CHRISTIANITY.

Christianity is intended to be the guide, the guardian, the companion of all our hours: to be the food of our immortal spirits; to be the serious occupation of our whole existence.-Jebb.

The task and triumph of Christianity is to make men and nations true and just and upright in all their dealings, and to bring all law, as well as all conduct, into subjection and conformity to the law of God.-H. J. Van Dyke.

Christianity works while infidelity talks. She feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, visits and cheers the sick, and seeks the lost, while infidelity abuses her and babbles nonsense and profanity. "By their fruits ye shall know them."-H. W. Beecher.

Had the doctrines of Jesus been preached always as pure as they came from his lips, the whole civilized world would now have been Christians.-Jefferson.

After reading the doctrines of Plato, Socrates, or Aristotle, we feel that the specific difference between their words and Christ's is the difference between an inquiry and a revelation.-Joseph Parker.

Through its whole history the Christian religion has developed supreme affinities for best things. For the noblest culture, for purest morals, for magnificent literatures, for most finished civilizations, for most energetic national temperaments, for most enterprising races, for the most virile and progressive stock of mind, it has manifested irresistible sympathies. Judging

its future by its past, no other system of human thought has so splendid a destiny. It is the only system which possesses undying youth.-A. Phelps.

There's not much practical Christianity in the man who lives on better terms with angels and seraphs, than with his children, servants, and neighbors.-H. W. Beecher.

Whatever men may think of religion, the historic fact is, that in proportion as the institutions of Christianity lose their hold upon the multitudes, the fabric of society is in peril.-A. T. Pierson.

The tendency of Christian ideas is to mental growth.-The mind must expand that takes them in with cordial sympathy. The conversion of Saui of Tarsus wrought in him an intellectual as well as a moral revolution.-A. Phelps.

Christianity has its best exponents in the lives of the saints. It is only when our creeds pass into the iron of the blood that they become vital and organic.-Faith if not transmuted into character, has lost its power.-C. L. Thompson.

CHRISTIANITY.

"Learn of me," says the philosopher, "and ye shall find restlessness." "Learn of me, says Christ," and ye shall find rest."-Drummond.

Christianity is the only system of faith which combines religious beliefs with corresponding principles of morality.-It builds ethics on religion.-A. Phelps.

Christianity as an idea begins with thinking of God in the same way that a true son thinks of his father; Christianity as a life, begins with feeling and acting toward God as a true son feels and acts toward his father.-C. H. Parkhurst.

Christ built no church, wrote no book, left no money, and erected no monuments; yet show me ten square miles in the whole earth without Christianity, where the life of man and the purity of women are respected, and I will give up Christianity.Drummond.

Christendom is accounted for only by Christianity; and Christianity burst too suddenly into the world to be of the world. -F. D. Huntington.

Christianity always suits us well enough so long as we suit it. A mere mental difficulty is not hard to deal with. With most of us it is not reason that makes faith hard, but life.-Jean Ingelow.

Christianity is a missionary religion, converting, advancing, aggressive, encompassing the world; a non-missionary church is in the bands of death.-Max Muller.

If ever Christianity appears in its power, it is when it erects its trophies upon the tomb; when it takes up its votaries where the world leaves them; and fills the breast with immortal hope in dying moments.Robert Hall.

The real security of Christianity is to be found in its benevolent morality; in its exquisite adaption to the human heart; in the facility with which it accommodates itself to the capacity of every human intellect; in the consolation which it bears to every house of mourning; and in the light with which it brightens the great mystery of the grave.-Macaulay.

There was never law, or sect, or opinion did so much magnify goodness, as the Christian religion doth.-Bacon,

Christianity ruined emperors, but saved peoples.-It opened the palaces of Constantinople to the barbarians, but it opened the doors of cottages to the consoling angels of Christ.-Musset.

Christianity is intensely practical.-She has no trait more striking than her common sense.-Buxton.

CHURCH.

Christianity is the record of a pure and holy soul, humble, absolutely disinterested, a truth-speaker, and bent on serving, teaching, and uplifting men.-It teaches that to love the All-perfect is happiness.--Emer

son.

Christianity, rightly understood, is identical with the highest philosophy; the essential doctrines of Christianity are necessary and eternal truths of reason.Coleridge.

The true social reformer is the faithful preacher of Christianity; and the only organization truly potent for the perfection of Society, is the Christian church.-I know of nothing which, as a thought, is more superficial, or which, as a feeling, is better entitled to be called hatred of men, than that which disregards the influence of the gospel in its efforts for social good, or attempts to break its hold on mankind by destroying their faith in its living power.-J. H. Seelye.

