To spread the page of Scripture, and compare
Our conduct with the laws engraven there;
To measure all that passes in the breast,
Faithfully, fairly by that sacred test;
To dive into the sacred deeps within,
To spare no passion, and no favourite sin,
And search the themes, important above all,
Ourselves, and our recovery from our fall.

COWPER

SELF-MURDER.

THEN said his wife unto him, Dost thou still retain thine integrity? Curse God, and die.

But he said unto her, Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh. What. shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? In all this did not Job sin with his lips. Joв, ii, 9, 10. PSALM XXXi, 15.

My times are in Thy hand.

Thou shalt not kill. ExODUS, XX, 13.

DREADFUL attempt!

Just reeking from self-slaughter, in a rage
To rush into the presence of our Judge!
As if we challenged Him to do His worst,
And mattered not His wrath.

VAIN man! 'tis Heaven's prerogative
To take, what first it deigned to give-
Thy tributary breath:

In awful expectation placed,

Await thy doom, nor, impious, haste

BLAIR.

To pluck from God's right hand, His instruments of

death.

THOMAS WHARTON.

THOUGH life seem one uncomiortable void,
Guilt at thy heels, before thy face despair;
Yet, gay this scene, and light this load of woe,
Compared with thy hereafter.

BP. PORTEUS,

SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS.

EVERY one that exalteth himself shall be abased, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted. LUKE, Xviii, 14.

For they, being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish theit own righteousness, have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God. ROMANS X, 3.

But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. We do not present our suppications before Thee for our righteousnesses, but for Thy great mercies. DANIEL, IX, 18,

O, SHALL God tolerate the meanest prayer
That humbly seeks His high supernal throne,
And man-presumptuous Pharisee-declare
His fellow's voice less welcome than his own?
MRS. NORTon.

WHAT is all righteousness that men devise?
What, but a sordid bargain for the skies?
But Christ as soon would abdicate His own,
As stoop from Heaven to sell the proud a throne.

COWPER.

SERVICE-OBEDIENCE.

LET every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God; the powers that be are ordained of God.

Whosoever, therefore, resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. ROMANS, xiii, 1, 2.

Render, therefore, unto Cæsar the things which be Cæsar's, and unto God the things which be God's. LUKE, XX, 25.

HAD I but served my God with half the zeal
I served my king, He would not, in mine age,
Have left me naked to mine enemies.

SHAKSPEARE.

EXPECT not more from servants than is just;
Reward them well, if they observe their trust,
Nor them with cruelty, or pride invade;
Since God and nature them our brothers made.

DENHAM.

THE good needs fear no law,

It is his safety, and the bad man's awe.

MASSINGER.

FOR government, though high, and low and lower

Put into parts, doth keep in one consent

Congruing in a full and natural close

Like music.

Therefore Heaven doth divide
The state of man in divers functions,
Setting endeavour in continual motion;
To which is fixed as an aim, or butt,
Obedience.

WE must learn to obey;
True virtue still directs the noble way.

SHAKSPEARE.

ROWLEY.

SICKNESS-PESTILENCE.

Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night, nor for the arrow that flieth by day! Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness: or for the destruction that wasteth at noon-day. PSALM Xci, 5, 6.

Let us fall now into the hand of the Lord; for His mercies are great; and let me not fall into the hand of man. II. SAMUEL, xxiv, 14.

The prayer of faith shall raise the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up. JAMES, V, 15.

BUT chiefly, Thou,

Whom soft-eyed pity once led down from Heaven
To bleed for man, to teach him how to live,

And O, still harder lesson, how to die;

Disdain not Thou to smooth the restless bed
Of sickness and of pain.

BP. PORTEUS.

DELAY not, sinner, till the hour of pain

To seek repentance: pain is absolute,
Exacting all the body and the brain,

Humanity's stern king, from head to foot:
How canst thou pray, when fevered arrows shoot
Through this torn targe, while every bone doth ache,
And the scared mind raves up and down her cell,
Restless, and begging rest, for mercy's sake?

Add not to death the bitter fears of hell;
Take pity on thy future self, poor man,
While yet in strength thy timely wisdom can;
Wrestle to-day with sin; and spare that strife
Of meeting all its terrors in the van,
Just at the ebbing agony of life.

THE daily lessening of our life shows, by
A little dying, how outright to die.

TUPPER.

SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT.

Is not His deed, whatever thing is done

In Heaven and earth? Did not He all create To die again! All ends that was begun;

Their times in His eternal book of fate

Are written sure, and have their certain date. Who, then, can strive with strong necessity,

That holds the world in his still changing state, Or shun the death ordained by destiny?

When hour of death is come, let none ask whence, nor

why.

SPENSER.

THE life of all his blood

Is touched corruptibly; and his pure brain,

Which some suppose the soul's frail dwelling-house,
Doth, by the idle comments that it makes,
Foretel the ending of mortality.

IT is an easy thing for him who has

No pain, to talk of patience.

AT dead of night,

SHAKSPEARE.

TOURNEUR.

In sullen silence, stalks forth pestilence:
Contagion, close behind, taints all her steps
With poisonous dew; no smiting hand is seen,
No sound is heard, but soon her secret path
Is marked with desolation; heaps on heaps
Promiscuous drop. No friend, no refuge near;
All, all is false and treacherous around;

All that they touch, or taste, or breathe, is Death.
BP. PORTEUS.

THE fountains of the deep their barriers break;
Above, below, the rival torrents pour,
And drown Creation; or in floods of fire
Descends a living cataract, and consumes
An impious race.

BP. PORTEUS.