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"HOW CHARMING IS DIVINE PHILOSOPHY!"

to take the portraits of the loungers in the wine-shops? Would Michael Angelo have created a "Moses" out of the marble if he had confined his chisel to the sculpture of rampant fauns and dancing nymphs? No; as the conception, so the execution; as the purpose in life, so the conduct. Our minds must ever aspire to

"More pellucid streams,

An ampler ether, a diviner air,

And fields invested with purpureal gleams."

Knowledge, knowledge must be our object; that comprehensive knowledge which will enable us to do our duty; and in striving after it, in daily reaching towards fresh heights, we shall feel a pleasure such as is never felt by those contented with the vulgar ambitions. To the man whom self-culture has strengthened, ennobled, inspired, what are the accidents of fortune or the temptations of wealth? It is in himself that he is thus and thus. Adversity may beset him, but it cannot shake his serene security of spirit. The conditions surrounding him may be harsh and distasteful, but they cannot affect the resolution with which he makes towards the victorious goal. And it may be that the materials with which he has to work are of inferior quality; the work, nevertheless, shines with the purity of the worker's conception. So it is said of Guido, that one day when an Italian noble asked him from what model he obtained the grace and ideal beauty of his female heads, he answered:-"I will show you," and calling to him a rude and uncouth peasant, bade him sit down, turn his head, and look up at the sky. Then, taking his chalk, he rapidly drew a Magdalene, tender and subdued in her penitent loveliness; and, to the expressed astonishment of the noble, replied "The beautiful and pure idea must be in the mind, and then it matters not what the model may be."

There are certain temptations besetting young men to which in these pages it is difficult to allude, and yet, in endeavouring to expound the threefold idea of self-culture, as physical, moral, and intellectual, an honest writer cannot wholly overlook them. Against intemperance it is scarcely necessary to raise the warning in respectable society men do not get drunk nowadays; a stigma and a reproach attach to the vice, and it is fatal to a young man's success in any decent calling. But if young men, as a rule, do not drink to excess, they frequently drink too much, and lay up for their later years a heritage of woe" in an enfeebled nervous system, a sodden brain, and a decrepit body. The habit of drinking with one another, at all times and on all kinds of excuses, accustoms them to an immoderate amount of alcohol. The right conduct of life, however, has for its primary condition temperance; temperance strict and absolute, in its wider as well as its ordinary significance. Fatal to the development of the intellect, fatal to the cultivation of the moral faculties, fatal to high aims and

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THE SIN OF IMPURITY.

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generous impulses, is the drinking habit,-the habit of swallowing glasses of intoxicating liquors on the pretence of good-fellowship, or in obedience to some self-created necessity. The student is often beguiled into the dangerous practice from a notion that the jaded brain requires, and is the better for, a stimulant. After a severe bout of study, he is apt to feel a depression of the animal spirits which can best be removed, he thinks, by a little alcohol. It is just as if one set to work to extinguish a fire by pouring oil upon it. To the student a regular indulgence in stimulants is ruin. The appetite will increase; the yearning after the artificial excitement will grow stronger; and at the same time the power of resistance will diminish. After a long and wide experience, I am able to say, that no work is so well done as the work which is done by unaided Nature; and that the student who resorts to stimulants is guilty not only of a vice but of a blunder.

"There is but one temple in the universe," says Novalis, "and that is the body of man. Nothing is holier than that high form. Bending before men is a reverence done to this revelation in the flesh. We touch heaven when we lay our hand on a human body." This may be accepted as an eloquent paraphrase of St. Paul's exclamation:-"What! know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God and ye are not your own?" Whether as Christians or as rational beings, appreciating the wonderful organisation of the body, we are bound to withdraw it from the contagion of impurity. Chastity is often spoken of as if it were especially a woman's virtue; and as a matter of fact a man's sins of impudicity society seems to regard with considerable indulgence. But for the good of the soul and the well-being of the mind, as a safeguard against premature decay, as essential to the spiritual health, chastity must be enforced upon men. As Jeremy Taylor says:- A pure mind in a chaste body is the mother of wisdom and deliberation, sober counsels and ingenuous actions, open deportment and sweet carriage, sincere principles and unprejudicate understanding, love of God and selfdenial, peace and confidence, holy prayer and spiritual comfort, and a pleasure of spirit infinitely greater than the sottish pleasure of unchastity." The "mens sana" which, in conjunction with the corpore sano," we rightly put forward as the chief pledge and earnest of earthly happiness, must also be "mens pura," unprofaned by indulgence of irregular and illicit desires. Breaches of chastity are heavily visited by Him who is perfect Purity; visited on the body and the intellect, on brain, heart, and soul; though it is impossible for us here to follow the profligate into the terrible degradation which their sin brings upon them

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76 "MAKE CLEAN OUR HEARTS WITHIN US!”

Lets in defilement to the inward parts,
The soul grows clotted by contagion,
Embodies and imbrutes, till she quite lose
The divine property of her first being."

