observed in the creation and disposition of the whole. What an immense duration would be consumed Yet this is not eternity; all this is only a point in comparison of eternity!"

imagination on imagination, conjec- same method in this dissolution as he ture on conjecture. First, I consider those long lives which all men wish, and some attain. I observe those old men who live four or five generations, and who alone make the history of an age. I do more: I turn to ancient chronicles, I go back to the patriar- It was a question asked of the chal age, and consider life extending brethren, both in the classical and through a thousand years; and I say provincial meetings of ministers, to myself, all this is not eternity, all twice in the year, if they preached this is only a point in comparison of the duties of the times? And when eternity. Having represented to my- it was found that Mr. Leighton did self real objects, I form ideas of ima- not, he was censured for this omis-ginary ones. I go from our age to sion, but said, "If all the brethren the time of publishing the gospel, have preached to the times, may not from thence to the publication of the one poor brother be suffered to preach law, from the law to the flood, from on eternity?" the flood to the creation; I join this epoch to the present time, and I imagine Adam yet living. Had Adam lived till now, and had he lived in misery, had he passed all his time in a fire, or on a rack, what idea must we form of his condition? At what price would we agree to expose ourselves to misery so great? What imperial glory would appear glorious were it followed by so much wo? Yet this is not eternity; all this is nothing in comparison of eternity! I go farther still. I proceed from imagination to imagination, from one supposition to another. I take the greatest number of years that can be imagined. I add ages to ages, millions of ages to millions of ages. I form of all these one fixed number, and I stay my imagination. After this I suppose God to create a world like this which we inhabit. I suppose him creating it, by forming one atom after another, and employing in the production of each atom the time fixed in my calculation just now mentioned! What numberless ages would the creation of such a world in such a manner require! Then I suppose the Creator to arrange these atoms, Awful as the consideration of eterand to pursue the same plan of ar- nity is, it is a source of great consolaranging them as of creating them. tion to the righteous. An eminent What numberless ages would such minister; after having been silent in an arrangement require! Finally, I company a considerable time, and suppose him to dissolve and annihi- being asked the reason, signified that late the whole, and observing the the powers of his mind had been so-

A lady having spent the afternoon and evening at cards, and in gay company, when she came home, found her servant maid reading a pious book. She looked over her shoulders, and said, "Poor melancholy soul! what pleasure canst thou find in poring so long over that book?" That night the lady could not sleep, but lay sighing and weeping very much. Her servant asked her once and again, what was the matter? At length she burst out into a flood of tears, and said, "O! it was one word I saw in your book that troubles me: there I saw that word eternity. O how happy should. I be if I were prepared for eternity!" The consequence of this impression was, that she laid aside her cards, forsook her gay company, and set herself seriously to prepare for anoother world.

A religious man, skilled in all li terature, was so ardently bent to impress eternity on his mind, that he read over carefully seven times a treatise on eternity, and had done it oftener, had not speedier death summoned him into it.

ture to save his life. He could bear Epaminondas, without all doubt, it no longer; but, quitting the place was one of the greatest generals and of his concealment, he presented one of the best men Greece ever prohimself to the assassins, begging of duced. Before him the city of Thebes them to put him to death, and dismiss was not distinguished by any memo the innocent youth. But the inhu- rable action; and after him it was man monsters, without being the not famous for its virtues, but its least affected with the tears either of misfortunes, till it sunk into its origithe father or the son, answered that nal obscurity, so that it saw its glory they must both die; the father be- take birth and expire with this great cause he was proscribed, and the son man. The victory he obtained at because he had concealed the father. Leuctra, had drawn the eyes and adThen a new contest of tenderness miration of all the neighbouring peoarose who should die first; but this ple upon Epaminondas, who looked the assassins soon decided, by behead-upon him as the support of Thebes, ing them both at the same time. as the triumphant conqueror of Cinna undertook to get Pomponius all Sparta, as the deliverer of all Strabo murdered in his tent, but his Greece; in a word, as the greatest son saved his life, which was the first man and the most excellent captain remarkable transaction of Pompey that ever was in the world. In the the Great. The treacherous Cinna midst of this universal applause, so had gained over one Terentius, a capable of making the general of an confidant of Pompey's, and prevailed army forget the man for the victor, on him to assassinate the General, Epaminondas, little sensible to so and seduce his troops. Young Pom-affecting and so deserved a glory; pey being informed of his design a "My joy," said he, "arises from my few hours before it was to be put in sense of that which the news of my execution, placed a faithful guard victory will give my father and my round the prætorium, so that none of mother." the conspirators could come near it. He then watched all the motions of the camp, and endeavoured to appease the fury of the soldiers by such acts of prudence as were worthy of the oldest commanders. However, some of the mutineers having forced open one of the gates of the camp, in order to desert to Cinna, the General's son threw himself flat on his back in their way, crying out, that they should not break their oath, and desert their commander, without treading his body to death. By this means he put a stop to their desertion, and afterwards wrought so effectually upon them by his affecting speeches and engaging carriage, that he reconciled them to his father.

