many times when the speaker has had no understanding of them, and so many more times when the speaker has had no meaning for them, that they have themselves acquired the unnatural character of empty impertinencies. To correct this mischief, would it not be well if the minister would use as much as possible other modes of speaking than those stereotyped phrases which have become worn through being so ill-used, and avail himself of the old figures only when he can give them a new force and significance ?

THE CONTRACT OF FRIENDSHIP.

The contract of friendship can never be mended when it is broken by a falsehood. If a tradesman has cheated you, deal with him again (supposing you cannot get better served elsewhere), yet be on your guard; if a servant has robbed you, give him pardon (should he ask it) for one offence, yet do not trust him far; but if a friend has deliberately lied to you, it would be natural to steel your heart to his blandishments for ever. To express hearty attachment for a

person is equivalent to swearing to be rigidly truthful and honest in his presence; and he who breaks that oath is morally a perjurer.

DREAM-FAITH.

The omnipotence of faith is very remarkably exemplified in dreams. Only believe in your own power, and you may defy the most horrible nightmare. Be courageous, fear nothing, and you are truly "the monarch of all you survey." But just begin to doubt, get frightened, distrust yourself, and in a moment you are impaled upon the horns of the ferocious bull, or fall into the jaws of the lion, or disappear in the bowels of the earth. What a delightful sensation is that of flying, in dreams! Have you never found yourself trying at midnight the most daring experiment of Dædalus-climbing to some hill-top as a starting point, venturing a leap from the bedroom window sill, or even feeling so lightsome as to soar aloft from the level road? As long as you have faith, you sail along superbly through ether, scarcely deigning to look at the few surprised mortals who are on terra

firma below you; but no sooner do you begin to wonder whether you won't fall than your waxen wings melt, and down you come toppling into the Icarian Sea.

LOVE AND PRIDE.

Love and pride are strange companions. They are so often together that, uncompromising antagonists as they prove, if you are given to philosophise on the passions you have thought there must be some affinity between them. We take pride in what we love; we love what we are proud of. A proud man loves himself; a lover is proud of somebody else. Love is a description of esteem, and so is pride. Walker calls pride, amongst other things, "a generous elation of the heart," and if love does not amount to this, 'tis but a "vexation of spirit"-so that in any sense I think we can make out a relationship. But then, were there ever seen two other such natural enemies! There is not a safer remedy for pride than love; and of all the insidious and open adversaries that love ever contended with, pride is the most mischievous. Sir

Edward Bulwer wrote a fine play to show how love can conquer pride, and in the drama of a greater master we are told that the loveinspired lines of the poet are able to "plant in tyrants mild humility." And O! Love, even genuine, honest Love, how often hast thou succumbed before the assaults of Pride! More often than to any other foe. The masked battery of pride, worked by a selfish crew, is love's greatest danger. I verily believe that true love never was subdued by anything but by pride.

SELF-GOVERNMENT.

It is a common saying that the man who is unable to govern himself is unfit to govern others; but that a man who does not govern himself cannot govern others is not so trite and obvious a remark. Nevertheless, there is a more practical truth in the second than in the first proposition. You may become temporarily a great power in your own sphere by the exercise of the sheer muscular force of passion; but to live from year to year, not a mere disturbing cause, but a ruling moral in

fluence in society, your own mind and conduct must be ruled by moral principle.

HAPPINESS.

We are apt very much to exaggerate the difference between the amount of happiness which falls to the lot of one person and that which is the portion of another. There is an average measure of good in this life which is within the grasp of all but a very small minority of mankind. It is wonderful how little suffices to make some persons happy; and it is no less surprising what large means of pleasure do but in other cases support a joyless existence. ""Tis in ourselves that we are thus, or thus." Not the wealth of the Indies and the power of Alexander combinedno sum of riches, and no advantage of placeare worth anything without a happy disposition. The world was evidently given to us to enjoy ourselves and improve ourselves in; but, letting alone the duty of improvement, how few there are who fulfil properly the duty of enjoyment! The way to be happy is to believe in God and in ourselves: a man who