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-ask your conscience how you will avoid the imputation of guilt-ask God how you will avoid his malediction if you do. These are previous questions. Let these first be answered, and it will be easy to reply to any which may follow them. If you only accept a challenge, when you believe in your conscience that duelling is wrong, you act the coward. The dastardly fear of the world governs you. Awed by its menaces, you conceal your sentiments, appear in disguise, and act in guilty conformity to principles not your own, and that, too, in the most solemn moment, and when engaged in an act which exposes you to death.

But if it be rashness to accept, how passing rashness is it, in a sinner, to give a challenge? Does it become him, whose life is measured out by crimes, to be extreme to mark, and punctilious to resent whatever is amiss in others? Must the duellist, who now, disdaining to forgive, so imperiously demands satisfaction to the uttermost-must this man, himself trembling at the recollection of his offences, presently appear a suppliant before the mercy-seat of God? Imagine this, and the case is not imaginary, and you cannot conceive an instance of greater incon. sistency or of more presumptuous arrogance. Wherefore, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath; for vengeance is mine, I will repay it, saith the LORD.

THE CHEERFULNESS OF PIETY.

DR. DURBIN.

THE good man only is rationally and permanently cheerful. No. cheerfulness but his is beyond the power of fortune, or the influence of earthly events. If prosperity smile on him, and he and his country are full to overflowing, he does not become proud and vain in his heart, and forget his God. His devotion becomes more intense and uniform by the addition of a large amount of gratitude; and, instead of using the power which the abundance of his wealth gives him, to do harm, he uses it, and his wealth also, to diffuse relief and joy among the afflicted, and thus disposes a thousand hearts to rise up and bless him.

Besides this, he has the pleasure of the consciousness of doing good, and being good—a pleasure, beyond a doubt, the purest and highest a human heart can feel on earth, except the pleasure of a consciousness of sin forgiven, and of the favor of God. Moreover, I may add, he is in haste to do all the good he can, during his prosperity, for he knows not but that he may be quickly deprived of the power to do good, by some sudden reverse of fortune. He seizes quickly the opportunity of "laying up for himself a good foundation against the time to come," that his Saviour may say to him, with others: "Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom; for I was hungry, and ye fed me; thirsty,

and ye gave me drink; naked, and ye clothed me; sick, and in prison, and ye visited me; for, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." With this exalted end in view, he hastens to do all the good he can during his prosperity.

But should he be a child of adversity, from his youth up, or should he experience the deepest reverses of fortune; do riches take wings and fly away; do friends forsake; does health fail; does he stand like some blasted tree, on the bleak mountain peak, stripped of all its branches, and scathed with the storms and lightnings of ages; has the very genius of desolation and sorrow taken him into captivity—under any or all those circumstances, he does not, like the ungodly man too frequently, throw away his life foolishly, in a fit of despair: but with a firmness and resignation peculiar to a good man, he bows to the awful dispensations of his God, and repeats, with a chastened smile, "Thy will be done!" and though that will is awfully mysterious at the present time, yet he is sure its issues will be best. Of such an one, under such circumstances, we may well say, with the poet:

"Like some tall cliff, that lifts his awful form,

Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm;
Though clouds and tempests round its sides are spread,
Eternal sunshine settles on its head."

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DUTY AND PRAISE.

J. B. KERFOOT.

How much of any good deed has sprung from love of praise, or how far it would have been changed if no such reward had been in view, is not an easy thing for any one to decide. How far virtue carries us, and where love of praise takes us up, would often be a wholesome inquiry. Here is peril-all the greater from the fact, that it is right to desire the regards of the virtuous. God implants the desire in us as a help to duty but it must not be the motive or the measure of duty. Conscience must be cultivated so as to be able to decide and impel without any such aid. Otherwise our virtue will become less realmore hollow every day. We will allow ourselves to receive more credit than is our due. We will gradually forget how little our due is. Weakening principle and growing vanity will be the result. A most subtle selfishness and cowardice will grow up. Appearances will be maintained, but reality will die out. An exterior, felt by us to be unfair, will be more carefully regarded than that honest reality of principle within, which only can make us good men, useful men, and true men. The remedy is this. Let God and your own consciences be the

judges to which you make your hourly appeals. Keep all other appeals in the background. Try yourselves more by your private life-that which no one else knows, than by that which others judge by. Bishop Jeremy Taylor says, truly-" He that does as well in private, between God and his own soul, as in public, in pulpits, in theatres and marketplaces, hath given himself a good testimony that his purposes are full of honesty, nobleness, and integrity." "The breath of the people," he adds, "is but air, and that not often wholesome.". Nor is it real virtue stifles and grows faint if it breathe it too much. It may exhilarate for a time, but it leaves afterwards the sickening sense of a hollow hypocrisy, for which the honest man will loathe himself in secret. Live, then, before your conscience. Let conscience people your area of action with the spectators whose applause you seek. The great philosopher as well as orator of Rome, may have felt the truth of his words all the more because of his own vanity, when he wrote "Nullum theatrum virtuti conscientiâ majus est"-" Virtue can have no theatre greater than conscience." I may add, that there is no theatre besides in which our deeds and words will not become too much the acting of a player's part. From "College of St. James Commencement Addresses."

