themselves that they have nothing to spare till they can support a certain style of luxury, and have provided for the establishment of children. But in the awful hour when we, and all the pagan nations, shall be called from our graves to stand before the bar of Christ, what comparison will these objects bear to the salvation of a single soul? Eternal mercy! let not the blood of heathen millions be found on our skirts! Standing, as I now do, in sight of a dissolving universe, beholding the dead arise, the world in flames, the heavens fleeing away, all nations convulsed with terror, or wrapt in the vision of the Lamb, I pronounce the conver sion of a single pagan of more value than all the wealth that Omnipotence ever produced! On such an awful subject it becomes me to speak with caution; but I solemnly own that, were there but one heathen in the world, and he in the remotest corner of Asia, if no greater duty confined us at home, it would be worth the pains for all the people in this great nation to embark together to carry the Gospel to him. Place your soul in his soul's stead; or, rather, consent for a moment to change condition with the savages on our borders. Were you posting on to the judgment of the great day in the darkness and pollution of pagan idolatry, and were they living in wealth in this very district of the Church, how hard would it seem for your neighbours to neglect your misery! When you should open your eyes in the eternal world, and discover the ruin in which they had suffered you to remain, how would you reproach them that they did not even sell their possessions, if no other means were sufficient, to send the Gospel to you! My flesh trembles at the prospect. But they shall not reproach us. It shall be known in heaven that we could pity our brethren. We will send them all the relief in our power, and will enjoy the luxury of reflecting what happiness we may entail on generations yet unborn!-Dr. Griffin.

MISSIONS. The Progress of

We know, from the testimony of God's Word, strengthened by the experience of past ages, how certain victory is in the end, however long and apparently doubtful the campaign may be between His kingdom and every form of evil. The day has been when the Church was "in the wilderness," and when within that Church four men only held fast their confidence in God, believed His word, and exhorted that Church to take possession of the land of promise. But how was that missionary sermon received? "All the congregation bade them stone them with stones!" And had they done so, the world's only true lights were extinguished and lost in universal unbelief and heathenism. It was in such desperate circumstances as these that the Lord Himself came to the rescue of the world, and it was then these marvellous words of promise were uttered"As truly as I live, My glory shall fill the whole earth!" The day has been, too, when the Church met in an upper room with closed doors, for fear of the Jews; but it was even then that its Lord said-" All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth; go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; and, lo! I am with you alway, even to the end of the world." Nevermore can the glory of God appear to the eyes of the weakest faith to be so dim, or the cause of Christ to be so hopeless, as it hath been in those days of old! The glory of God is filling the earth; the Gospel is being preached to all nations; and ere long the prophetic song will be uttered by great voices in heaven," saying-"The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and His Christ, and He shall reign for ever and ever!"-Dr. Macleod.

MONASTERY.-Evening Visiting a

Slowly, slowly, up the wall

Steals the sunshine, steals the shade;
Evening damps begin to fall,

Evening shadows are displayed:
Round me, o'er me, everywhere,
All the sky is grand with clouds,
And athwart the evening air

Wheel the swallows home in crowds:
Shafts of sunshine from the west
Paint the dusky windows red;
Darker shadows, deeper rest,
Underneath and overhead:
Darker, darker, and more wan,
In my breast the shadows fall;
Upward steals the life of man,

As the sunshine from the wall:
From the wall into the sky,

From the roof along the spire;
Ah, the souls of those that die

Are but sunbeams lifted higher!

MONASTERY.-Experience in a

Archbishop Voragine.

There are some solitary creatures who seem to have left the rest of mankind only to meet the devil in private.-T. Adams.

MONASTERY.-Virtue Confined in a

I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world; we bring impurity much rather: that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary. That virtue, therefore, which is but a youngling in the contemplation of evil, and knows not the utmost that vice promises to her followers, and rejects it, is but a blank virtue, not a pure.-Milton.

MONKS.—Original

As for their food, the grass was their cloth, the ground their table, herbs and roots their diet, wild fruits and berries their dainties, hunger their sauce, their nails their knives, their hands their cups, the next well their wine-cellar; but what their bill of fare wanted in cheer it had in grace, their life being constantly spent in prayer, reading, and such like pious employments. They turned solitariness into society; and, cleaving themselves asunder by the divine art of meditation, did make of one, two or more, opposing, answering, moderating in their own bosoms and busying themselves with variety of heavenly recreations. It would do one good even but to think of their goodness, and at the rebound and second-hand to meditate on their meditations; for if ever poverty was to be envied, it was here. But they did not bind themselves with a wilful vow to observe poverty, but poverty rather vowed to observe them, waiting constantly upon them. Neither did they vow chastity, though keeping it better than such

as vowed it in after ages. As for the vow of obedience, it was both needless and impossible in their condition, having none beneath or above them, their whole convent, as one may say, consisting of a single person.-Dr. Fuller.