Christianity is a religion which is jealous in its demands, but how infinitely prodigal in its gifts?-If it troubles you for an hour, it repays you with immortality.-Bulwer.

A fit abode, wherein appear enshrined our hopes of immortality.-Byron.

CHURCH.-The clearest window ever fashioned, if it is barred by spider's webs, and hung over with carcasses of dead insects, so that the sunlight cannot find its way through, is of little use.-Now the church is God's window, and if it is so obscured by errors that its light becomes darkness, how great is that darkness!— H. W. Beecher.

A Christian church is a body or collection of persons, voluntarily associated together, professing to believe what Christ teaches, to do what Christ enjoins, to imitate his example, cherish his spirit, and make known his gospel to others.

Christ alone is the head of the churchby his truth to instruct it; by his authority to govern it; by his grace to quicken it; by his providence to protect and guide it; by his Holy Spirit to sanctify and bless it; -the source of its life, wisdom, unity, peace, power, and prosperity, dwelling with it here on earth, and preparing its faithful members to dwell forever with him in heaven.

The church is the great uplifting and conserving agency in the world, without which the race would soon relapse into barbarism, and press its way to perdition. -R. F. Sample.

The way to preserve the peace of the church is to preserve its purity.-M. Henry.

It is the province of the church not only to offer salvation in the future, but to teach men how they ought to live in the present life.-F. C. Monfort.

The church is not a gallery for the exhibition of eminent Christians, but a school for the education of imperfect ones, a nursery for the care of weak ones, a hospital for the healing of those who need assiduous care.-H. W. Beecher.

I have seen much of the world and of men, and if there are truth, purity, sound morals, and right aims anywhere, you may find them in the Christian church.-J. P. Thompson.

Men say the pinnacles of the churches point to heaven; so does every tree that buds, and every bird that rises and sings.They say their aisles are good for worship; so is every rough seashore and mountain glen.-But this they have of distinct and indisputable glory, that their mighty walls were never raised, and never shall be, but by men who love and aid each other in their weakness, and on the way to heaven.Ruskin.

There ought to be such an atmosphere in every Christian church, that a man going and sitting there should take the contagion of heaven, and carry home a fire to kindle the altar whence he came.-H. W. Beecher.

That is the only true church organization when heads and hearts unite in working for the welfare of the human race.-Lydia Maria Child.

CITIES.

Trivial circumstances, which show the manners of the age, are often more instructive as well as entertaining, than the great transactions of wars and negotiations, which are nearly similar in all periods, and in all countries of the world.-Hume.

Circumstances are the rulers of the weak; they are but the instruments of the wise.-Samuel Lover.

Circumstances form the character; but like petrifying waters they harden while they form.-L. E. Landon.

Men are not altered by their circumstances, but as they give them opportunities of exerting what they are in themselves; and a powerful clown is a tyrant in the most ugly form in which he can possibly appear.-Steele.

Occasions do not make a man either strong or weak, but they show what he is.Thomas à Kempis.

Circumstances!-I make circumstances!

-Napoleon.

CITIES. The city is an epitome of the social world.-All the belts of civilization intersect along its avenues.-It contains the products of every moral zone, and is cosmopolitan, not only in a national, but in a moral and spiritual sense.-E. H. Chapin.

Cities force growth, and make men talkative and entertaining, but they make them artificial.-Emerson.

The union of men in large masses is indispensable to the development and rapid growth of their higher faculties.-Cities have always been the fireplaces of civilization, whence light and heat radiated out into the dark, cold world.-Theodore Parker.

God the first garden made, and Cain the first city. Cowley.

I have found by experience, that they who have spent all their lives in cities, contract not only an effeminacy of habit, but of thinking.-Goldsmith.

If you suppress the exorbitant love of pleasure and money, idle curiosity, iniquitous purpose, and wanton mirth, what a stillness would there be in the greatest cities.-Bruyére.

The city has always been the decisive battle ground of civilization and religion. It intensifies all the natural tendencies of man. From its fomented energies, as well as from its greater weight of numbers, the city controls. Ancient civilizations rose and fell with their leading cities. In modern times, it is hardly too much to say," as goes the city so goes the world."-S. J. McPherson.

I bless God for cities. They have been as lamps of life along the pathways of humanity and religion.-Within them, science has given birth to her noblest discoveries.-Behind their walls, freedom has fought her noblest battles.-They have stood on the surface of the earth like great breakwaters, rolling back or turning aside the swelling tide of oppression.-Cities, indeed, have been the cradles of human liberty. They have been the active sentries of almost all church and state reformation.Guthrie.

If you would know and not be known, live in a city.-Colton.

