Howe'er it be, it seems to me

'Tis only noble to be good;
Kind hearts are more than coronets,

And simple faith than Norman blood.
Alfred Tennyson.

The test of a strong, simple sermon is results, not the Sunday praise of the auditors, but their bettered lives during the week. People who pray on their knees on Sunday and prey on their neighbours on Monday, need simplicity in their faith.

William George Jordan.

Full apt are we to set before ourselves as the essence of life's bliss, the great things, the showy things, the noteworthy things, but therein are we beguiled, therein are we blinded. Greatness hath little to do with happiness.

Malcolm J. McLeod.

Methinks I love all common things,
The common air, the common flower,
The dear, kind, common thought that springs
From hearts that have no other dower,
No other wealth, no other power,

Save love; and will not that repay

For all else fortune tears away?

Bryan Waller Procter.

Simplicity consists in a just medium, in which we are neither too much excited, nor too sedate; the soul is not carried away by external things, so as to be unable to reflect; neither does it make those continual references to self, which a jealous sense of its own excellence multiplies to infinity. That freedom of the soul which looks straight onward in its path, losing no time to reason upon its steps, to study them, or to dwell upon those which it has already taken, is true simplicity.

Fénelon.

Oh! could the faith of childhood's days,
Oh! could its little hymns of praise,

Oh! could its simple, joyous trust

Be re-created from the dust

That lies around a wasted life,

The fruit of many a bitter strife!
Oh! then at night in prayer I'd bend,
And call my God, my Father, Friend,
And pray with childlike faith once more
The prayer my mother taught of yore,
"Now I lay me down to sleep:

I pray the Lord my soul to keep."

Eugene Henry Pullen.

The true friend of truth and good loves them under all forms, but he loves them most under the most simple form.

Lavater.

Who is there that sets himself to the task of steadily watching his thoughts for the space of one hour, with the view of preserving his mind in a simple, humble, healthful condition, but will speedily discern in the multiform, self-reflecting, self-admiring emotions, which, like locusts, are ready to "eat up every green thing in his land," a state as much opposed to simplicity and humility as night is to day?

M. A. Kelty.

Her presence breathed in sweet excess
The fragrance of rare loveliness

A simple beauty in her face,

And in her form a simple grace.

She was so perfect and so fair,

So like a vision, and so rare,

The air that touched her seemed to me
To thrill with trembling ecstasy.

1. Edgar Jones.

If thou hadst simplicity and purity, thou wouldst be able to comprehend all things without error, and behold them without danger. The pure heart safely pervades not only heaven, but hell.

Thomas à Kempis.

T

Happy those early days, when I
Shined in my Angel-infancy!
Before I understood this place
Appointed for my second race,
Or taught my soul to fancy aught
But a white, celestial thought;
When yet I had not walk'd above
A mile or two from my first Love,
And looking back, at that short space
Could see a glimpse of his bright face;
When on some gilded cloud or flower
My gazing soul would dwell an hour,
And in those weaker glories spy
Some shadows of eternity;

Before I taught my tongue to wound
My conscience with a sinful sound,
Or had the black art to dispense
A several sin to every sense,
But felt through all this fleshly dress
Bright shoots of everlastingness.

O how I long to travel back,

And tread again that ancient track!
That I might once more reach that plain,
Where first I left my glorious train;
From whence th' enlighten'd spirit sees
That shady City of Palm trees!
But ah! my soul with too much stay
Is drunk, and staggers in the way:-
Some men a forward motion love,
But I by backward steps would move;