Page images
PDF
EPUB

Small service is true service while it lasts,
Of friends, however humble, scorn not one;
The daisy, by the shadows that it casts,
Protects the lingering dew-drop from the sun.
WORDSWORTH.

I DARE NOT SCORN.

I may not scorn the meanest thing,
That on the earth doth crawl,

The slave who dares not burst his chain,
The tyrant in his hall.

The vile oppressor who hath made
The widow'd mother mourn,

Though worthless, he before me stand-
I cannot, dare not scorn.

The darkest night that shrouds the sky
Of beauty hath a share ;

The blackest heart hath signs to tell,
That God still lingers there.

I pity all that evil are

I pity and I mourn;

But the SUPREME hath fashioned all

And, oh! I dare not scorn.

ROBERT NICOLL.

However wretched a fellow-mortal may be, he is still a member of our common species.

SENECA.

Proud looks lose hearts, but courteous words win them. FERDIN.

PRIDE AND ITS EFFECTS.-Pride is defined by a celebrated moralist, to be inordinate and unreasonable selfesteem. Now, when a man thinks too highly of himself, it is in the course of nature that he should think too lowly of others; and it may be laid down as a general axiom, that the concomitants of pride are scorn and insolence towards one's fellow-creatures, and impiety and irreverence towards God. "The proud have had me greatly in derision," was the remark of the Psalmist; and he laid his finger precisely on that spot where irreligion has its origin, when he said, "The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God. God is not in all his thoughts."

These are distinguishing marks of pride, where it is permitted to get dominion over the heart, and to influence the actions. However it be nourished, and whatever be the shape it is invested with, its effects are uniformly hateful and pestilential; uniformly subversive of piety

towards God, and charity towards man, as well as injurious to the happiness of him who is actuated by it. In the pride of exalted birth, Absalom the son of David, broke the ties of religion, allegiance, and filial piety, and rebelled against his father, whom the Lord had anointed king over Israel. In the pride of arbitrary power, Jezebel usurped the vineyard of Naboth by perjury and murder, and "her carcass was eaten by dogs." "In the pride of majesty," the heart of Nebuchadnezzar was lifted up, and his mind hardened, to forget his Almighty Benefactor, and he was "driven from men, and his dwelling was with the beasts of the field." In the pride of despotic authority, Pharaoh "refused to let the people of Israel go to serve the Lord," and the Lord "hardened his heart" for a punishment, because he had already hardened it himself by his sin. In the pride of victory, Saul rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord rejected him from being king over Israel." In the pride of royal favour, the insatiable ambition of Haman would not rest, so long as he saw Mordecai the Jew," sitting at the king's gate," until he himself was hanged on the gallows that he had prepared for the object of his malice. In the pride of popular applause, Herod permitted himself to be saluted with divine. honours; and immediately an angel of the Lord smote him, and he was "eaten of worms, and gave up the ghost." In the pride of wealth, the covetous man, in one parable, thought of nothing but to "eat, drink, and be merry;" and the rich man in another, thought not of the beggar that "lay at his gate full of sores," until the soul of the former was "" required of him that night," and the latter "lifted up his eyes in hell, being in torments." In the pride of youth, Rehoboam threatened to chastise his subjects with scorpions, and was punished by the loss of his hereditary authority. In the pride of bodily strength, Goliath defied the armies of the living God," and was slain by the hand of a stripling whom he had cursed by his gods. In the pride of female beauty and accomplishments, the heart of Herodias's daughter was hardened into the commission of an act of wanton barbarity, in demanding the head of John the Baptist; and the crime was recompensed by the degradation and banishment of her partners in guilt, if not by her own untimely destruction. In the pride of learning, the Greeks esteemed "the preaching of Christ crucified, to be foolishness," and were

judicially "given over by God to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient." In the pride of a fancied equality, and consequent disobedience to their rulers, Korah and his company rebelled against Moses and Aaron, and went down alive into the pit, because they had provoked the Lord. Proud of their spiritual privileges, and of their descent from Abraham, the Jews despised, rejected, and crucified the Lord of glory; and "his blood was on them and their children," and "their house was left unto them desolate." Would we see even a more decisive proof of the origin of pride, and of its offensiveness to God, we may discover it in the disobedience of Adam, which entailed sin, misery, and death on all his descendants; in the rebellion of the evil spirit, who first set the example of resisting the Almighty, and was the primary cause of the wretchedness of man. Of such quality as this, so selfish and malignant, so uncourteous and overbearing, so impatient of control, so resolute in the attainment of its end, and so unprincipled in the adoption of means, of a quality so pernicious to all "the fruits of the Spirit," and so signally branded by the displeasure of God; surely of such a quality it may be well and safely affirmed, that "it is not of the Father, but is of the world."

