to crucify their lusts than their bodies, to circumcise than stab their hearts, and to mortify than kill themselves.

His willingness to leave this world about that age, when most men think they may best enjoy it, though paradoxical unto worldly ears, was not strange unto mine, who have so often observed, that many, though old, oft stick fast unto the world, and seem to be drawn like Cacus's oxen, backward, with great struggling and reluctance, into the grave. The long habit of living makes mere men more hardly to part with life, and all to be nothing, but what is to come. To live at the rate of the old world, when some could scarce remember themselves young, may afford no better-digested death than a more moderate period. Many would have thought it a happiness to have had their lot of life in some notable conjuncture of ages past; but the uncertainty of future times hath tempted few to make a part in ages to come. And surely, he that hath taken the true altitude of things, and rightly calculated the degenerate state of this age, is not likely to envy those that shall live in the next, much less three or four hundred years hence, when no man can comfortably imagine what face this world will carry. And, therefore, since every age makes a step unto the end of all things, and the Scripture affords so hard a character of the last times, quiet minds will be content with their generations, and rather bless ages past than be ambitious of those

to come.

Though age had set no seal upon his face, yet a dim eye might clearly discover fifty in his actions; and, therefore, since wisdom is the gray hair, and an unspotted life old age, although his years came short, he might have been said to have held up with longer livers, and to have been Solomon's * old man. And surely if we deduct all those days of our life which we might wish unlived, and which abate the comfort of those we now live; if we reckon up only those days which * Wisdom, chap. iv.

God hath accepted of our lives, a life of good years will hardly be a span long: the son, in this sense, may outlive the father, and none be climacterically old. He that early arriveth unto the parts and prudence of age, is happily old without the uncomfortable attendants of it; and 'tis superfluous to live unto gray hairs, when in a precocious temper we anticipate the virtues of them. In brief, he cannot be accounted young who outliveth the old man. He that hath early arrived unto the measure of a perfect stature in Christ, hath already fulfilled the prime and longest intention of his being; and one day lived after the perfect rule of piety, is to be preferred before sinning immortality.

Although he attained not unto the years of his predecessors, yet he wanted not those preserving virtues which confirm the thread of weaker constitutions. Cautelous chastity, and crafty sobriety, were far from him; those jewels were paragon, without flaw, hair, ice, or cloud in him; which affords me a hint to proceed in these good wishes, and few mementoes unto you.

Tread softly and circumspectly in this funambulous track and narrow path of goodness; pursue virtue virtuously; be sober and temperate, not to preserve your body in a sufficiency to wanton ends; not to spare your purse; not to be free from the infamy of common transgressors that way, and thereby to balance or palliate obscurer and closer vices, nor simply to enjoy health, by all which you may leaven good actions, and render virtues disputable; but, in one word, that you may truly serve God, which, every sickness will tell you, you cannot well do without health. The sick man's sacrifice is but a lame oblation. Pious treasures, laid up in healthful days, excuse the defect of sick non-performances, without which we must needs look back with anxiety upon the lost opportunities of health, and may have cause rather to envy than pity the ends of penitent malefactors, who go with clear parts unto the

last act of their lives, and in the integrity of their faculties return their spirit unto God that gave it.

Consider whereabout thou art in Cebes his table, or that old philosophical pinax of the life of man; whether thou art still in the road of uncertainties; whether thou hast yet entered the narrow gate, got up the hill and asperous way which leadeth unto the house of sanity, or taken that purifying potion from the hand of sincere erudition, which may send thee clear and pure away unto a virtuous and happy life.

In this virtuous voyage, let not disappointment cause despondency, nor difficulty despair. Think not that you are sailing from Lima* to Manilla, wherein thou mayest tie up the rudder, and sleep before the wind; but expect rough seas, flaws, and contrary blasts; and it is well if by many cross tacks and veerings thou arrivest at thy port. Sit not down in the popular seats and common level of virtues, but endeavour to make them heroical. Offer not only peace-offerings but holocausts unto God. To serve Him singly to serve ourselves were too partial a piece of piety, nor likely to place us in the highest mansions of glory.

