A flattering mouth worketh ruin.

A man that flattereth his neighbour,

BAD EXAMPLES.

HERE are several kinds of bad examples that do us harm-namely, those we imitate, those we proudly exult over, those which drive us into an opposite extreme, and those which lower our standard. This last is the most hurtful. For one who is corrupted by becoming readily as bad as a very bad example, there are ten that are debased by being content with the idea that they are better than the worst. Nothing is so dangerous as to be perpetually measuring ourselves by what is beneath us; and being satisfied at feeling a superiority to that which, despite ourselves, we more and more assimilate. A great principle is involved in this statement. In judging things outward and secular, we act always in view of some particular standard. When we speak of an article as good or bad, there is a scale in our minds by which we measure it; and hence, what is sufficient in one estimate is insufficient in another. This principle applies equally to moral and spiritual things. To say of a man that he is a good man, implies that we judge him by some determinate standard. By another standard he may not be a good man; he may even be a bad man.

Spreadeth a net for his feet.

A lying tongue hateth those that are afflicted by it.

Bad customs are not binding.

Trust not swearers,

Nothing, then, it will be perceived, is of more vital importance to those in youth and early manhood, than to adopt a true standard of moral and spiritual excellence. If you fail on this point, you may come to be satisfied with the very smallest moral attainments. Only bring your standard down low enough, and there is no point of degradation to which you may not sink, and still acquit yourself of guilt. Hence, the main safe-guard of character consists in keeping the rule by which we estimate ourselves at the greatest possible height; and in view of this vital truth, the Scriptures have given us a clear and definite standard-it is this: he only is truly good who is so when judged by the law of God.

AVOID IDLENESS.

VOID idleness, and fill up all the spaces of
thy time with severe and useful employ-
ment; for lust easily creeps in at those
emptinesses where the soul is unemployed, and
the body is at ease; for no easy, healthful, idle
person was ever chaste if he could be tempted;
but of all employments bodily labour is the most
useful, and of the greatest benefit for driving away
the devil.
JEREMY TAYLOR.

Neither believe boasters.

Better suffer wrong than do it.

"Can do" is easily carried about.

Look to others, but trust to yourself.

SELF-RELIANCE.

NSIST on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half-possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it. Where is the master who could have taught Shakespeare? Where is the man who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or Newton ? Every great man is a unique. The Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part he could not borrow. If anybody will tell me whom the great man imitates in the original crisis when he performs a great act, I will tell him who else than himself can teach him. Shakespeare will never be made by the study of Shakespeare. Do that which is assigned thee, and thou canst not hope too much, or dare too much. There is at this moment for me an utterance bare and grand as that of the colossal chisel of Phidias, or trowel of the Egyptians, or the pen of Moses and Dante, but different from all these. Not possible will the soul, all rich, all eloquent with thousandcloven tongue, deign to repeat itself; but if I can

No help like self-help.

Eagles fly alone, but sheep herd together.

Every man for himself, and God for us all!

Better do it than wish it done.

hear what these patriarchs say, surely I can reply in
the same pitch of voice; for the ear and the tongue
are two organs of one nature. Dwell up there in the
simple and noble regions of thy life, obey the heart,
and thou shalt reproduce the fore-world again.

EMERSON.

THE VALUE OF TRAVEL.

T draws the grossness of the understanding,
And renders active and industrious spirits.

He that knows most men's manners must of
necessity

Best know his own, and mend those by ex-
ample.

'Tis a dull thing to travel like a mill-horse,

Still in the place he was born in, lamed, and blinded;
Living at home is like it. Pure and strong spirits,
That, like the fire, still covet to fly upward,

And to give fire as well as take it, cased up and
mew'd here-

I mean at home, like lusty-mettled horses,

Only tied up in stables to please their masters,

Beat out their fiery lives in their own litters.

BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.

The world is a good school.

Every man for his ain hand, as Henry Wynd fought.

Blessed is the man that walketh not

In the counsel of the ungodly,

EVIL ASSOCIATIONS.

F all the dangers to which the young can be exposed, there is not one which experience pronounces more imminent than the company and example of the ungodly. "Sinners" are fond to have associates in their evil courses.

Some of these courses are such as cannot be

pursued without associates. And in how many
instances besides is solitary vice-vice, of which the
perpetrator has no companion but his own conscience,
felt to be irksome and miserable! How often is it
for the purpose of preventing the intrusions, and
silencing the annoying whispers or louder remon-
strances of this troublesome visitor, that company is
courted! "Hand joins in hand." They keep one
another in countenance; they rally each other's
spirits ;

they drown dull care; they unite in making a mock at sin." They help each other to "break God's bands asunder, and cast away his cords from them;" and, for the time at least, to give their foreboding fears to the winds. And while the fearers of God, in the exercise of a pure benevolence, rejoice with the angels of heaven over a repenting sinner- -over one who turns from the "fatal paths of folly, sin, and death," into the paths of wisdom, purity, and peace-these children of the Wicked One

Nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.

Nor standeth in the way of sinners,