POETRY.-ANECDOTES AND SELECTIONS. Poetry. LITTLE BY LITTLE. WHEN the new years come and the old How, little by little, all things grow; As the new years come and the old years Low on the ground an acorn lies, Little by little it mounts to the skies; Little by little the great rocks grew, Little by little are builded-while so Little by little all tasks are done; So are the crowns of the faithful won;; So is heaven in our hearts begun. With work and with weeping, with laugh ter and play, Little by little, the longest day And the longest life are passing away; The new years come and the old years go. Anecdotes and Selections. BESETTING SINS.-For each one of us, no business can be of more pressing moment, of more urgent importance, than the discovery of our besetting sin. The bosom sin in grace exactly resembles a strong current in nature, which is setting full upon dangerous shoals and quicksands. If in your spiritual computation you do not calculate upon your besetting sin-upon its force, its ceaseless operation, and its artfulness-it will sweep you on noiselessly, and with every appearance of calm, but surely and effectually, to you ruin. So may we see a gallant ship leave the dock, fairly and bravely rigged, and with all her pennons flying; and the high sea, when she has cleft her way into it, is unwrinkled as the brow of childhood, and seems to laugh with many a twinkle smile; and when night falls, the moonbeam dances upon the wave, and the brightness of the day has left a delicious balminess behind it in the air, and the ship is anchored negligently and feebly, and all is then still save the gentle drowsy gurgling which tells that water is the element in which she floats. But in the dead of the night the anchor loses its hold, and then the current, deep and powerful, bears her noiselessly whither it will; and in the morning the wail of despe ration rises from her decks, for she has fallen on the shoal; and the disconsolateness of the dreary twilight, as the breeze springs with the daybreak, and with rude impact dashes her planks angrily against the rock, contrasts strangely with the comfort and peacefulness of the past ANECDOTES AND SELECTIONS. evening. Such was the doom of Judas Iscariot. Blessed with the companionship of our Lord Himself, dignified with the apostleship, and adorned with all the high graces which that vocation involved, he was blinded to the under-current of his character, which set in the direction of the mammon of unrighteousness, and which eventually ensured for him, an irretrievable fall.-Goulburn. VOICES OF GRACE.-It is marvellous and beautiful to observe how, various are the voices of free grace. "I am thirsty," said one, "Come to the waters," she cries. "I am hungry," says another. "Then eat ye that which is good," she says, "and let your soul delight itself in fatness." "But I am poor, and have nothing to buy with." "Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price." "We are weary," sighed the labourers in the sun-beaten fields. "Come unto me," breathes her answer like a breeze from the waters, "and I will give you rest.' "Cast thy burden on the Lord and He will sustain thee," she whispers to the pilgrim ready to faint on the highway. "Behold the Fountain," she cries to the guilty, "the Fountain opened for sin and uncleanness." To the lost she cries, "I am the Way;" to the ignorant, "I am the Truth;" to the dying, "I am the Life." How large her welcome to the sinner, how soothing her consolations to the mourner, how inspiring her tones to him that is faint of heart! There is no disease for which she has not a remedy, no want for which she has not a supply; and every one who applies to her shall confess at length, "It is enough; I am blessed as if all the methods and riches of grace were for me alone!" GETTING RID OF BAD HABITS.-I once heard a minister say, "Suppose some cold morning you should go into a neighbour's house and find him busy at work on his windows, scratching away, and should ask what he was doing, and he should reply, 'Why I am trying to remove the frost, but as fast as I get it off one square it comes on another;' would you not say, 'Why, man, let your windows alone, and kindle your fire, and the frost will soon come off?' And have you not seen people who try to break off their bad habits one after another without avail? Well they are like the man who tried to scratch the frost from his windows. Let the fire of love to God and man, kindled at the altar of prayer, burn in their hearts, and the bad habits will soon melt away." 66 CONFESSION.-Ruskin, though not a preacher, gives a good recipe on confessing sin :-When you are examining yourself, never call yourself merely a sinner;" that is very cheap abuse, and utterly useless. You may even get to like it, and be proud of it. But call yourself a liar, a coward, a sluggard, a glutton, or an evil-eyed, jealous wretch, if you indeed find yourself to be in any wise either of these. An immense quantity of modern confession of sin, even when honest, is merely sickly egotism, which will rather gloat over its own evil than lose the centralization of its interest in itself. THE FIRESIDE.-THE PENNY POST BOX. The Fireside. BRIGHT SUNDAYS. LET it rain every other day in the week, so that it be pleasant on Sunday. Then let the sky and the sea be blue; then let the little birds sing, and the little children; then let the green fields be full of blossoms, and let no ascetic say it is "wicked" to pluck them; then let the sunlight into your houses, place flowers on your table, have an extra sweet morsel for little mouths, and a pleasant word for everybody. I had almost said, do anything but make the day one of gloom. Do anything that a man or woman may do, and look the pure stars in the face, but don't groan; don't set back the chairs against the wall; don't bring out dry theological books for young folks to read, written by library-men, who never so much as peeped into one of the windows of a warm human heart; don't fold your hands over your Sunday suit, and look the ceiling out of countenance; don't bribe your children to read six chapters in the Bible; don't frown if they smile; don't let your young people long for the going down of the Sabbath sun, counting the tardy minutes, like a restless prisoner waiting his release. Oh, anything but that; as you love truth above hypocrisy; as you love honour and obedience beyond secret license; as you dread the shadow of moral death on those bright young faces, which I am sure you love.