To the impure, physiology as well as religion cries:-"Be sure
thy sin shall find thee out! Nemesis dogs thy footsteps, and
her avenging stroke is certain, however long delayed." Let me
affectionately warn the young student against this terrible, this
degrading vice, which poisons the relations between the sexes,
and undermines the foundations of honourable love. The lewd
jest, the lewd song, the lewd book, the lewd play-these let him
shun as the accursed instruments of evil, bearing always in mind
the Divine promise that the pure in heart shall see God. And
the pure heart will close its portals against even the slightest
suggestion of wrong; it is like the mother-of-pearl which admits
no drop of water save that which comes from heaven.
"When
fruits are whole," says St. Francis de Sales, "you may store them
up securely, some in straw, some in sand or amid their own
foliage; but, once bruised, there is no means of preserving them
save with sugar or honey. Even so the purity which has never
been tampered with may well be preserved to the end; but when
once that has ceased to exist nothing can ensure its existence but
genuine devotion, which, as I have often said, is the very honey
and sugar of the mind."

I may quote from the same admirable writer his remarks on the best mode of maintaining purity. He cautions the young to be swift in turning aside from whatever leads to uncleanness; for the sin is one which approaches with a stealthy foot, one in which the smallest beginnings are apt for rapid growth. It is easier to fly from it than to overcome it. The source of purity is the heart; but it is in the body that its material results take shape, and therefore it may be perfected both through the exterior senses and by the thoughts and desires of the heart. All lack of modesty in seeing, hearing, speaking, smelling, or touching, is impurity, especially when the heart takes pleasure therein. Remember that there are things which blemish perfect purity, without being in themselves actually impure. Aught which tends to blunt its extreme sensitiveness, or to cast the slightest shadow over it, is of this character; and all evil thoughts, or foolish acts of levity or heedlessness, are as steps towards the direct breach of the law of chastity. Avoid the society of the sensual; if a foul animal lick the sweet almond tree, its fruit, it is fabled, becomes bitter; and so a corrupt and unclean man can scarcely hold communication with others and not impair their perfect purity. On the other hand, seek the company of the modest and good; read and consider holy things; for the Word of God is a fountain of purity, and cleanses and strengthens those who study it; wherefore David likens it to gold and precious stones.

Part II.

MENTAL SELF-CULTURE.

"In self-culture, by distinctly recognising his own individual powers, as originally and specifically belonging to his mind, a man is less likely to waste his strength in cultivating those faculties which are dormant or feeble. He is taught also to be contented with the mental place assigned him among his fellows, and not to attempt to imitate those from whom he differs essentially by natural constitution. He thus avoids self-contradiction-the source of all affectation. By reflecting on the harmony and beauty which spring in all nature from variety, he sees that his individuality is but a part of a wide and consummate plan. A wood in which the gnarled oak, the delicate larch, the graceful birch, the wide-spreading beech, the old thorn, even the rough briar, and the fern in the foreground, are all varieties essential to the general effect of beauty or grandeur in the landscape; teaching him a lesson of content with the condition assigned to him here, by that Power which formed his soul as well as the trees he is gazing upon, and appointed him his place, as it has theirs, in this great whole. To fill that place well, however humble it may be, he feels is his duty, the sole purpose for which he was placed here. He has no sure instincts to guide him to this end. He must accomplish this by labour in the right direction."—"Evening Thoughts," by a Physician.

"One great aim, like a guiding-star, above,

Which tasks strength, wisdom, stateliness, to lift
His manhood to the height that takes the prize."
-Robert Browning.

"In the poorest cottage are books-is one Book, wherein for several thousands of years the spirit of man has found light and nourishment, and an interpreting response to whatever is deepest in him; wherein still, to this day, for the eye that will look well, the mystery of evidence reflects itself, if not resolved, yet revealed, and prophetically emblemed; if not to the satisfying of the outward sense, yet to the opening of the inward which is the far grander result. In books lie the creative Phoenix

sense,

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MENTAL SELF-CULTture.

ashes of the whole past!' All that men have devised, discovered, done, felt, or imagined, lies recorded in books; wherein whoso has learned the mystery of spelling printed letters may find it and appropriate it."-Thomas Carlyle.

"Wie fruchtbar ist der Kleinste Kreis
Wenn man ihn wohl zu pflegen weiss."

-Goethe.

"The arts are sisters, languages are close kindred, sciences are fellow. workmen ; almost every branch of human knowledge is connected with biography; biography falls into history which, after drawing into itself various minor streams, such as geography, jurisprudence, political and social economy, arrives full upon the still deeper waters of general philosophy. There are very few, if any, vacant spaces between various kinds of knowledge; any track in the forest, steadfastly pursued, leads into one of the great highways; just as you often find, in considering the story of any little island, that you are perpetually brought back into the general history of the world, and that this small rocky place has partaken the fate of mighty thrones and distant empires."-Sir Arthur Helps.

"Make your books your friends,

And study them unto the noblest ends;
Searching for knowledge, and to keep your mind
The same it was inspired, rich, and refined."

-Ben Jonson.

"Pleasure there is in all studies to such as are truly addicted to themsweetness which, like Circe's cup, bewitched a student so that he cannot leave off. Julius Scaliger was so much affected with poetry that he broke out into a pathetical protestation he had rather be the author of twelve verses in Lucian, or such an ode as in Horace, than Emperor of Germany." -Burton, "Anatomy of Melancholy."

"Omni die renovare debemus propositum nostrum, dicentis; nunc hodie profecta incipiamus, quia nihil est quod hactenus fecimus."—"Imitatio Christi."

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