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of a dismal death, and so had most need of the refreshments of society and the friendly assistances of His disciples, and when also He desired no more of them, but only for a while to sit up and pray with him; yet they, like persons wholly untouched with His agonies, and unmoved with His passionate entreaties, forget both His and their own cares, and securely sleep away all concern for Him or themselves either. Now, what a fierce and sarcastic reprehension may we imagine this would have drawn from the friendships of this world, that act but to an human pitch! and yet what a gentle one did it receive from Christ, in Matt. xxvi. 40! No more than, "What, could you not watch with me for one hour?" And when, from this admonition they took only occasion to redouble their fault and to sleep again, so that upon a second and third admonition, they had nothing to plead for their unseasonable drowsiness, yet then Christ, who was the only person concerned to have resented and aggravated this their unkindness, finds an extenuation for it, when they themselves could not. "The spirit indeed is willing," says He, "but the flesh is weak." As if He had said, “I know your hearts, and am satisfied of your affection; and therefore accept your will, and compassionate your weakness." So benign, so gracious is the friendship of Christ, so answerable to our wants, so suitable to our frailties. Happy that man who has a friend to point out to him the perfection of duty, and yet to pardon him in the lapses of his infirmity!

Select Sentences.

No man's religion ever survives his morals.

That is not wit which consists not with wisdom.

No man shall ever come to heaven himself who has not sent his heart thither before him.

That man will one day find it but a poor gain who hits upon truth with the loss of charity.

What is absurd in the sanctions of right reason will never be warranted by the rules of religion.

How hard is it to draw a principle into all its consequences, and to unravel the mysterious fertility but of one proposition!

Nobody is so weak, but he is strong enough to bear the misfortunes that he does not feel.

We are beholden to nature for worth and parts, but it is to fortune that we owe the opportunities of exerting them.

Virtue is that which must tip the preacher's tongue and the ruler's sceptre with authority.

Our religion is a religion that dares to be understood: the Romish clergy deal with their religion as with a great crime --if it is discovered, they are undone.

That prince that maintains the reputation of a true, fast, generous friend, has an army always ready to fight for him, maintained to his hand without pay.

Ingratitude put the poignard into Brutus' hand, but it was want of compassion that thrust it into Cæsar's heart.

So far as truth gets ground in the world, so far sin loses it. Christ saves the world by undeceiving it, and sanctifies the will by first enlightening the understanding.

If we justly look upon a proneness to find faults as a very ill and a mean thing, we are to remember that a proneness to believe them is next to it.

Charity commands us, where we know no ill, to think well of all; but friendship, that always goes a step higher, gives a man a peculiar right and claim to the good opinion of his friend.

Whosoever has Christ for his friend shall be sure of counsel, and whosoever is his own friend will be sure to obey it.

He who fixes upon false principles treads upon infirm ground, and so sinks; and he who fails in his deductions from right principles, stumbles upon firm ground, and so falls. The

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disaster is not of the same kind, but of the same mischief in both.

This happiness does Christ vouchsafe to all His, that as a Saviour He once suffered for them, and that as a friend He always suffers with them.

A blind guide is certainly a great mischief, but a guide that blinds those whom he should lead is undoubtedly a much greater.

To be resolute in a good cause is to bring upon ourselves the punishment due to a bad one. Truth indeed is a possession of the highest value, and therefore it must needs expose the owner to much danger.

Sin is usually seconded with sin, and a man seldom commits one sin to please, but he commits another to defend himself. Religion placed in a soul of exquisite knowledge and abilities, as in a castle, finds not only habitation but defence. Innocence is like polished armour; it adorns and it defends. It has been seldom or never known that any great virtue or vice ever went alone, for greatness in everything will still be attended on.

Friendship consists properly in mutual offices, and a generous strife in alternate acts of kindness. But he who does a kindness to an ungrateful person, sets his seal to a flint, and sows his seed upon the sand. Upon the former he makes no impression, and from the latter he finds no production.

He that falls below pity, can fall no lower.

He that governs well, leads the blind; but he that teaches, gives his eyes.

Teaching is not a flow of words, nor the draining of an hourglass, but an effectual procuring that a man comes to know something which he knew not before, or to know it better.

With ordinary minds, such as much the greater part of the world are, 'tis the suitableness, not the evidence of a truth, that makes it to be assented to. And it is seldom that anything practically convinces a man that does not please him first.

A friend is the gift of God, and He only who made hearts can unite them.

It is an invisible hand from heaven that ties this knot [friendship], and mingles hearts and souls by strange, secret, and unaccountable conjunctions.

As by flattery a man is usually brought to open his bosom to his mortal enemy; so by detraction, and a slanderous misreport of persons, he is often brought to shut the same even to his best and truest friends.

It is the only act of justice which envy does, that the guilt it brings upon a man it revenges upon him too, and so torments and punishes him much more than it can afflict or annoy the person who is envied by him.

Another thing that makes a governor justly despised, is a proneness to despise others. There is a kind of respect due to the meanest person, even from the greatest; for it is the mere favour of Providence that he who is actually the greatest was not the meanest. A man cannot cast his respects so low, but they will rebound and return upon him. What Heaven bestows upon the earth in kind influences and benign aspects, is paid it back again in sacrifice, incense, and adoration,

SELECTIONS FROM ARCHBISHOP TILLOTSON.

Was the World made by Chance ?

[The following is taken from the Archbishop's first and most elaborate sermon, Job xxviii. 28. Voltaire was well acquainted with the works of Tillotson, whom he pronounces, "Le plus sage et le plus éloquent prédicateur de l'Europe;" and it would almost seem as if the sage of Ferney had profited by his intimacy with the English primate. In one of his letters, Sir James Mackintosh says, "You would scarcely suppose that Voltaire had borrowed or stolen from Tillotson; but so the

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truth seems to be. Tillotson says, 'If God were not a necessary being, He might almost seem to be made for the use and benefit of man.'

'Si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudroit l'inventer.'

It is odd enough that the passage should have probably originated in a misrecollection of some words in the 22d chapter of the 1st book, 'De Naturâ Deorum.""]

I come now to consider the other account, which another sort of atheists, those whom I call the epicurean, do give of the existence of the world. And 'tis this. They suppose the matter of which the world is constituted to be eternal and of itself, and then an empty space for the infinite little parts of this matter (which they call atoms), to move and play in; and that these being always in motion, did, after infinite trials and encounters, without any counsel or design, and without the disposal and contrivance of any wise and intelligent being, at last, by a lucky casualty, entangle and settle themselves in this beautiful and regular frame of the world, which we now And that the earth, being at first in its full vigour and fruitfulness, did then bring forth men and all other sorts of living creatures, as it does plants now.

see.

Now I appeal to any man of reason, whether anything can be more unreasonable than obstinately to impute an effect to chance which carries in the very face of it all the arguments and characters of a wise design and contrivance? Was ever any considerable work, in which there was required a great variety of parts, and a regular and orderly disposition of those parts, done by chance? Will chance fit means to ends, and that in ten thousand instances, and not fail in any one? How often might a man, after he had jumbled a set of letters in a bag, fling them out upon the ground before they would fall into an exact poem; yea, or so much as make a good discourse in prose?