refreshes the day; not to impoverish, but to enrich us, as the plough enriches the field; to multiply our joy, as the seed, by planting, is multiplied a thousand-fold.H. W. Beecher.

Strength is born in the deep silence of long-suffering hearts; not amid joy.-Mrs. Hemans.

By afflictions God is spoiling us of what otherwise might have spoiled us.- -When he makes the world too hot for us to hold, we let it go.-Powell.

No Christian but has his Gethsemane; but every praying Christian will find there is no Gethsemane without its angel.-T. Binney.

With the wind of tribulation God separates, in the floor of the soul, the wheat from the chaff.-Molinos.

We are apt to overlook the hand and heart of God in our afflictions, and to consider them as mere accidents, and unavoidable evils.This view makes them absolute and positive evils which admit of no remedy or relief. If we view our troubles and trials aside from the divine design and agency in them, we cannot be comforted.-Emmons.

Amid my list of blessings infinite, stands this the foremost, "that my heart has bled."-Young.

Affliction is a divine diet which though it be not pleasing to mankind, yet Almighty God hath often imposed it as a good, though bitter, physic, to those children whose souls are dearest to him.--Izaak Walton.

The very afflictions of our earthly pilgrimage are presages of our future glory, as shadows indicate the sun.-Richter.

How fast we learn in a day of sorrow! Scripture shines out in a new effulgence; every verse seems to contain a sunbeam, every promise stands out in illuminated splendor; things hard to be understood become in a moment plain.-H. Bonar.

The most generous vine, if not pruned, runs out into many superfluous stems and grows at last weak and fruitless: so doth the best man if he be not cut short in his desires, and pruned with afflictions.-Bp. Hall.

Extrordinary afflictions are not always the punishment of extraordinary sins, but sometimes the trial of extraordinary graces. Sanctified afflictions are spiritual promotions.-M. Henry.

The only way to meet affliction is to pass through it solemnly, slowly, with humility and faith, as the Israelites passed through the sea. Then its very waves of misery will divide, and become to us a wall, on the right

side and on the left, until the gulf narrows before our eyes, and we land safe on the opposite shore.-Miss Mulock.

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We should always record our thoughts in affliction set up way-marks, that we may recur to them in health; for then we are in other circumstances, and can never recover our sick-bed views.

The good are better made by ill, as odors crushed are sweeter still.-Rogers.

What seem to us but dim funereal tapers, may be heaven's distant lamps.-Longfel low.

It is from the remembrance of joys we have lost that the arrows of affliction are pointed.-Mackenzie.

The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials.Chinese Proverb.

Never on earth calamity so great, as not to leave to us, if rightly weighed, what would console 'mid what we sorrow for.Shakespeare.

The lessons we learn in sadness and from loss are those that abide.-Sorrow clarifies the mind, steadies it, forces it to weigh things correctly. -The soil moist with tears best feeds the seeds of truth.-T. T. Munger.

Never was there a man of deep piety, who has not been brought into extremities-who has not been put into fire-who has not been taught to say, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him."-Cecil.

As sure as God puts nis children into the furnace of affliction, he will be with them in it.-Spurgeon.

Heaven tries our virtue by affliction; as oft the cloud that wraps the present hour, serves but to lighten all our future days.J. Brown.

Come then, affliction, if my Father wills, and be my frowning friend. A friend that frowns is better than a smiling enemy.Anon.

AGE. It is not by the gray of the hair that one knows the age of the heart.Bulwer.

A graceful and honorable old age is the childhood of immortality.-Pindar.

How beautiful can time with goodness make an old man look.-Jerrold.

Old age adds to the respect due to virtue, but it takes nothing from the contempt inspired by vice; it whitens only the hair.J. P. Senn.

Age does not depend upon years, but upon temperament and health.-Some men

are born old, and some never grow so.— Tryon Edwards.

A person is always startled when he hears himself seriously called old for the first time.-O. W. Holmes.

The vices of old age have the stiffness of it too; and as it is the unfittest time to learn in, so the unfitness of it to unlearn will be found much greater.-South.

Let us respect gray hairs, especially our own.-J. P. Senn.

Our youth and manhood are due to our country, but our declining years are due to ourselves.-Pliny.

When we are young, we are slavishly employed in procuring something whereby we may live comfortably when we grow old; and when we are old, we perceive it is too late to live as we proposed.-Pope.

Old men's eyes are like old men's memories; they are strongest for things a long way off.-George Eliot.

No wise man ever wished to be younger.Swift.

To be happy, we must be true to nature, and carry our age along with us.-Hazlitt.

Years do not make sages; they only make old men.-Mad. Swetchine.

Every one desires to live long, but no one would be old.-Swift.

Nothing is more disgraceful than that an old man should have nothing to show to prove that he has lived long, except his years.-Seneca.

How many fancy they have experience simply because they have grown old.Stanislaus.

Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success.- Bacon.

As we grow old we become both more foolish and more wise.-Rochefoucauld.

Age that lessens the enjoyment of life, increases our desire of living.-Goldsmith. Childhood itself is scarcely more lovely than a cheerful, kindly, sunshiny old age.— L. M. Child.