Men, by associating in large masses, as in camps and cities, improve their talents, but impair their virtues; and strengthen their minds, but weaken their morals.Colton.

The conditions of city life may be made healthy, so far as the physical constitution is concerned.-But there is connected with the business of the city so much competition, so much rivalry, so much necessity for industry, that I think it is a perpetual, chronic, wholesale violation of natural law. -There are ten men that can succeed in the country, where there is one that can succeed in the city.-H. W. Beecher.

Whatever makes men good Christians, makes them good citizens.-Daniel Webster.

There is no solitude more dreadful for a stranger, an isolated man, than a great city. -So many thousands of men, and not one friend.-Boiste.

In the country, a man's mind is free and easy, and at his own disposal; but in the city, the persons of friends and acquaintance, one's own and other people's business, foolish quarrels, ceremonies, visits, impertinent discourses, and a thousand other fopperies and diversions steal away the greatest part of our time, and leave no leisure for better and more necessary employment. Great towns are but a larger sort of prison to the soul, like cages to birds, or pounds to beasts.-Charron.

CIVILITY.-(See "COURTESY.") Civility is a charm that attracts the love of all men; and too much is better than to show too little.-Bp. Horne.

The general principles of urbanity, politeness, or civility, have been the same in all nations; but the mode in which they are dressed is continually varying. The general idea of showing respect is by making yourself less; but the manner, whether by bowing the body, kneeling, prostration,

CIVILIZATION.

pulling off the upper part of our dress, or taking away the lower, is a matter of custom.-Sir J. Reynolds.

While thou livest, keep a good tongue in thy head.-Shakespeare.

The insolent civility of a proud man is, if possible, more shocking than his rudeness could be; because he shows you, by his manner, that he thinks it mere condescension in him, and that his goodness alone bestows upon you what you have no pretence to claim.-Chesterfield.

Nothing costs less, nor is cheaper, than the compliments of civility.-Cervantes.

When a great merchant of Liverpool was asked by what means he had contrived to realize the large fortune he possessed, his reply was, "By one article alone, in which thou mayest deal too, if thou pleasest-it is civility."- -Bentley.

If a civil word or two will render a man happy, he must be a wretch, indeed, who will not give them to him.-Such a disposition is like lighting another man's candle by one's own, which loses none of its brilliancy by what the other gains.—Penn.

CIVILIZATION.-All that is best in the civilization of to-day, is the fruit of Christ's appearance among men.-Daniel Webster.

More than one of the strong nations may shortly have to choose between a selfish secular civilization, whose God is science, and an unselfish civilization whose God is Christ.-R. D. Hitchcock.

If you would civilize a man, begin with his grandmother.- Victor Hugo.

Here is the element or power of conduct, of intellect and knowledge, of beauty, and of social life and manners, and all needful to build up a complete human life.-We have instincts responding to them all, and requiring them all, and we are perfectly civilized only when all these instincts of our nature-all these elements in our civilization have been adequately recognized and satisfied.-Matthew Arnold.

In order to civilize a people, it is necessary first to fix it, and this cannot be done without inducing it to cultivate the soil.De Tocqueville.

The most civilized people are as near to barbarism, as the most polished steel is to rust.-Nations, like metals, have only a superficial brilliancy.-Rivarol.

The true test of civilization is, not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops, but the kind of man that the country turns out.-Emerson.

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CIVILIZATION.

A sufficient and sure method of civilization is the influence of good women.-Em

erson.

The ultimate tendency of civilization is toward barbarism.-Hare.

The ease, the luxury, and the abundance of the highest state of civilization, are as productive of selfishness as the difficulties, the privations, and the sterilities of the lowest. Colton.

It is the triumph of civilization that at last communities have obtained such a mastery over natural laws that they drive and control them. The winds, the water, electricity, all aliens that in their wild form were dangerous, are now controlled by human will, and are made useful servants. -H. W. Beecher.

Civilization is the upward struggle of mankind, in which millions are trampled to death that thousands may mount on their bodies.-Balfour.

Nations, like individuals, live or die, but civilization cannot perish.-Mazzini.

The old Hindoo saw, in his dream, the human race led out to its various fortunes.First, men were in chains, that went back to an iron hand-then he saw them led by threads from the brain, which went upward to an unseen hand. The first was despotism. iron, and ruling by force.-The last was civilization, ruling by ideas.- Wendell Phillips.

No civilization other than that which is Christian, is worth seeking or possessing. -Bismarck.

