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by which he is united to God as his portion, to His Word, to His ways, and to His children; and by which he forgives and prays for his enemies. It is the mind of Christ; yea, it is Christ in us the hope of glory, and it is the foretaste of that glory itself.R. Cecil.

Religion will always make the bitter waters of Marah wholesome and palatable, but we must not think it continually will turn water into wine because it once did.-Warburton.

It is one thing to wish to have truth on our side, and another to wish to be on the side of truth.

What one dies for, not his dying, glorifies him. To be of no church is dangerous. Religion of which the rewards are distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind, unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example.

To tell our own secrets is generally folly, but that olly is without guilt. To communicate those with we are entrusted is always treachery, and

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for the most part combined with folly.

to the clergy is seldom at a great

In solitude, if we escape the example of bad men, we likewise want the counsel and conversation of the

good.

Suspicion is no less an enemy to virtue than to happiness. He that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious; and he that becomes suspicious will quickly be corrupt.

Idle and indecent applications of sentences taken from Scripture is a mode of merriment which a good man dreads for its profaneness, and a witty man disdains for its easiness and vulgarity.

Many men mistake the love for the practice of virtue, and are not so much good men as the friends of goodness.

Piety is the only proper and adequate relief of decaying man. He that grows old without religious hope, as he declines into imbecility, and feels pains and sorrows incessantly crowding upon him, falls into a gulf of bottomless misery, in which every reflection must plunge him deeper, and where he finds only new gradations of anguish and precipices of horror.

He that would pass the latter part of his life with honour and decency must, when he is young, consider that he shall one day be old; and remember when he is old that he has once been young.

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GNORANCE is named the mother of devotion, yet, if it falls in a hard ground, it is the mother of atheism; if in a soft ground, it is the parent of superstition; but if it proceeds from ill or mean opinions of God, it is a great impiety, and is as bad as atheism.

Incredulity is not wisdom, but the worst kind of folly. It is folly, because it causes ignorance and mistake, with all the consequences of these; and it is very bad, as being accompanied with disingenuity, obstinacy, rudeness, uncharitableness, and the like bad dispositions; from which credulity itself, the other extreme sort of folly, is exempt.-Barrow.

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READ of my Saviour, that when He was in the wilderness, then the devil leaveth Him, and behold angels came and ministered unto Him. A great change in a little time. No twilight betwixt night and day. No purgatory condition betwixt hell and heaven, but instantly, when out devil, in angel. Such is the case of every solitary soul. It will make company for itself. A musing mind will not stand neuter a minute, but presently side with legions of good or bad thoughts. Grant, therefore, that my soul, which ever will have some, may never have bad company.-Fuller.

Idleness is the Dead Sea that swallows up all virtues, and the self-made sepulchre of a living

man.

We find in Scripture that most of the manifestations of the will of God made to eminent saints took place when they were busy. Moses is keeping his father-in-law's flock when he sees the burning bush; Joshua is going round about the city of Jericho when he meets the angel of the Lord; Jacob is in prayer, and the angel of God appears to him; Gideon is threshing, and Elisha is ploughing, when the Lord calls them; Matthew is at the receipt of custom when he is bidden to follow Jesus; and James and John are mending their nets. The Almighty Lover of the souls of men is not wont to manifest Himself to idle persons. He who is slothful and inactive cannot expect to have the sweet company of his Saviour.

Idleness is the womb or fountain of all wickedness; for it consumes and wastes the riches and virtues we have already, and disenables us to get those we have not.

There are some that profess idleness in its full dignity; who call themselves the Idle, as Busiris, in the play, calls himself the Proud; who boast that they do nothing, and thank their stars that they have nothing to do; who sleep every night till they can sleep no longer, and rise only that exercise may enable them to sleep again; who prolong the reign of

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