dinary conversation, indicates qualities of mind and heart, which command the respect of the wise and good. "What salary do you get for swearing?" said a venerable man of God to an ugly foul-mouthed swearer, vomiting out his oaths to a group of bystanders. The ruffian at first knew not what to make of the question. He was asked again, "What salary?" He at length replied: "None." "None!" said his questioner. "Why you are a very foolish man to do all that for nothing. A man that does as much dirty talk as you do-talk which strips him of every quality of decency and manliness, ought to be well paid."

Many swear to appear manly. They appear just the opposite. They deem it an evidence of courage. It is an evidence of cowardice. Swearers hope to merit the approval and praise of others. They merit and receive their censure and contempt. A profane young man always has trouble to get a situation. He is never a safe clerk or salesman. His language insults the good. We have known persons to shun certain stores, because some of their clerks made use of improper language.

A swearer has no respect for himself. He is conscious of the falsehood and vulgarity of his heart. He has no respect for his fellow-men. Otherwise he would have some regard for their feelings, and not indulge in profane language in their presence. It is an insult to a good man to swear in his presence. No gentleman will do it. A swearer has no respect for God. There is a name that is above every other name. It belongs to the Being, who alone is good. And hence the old Saxon's called Him God. Many a pious Jew will pick up every scrap of paper his eye falls upon in the street, lest, peradventure, the Holy name of God might be written or printed on the paper, and some might tread upon it with their feet. No one who knows Him savingly, can pronounce His holy name without a feeling of awe. Yet there are those who use it in the profanest style. Impure frivolous remarks are backed by appeals to the Supreme Being. He who has power to cast both soul and body into hell, is asked to damn the soul. Men, who once knelt at the confirmation altar, swear in the most flippant style, by the holy name of the world's Redeemer. Even Christians, so-called, "blaspheme that worthy name by the which they are called."

"It chills one's blood, to hear the blest Supreme
Rudely appealed to on each trifling theme."

We entreat the swearer to stop this profane practice. For his own sake, he ought at once to abandon it. Every day it grows into more of a fixed settled habit. And once the habit is formed, the vile words will come unbidden.

A number of Esquimauxs happened to be on an American vessel, coasting along Russian America. After exhibiting their untutored musical skill, by clattering on a rude tamborine, one of the officers entertained them by playing his flute. They were greatly astonished, unable to conceive where the sound came from. One, more intelligent than the rest, tried to discover the secret by examining the fingers and lips of the player. We have often observed well-dressed young men, with clean hands and faces, a fair skin and a clear musical human voice, who used the language of devils. They possessed the "human face divine," on which at times would play a cheery smile. We felt drawn towards them,

until a stream of profane oaths jetted from their lips like venom from a serpent's tooth-the language of a fiend from the mouth of a being made in the image of God. Like the Esquimaux, one feels tempted to examine where the hissing sound comes from; to look at the tongue to see whether after all it is not a serpent's tongue in the mouth of a man.

We have often been puzzled to understand the acquisition of the habit of profanity. The vilest swearer was once an innocent child. His first stammering speech was pure. His earliest words were hallowed with prayer. Among the first he learned to pronounce was the sacred word GOD. He had a thousand childish questions to ask about the Great Being. And when he folded his little hands in prayer, he was sure that God was right above his head. And when he said a naughty word, he was sure that God had heard it, and it troubled him. And he asked his mother whether God would not forgive him, if he would never say it again. Now he profanes that holiest of all names a hundred times a day; swears by it without thinking what he is doing. Whence this change? O, what a fall!

Moffat, the great African Missionary, says, that formerly the Bechuanas, a Caffre tribe, made use of the word "Morimo," to designate God. The word means Him that is above," or "Him that is in heaven." By this name they called the Supreme Being. When Moffat came to labor among them, their language had lost this word. Here and there he met with an old man, scarcely one or two in a thousand, who had a faint recollection that in their childhood they had heard people speak of "Morimo." But now this sacred word was only used in the spells and charms of sorcerers and the so-called rain-makers. They applied it to the fabulous ghosts, by whose aid they pretended to produce rain in dry seasons. The tribe has lost the name of God! Just as certain families now practically lose it out of their language. They only use it in swearing, but never in solemn worship. It was not so when they were children.

The use of any kind of impure words is profane. The expressions may not be the oaths of the swearer, but they are unchaste expressions withal. They suggest to the mind the lowest propensities and passions of our fallen nature. The use of filthy, impure language debases the one that uses it, and tends to kindle the flames of vice in the susceptible heart of him that bears it. For this reason the Apostle James calls "The tongue a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature, and is set on fire of hell."

The use of human speech is a great and solemn gift. This thing of touching and turning immortal spirits by certain sounds that fall from our lips, is a great mystery. Through the ear our words fall upon the minds and hearts of others, like seeds of good or evil. On soil prolific do they fall. By us they are quickly spoken and forgotten. We think, perhaps, they will die with their sound. But they will take root somewhere; the pure or impure seed will sprout and mature into a harvest in some souls. We keep no account of them. God has the record. All, whose eternal destiny has been damaged by our words, will be witnesses against us in the last judgment. "Every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment."