MONOTONY.-The Avoidance of

The fault which it is intended to avoid is called monotony, from monossingle, and tonos-a tone; uniformity of sound, want of variety in cadence. The excellence we would therefore notice, and which we now recommend, is to give tone in variety. Take an illustration:-Suppose one person were to repeat the progression of numbers from one to eight, and to say, in one manner and toneone, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. This he does without any change of higher and lower in note, not even so much as the ticks of a clock. Suppose that a second person should repeat all these numbers in the sound of eight bells. Now here is a striking difference; something like it exists between a monotonous speaker and another who adds a little variety to his speaking: not that he is to sing, but he is to give to speech the due grace of variety. As I said beforeStudy nature; nature loves variety. As the eye and the taste delight not in sameness, neither does the ear. Perpetually harping upon the same string is wearisome, but a diversified melody is pleasing; and, if this melody harmonize with good sense, it edifies also, Yet, I repeat, to make a singing in reading or speaking is nowhere to be tolerated but in Cathedral service, and even there the force of our Liturgy is destroyed by it. Some words are to be delivered in a higher and some in a lower tone, and others in a kind of baritone or midway elevation, and in such a manner as that the rising and falling is regular, not by sudden jerks from one octave to another, as in music. The bold undulation of the sea-wave, or somewhat of a gale, is no unfit comparison; or walking along a path, straight as to direction, but varied by rises and falls, conveys the same idea. This is not a wild but an intelligible variety of modulation, and is only to be acquired by studying nature, by taking the best rules and the best examples. Dr. Sturtevant.

MONUMENT.-The Best

A man's best monument is his virtuous actions. Foolish is the hope of immortality and future praise by the cost of senseless stones, when the passenger shall only say-"Here lies a fair stone and an unsightly carcase." That can only report thee rich; but for other praises, thyself must build thy monument alive, and write thy own epitaph in honest and honourable actions. These are so much more noble than the other, as living men are better than dead stones.Bishop Hall.

MONUMENT.-An Injunction respecting a

On your families' old monument

Hang mournful epitaphs, and do all rites
That appertain unto a burial.-Shakspeare.

MONUMENTS.-The Origin of

Almost all nations have wished that certain external signs should point out the places where their dead are interred. Among savage tribes, unacquainted with letters, this has mostly been done by rude stones placed near the graves, or by mounds of earth raised over them. This custom proceeded obviously from a two-fold desire :-first, to guard the remains of the deceased from irreverent

approach, or from savage violation; and, secondly, to preserve their memory. As soon as nations had learned the use of letters, epitaphs were inscribed upon these monuments, in order that their intention might be more surely and adequately fulfilled.-W. Wordsworth.

MONUMENTS.-Way-Side

In ancient times, it was the custom to bury the dead beyond the walls of towns, and cities; and among the Greeks and Romans they were frequently interred by the way-sides. Let us pause and contemplate the advantages which must have attended such a practice. We might ruminate upon the beauty which the monuments, thus placed, must have borrowed from the surrounding images of nature from the trees, the wild flowers, from a stream running perhaps within sight or hearing, from the beaten road stretching its weary length hard by. Many tender similitudes must these objects have presented to the mind of the traveller leaning upon one of the tombs, or reposing in the coolness of its shade, whether he had halted from weariness or in compliance with the invitation -"Pause, traveller," so often found upon the monuments. And to its epitaph also must have been supplied strong appeals to visible appearances or immediate impressions, lively and affecting analogies of life as a journey-death as a sleep overcoming the tired wayfarer-of misfortune as a storm that falls suddenly upon him-of beauty as a flower that passeth away, or of innocent pleasure as one that may be gathered-of virtue that standeth firm as a rock against the beating waves of hope "undermined insensibly like the poplar by the side of the river that fed it," or blasted in a moment like a pine-tree by the stroke of lightning in the mountain-top-of admonitions and heart-stirring remembrances, like a refreshing breeze that comes without warning, or the taste of the waters of an unexpected fountain. These and similar suggestions must have given, formerly, to the language of the senseless stone a voice enforced and endeared by the benignity of that nature with which it was in unison.-W. Wordsworth.

MUSIC--in Association with Truth.

It suggests

And illustrates the highest of all truths-
The harmony of all things, even earth

With its great Author.-P. J. Bailey.

MUSIC-an Attendant on Christ.

But, oh! her richest, dearest notes to man,

In strains aerial over Bethlehem poured,

When He, whose brightness is the light of heaven,

To earth descending, for a mortal's form

Laid by His glory, save one radiant mark

That moved through space, and o'er the infant hung

He summoned Music to attend Him here,

Announcing peace below!

He called her, too,

To sweeten that sad Supper, and to twine

Her mantles round Him and His few grieved friends,

To join their mournful spirits with the hymn,

Ere to the Mount of Olives He went out

So sorrowful.

DD