Miltiades, a famous Athenian commander, died in prison, where he had been cast for debt. His son Simon, to redeem his father's body for burial, voluntarily submitted himself a prisoner in his room, where he was kept in chains till the debt was paid,

"Nothing in history seems so valuable to me," says Rollin, as such sentiments which do honour to human nature, and proceed from a heart which neither false glory nor false greatness have corrupted. I confess it with grief I see these noble sentiments daily expire amongst us, especially in persons where birth and rank raise them above others, who too frequently are neither good fathers, good sons, good husbands, nor good friends; and who would think it a disgrace to express for a father and mother the tender regard of which we have here so fine an example from the pagan above mentioned."

A gentleman of Sweden was condemned to suffer death as a punishment for certain offences committed by him in the discharge of an important public office, which he had filled for a number of years with an integrity that had never before undergone either suspicion or impeachment. His son, a youth about eigh

"It is my worthy father :" and, running to the door to receive him, he fell down upon his knees in the presence of his servants to ask his father's blessing.

FLATTERY.

teen years of age, was no sooner apprised of the predicament to which the wretched author of his being was reduced, than he flew to the Judge who had pronounced the fatal decree, and, throwing himself at his feet, It is mentioned, as an amiable part prayed" that he might be allowed to of the character of the judicious Mr. suffer in the room of a father whom Hooker, that he used to say, "If I he adored, and whose loss he declar- had no other reason and motive for ed it was impossible for him to sur- being religious, I would strive earvive." The magistrate was thunder- nestly to be so for the sake of my struck at this extraordinary proce-aged mother, that I may requite her dure in the son, and would hardly care of me, and cause the widow's be persuaded that he was sincere in it. heart to sing for joy." Being at length satisfied, however, that the young man actually wished for nothing more ardently than to save his father's life at the expense of his own, he wrote an account of the whole affair to the King; and the consequence was, that his Majesty immediately despatched back the courier, with orders to grant a free pardon to the father, and to confer a title of honour on his incomparable son. The last mark of royal favour, however, the youth begged leave, with all humility, to decline; and the motive for the refusal of it was not less noble than the conduct by which he had deserved it was generous and disinterested. "Of what avail," exclaimed he, "could the most exalted title be to me, humbled as my family already is in the dust? Alas! would it not serve but as a monument to perpetuate in the minds of my countrymen the direful remembrance of an unhappy father's shame!" His Majesty (the King of Sweden) actually shed tears when this magnanimous speech was reported to him; and, sending for the heroic youth to Court, he appointed him directly to the office of his private confidential secretary.

"As there is no character so deformed," says Johnson, "as to fright away from it the prostitutes of praise, so there is no degree of encomiastic veneration which pride has refused. The Emperors of Rome suffered themselves to be worshipped in their lives with altars and sacrifice; and in an age more enlightened, the terms peculiar to the praise and worship of the Supreme Being have been applied to wretches whom it was the reproach of humanity to number among men, and whom nothing but riches or power hindered those that read or wrote their deification from hunting into the toils of justice, as disturbers of the peace of nature."