Such being the nature, the tendency, and the consequences of pride, these considerations might be supposed capable of suppressing it, even if the matter on which it feeds were much more worthy of encouraging extravagant self-esteem, than it really is: but, as it hath been well observed

*

Pride hath no other glass
To show itself but pride;

Otherwise the mirror of reason and common sense, no less
than the mirror of revelation, could hardly fail to expose
its folly and deformity.
BISHOP MANT.

RIDICULOUSNESS OF PRIDE IN MAN.-Take some quiet sober moment of life, and add together the two ideas of pride and man; add them, if you can, without a smile. Behold him a creature of a span high, strutting in infinite space, and darting disdain from his eyes, in all the grandeur of littleness. Perched on a small speck of the universe, he is rolling along the heavens, through a road

G

of worlds, while systems and creations are flaming above and beneath; he is an atom of atoms. Yet will this

miserable creature revel in his greatness, and mock at his fellow, sprung from that same dust to which they both shall soon return. Well has man been compared to the fly on the coach-wheel, saying, "What a dust I raise!" MISS SINCLAIR.

Whoever has paid attention to the manners of the day, must perceive a remarkable innovation in the use of moral terms, in which we have receded more and more from the spirit of Christianity. Of this, the term to denote a lofty sentiment of personal superiority, supplies an obvious instance. In the current language of the times, pride is scarcely ever used but in a favourable sense. It will perhaps be thought the mere change of a term is of little consequence; but be it remembered, that any remarkable innovation in the use of moral terms, betrays a proportionable change in the ideas and feelings they are intended to denote. As pride has been transferred from the list of vices to that of virtues, so humility, as a natural consequence, has been excluded, and has rarely been suffered to enter into the praise of a character we wish to commend, although it was the leading feature in that of the Saviour of the world, and is still the leading characteristic of his religion; while there is no vice, on the contrary, against which the denunciations are so frequent as pride. Our conduct in this instance is certainly rather extraordinary, both in what we have embraced, and in what we have rejected; and it will surely be confessed that we are somewhat unfortunate in having selected that one as the particular object of approbation, which God had already selected as the special mark at which he aims the thunderbolts of his vengeance. REV. ROBERT HALL.

CREESUS, king of Lydia, who felt presumptuously proud on account of his power and his riches, had dressed himself one day in his utmost splendour of apparel and royal ornament, and seating himself on his throne, exhibited his person to SOLON, as comprehending within itself the substance and sum of worldly glory. "Have you ever beheld," said he to the Grecian sage, 66 a spectacle more august?" "I have,” was the answer, "there is neither a pheasant in our fields, nor a peacock in our court-yard,

nor a cock on our dunghill, that does not surpass you in glory!"

WILLIAM PENN and THOMAS STORY, travelling together in Virginia, being caught in a shower of rain, unceremoniously sheltered themselves from it in a tobacco house, the owner of which, happening to be in, thus accosted them: "You have a great deal of impudence to trespass on my premises; you enter without leave. Do you know who I am?" to which was answered, "No." "Why, then, I would have you to know that I am a justice of the peace." Thomas Story replied, "My friend here makes such things as thou art; he is the governor of Pennsylvania." The would-be great man quickly abated his haughtiness. IMPERIAL MAGAZINE.

What is the pomp of learning? the parade
Of letters and of tongues? e'en as the mists
Of the grey morn.before the rising sun,
That pass away and perish. Earthly things
Are but the transient pageants of an hour;
And earthly pride is like the passing flower,
That springs to fall, and blossoms but to die,
Baseless and silly as the schoolboy's dream.

KIRKE WHITE.

REVENGE, VENGEANCE.

REVENGE, return of an injury. To REVENGE, to vindicate by punishment of an enemy. To wreak one's wrongs on him that inflicted them. JOHNSON.

What will not ambition and revenge descend to.

MILTON.

VENGEANCE, punishment; penal retribution; avengeJOHNSON.

ment.

From the French verb Venger, to avenge, to punish, which according to some etymologists has for its root the Latin Vindico, come our words VENGEFUL; VENGEANCE; AVENGE-ER-ED; REVENGE-FUL-ED, &c.

The Almighty forbids malice and revenge in express

« PreviousContinue »