ting opportunity for expressing before you the honest though unfavourable opinions about yourself or your proceedings which he has no business to be ashamed of, or he may have been merely deficient in moral courage, without being really vicious: but a man professing to be your sincere friend whom you discover abusing you in presence of your enemies when he thinks you not near,-a man whom you find contemning when he is with one person what he approves when he is with another; pretending to be on bad terms with A. that he may be thought well of by B., and pretending to have quarrelled with B. that he may get into the good graces of A.; depreciating C. in D.'s presence, and eulogising the same person in E.'s; praising you to your face, and disparaging you in other company; repeating with marks of deprecation, in quarters where they must needs tend to his friend's disrepute, unguarded words and confidential statements that he has listened to with smiling assent;-that man, I say, is everybody's enemy-a treacherous double-faced snake in the grass, with no heart to wish well

to any one but his own mean despicable self.

THE PASSIONS.

The passions, like plants, are always growing or fading. You may know a certain number of Latin phrases and of algebraical rules, and keep them in your head from January to December without forgetting one or learning a new one; but you cannot retain a certain amount of love or of hatred in your heart all the year round without addition or loss. The weather and the circle of the seasons make many changes in the look of the plant without destroying its vitality; the small amenities and provocations of everyday life may produce many shades of expression on one kind face, while the root of affection remains alive but only, a petrifaction can endure the changes of time without growth or decay.

THE WEAKNESS OF MAN'S FAITH.

It would be scarcely possible to frame within the same compass a prayer at once more beautiful, more elaborate, more complete, and

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more earnest and devout in tone, than the litany of the Church of England. Every exigence of human nature seems taken account of in this form of supplication. For propriety of language, amplitude of detail, and both generality and variety of phrase, the litany is admirable as a literary composition. Every Sunday morning thousands of clergymen repeat this universal prayer, and the words are followed and the responses spoken by millions of hearers; and yet, notwithstanding the promise of Scripture that the petition which two or three unite to prefer in God's name shall be granted, the world is not a paradise. What a startling example of prayer without faith! The influence of the church on the world is in proportion to the church's faith.

SELF-DENIAL.

Self-denial is so strictly a private virtue that when people claim credit for having made sacrifices they have most often really made none. You have foregone some pleasure or convenience, and ask to be paid for it in

admiration. Don't say it is for virtue's or justice' sake, or for the sake of any other of the supreme metaphysical principles; if it were, you would no more ask to be admired than the stone does when it falls to the ground in obedience to the principle of gravitation.

PROVIDENCE.

People whose thoughts rest on the surface of things are too apt to reduce Providence to an easy key for the interpretation of wonders. A man has a remarkable escape from sudden death his life is said to have been most Providentially preserved. Another singularly comes into great good fortune: Providence is represented as having smiled upon him. Such-like figures of speech have a tendency to give us a mean notion of the mystery of God's government upon earth. Far more important and cheering for us than any of these presumptive Providences in accidents is the even and ordinary operation of the Grand Intelligence to be traced through bygone years of our lives. Probably few Christian men who have reached the middle of a busy

life could thoughtfully scan their own histories without seeing what now, after the lapse of time, appears more distinctly as the evidence of God's ever-living care for his creature than one of those everyday miracles which form popular illustrations of a Special Providence. Providence in crises is like the lightning's flash your reason is half-blinded, and you admire in ignorance. Providence as an unintermitting influence is like the sun, shining for you even when not on you, and lighting you all life's day through.

PUNCTUALITY.

Punctuality is more than a commercial virtue, and unpunctuality is worse than unbusinesslike. A habitually unpunctual man is not necessarily a rogue, but he is sure to show the want of a nice sense of honour in other matters besides the keeping of appointments. He may bluster for a moment on being called a liar, but in his heart he does not attach half the importance to the stigma which a punctual man does. Punctuality is the foundation of credit: the security of a