THE CONFIRMATION OF FAITH.

RT. REV. WM. WHITE, D. D.

In regard to the confirming of our faith, there is weighty evidence in this consent of prophecy and history, and of prophecies and events of different ages, in a long succession, respectively answering to one another. Here is an extraordinary series, which, like that of the fortunes of the seed of Abraham, is addressed to all ages. Our Saviour, having read in a synagogue, from the Prophet Isaiah, a description of the character in which he was at that moment manifesting himself, made the appeal to their senses and to their understandings-" This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears." But in the present subject, we have the detail of successive prophecies, which have been fulfilling through many ages; which, in this, our day, are going on in their fulfilment, and which will continue to be fulfilled, in what remains of time. Balanced with this evidence, how light are difficulties lying on the face of detached parts of the Christian system; the meaning of which we may have mistaken; while this sentiment, pervading it, may be made luminous to every understanding! a sentiment, which a succession of impostors would have found it impossible to sustain through a long tract of time, as it would also have been for them, had they so continued it, to have brought the state of the world, and the conduct, as well of enemies as of friends, to correspond with

the extraordinary scheme, thus supposed to have been contrived. What then should be the result, but our being rendered by it the humble disciples of the blessed Person who once "tabernacled among men,” and who is now exalted far above "all principality and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come."

From "Missionary Sermon."

THE BEAUTY OF GOODNESS.

J. B. KERFOOT.

I KNOW not how I can better conclude this address to you all, young gentlemen-especially to you who have now ceased to be our pupils— than by proposing as its title one of the most expressive words with which your Greek studies have familiarized you. I tried to think of some one word in our own language which would express my idea, but none occurred to me. I wished to impress the thought of virtue beautiful because of its reality; lovely in appearance because real in its nature. Kaloxaya0ta-beauty and goodness inseparably united; springing each from the other-the moral state and appearance of the upright man. Kalozarabia seems to me the very word needed. He who exhibits virtue in a graceless form, belies her scarcely less than he who puts show in the place of reality. Goodness and loveliness belong together; neither can exist apart from the other. Moral goodness must always be beautiful. Moral beauty can never clothe anything but moral goodness. Bend your efforts to the reality, and the loveliness which belongs to it will appear of itself. Desire to exhibit the loveliness of goodness, not for your own sake or praise, but for the sake of virtue and of her One Fountain, and you will avoid needless offences. But feel it to be a degradation to wish to appear, or to consent to appear, in any matter better than you are. Yet rebel not against the exactions of your place and circumstances. They require high virtue and its good name. Concentrate your thoughts upon the former; the latter, the good name, will not fail to come with it. Make yourself καλοκάγαθος—καλος και αγαθός. Seek what I now earnestly comInend to you all-zalozaɣabia—and do it, in the only true and sure way, by seeking till you find that which has so often been commended to you in a place and on occasions more sacred than this, and in the words of Divine origin—“ The Beauty of Holiness!"

From "College of St. James Commencement Addresses."

THE RESURRECTION.

BISHOP MCILVAINE.

ALREADY had the Disciples learned, by painful experience, that it was through much tribulation they were to share in his kingdom; but such trials had not shaken their faith. Accustomed to behold him despised, persecuted, and rejected of men, their confidence was continually sustained, as they heard him speak "as never man spake," and with an authority that controlled the sea and raised the dead. But now, deep tribulation, such as they had not known before, had overtaken them. What darkness had come upon their faith! He, who was once so mighty to give deliverance to the captive, had himself been taken captive and bound to the cross. He, who with a word raised the dead, had been violently, wickedly, put to an ignominious death. He, whom they expected to reign as King of kings, and to subdue all nations, had been brought under the dominion of his own nation, and shut up in the sepulchre, and all the people of Israel were now boastfully confident that the death of the cross had proved him a deceiver. O, indeed, it was a season of great heaviness, and dismay, and trial, those days and nights in which their beloved Master was lying in death! The great stone which his enemies had rolled to the door of the sepulchre, lest his disciples should go by night and take away the body, was expressive of the cold, dead weight, which that death and burial had laid upon their hearts. That sepulchre seemed as the tomb of all their hopes. All was buried with Jesus. "For, as yet (it is written), they knew not the Scripture, that he must rise again from the dead." (John, xx. 9.) Had they understood what he had often told them, they would have known "that thus it behooved (the) Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day."

The third day was now come. The Jewish Sabbath was over. The first day of the week was breaking. While it is yet dark, faithful women repair to the sepulchre with spices for the embalming. They find the stone rolled away. Wondering at this, they enter the tomb. The body is not there. Enemies have taken it away, is their first thought. Mary Magdalene hastens to say to Peter and John, "they have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they have laid him." Angels appear to the women in their alarm, saying, "He is not here, but is risen." "With fear," and yet "with great joy," they ran "to bring his disciples word." But to the latter, "their words seemed as idle tales, and they believed them not." Peter and John had now reached "the place where the Lord lay," and entering in, they found the grave-clothes remaining, but otherwise an empty sepulchre. "They saw and believed." After a little, came Mary Magdalene to the other disciples, and "told them she had seen the Lord," and what things he

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