Be charitable before wealth makes thee covetous, and lose not the glory of the mitre. If riches increase, let thy mind hold pace with them; and think it not enough to be liberal, but munificent. Though a cup of cold water from some hand may not be without its reward, yet stick not thou for wine and oil for the wounds of the distressed; and treat the poor as our Saviour did the multitude, to the relics of some baskets.

Trust not to the omnipotency of gold, or say unto it, Thou art my confidence; kiss not thy hand when thou beholdest that terrestrial sun, nor bore thy ear unto its servitude. A slave unto Mammon makes no servant unto God; covetousness cracks the sinews of faith, numbs the apprehension of anything above sense, and, only affected with the certainty of Through the Pacific Sea, with a constant gale from the east.

#

BE NOT SHRUBS, BUT CEDARS.

185 things present, makes a peradventure of things to come; lives but unto one world, nor hopes but fears another; makes our own death sweet unto others, bitter unto ourselves; gives a dry funeral, scenical mourning, and no wet eyes at the grave.

If avarice be thy vice, yet make it not thy punishment; miserable men commiserate not themselves, bowelless unto themselves, and merciless unto their own bowels. Let the fruition of things bless the possession of them, and take no satisfaction in dying but living rich; for since thy good works, not thy goods, will follow thee, since riches are an appurtenance of life, and no dead man is rich, to famish in plenty, and live poorly to die rich, were a multiplying improvement in madness, and use upon use in folly.

Persons lightly dipped, not grained in generous honesty, are but pale in goodness, and faint-hued in sincerity; but be thou what thou virtuously art, and let not the ocean wash away thy tincture. Stand magnetically upon that axis where prudent simplicity hath fixed thee, and let no temptation invert the poles of thy honesty; and that vice may be uneasy, and even monstrous unto thee, let iterated good acts, and long-confirmed habits, make virtue natural, or a second nature in thee. And since few or none prove eminently virtuous but from some advantageous foundations in their temper and natural inclinations, study thyself betimes, and early find what nature bids thee to be, or tells thee what thou mayest be. They who thus timely descend into themselves, cultivating the good seeds which nature hath set in them, and improving their prevalent inclinations to perfection, become not shrubs, but cedars in their generation; and to be in the form of the best of the bad, or the worst of the good, will be no satisfaction unto them.

Let not the law of thy country be the non ultra of thy honesty, nor think that always good enough which the law will make good. Narrow not the law of charity, equity, mercy; join gospel righteousness with legal right; be not a mere

Gamaliel in the faith; but let the Sermon on the Mount be thy Targum unto the law of Sinai.

SIR MATTHEW HALE.

Sir Thomas Browne died on his birth-day; Sir Matthew Hale died at his birth-place, for he was born at Alderley in Gloucestershire, Nov. 1, 1609, and it was there that, having returned to breathe his native air, he expired on Christmasday 1676.

Of one of the most unimpeachable characters in English history, so many accounts have been written, from the brief but solid life by Burnet to the lively and rather flippant sketch by Lord Campbell, that for our purpose it is enough to remind the reader, that as the leading barrister of his day, he pled the cause alike of Archbishop Laud and Christopher Love; that as a judge under the Protectorate, and as Chief Justice of England in the reign of Charles II., he was equally inaccessible to intimidation or corrupt influence; that as a private Christian he lived on terms of affectionate intimacy with Richard Baxter, as well as with Tillotson and Stillingfleet; and that his pure and impartial memory is now not more precious to the Church which he adorned, than to the Dissenters from it, whose ancestors he protected, as much as in him lay, from the excessive pressure of unjust and cruel laws.

The following letter, addressed by this excellent man, when absent on circuit, to his children, is more interesting than any passage which we can detach from his well-known "Contemplations," and we reprint it with the greater pleasure, inasmuch as it is still a word in season.

Directions for Keeping the Lord's-Bay.

I am now come well to Farringdon, from whence I wrote to you my former instructions, concerning your words and speech;