"The only coin that is most current among mankind (says another) is flattery: the only benefit of which is, that by hearing what we are not, we may learn what we ought to be."

As Canute the Great, King of England, was walking on the seashore at Southampton, accompanied by his courtiers, who offered him the grossest flattery, comparing him to the greatest heroes of antiquity, and asserting that his power was more Mr. Robert Tillotson went up to than human, he ordered a chair to be London on a visit to his son, when placed on the beach, while the tide he was Dean of Canterbury, and, was coming in. Sitting down with being in the dress of a plain country- a majestic air, he thus addressed himman, was insulted by one of the self to the sea: "Thou sea, that art Dean's servants, for inquiring if a part of my dominions, and the land John Tillotson was at home. His whereon I sit, is mine: no one ever person, however, being described to broke my commands with impunity. the Dean, he immediately exclaimed, | I, therefore, charge thee to come no

farther upon my land, and not to aspersion on it. Zealous as a David; presume to wet either my feet or my learned and wise: the Solomon of our robe, who am thy Sovereign." But age; religious as Josias; careful of the sea, rolling on as before, and spreading Christ's faith as Constanwithout any respect, not only wets tine the Great; just as Moses; undethe skirts of his robe, but likewise filed in all his ways as a Jehoshaphat splashed his thighs. On which he and Hezekiah; full of clemency as rose up suddenly, and, addressing a Theodosius," If Mr. Walpole himself to his attendants, upbraided had seen this passage, he certainly them with their ridiculous flattery, would not have said that "Honest and very judiciously expatiated on Abbot could not flatter." the narrow and limited power of the greatest monarch on earth.

A flatterer one day complimented Alphonso V. in the following words: "Sire, you are not only a King like others, but you are also the brother, the nephew, and the son of a King." "Well," replied the monarch, "what do all these vain titles prove? That I hold the crown from my ancestors, without ever having done any thing to deserve it."

The following passages from the Bishop of Downe's sermon and a letter from General Digby to the Marquis of Ormond show the impious nonsense as well as flattery that was preached and propagated after the death of Charles I. "The person now murdered," says the Bishop, "was not the Lord of Glory, but a glorious Lord, Christ's own vicar, his lieutenant and vicegerent here on earth." [One would imagine he was His Majesty, King James the speaking of his Holiness of Rome.] First, once asked Bishop Andrews "Albeit he was inferior to Christ as and Bishop Neale the following ques- man is to God, yet was his privilege tion:-"My Lords, cannot I take my of inviolability far more clear than subjects' money when I want it, was Christ's; for Christ was not a without all this formality in Parlia-temporal prince, his kingdom was not ment?" Bishop Neale readily an- of this world; and, therefore, when swered, "God forbid, Sir, but you he vouchsafed to come into this world, should; you are the breath of our and to become the son of man, he did nostrils." Whereupon the King subject himself to the law; but our turned, and said to Bishop Andrews gracious Sovereign was well known "Well, my Lord, what say you?" to be a temporal prince, a free mo"Sir," replied the Bishop, "I have narch, to whom they did all owe and no skill to judge of parliamentary had sworn allegiance. The parliacases. The King answered, "No ment is the great council, and hath put offs, my Lord; answer me pre- acted more against the Lord and Sosently." "Then, Sir," said he, "Ivereign than the other did against think it lawful for you to take my Christ. The proceedings against brother Neale's money, for he offers our Sovereign were more illegal, and it." in many things more cruel." It is lamentable to reflect how even "From the creation of the world," good men have been guilty of extra-says General Digby, "to the accursed vagant adulation and ridiculous flat- day of this damnable murder, nothing tery. Thus Archbishop Abbot, who parallel to it was ever heard of. manifested such great zeal for the protestant religion, speaking of his Royal Master King James the I. he says, "Whose life hath been so immaculate and unspotted, &c. that even malice itself, which leaves nothing unsearched, could never find

Even the crucifying our blessed Saviour, if we consider him only in human nature, did nothing equal this," &c. &c.

FORWARDNESS.

NOTHING, perhaps, is more unbetrue blemish in it, nor cast probable coming young persons than the as