-Fanny Fern. The Penny Post Box. HOW MILTON SPENT THE DAY. AT his meals he never took much wine or other fermented liquor. Although not fastidious in his food, yet his taste seems to have been delicate, refined, like his other senses, and he had a preference for such viands as were of an agreeable flavour. In his early years he used to sit up late at his studies, but in his later years he retired every night at nine o'clock and lay until four in the summer and five in the winter. If not then disposed to rise, he had some one to sit at his bedside and read to him. When he rose he had a chapter of the Hebrew Bible read for him; and then, after breakfast, studied till twelve. He then dined, took some exercise for an hour, generally in a chair in which he used to swing himself, and afterwards played on the organ or bass viol, and either sung himself or requested his wife to sing, who, as he said, had a good voice but no ear. He then resumed his studies until six, from which hour until eight he conversed with all who came to visit him. He finally took a light supper, smoked a pipe of tobacco, and drank a glass of water; afterwards he retired to rest. Like many other poets, Milton found the stillness, warmth, and recumbency of bed favourable FACTS, HINTS, GEMS, AND POETRY. to composition; and his wife said, before rising of a morning, he often dictated to her twenty or thirty verses. A favourite position of his when dictating his verses, we are told, was that of sitting with one of his legs over an arm of his chair. His wife related that he used to compose chiefly in the winter. Facts, Hints, Gems, and Poetry. Facts. Envy deserves pity more than anger, The California pitcher plant is said It is a distemper rather than a vice, for it hurts nobody so much as itself. to resemble in shape the upraised head for nobody would feel envy if he could and body of an excited cobra. It pos- help it. Whoever envies another sesesses an extraordinary attraction for cretly allows that person's superiority. insects, especially flies, who enter the An infidel, who expects to die like a hollow body, and being unable to ex-beast, is very apt to live like one. tricate themselves, die there. Mr. Jas. Glaisher, F.R.S., in a recent lecture, brought out the result of his investigations on the subject of rain. He says that rain has its origin within eight hundred feet from the earth; that on the ninth day of the moon there is more rain than on any other day; that in the first and last weeks of the moon there is less rain than in the second and third weeks. His ex periments reach from 1815 to 1869, of every day in which there has been an inch fall of rain. On July 26, 1867, 3 7-10 inches of rain fell at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, the largest amount in one day since 1815. The Neapolitan coral fishers this year have been very successful, but there is no chance of the prices being lowered, so increasing is the demand for this article. Good pink coral is now worth about fifty times its weight in gold. Hints. No man does his best except when he is cheerful. A light heart maketh nimble hands and keeps the mind free and alert. The ruin of most men dates from some vacant hour. Occupation is the armour of the soul. If you would know a man's true character, see him in the bosom of his family. A Persian philosopher, being asked by what method he had acquired so much knowledge, answered," By not being prevented by shame from asking questions when I was ignorant." Gems. Virtue lives on our income, but vice eats into the capital. The hardest thing to hold in this world is an unruly tongue. Politeness is the just medium between ceremony and rudeness. He travels safe and not unpleasantly who is guarded by poverty and guided by love. If you would be wise, learn justly to estimate heaven and earth, the soul and the body, time and eternity. There are not good things enough in life to indemnify us for the neglect of a single duty. Mirth should be the embroidery of conversation, not the web; and wit the ornament of the mind, not the furniture. The more a man knows, the less he is apt to talk; discretion allays his heat, and makes him coolly deliberate what and where to speak. POETIC SELECTIONS.-THE CHILDRENS' CORNER. Poetic Selections. BE ACTIVE. Look ye, brothers, time is rolling, Rouse thee, comrades, nerve for labour! Wealth you may not, must not keep; Go to hearts which pine and perish, Carry gladness to the sighing, Give your strength to bear the same; Up some hill or down some valley, A HEART'S PETITION. LIE all night long upon my branch, O dew, new. Rest all night long upon my heart, O love Of man is sanctified for heaven above. Sure of the morning's breaking, Beyond the dim, blind porticos of death, O Faith! O Love! O Dews of sacred birth! Man's human life outliving, The Childrens' Corner. THE SWEARING PARROT. Two friendly neighbours bought each of them a parrot. That of Mrs. A. was a bird of grave deportment, who had been taught to speak very proper words; that of Mrs. B. was an impious fellow, for his language abounded in bad words. Now, Mrs. B. felt quite shocked at the irreverent talk of her parrot, and prevailed on her friend allow the grave parrot to pay a visit to the swearer, in the hope of reclaiming the rogue by good example. The two birds stayed together for about a month; but imagine the consternation of good Mrs. A., on the return of her more grave and decorous bird, to hear him swearing terribly. The fact is that, instead of teaching, he had been learning, and from that sad day his language was as bad as that of his scapegrace associate. Let all our scholars learn from this that, although they have never been guilty of profaneness, nor of speaking foul and unclean words, yet if they keep company with wicked boys who delight in swearing, they will soon be likely to indulge in profane language; for "evil communications corrupt good manners. WINKS AND SON, PRINTERS, LEICESTER. |