The Post office, with its educating energy, augmented by cheapness, and guarded by a certain religious sentiment in mankind, so that the power of a wafer, or a drop of wax guards a letter as it flies over sea and land, and bears it to its address as if a battalion of artillery had brought it, I look upon as a first measure of civilization.Emerson.

With Christianity came a new civilization, and a new order of ideas.-Tastes were cultivated, manners refined, views broadened, and natures spiritualized.-Azarias.

Christianity has carried civilization along with it, whithersoever it has gone.--And as if to show that the latter does not depend on physical canses, some of the countries the most civilized in the days of Augustus, are now in a state of hopeless barbarism.-Hare.

No true civilization can be expected permanently to continue which is not based on the great principles of Christianity.— Tryon Edwards.

CLEANLINESS.

CLEANLINESS.-Cleanliness of body was ever esteemed to proceed from a due reverence to God.-Bacon.

Certainly, this is a duty-not a sin.Cleanliness is, indeed, next to Godliness.John Wesley.

Let thy mind's sweetness have its operation upon thy body, thy clothes, and thy habitation.-Herbert.

The consciousness of clean linen is, in, and of itself, a source of moral strength, second only to that of a clean conscience.— A well-ironed collar or a fresh glove has carried many a man through an emergency in which a wrinkle or a rip would have defeated him.--E. S. Phelps.

Even from the body's purity the mind receives a secret sympathetic aid.-Thom

son.

So great is the effect of cleanliness upon man, that it extends even to his moral character. Virtue never dwelt long with filth; nor do I believe there ever was a person scrupulously attentive to cleanliness who was a consummate villain.— Rumford.

Beauty commonly produces love, but cleanliness preserves it.-Age itself is not unamiable while it is preserved clean and unsullied-like a piece of metal constantly kept smooth and bright, which we look on with more pleasure than on a new vessel cankered with rust.-Addison.

Cleanliness may be recommended as a mark of politeness, as it produces affection, and as it bears analogy to purity of mind. As it renders us agreeable to others, so it makes us easy to ourselves.-It is an excellent preservative of health; and several vices, destructive both to body and mind, are inconsistent with the habit of it.-Addison.

CLEMENCY.-Clemency is not only the privilege, the honor, and the duty of a prince, but it is also his security, and better than all his garrisons, forts, and guards to preserve himself and his dominions in safety. It is the brightest jewel in a monarch's crown.-Stretch.

Lenity will operate with greater force, in some instances, than rigor. It is, therefore, my first wish, to have my whole conduct distinguished by it.- Washington.

Clemency, which we make a virtue of, proceeds sometimes from vanity, sometimes from indolence, often from fear, and almost always from a mixture of all three.-Rochefoucauld.

As meekness moderates anger, so clemency moderates punishment.-Stretch.

In general, indulgence for those we know, is rarer than pity for those we know not.Rivarol.

Clemency is profitable for all; mischiefs contemned lose their force.-Stretch.

CLOUDS. Those playful fancies of the mighty sky.-Albert Smith.

That looked as though an angel, in his upward flight, had left his mantle floating in mid-air.-Joanna Baillie.

My God, there go the chariots in which thou ridest forth to inspect thy fields, gardens, meadows, forests, and plains.-They are the curtains, which, at thy good pleasure, thou drawest as a covering over the plants, that they may not be withered and destroyed by the heat; and not seldom are they the arsenal in which thou keepest thine artillery of thunder and lightning, at times to strike the children of men with reverential awe, or inflict on them some great punishment.-Gotthold.

COMFORT.-Of all created comforts, God is the lender; you are the borrower, not the owner.- - Rutherford.

It is a little thing to speak a phrase of common comfort, which by daily use has almost lost its sense; and yet, on the ear of him who thought to die unmourned, it will fall like the choicest music.-Talfourd.

I have enjoyed many of the comforts of life, none of which I wish to esteem lightly; yet I confess I know not any joy that is so dear to me, that so fully satisfies the inmost desires of my mind, that so enlivens, refines, and elevates my whole nature, as that which I derive from religion-from faith in God.-May this God be thy God, thy refuge, thy comfort, as he has been mine.-Lavater.

Most of our comforts grow up between our crosses.- -Young.

The comforts we enjoy here below, are not like the anchor in the bottom of the sea, that holds fast in a storm, but like the flag upon the top of the mast, that turns with every wind.-C. Love.

Giving comfort under affliction requires that penetration into the human mind, joined to that experience which knows how to soothe, how to reason, and how to ridicule, taking the utmost care not to apply those arts improperly.-Fielding.

COMMANDERS.-He who rules must humor full as much as he commands.George Eliot,

It is better to have a lion at the head of an army of sheep, than a sheep at the head of an army of lions.-De Foc.