavery, thou art a bitter draught.-Sterne.

That execrable sum of all villainies commonly called the slave-trade.-J. Wesley. Corrupted freemen are the worst of slaves. Garrick.

Here lies the evil of slavery: its whips, imprisonments, and even the horrors of the middle passage, are not to be named, in comparison with the extinction of the proper consciousness of a human beingwith the degradation of a man into a brute. -Channing.

There is a law above all human enactments, written upon the heart by the finger of God; and while men despise fraud, and loathe rapine, and abhor blood, they shall reject with indignation the wild and guilty phantasy, that man can hold property in man.-Brougham.

Slavery is a system of the most complete injustice.-Plato.

SLAVERY.

Every man has a property in his own person; this nobody has a right to but himself.-Locke.

Natural liberty is the gift of the beneficent Creator of the whole human race.Alexander Hamilton.

Slavery is a system of outrage and robbery.-Socrates.

Slavery is an atrocious debasement of human nature.-Franklin.

Slavery is a state so improper, so degrading, so ruinous to the feelings and capacities of human nature, that it ought not to be suffered to exist.-Burke.

Slavery is not only opposed to all the principles of morality, but, as it appears to me, is pregnant with appaling and inevitable danger to the Republic.-Humboldt.

I envy neither the heart nor the head of that man from the North, who rises here in Congress to defend slavery from principle.-John Randolph.

We have found that this evil, slavery, has preyed upon the very vitals of the Union, and has been prejudicial to all the States in which it has existed.-James Monroe.

The abolition of domestic slavery is the greatest object of desire in these colonies, where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state. Thos. Jefferson.

I can only say that there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do to see a plan adopted for the abolition of slavery. Washington.

Not only does the Christian religion, but Nature herself, cry out against the state of slavery.-Pope Leo X.

It is injustice to permit slavery to remain for a single hour. William Pitt.

Slavery is contrary to the fundamental law of all societies.-Montesquieu.

Slavery in all its forms, in all its degrees, is a violation of divine law, and a degradation of human nature.-Brissot.

Those are men-stealers who abduct, keep, sell, or buy slaves or freemen.-Grotius.

Where slavery is, there liberty cannot be; and where liberty is, there slavery cannot be.-Charles Sumner.

It is observed by Homer that a man loses half his virtue the day he becomes a slave; he might have added, with truth, that he is likely to lose more than half when he becomes a slave-master.- Whately.

We can apply to slavery no worse name than its own. Men have always shrunk instinctively from this state, as the most degraded. No punishment, save death, has

been more dreaded; and, to avoid it, death has often been endured. Slavery virtually dissolves the domestic relations. It ruptures the most sacred ties upon earth. It violates home. It lacerates best affections; produces and gives license to cruelty; compels the master systematically to degrade the mind of the slave; and to resist that improvement which is the design and end of the Creator.-Millions may rise up and tell me that the slave suffers little from cruelty. I know too much of human nature, human history, and human passion, to believe them.—Channing.

Those who carry on the traffic in human flesh and blood; those who steal a person in order to sell him into bondage; or those who buy such stolen men or women; or the nations who legalize or connive at such traffic; all these are men-stealers, and God classes them with the most flagitious of mortals. Adam Clarke.

The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions; the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submission on the other. The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances. The hour of emancipation must come; but whether it will be brought on by the generous energies of our own minds, or by the bloody scenes of St. Domingo, is a leaf of our history not yet turned over. The Almighty has no attribute which can take sides with us in such a contest.-Jefferson.

From my earliest youth I have regarded slavery as a great moral and political evil. -I think it unjust, repugnant to the natural equality of mankind, founded only in superior power; astanding and permanent conquest by the stronger over the weaker. -All pretence of defending it on the ground of different races, I have ever condemned, and have even said that if the black race is weaker, that is a reason against and not for its subjection and oppression.-In a religious point of view, I have ever regarded and spoken of it, not as subject to any express denunciation, either in the Old Testament or the New, but as opposed to the whole spirit of the gospel, and to the teachings of Jesus Christ.-The religion of Christ is a religion of kindness, justice, and brotherly love --but slavery is not kindly affectionate; it does not seek another's and not its own; it does not let the oppressed go free; it is but a continual act of oppression. -Daniel Webster.

No one is a slave whose will is free.Tyrius Maximus,