Some one has said that every sound falling from our lips strikes the air and starts a succession of atmospheric waves as starts a pebble thrown into

the sea a succession of wavelets. That these will keep on starting others, the circle ever widening, through the great immensity of space, for ought we know, for thousands of years. And that there are spiritual beings, with organs of sight and hearing so keen, that through coming centuries they can read our words, printing their solemn thoughts on the air as they roll on through God's universe; and that our own spirits after death may be endowed with this celestial faculty of reading on the pages of the air. If so, an unseen Hand is stenographing every word we utter upon the heavens, for our future reading, through the ages beyond the grave. What a book will the swearer have to read there! what pages will confront the person of indecent and unchaste speech! He cannot escape from the fruit of his doing. The whole universe will witness-will cry out against the wicked in the day of judgment.

Beware how you foolishly listen to wicked words. They are hard to shake off. They will haunt you in after years. Their stain will stick. In the darkest hours of trial, when the Tempter has the advantage of you, memory unbidden will march their hideous train up through the long years past, as the devil's allies, to drive you beyond hope and heaven. The blasphemies, which Apollyon whispered into Christian's ear, came back to him, and tormented his heart, as the good men passed through the Valley of Humiliation.

All persons, especially young people, whose habits of language and speech are just being formed, should see well to their words. They will come back to us, as angels of mercy, or as accusers before the bar of God. Every word is the bearer of something good or evil. It will either pollute or purify the mind through which it passes. Sir Joshua Reynolds would never look upon an inferior painting, lest it should unconsciously lower his ideal standard of perfection, and he should re-produce the defects he had noticed in his own future paintings. Avoid those using vulgar and profane language. Associate with the pure. Their language will help to lift you into a purer atmosphere. "Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth; keep the door of my lips. Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer."

THE BRIGHT SIDE.-God doth chequer his providences, white and black, as the pillar of cloud had its light side and dark. Look on the light side of thy estate; who looks on the dark side of a landscape? God's providences in this life are various, represented by those speckled horses among the myrtle trees, which were red and white (Zech. I. 8); mercies and afflictions are interwoven; God doth speckle his work. Oh, saith one, I want such a comfort; but weigh all thy mercies in the balance, and that will make thee content. Look on the light side of your condition, and then all your discontent will easily be dispersed; do not pore upon your losses, but ponder upon your mercies. Why should one man think to have all good things, when he himself is good but in part? Wouldst thou have no evil about thee, who hast so much evil in thee? Thou art not fully sanctified in this life, how then thinkest thou to be fully satisfied? Never look for perfection of contentment till there be perfection of grace.

Watson.

MY PLAYMATES.

BY CAROLA WILDGROVE.

Come, see my cunning playmates,-
Such faithful friends are we!
We have such merry frolics,
So full of life and glee.
My Newfoundland's my pony;
I ride upon his back,
Or, harnessed to my carriage,
I drive him on the track.

With silken coat, and shaggy,
Of such majestic size,
With mien so truly noble,

And such expressive eyes.
With gait so proud and stately,
I think him quite a steed;
The kingly name of Leo
He graces well indeed.

And here's my curly spaniel,
Full many a mile we've run,
For Carlo's feet are nimble,-
He's just the dog for fun.
My things he often catches,
And bounds away so fleet,
Then back he circles with them,
And lays them at my feet.

He chases too, my kitty,

And Malta likes the race;

But if he barks too loudly,

She strikes him in the face;

Yet strikes him very softly,
And he politely bows,

As if to ask her pardon

For all his harsh "wow, wows."

And you must see my cosset,

A snowy lamb is he;

And all his antic friskings

Are innocent and free.
And then I've doves so gentle
They light upon my head,

Or sit upon my shoulder,

And from my hand eat bread.

My playmate group is pleasant,
And we have pastimes rare;
We're all good friends together,
And troubled by no care.

We have no noisy quarrels
Our family agree;
And, sporting in good nature,
We're happy, gay, and free.

BENEFIT OF THE CLERGY.

Cut off even in the blossom of his sin,
Unhousel'd, disappointed, unanel'd,

Home Monthly.

"To be hanged without benefit of clergy." The first three words of the sentence seem severe enough, but the last part of it conveys to many minds an idea, that the intention of the legislature was to increase indefinitely the punishment of the culprit, by sending him,

to the other world, after breaking his neck with a halter in this one.

Such, however, was not the design of the framers of the sentence, nor did "benefit of clergy" refer in any way to those spiritual ministrations, which the coldest form of charity would not deny to the condemned. Benefit of clergy was a privilege founded upon the exemption, which clerks in orders originally claimed from the jurisdiction of secular judges. Basing their claim upon the text, "Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm," and theoretically, perhaps, on the presumed impossibility of men, whose calling it was "to wait upon God continually," committing any serious crime, the clergy, in the days when justice was hampered by superstition, procured that, no matter how heinous the offence of which they had been accused, they were to be answerable to their own ordinary only, and not to the king's justices. A clerk arraigned or convicted before a secular judge, had but to declare who and what he was, his declaration being backed up, if necessary, by the demand of his bishop, and he was discharged into the custody of the ordinary, who was supposed to provide some sufficient punishment for him, or else to deliver him by "purgation." The latter process was most frequently adopted; it consisted in the accused taking oath before the ordinary that he was innocent, and a certain number of other people asserting, also upon oath, that they believed his statement.

In this way the clergy enjoyed an almost complete immunity from punishment for their crimes, and as these were neither few nor slight, their privilege gave rise to much complaint by those who had to smart where the clergy were set free, and still more by those whom the clerical delinquents had outraged. The offensive assertion of the privilege in the case of the clergyman, whom A'Becket refused to allow to be tried at common law, brought about the Constitution of Clarendon, and ultimately the death of the archbishop.