DEFORMITY.

Mock not at those who are mis-shapen by nature. There is the same reason of the poor and the deformed -he that despiseth them, despiseth God that made them. A poor man is a picture of God's own making, but set in a plain frame, not gilded; a deformed man is also his workmanship, but not drawn with even lines and lively colours. The former, not for want of wealth, as the latter not for want of skill, but both for the pleasure of their Maker.

Their souls have been the chapels of sanctity, whose bodies have been the 'spitalls of deformity. An Emperor of Germany, coming by chance on a Sunday into a church, found there a most mis-shapen priest, insomuch that the emperor scorned and contemned him. But when he heard him read those words in the service, "For it is He that made us, and not we ourselves," the emperor checked his own proud thoughts, and made inquiry into the quality and condition of the man; and finding him on examination to be most learned and devout, he made him Archbishop of Cologne, which place he did excellently discharge.

Thomas Fuller.

A CAUTION.

All is but lost that living we bestow'd,
If not well ended at our dying day.

O man, have mind of that last bitter rage,
For as the tree doth fall, so lies it ever low.

Spenser.

NATIONAL INFATUATION.

There is a high department of theology, which has glided out of the minds of our feeble time; but which deserves the most solemn consideration of the true theologian. It gives the key to all the great heresies of Ecclesiastical History. Nothing can be clearer than the evidence, alike furnished by Scripture and experience, that there exists a law of the Divine government by which, when nations abuse the gift of reason, they are punished by being delivered over to Infatuation. A "strong delusion," a real and direct urgency to error, from a source of Evil more imperious and more subtle than the mere perversity of human nature, is let loose against them. Under this influence they become rapidly incapacitated from judging of right and wrong; they act gravely on principles of palpable absurdity; they embrace habits of notorious ruin; they cling to the most startling superstitions as holiness; and they imagine rationality, wisdom, and virtue, as the very depths of folly, falsehood, and crime. To any man who has read the history of ancient Heathenism, the most natural of all questions is, how could human beings have ever fallen into practices of such absolute repulsiveness and undisguised horror? If the gross impurities of the worship might allure the carnal mind, how are its crueltics to be accounted for, its offerings of human victims, its burning of infants by their parents, the senseless fury and startling abominations of its altars, and the remorseless corruptions and unsparing slaughters of national life? Even in Israel, when it once

fell from its divine allegiance, the Books of Kings are almost a perpetual record of domestic massacre.

St Paul gives the solution, as the principle of a divine punishment, "Even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind. (Rom. i. 28.) We have no right to dilute this language into metaphor. The nations first fell into impiety, they were then delivered over to Heathenism, a system of retributive evil by which their understandings were imbruted, and their natural propensity to irreligion was rendered desperate. Thenceforth they were "filled with all unrighteousness." The apostle then recapitulates the excesses of startling and horrid guilt, into which they were thus suffered to fall; excesses into which man could not have fallen but by the judicial prostration of his understanding. He ends by giving the most convincing and awful evidence of this Satanic Infatuation; that "knowing the judgment of God, and that they which commit such things are worthy of death (eternal), they not only do the same, but have pleasure in those that do them." In other words, that they not only have gratification in their own commission of crime, but they have gratification in its existence, even where they can have no personal temptation.

Croly.

DISSEMBLANCE.

The colours of dissemblance and deceit,
Were dyed deep in grain, to seem like truth.

Spenser.

SELF-DENIAL.

Such as a man's principal end is, such is the man, and such is the course of his life. He that takes this world for his portion, and makes the felicity of it his end, is a carnal, worldly, unsanctified man, whatever good and godly actions may come in upon the by. It is he, and only he, that is a sanctified believer, who looks on heaven as his only portion, and his sailing through the troubled seas of this world, of purpose to come to that desired harbour; not loving their seats better than the land of rest, which he is sailing to, but patiently and painfully passing through them, because there is no other way to glory. And it is the desire of the land to which he is sailing, that moveth the mariner or passenger to do all that he doth on his voyage; and the desire of his home or journey's end, that moveth the traveller all the way; and the desire of a perfect building, that moveth the builder in every stroke of his work; so it must be the love of God, and the desire of everlasting blessedness, that must be the very engine to move the test of the affections and endeavours of the saints, and must make men resolve on the necessary labours and patience of believers. Take off this weight, and all the motions of Christianity will cease. No man will be at labour and sufferings for nothing, if he can avoid them. It is a life of labour, though sweet to the spirit, yet tedious to the flesh, which Christianity doth engage us in; and there is much suffering to be undergone; and this is to the very last, and to the denial of ourselves; and if God require it, to the

loss of all the comforts of the world; for no less than forsaking all that we have, will serve to make us Christ's disciples.

OF PATIENCE.

Baxter.

A soueraine salue there is for eche disease:
The cheefe reuenge for cruell ire

Is pacience, the cheefe and present ease,

For to delay eche yll desire.

The Gorgious Gallery of Gallant Inuentions, 1578.

IGNORANCE.

Ignorance can shake strong sinews with idle thoughts, and sink brave hearts with light sorrows, and doth lead innocent feet to impure dens, and haunts the simple rustic with credulous fears, and the swart Indian with that more potent magic, under which spell he lives and dies. And by ignorance is a man fast bound from childhood to the grave, till knowledge, which is the revelation of good and evil, doth set him free.

(A. M.) Anon.

A blind man sitting in the chimney-corner is pardonable enough, but sitting at the helm he is intolerable. If men will be ignorant and illiterate, let them be so in private, and to themselves, and not set their defects in a high place, to make them visible and conspicuous. If owls will not be hooted at, let them keep close within the tree, and not perch upon the upper boughs.