That not a worm is cloven in vain,
That not a moth with vain desire
Is shriveled in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another's gain.
Behold, we know not anything:
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last-far off-at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.

Tennyson.

VIII.

FIRE-BRANDS.

I LOVE clamor when there is an abuse. The alarm-bell disturbs the inhabitants, but saves them from being burnt in their beds.

Burke.

DARE to be true; nothing can ever need a lie.

George Herbert.

DOUBT comes in at the window when inquiry is denied at the door.

Prof. Jowett.

COWARD'S Castle is that pulpit or platform from which a man, surrounded by his friends, in the absence of his opponents, secure of applause and safe from reply, denounces those who differ from him.

F. W. Robertson.

THERE is no use in sweeping a chamber if all the dust comes out of the broom.

Whately.

By and by, when the world has found out what church does the most good, it will know in what church to believe. Lessing.

THERE are three difficulties in authorship: to write anything worth the publishing, to find honest men to publish it, and to get sensible men to read it. Literature has now become a game, in which the publishers and booksellers are the kings, the critics the knaves, the public the pack, and the poor author the mere table, or thing played upon. Colton, 1849.

THREE-FOURTHS of the popular novels of the day enfeeble the intellect, impoverish the imagination, vulgarize the taste and style, give false or distorted views of life and human nature, and, which is worst of all, waste that precious time which should be given to solid mental improvement. Greyson Letters.

THE sensation novel has had its day, and its day was but an episode, an interruption. Realism has now wellnigh done all it can. Its close details, its trivial round of common cares and ambitions, its petty trials and easy loves, seem now at least to have spent their attractive power, and to urge with their fading breath the need of some new departure for the novelist. Perhaps the one common want in the more modern novel may suggest the new source of supply. Perhaps, in order to give a fresh life to our fiction, it will have to be dipped once again in the old holy well of

romance.

Justin McCarthy.

In every matter that relates to invention-to use, or beauty, or form-we are borrowers.

Wendell Phillips.

NEWSPAPERS are the teachers of disjointed thinking.

Dr. Rush.

IN multitudes of cases, perhaps in the greater part of them, the household sorrow and the household wreck may be traced to the working of a poison distilled into the unhappy family through a literature which ought to be driven, like offscourings, from every respectable library and every circle of honest people. The teachings of a godless philosophy filter in, drop by drop; they make the whole head sick and the whole heart faint.

Rev. Morgan Dix, D.D.

RHETORIC is the talent of decaying states.

Wendell Phillips.

SPEAKING against time has become one of the fine arts.

Charles Sumner.

CONVERSATION should always be a selection.

Sir William Hamilton.

THE habit of using words which belong to a higher state of feeling and experience than we ourselves have attained to, deadens the sense of truth, and causes a dismal rent in the soul.

Guesses at Truth.

It is a great mistake to think anything too profound or rich for a popular audience. No train of thought is too deep, or subtle, or grand; but the manner of presenting it to their untutored minds should be peculiar. It should be presented in anecdote or sparkling truism, or telling illustration, or stinging epithet; always in some concrete form-never in a logical, abstract, syllogistic shape.

Rufus Choate.

WE should go through life as the traveler goes through the Swiss mountains; a hasty word may bring down an avalanche a misstep may plunge us over a precipice. The Presbyterian.

THE truest style of eloquence, secular or sacred, is praotical reasoning, animated by strong emotion.

Gladstone.

THE man who fails in business but continues to live in luxury is a thief.

Spectator.

MANY a college-student only succeeds in mastering a disqualifying culture.

Youmans.

THE theater is the illumined and decorated gateway to

ruin.

Rev. P. D. Gurley, D.D.

THERE is no more absurd cant than that the culture of the mind favors the culture of the heart. What do operas and theaters for the moral elevation of society? Does a sentimental novel prompt to duty? Education seldom keeps people from folly when the will is not influenced by virtue. John Lord.

THE theater is neither moral nor immoral, but a passive thing which may be used to express moral or immoral ideas. There is no more harm in a dramatic composition, as such, than in a picture or statue. Whether there is any harm in it will depend on the drama itself, just as there are pure and obscene paintings. I am firmly convinced that the Church and theater should be allies, and that the Church is not guiltless of the divorce. God intended them to work together, and it was not without purpose that Shakespeare and the Reformation were born about the same time. the methods are diverse, although the Church often uses theatrical methods which do not belong there any more than a sermon is in place in a theater. Incidentally the theater should teach morality, but its method is artistic, while the Church's method should be simple.

But

Rev. E. C. Sweetzer.

THEOLOGICAL seminaries are in danger of turning out preachers as foundries turn out stoves-all of the same cast and pattern.

Rev. Alexander Clarke.

THE practical way for Christians to reform the theater is to make it to the interest of the managers to present moral attractions. If they patronize refined plays and good actors, and withhold support from poor plays and indifferent actors, they will appeal so powerfully to the pocket nerve of the managers that they will strike their colors at once. So long, however, as they remain away from the theater altogether their influence one way or the other will be simply nothing, and the ungodly will still continue to direct amusements. And the worst of it is that the latter have somehow won a reputation of knowing a good drama from a bad one.

Baltimore American.

HE that lacks time to mourn, lacks time to mend;
Eternity mourns that. 'Tis an ill cure

For life's worst ills, to have no time to feel them.
Henry Taylor.

THE opera is an experiment, bold even to the verge of absurdity. It is a musical drama. Inheritor of every material objection which lies against the drama, it further taxes common sense to witness a whole career, or, at least, an appreciable fraction of a career, of man executed in music. To think of buying and selling and journeying, of toiling and scolding and complaining, with love and hate, conspiracy and crime and shame, all addressed in pantomime of sound to the ear! It changes our whole estimate of the celestial art of music. It transforms St. Cecilia to the veriest Cinderella. Music is a fine art, but music at the opera is music overloaded, out of place, degraded beyond recognition.

Rev. Jonathan Edwards, D.D.