Good men generally reap more substantial benefit from their afflictions than bad men do from their

prosperities.

We must needs have some concern when we look

into our losses; but if we consider how little we

deserve what is left, our murmurs will turn into thankfulness.

T is reported of Thales, one of the Grecian sages, that being urged by his mother to alter his condition in life, he told her at first that it was too soon; and afterwards, when she urged him again, he told her that it was too late. So says an old divine: "Effectual vocation is an espousal to Christ." All the time of our life God is urging this upon us; His ministers are still working for Christ. If now we say it is too soon, for aught we know the very next moment our sun may set, and then God will say it is too late. They who are never contracted to Christ on earth shall never be united to Him in heaven.

Procrastination is like the ivy round the oak, and ends by limiting, if it does not destroy, the power of manly and necessary exertion.-Sir Walter Scott.

He that riseth late must trot all day, and scarcely overtake his business at night.

When you do attempt anything that is right, go through with it. Be not easily discouraged. Form habits of perseverance. Yield not to sloth and sleep and fickleness. To resist all these will not be easy, but you will feel that you have done right when you get through.

HE symptoms of spiritual decline are like those which attend the decay of bodily health. It generally commences with loss of appetite and a disrelish for spiritual food, prayer, reading the Scriptures, and devotional books. Whenever you perceive these symptoms, be alarmed, for your spiritual health is in danger.

Two things characterise every Church that is in the highest condition of spiritual health. The one is that they all worship, the other that they all work. The first appertains more directly to the heart; the second appertains as well to the head, the hands, and the purse. The fullest combination of the two would almost realise the ideal of Church life in its highest form.-Theodore L. Cuyler.

Better a thousandfold sacrifice elegance than fervour; better crucify refined taste than quench holy passion; better have the outward forms of devotion imperfect and inartistic than lose the spirit which alone gives them value. Better that music should be discordant than soulless, the prayers broken and rugged then cold and undevout, the altar bare and unattractive than the fire that ought to burn on it extinguished, the temple rude and unshapely than the God absent.

He who lives so, that he wishes there was no God, no providence, no judgment, no future state, will, by degrees, persuade himself that there is none.-Henry.

He that is good will infallibly become better, and he that is bad will as certainly become worse; for vice, virtue, and time, are three things that never stand still.-Colton.

I have seen such sin in the Church that I have often been brought by it to a sickly state of mind. But when I have turned to the world I have seen sin working there in such measures and forms that I have turned back again to the Church, with more wisdom of mind and more affection to it. I see sin, however, nowhere put on such an odious appearance as in the Church.