HE that outlives Nestor, and appears

To have passed the date of grey Methusalem's years, If he his life to sloth and sin doth give,

I say he only was, he did not live.

THOMAS RANDOLPH.

WHAT is a man,

If his chief good and market of his time,
Be but to sleep and feed?-a beast, no more.
Sure he who made us with such large discourse,
Looking before, and after, gave us not

That capability and godlike reason

To rust in us, unused.

SHAKSPEARE.

THE means that heaven yields must be embraced,
And not neglected; else, if Heaven would,
And we will not, Heaven's offer we refuse;

The proffered means of succour and redress.

SHAKSPEARE.

VIRTUE, though chained to earth, will still live free, And hell itself must yield to industry.

BEN JONSON.

INDUSTRIOUS wisdom often does prevent

What lazy folly thinks inevitable :

Big, swelling clouds are by the wind blown o'er, And threatening clouds may dwindle to a shower.

OLD PLAY.

27

REASON.

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. MARK, xii, 30.

Trust in the Lord with all thy heart; and lean not to thine own understanding. PROVERBS, iii, 5.

Canst thou, by searching, find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? JOB, Xi, 7.

THOUGH Reason cannot through Faith's mysteries see,

It sees that there, and such they be;

Though it, like Moses, by a sad command

Must not come into th' Holy Land,

Yet thither it infallibly does guide,
And from afar 'tis all descried.

WITH Scanty line shall Reason dare to mete
Th' immeasurable depths of Providence?
On the swol'n bladders of opinion borne,

COWLEY.

She floats awhile, then, floundering, sinks absorbed
Within that boundless sea she strove to grasp.
Shall man, here stationed to revere that God
Who called him into being from the dust,
His moral scheme implead, and, impious, cite
Th' Almighty Legislator to the bar
Of erring intellect?

GEORGE BALLY.

REASON the root; fair faith is but the flower;
The fading flower shall die, but reason lives
Immortal, as her Father in the skies.

YOUNG

THROUGH Reason's wounds alone. thy faith can die.

YOUNG.

REASON progressive, instinct is complete;

Swift instinct leaps; slow reason feebly climbs.
Brutes soon their zenith reach; their little all
Flows in at once; in ages they no more
Could know, or do, or covet, or enjoy.
Were man to live coeval with the sun,
The patriarch pupil would be learning still;
Yet, dying, leave his lesson half unlearned,

YOUNG.

DIM as the borrowed beams of moon and stars
To lonely, weary, wandering travellers,
Is Reason to the soul; and as on high
Those rolling fires discover but the sky,
Not light us here; so Reason's glimmering.ray
Was lent, not to assure our doubtful way,
But guide us upward to a better day.
And as those nightly tapers disappear,
When day's bright lord ascends our hemisphere;
So pale grows Reason, at Religion's sight;
So dies, and so dissolves, in supernatural light.

DRYDEN.

'Tis Reason our great Master holds so dear;
'Tis Reason's injured rights His wrath resents;
'Tis Reason's voice obeyed, His glories crown;
To give lost Reason life, He poured His own.

YOUNG.

WITH short plummets Heaven's deep well we sound,
That vast abyss where human wit is drowned.
In our small skiff we must not launch too far;
We here but coasters, not discoverers are.

DRYDEN.

REDEMPTION.

WITH the Lord there is mercy, and with Him is plenteous redemption CXXX, 7.

PAALIS

But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who, of God, is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption:

That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. I. CORINTHIANS, i, 30, 31.

Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by His own blood, He entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. HEBREWS, ix, 12.

REDEMPTION! O, thou beauteous mystic plan!
Thou salutary source of life to man!

What tongue can speak thy comprehensive grace?
What thought thy depths unfathomable trace?
When lost in sin our ruined nature lay,
When awful justice claimed her righteous pay,
See the mild Saviour bend His pitying eye,
And stop the lightning just prepared to fly!

BOYSE.

ONWARD as we trace

God's oracles, Redemption is the point

To which they all converge.

SAMUEL HAYES.

HALF mankind maintain a churlish strife
With Him, the Donor of eternal life,

Because the deed, by which His love confirms
The largess He bestows, prescribes the terms.
Compliance with His will your lot ensures,
Accept it only, and the boon is yours.
And sure it is as kind to smile and give,
As with a frown to say, Do this, and live.

COWPER.

WHEN creatures had no real light Inherent in them, Thou didst make the sun Impart a lustre, and allow them bright; And in this, show what Christ hath done.

GEORGE HERBERT.

BE every knee

To Christ in homage bent! Be every heart

In adoration, and in fervent prayer,

To Him poured forth! From His all-gracious birth,
The day-spring from on high descends: grim death,
Stripped of his boasted empire, prostrate falls:
The cerements of the dank, victorious grave
Are burst asunder: th' adamantine gates
Of Paradise unbarred: man's forfeit race
From the deep gulf of Erebus redeemed,
To life, to immortality arise.

SAMUEL HAYES.

THE grand Redemption of degenerate man
Is not a single, independent act,

But one great system; that, perchance, involved
In the one only greater, God's high law
Pervading and supporting every part
Of the stupendous universe: to thee,
Dark are the system's limits; nay, the whole
To thee unknown, save some minuter spots,
Displayed to show the parts thou hast to act
In the alarming scene.

JOHN HEY.

REDEMPTION! 'twas creation more sublime;
Redemption! 't was the labour of the skies;
Far more than labour, it was death in Heaven :
A truth so strange! 't were bold to think it true,
If not far bolder still, to disbelieve.

YOUNG.