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and his friends. Thus angels instructed Abraham, Joshua, Gideon, David, Elijah, Daniel, Zechariah the prophet, Zachariah the father of John the Baptist, the Virgin Mary, the Apostles, and their fellow-disciples. Thus they comforted Jacob at the approach of Esau, Daniel in his peculiar sorrows and dangers, Zechariah in the sufferings of his nation, Joseph and Mary in their perplexities, Christ in his agony, the Apostles and their companions after his resurrection, Paul immediately before his shipwreck, and the Church universally, by the testimony and instruction given in the Revelation of St. John.

PROCRASTINATION.

REV. EDWARD YOUNG, D.D.

BE wise to-day: 'tis madness to defer;
Next day the fatal precedent will plead;
Thus on, till wisdom is push'd out of life.
Procrastination is the thief of time;
Year after year it steals till all are fled,
And to the mercies of a moment leaves
The vast concerns of an eternal scene.
If not so frequent, would not this be strange?
That 'tis so frequent, this is stranger still.

Of man's miraculous mistakes, this bears
The palm, "That all men are about to live,”-
For ever on the brink of being born.
All pay themselves the compliment to think
They one day shall not drivel: and their pride
On this reversion takes up ready praise;
At least, their own; their future selves applaud.
How excellent that life-they ne'er will lead !
Time lodg'd in their own hands is folly's vails;
That lodg'd in fate's, to wisdom they consign;
The thing they can't but purpose, they postpone.

"Tis not in folly, not to scorn a fool;

And scarce in human wisdom, to do more.

All promise is poor dilatory man,

And that through every stage: when young, indeed,
In full content we, sometimes, nobly rest,
Unanxious for ourselves; and only wish,

As duteous sons, our fathers were more wise.
-At thirty man suspects himself a fool;

Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan;
At fifty chides his infamous delay;
Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve;
In all the magnanimity of thought

Resolves; and re-resolves; then, dies the same.
And why? Because he thinks himself immortal.
All men think all men mortal, but themselves;
Themselves, when some alarming shock of fate
Strikes through their wounded hearts the sudden dread,
But their hearts wounded, like the wounded air,
Soon close, where, past the shaft, no trace is found.
As from the wing, no scar the sky retains;
The parted wave no furrow from the keel;-
So dies in human hearts the thought of death,
E'en with the tender tear which Nature sheds
O'er those we love, we drop it in their grave.

SYMBOLS IN A HOUSE.

REV. HENRY WARD BEECHER.

WHAT Wonderful provision God has made for us, spreading out the Bible into types of nature!

What if every part of your house should begin to repeat the truths which have been committed to its symbolism? The lowest stone would say, in silence of night, “Other foundation can no man lay.” The corner stone would catch the word, "Christ is the corner stone." The door would add, "I am the door."

The taper burning by your bedside would stream up a moment to tell you, "Christ is the light of the world." If you gaze upon your children, they reflect from their sweetly-sleeping faces the words of Christ, "Except ye become like little children." If, waking, you look towards your parents' couch, from that sacred place God calls Himself your father and your mother. Disturbed by the crying of your children, who are affrighted in a dream, you rise to soothe them, and hear God saying, "So will I wipe away all tears from your eyes in heaven." Returning to your bed, you look from the window. Every star hails you, but, chiefest, "the bright and morning Star." By-and-by, flaming from the east, the flood of morning bathes your dwelling, and calls you forth to the cares of the day, and then you remember that God is the sun, and that heaven is bright with His presence. Drawn by hunger, you approach the table. The loaf whispers as you break it, "Broken for you," and the wheat of the loaf sighs, "Bruised and ground for you." The water that quenches your thirst says, "I am the water of life." If

you wash your hands, you can but remember the teachings of spiritual purity. If you wash your feet, that hath been done secretly by Christ, as a memorial. The very roof of your dwelling hath its utterance, and bids you look for the day when God's house shall receive its top-stone.

Go forth to your labour, and what thing can you see that hath not its message? The ground is full of sympathy. The flowers have been printed with teachings. The trees, that only seem to shake their leaves in sport, are framing Divine sentences. The birds tell of heaven with their love-warblings in the green twilight. The sparrow is a preacher of truth. The hen clucks and broods her chickens, unconscious that to the end of the world she is part and parcel of a revelation of God to man. The sheep that bleat from the pastures, the hungry wolves that blink in the forest, the serpent that glides noiselessly in the grass, the raven that flies

heavily across the field, the lily over which his shadow passes, the plough, the sickle, the wain, the barn, the flail, the thrashing floor, all of them are consecrated priests, unrobed teachers, revelators that see no vision themselves, but that bring to us thoughts of truth, contentment, hope, and love. All are ministers of God. The whole earth doth praise Him, and show forth His glory!

A DIALOGUE ABOUT TEA.

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From "Evenings at Home."

TUTOR. Come the tea is ready. Lay by your book, and let us talk a little. You have often assisted in making tea, but perhaps have never considered what kind of an operation it is.

Pupil. An operation of cookery, is it not?

T. You may call it so; but it is properly an operation of chemistry.

P. Of chemistry! I thought that that had been a very deep sort of a business.

T. Oh, there are many things in common life that belong to the deepest of sciences. Making tea is the chemical operation called infusion, which is, when a hot liquor is poured upon a substance in order to extract something from it. The water, you see, extracts from the tea-leaves their colour and flavour.

P. Would not cold water do the same ? T. It would, but more slowly. Heat assists almost all liquors in their power of extracting the virtues of herbs and other substances. Thus, good housewives formerly used to boil their tea, in order to get all the goodness from it as completely as possible. The greater heat and agitation of boiling makes the water act more powerfully. The liquor in which a substance has been boiled is called a decoction of that substance.

P. Then we had a decoction of mutton at dinner to

day.

T. We had-broth is a decoction, and gruel and barley-water are decoctions.

P. And ink

T. No-the materials of which ink is composed are steeped in a cold liquor, which operation is termed maceration. In all these cases, you see, the whole substance does not mix with the liquor, but only part of it. The reason of which is, that part of it is soluble in the liquor, and part not.

P. What do you mean by soluble?

T. Solution is when a solid put into a fluid entirely disappears in it, leaving the liquor clear. Thus, when I throw this lump of sugar into my tea, you see it gradually wastes away till it is all gone, the tea remaining as clear as before, though I can tell by the taste that the sugar is dispersed through all parts of it. The body which thus disappears, is said to be soluble, and the liquor it dissolves in, is called the solvent, or

menstruum.

P. Salt is a soluble substance.

T. Yes. But what if I were to throw a lump of chalk into some water?

P. It would make the water white.

T. While you stirred it—no longer; afterwards it would sink undissolved to the bottom.

P. Chalk, then, is not soluble.

T. No, not in water; when stirred up in a liquor so as to cause it to lose its transparency, it is said to be diffused. Now, suppose you had a mixture of sugar, salt, chalk, and tea-leaves, and were to throw it into water, either hot or cold; what would be the effect?

P. The sugar and salt would disappear, being dissolved. The tea-leaves would yield their colour and taste. And the chalk

T. The chalk would sink to the bottom with the tea-leaves, unless the water were stirred, when it would be rendered turbid or muddy. After the operation, the

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