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ourselves friends of the unrighteous Mammon, that is, to use our temporal wealth that it may conduce to our spiritual weal. For example, that noble one of our own-" Charity is the scope of all God's commandments:" the Germans-"Charity gives itself rich; Covetousness hoards itself poor:" and that of the Rabbis which has a still deeper significance"Alms are the salt of riches." But simultaneously we were warned that charity should be governed by discretion; teaching which the Greeks said-" Sow with the hand and not with the whole sack ;"-for as it fares with the seed which is providently dispersed with the hand, not prodigally shaken from the sack's mouth, so it is with benefits that are to do good, either to those who impart, or to those who receive them. And to close this series with respect to the proper use of money, the Italians have put the everto-be-remembered truth that a man shall carry nothing away with him when he dies, into this homely but striking phrase "Our last robe (that is the winding-sheet) has no pockets."

The wisdom of governing that unruly member the tongue is well exemplified in these popular sayings. The Persians say" Speech is silver, silence is golden;" the Italians," He who speaks, sows; he who keeps silence, reaps." Could anything be more shrewd, more expressive of extremest caution than this Italian adage, "Silence was never written down." The danger of random talking, and the perils from bad associates, are also admirably illustrated by proverbs familiar to most of us. Proverbs, for the most part, courageously accept the law of labour as the condition of man's life here below. Thus, “No pains, no gains;" "No sweat, no sweet;" "No mill, no meal." To encourage this labour and to ameliorate this inevitable lot too, most languages have such proverbs as these: "God helps them that help themselves;" "God reaches us good things with our own hands;" or, as it appears with a slight

variation in the Basque; "God is a good worker, but he likes to be helped."

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I would especially direct attention to the noble utterance which so many proverbs contain, calling men to a firm endurance of adverse fortune, and a patient waiting for better times, nerving the disappointed and the often baffled to fresh exertions, with the cheering assurance that for the bold and the brave, calamity must have an end;- Where one door shuts, another opens;" "The World is his who has patience." And if, alas! thy youth has been blighted by some fell disaster, if the dark shadow of bitterest woe has spread like midnight over thy early days; if pain and anguish have reft away or poisoned those pleasures which belong of right to the morning of life; oh! droop not over the memory of the past, waste not thy heart's affections in idle regrets, but set "Hard heart against hard hap," and brace up thy shattered energies with the thought that "The sun of all days is not yet gone down.'

[The reverend lecturer, in a strain of considerable eloquence, dwelt upon the insidious temptation to which youth is liable, on the danger of listening to the syren voice of sin, and on the folly of wasting our most precious time, illustrating this branch of his subject, by (among others) the following proverbs.] The Italians say, "When you grind your corn, give not the flour to the devil, and the bran to God;" "The morning hour has gold in its mouth." The Arabians have a beautiful saying:-" Every day in thy life is a leaf in thy history;" a leaf on which is written every secret action, every inward thought; a leaf which, whether it be blurred and blotted by careless indifference, or disfigured with the more defiant characters of hardened vice, will one day be turned back for inspection, yea! whatever is inscribed thereon shall be read aloud when "The secrets of all hearts shall be revealed.”

SELF-RAISED MEN.

GALILEO-TORRICELLI.-PROFESSOR HEYNE.-BERNARD PALISSY.JAMES BRINDLEY.-ROBERT ARKWRIGHT.JAMES WATT.

BY TINDAL ATKINSON, ESQ.,

BARRISTER-AT-LAW.

Time can never be better employed than in recalling the memories of men whose suggestive histories are pregnant with encouragement to the seekers after knowledge, and whose influence upon the age in which they lived was found in the impulse they gave to the spreading tide-wave of civilization, and the lasting monuments they have raised of national wealth and ennobling grandeur. I address myself then, not so much to those in this assembly, whom early exertions and happier circumstances have placed beyond the obstructive influences which impede the acquisition of knowledge, as those present whose less fortunate lot it may be to find in their efforts to cultivate their intellect, the desire to know, and the necessity to live, in daily, and sometimes painful, antagonism. Let him who, in the sharp struggle to inform his mind and better his condition, finds the toil-worn spirit is more apt to seek repose, than, after the exhaustion of daily toil, to court mental exertion, and who, comparing the scanty store of his own humble acquirements, with the overshadowing knowledge of the world's great men, is chilled into apathy, remember "That God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose, take which you please, you can never have them both!" Between these, as a pendulum, man oscillates ever. He in

whom the love of repose predominates, will accept the first creed, the first philosophy he meets, most likely his father's; he gets rest, commodity, and reputation, but he shuts the doors of truth. Let him, while pondering on this, console himself with the assurance that, between the intellect of the man whose hands are rendered callous by continuous toil and that of him who, lapped in affluence, has, from its first dawning been the subject of the most careful and anxious solicitude, no inherent difference exists; "that the difference is not in wisdom but in art."

How is it that almost countless millions have sprung into being only to disappear like autumnal leaves, which leave no trace behind them, while only the enshrined memories of a few great names have floated down the stream of time, the sacred objects of the world's idolatry? Or why does one man, distinguished from all his fellows, display that energy of will and that indomitable perseverance which, in the active business of life, overcome all obstacles and achieves success; while another, unsteady of purpose, and procrastinating in his habits, begins his career in failure, continues it in misfortune, and ends it too often in bitter disappointment and abject misery? The answer is found in man's want of faith in his own powers; in the unhappy facility of imitation; in his invincible dislike of labour, and the slight control that a feeble will exercises over the cravings of ungratified instincts. In no instance, that I have met with, of men who have fought their way, in defiance of adverse circumstances, to affluence and eminence, has there been one in which long-continued labour, united to habits of rigid self-denial, was not the governing principle of his virtuous conduct, influencing and guiding every act of his chequered and eventful life. To be thus constantly resolving and never executing, forms the stumbling block placed in the very threshold of progress, over which halting humanity too often falls helplessly prostrate.

Who is there who has not at some period of his life laid down a course of educational improvement? If the measure of success were to be tested by the duration of impulse, what a melancholy record of wasted energy and fruitless effort, of time misspent and neglected opportunities, would such a retrospect present! It is consolatory, however, to know that even this almost universal failure has its use. It teaches, as we shall presently see, the value of untiring perseverance and inflexible will. It shows how little man is indebted to the accidents of fortune, and how much to continuous exertion, for all that marks the distinction between the shivering savage and the fur-clad European-the ignorant boor, and the cultivated scholar. It illustrates the fact that talent and industry bear upwards with irresistible force," and demonstrates the proposition that there is no situation in life so hopeless, in which eminence may not be gained by welldirected and unceasing labour. It is to enforce this truth that I am here before you this evening.

To take from the annals of philosophy, science, and literature, some of the great names whose owners have achieved distinction by the force of their own right hands-who owed little to others, and almost everything to themselves-who from the lowest depths of society raised themselves to the highestwho were in themselves a light in the moral gloom by which they were surrounded-self-helping, selfacting, self-denying men, every one of whose lives stands out, a beacon of light on the highway of time, will be attended with at least this advantage, that while borrowing hope from their endurance, and encouragement from their success, we shall be enabled to measure the smallness of the means required for the acquisition of that knowledge which, while it elevates the individual, benefits mankind.

Springing out of this inquiry, and closely connected with its subject, is the remarkable fact of how

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