death, and I will give thee a crown of life.""-Bishop of Winchester. "If thou be a vessel of gold, and thy brother but of wood, be not high minded; it is God that maketh thee to differ; the more bounty God shows, the more humility he requires. Those mines that are richest, are deepest; those stars that are highest, seem smallest; the goodliest buildings have the lowest foundations; the more God honoureth men, the more they should humble themselves: the more the fruit, the lower the branch on which it grows; pride is ever the companion of emptiness: O! how full was the apostle, yet how low was his language of himself! Least of saints, last of apostles; chief of sinners; no sufficiency to think; no ability to do; all that he is, he is by grace.' Thus humility teacheth us, in our operation, to draw strength from God, not from ourselves; in our graces, to ascribe their goodness to God, and their weakness to ourselves."-Bp. Reynolds. "I have ever observed the humblest men most tender of making separations, and the proudest most prone to it. Many corruptions may be in a Church, and yet it may be a great sin to separate from it, so that we be not put upon an owning of their corruptions, nor upon any actual sin. There is a strange inclination in proud men to make the Church of Christ much narrower than it is, and to reduce it to almost rothing, and to be themselves the members of some singular society, as if they were loth to have too much company in Heaven."-Baxter. "Redeemed from sin and death by the infinite condescension of God, the disciple of the meek and lowly Jesus, the worshipper of a crucified Saviour, feels that pride was not made for man, much less for a Christian man; but that humility is the very badge of his profession Without humility, where is the love of God, which cannot exist distinct from a dutiful submission to his commandments? Without humility, where is the love of man, that love which consists in the cultivation of charitable affections, in the exercise of charitable services, from one towards another? Without humility, where is poverty of spirit and contrition of soul? where are meekness and mercy where is purity of heart where are peace and righteousness? where is repentance for sin, and faith, exclusive of every meritorious claim, faith in the blood of the Redeemer? . . . A proud Christian is a contradiction in terms; humility is the very essence of the Gospel!"-Bp. Mant. ? "When the corn is near ripe, it bows the head, and stoops lower than when it was green. When the people of God are near ripe for heaven, they grow more humble and self-denying than in the days of their first profession. The longer a saint grows in this world, the better he is still acquainted with his own heart, and his obligations to God; both which are very humbling things. Paul had one foot in heaven, when he called himself the chiefest of sinners, and least of saints (1 Tim. i, 15; Eph. iii, 8). A Christian, in the progress of his knowledge and grace, is like a vessel cast into the sea; the more it fills, the deeper it sinks. Those that went to study at Athens, (saith Plutarch,) at first coming seemed to themselves to be wise men ; afterwards, only lovers of wisdom; and after that only rhetoricians, such as could speak of wisdom, but knew little of it; and last of all, idiots in their own apprehensions; still with the increase of learning laying aside their pride and arrogancy. "When harvest is nigh, the grain is more solid and pithy, than ever it was before; green corn is soft and spongy, but ripe corn is substantial and weighty: so it is with Christians; the affections of a young Christian, perhaps, are more fervent and sprightly, but those of a grown Christian are more Christ abounds more and judicious and solid; their love to more in all judgment (Phil. i, 9). more active and pliable; but as he grows up to a perfect state, the parts are more consolidated and firmly knit. The fingers of an old musician are not so nimble, but he hath a more judicious ear in music than in his youth. "When corn is dead ripe, it's apt to fall of its own accord to the ground, and there shed; whereby it doth, as it were, anticipate the harvestman, and calls upon him to put in the sickle. Not unlike to which are the lookings and longings,. the groanings and hastenings of ready Christians to their expected glory; they hasten to the coming of the Lord; or as Montanus more fitly renders it, they hasten the coming of the Lord; i.e., they are urgent and instant in their desires and cries to hasten His coming; their desires sally forth to meet the Lord, they willingly take death by the hand; as the corn bends to the earth, so do these souls to heaven. This shows harvest to be near."-Flavel. 6 "Paul writing to the Corinthians about twenty-four years after his conversion, declares himself to be the least of the apostles' (1 Cor. xv, 9). Five years afterwards he takes a lower grade, 'less than the least of all saints' (Eph. iii, 8). A year later he takes the lowest place of all, the chief of sinners' (1 Tim. i, 15). He had then a deeper sense of his own sinfulness than of the guilt of Judas."-Christian Annotator. 439 NATURAL CORRUPTION. "The heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil." ECCLESIASTES VIII, 11. "The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint." ISAIAH I, 5. "MAN is at loss where to fix himself. He is unquestionably out of his way, and feels within himself the remains of a happy state which he cannot retrieve. He searches in every direction with solicitude, but without success, encompassed with impenetrable darkness! "Hence arose the contest amongst the philosophers; some of whom endeavoured to exalt man, by displaying his greatness; others to abase him, by representing his misery. And what seems more strange is, that each party borrowed the arguments of the other, to establish their own opinion. For the misery of man may be inferred from his greatness, and his greatness from his misery. Thus the one sect demonstrated his misery the more satisfactorily, in that they inferred it from his greatness; and the other the more clearly proved his greatness, because they deduced it from his misery. Whatever was offered by the one, to establish his greatness, served only to evince his misery, as alleged by the other; it being more miserable to have fallen from the greater height. And the converse is equally true. So that in this endless circle of dispute, each helped to advance his adversary's cause ; for it is certain that the more men are enlightened, the more they will discover of human misery and human greatness. In a word, man knows himself to be miserable. He is, therefore, miserable, because he knows himself to be so. But he is also eminently great, because he knows himself to be miserable. "What a chimera then is man! What a novelty! What a chaos! What a subject of contradiction! A judge of all things, and yet a worm of the earth; the depositary of the truth, and yet a medley of uncertainties; the glory and the scandal of the universe. If he exalt himself, I humble him; if he humble himself, I exalt him; and press him with his own inconsistencies, till he comprehends himself to be an incomprehensible monster."-Pascal. "If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are ' (1 Cor. iii, 17). That God hath withdrawn himself, and left this his temple desolate, we have many sad and plain proofs before us. The stately ruins are visible to every eye, that bear in their front, yet extant, their doleful inscription'Here God once dwelt.' Enough appears of the admirable frame and structure of the soul of man to show the Divine Presence did sometime reside in it: more than enough of vicious deformity to complain He is now retired and gone. The lamps are extinct, the altar overturned, the light and love are now vanished, which did the one shine with so heavenly brightness, the other burn with so pious fervour; the golden candlestick is displaced, and thrown away as a useless thing, to make room for the throne of the prince of darkness; the sacred incense, which sent rolling up in the clouds its rich perfume, is exchanged for a poisonous, hellish vapour, and here is, instead of a sweet savour, a stench.' The comely order of this house is turned all into confusion; the 'beauties of holiness' into noisome impurities; the house of prayer into |