When one becomes indifferent to women, to children, and to young people, he may know that he is superannuated, and has withdrawn from what is sweetest and purest in human existence.-A. B. Alcott.

Old age is a blessed time. It gives us leisure to put off our earthly garments one by one, and dress ourselves for heaven.

"Blessed are they that are home-sick, for they shall get home."

A comfortable old age is the reward of a well-spent youth.-Instead of its bringing sad and melancholy prospects of decay, it should give us hopes of eternal youth in a better world.-R. Palmer.

No snow falls lighter than the snow of age; but none lies heavier, for it never melts. It is a rare and difficult attainment to grow old gracefully and happily.-L. M. Child.

Old age is a tyrant, which forbids the pleasures of youth on pain of death.Rochefoucauld.

Old age has deformities enough of its own. It should never add to them the deformity of vice.-Cato.

We should so provide for old age that it may have no urgent wants of this world to absorb it from meditation on the next.-It is awful to see the lean hands of dotage making a coffer of the grave.—Bulwer.

To resist the frigidity of old age one must combine the body, the mind, and the heart. And to keep these in parallel vigor one must exercise, study, and love.-Bonstettin.

When a noble life has prepared old age, it is not decline that it reveals, but the first days of immortality.-Mad. de Staël.

The evening of a well-spent life brings its lamps with it.-Joubert.

Age does not make us childish, as some say; it finds us true children.-Goethe.

Age is rarely despised but when it is contemptible.-Johnson.

As winter strips the leaves from around us, so that we may see the distant regions they formerly concealed, so old age takes away our enjoyments only to enlarge the prospect of the coming eternity.-Richter.

He who would pass his declining years with honor and comfort, should, when young, consider that he may one day become old, and remember when he is old, that he has once been young.-Addison.

That man never grows old who keeps a child in his heart.

A healthy old fellow, who is not a fool, is the happiest creature living.-Steele.

In old age life's shadows are meeting eternity's day. - Clarke.

The Grecian ladies counted their age from their marriage, not from their birth.Homer.

The golden age is before us, not behind us.-St. Simon.

The tendency of old age to the body, say the physiologists, is to form bone.-It is as rare as it is pleasant to meet with an old man whose opinions are not ossified.-J. F. Boyse.

That old man dies prematurely whose memory records no benefits conferred.They only have lived long who have lived virtuously.-Sheridan.

I venerate old age; and I love not the man who can look without emotion upon the sunset of life, when the dusk of evening begins to gather over the watery eye, and the shadows of twilight grow broader and deeper upon the understanding.-Longfel low.

While one finds company in himself and his pursuits, he cannot feel old, no matter what his years may be.-A. B. Alcott.

It is only necessary to grow old to become more charitable and even indulgent.-I see no fault committed by others that I have not committed myself.-Goethe.

An aged Christian, with the snow of time upon his head, may remind us that those points of earth are whitest which are nearest to heaven.-E. H. Chapin.

There are three classes into which all the women past seventy years of age I have ever known, were divided: that dear old soul; that old woman; that old witch.-Coleridge.

That which is called dotage, is not the weak point of all old men, but only of such as are distinguished by their levity and weakness.-Cicero.

There cannot live a more unhappy creature than an ill-natured old man, who is neither capable of receiving pleasures, nor sensible of conferring them on others.-Sir W. Temple.

As we advance in life the circle of our pains enlarges, while that of our pleasures contracts.-Mad. Swetchine.

Gray hairs seem to my fancy like the soft light of the moon, silvering over the evening of life.-Richter.

One's age should be tranquil, as childhood should be playful.-Hard work at either extremity of life seems out of place.At mid-day the sun may burn, and men labor under it; but the morning and evening should be alike calm and cheerful.—Arnold.

When we are out of sympathy with the young, then I think our work in this world is over..-G. Macdonald.

At twenty, the will reigns; at thirty, the wit; at forty, the judgment; afterward, proportion of character.-Grallan,

It is often the case with fine natures, that when the fire of the spirit dies out with increasing age, the power of intellect is unaltered or increased, and an originally educated judgment grows broader and gentler as the river of life widens out to the everlasting sea.-Mrs. Gatty.

Some men never seem to grow old. Always active in thought, always ready to adopt new ideas, they are never chargeable with fogyism. Satisfied, yet ever dissatisfied, settled, yet ever unsettled, they always enjoy the best of what is, and are the first to find the best of what will be.

Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty; for in my youth I never did apply hot and rebellious liquors in my blood; and did not, with unbashful forehead, woo the means of weakness and debility: therefore my age is as a lusty winter, frosty but kindly.-Shakespeare.

When men grow virtuous in their old age, they are merely making a sacrifice to God of the devil's leavings.-Swift.

Age sits with decent grace upon his visage, and worthily becomes his silver locks, who wears the marks of many years well spent, of virtue, truth well tried, and wise experience.-Rowe,

Toward old age both men and women hang to life by their habits.- Charles Reade. Probably the happiest period in life most frequently is in middle age, when the eager passions of youth are cooled, and the iufirmities of age not yet begun; as we see that the shadows, which are at morning and evening so large, almost entirely disappear at mid-day.-T. Arnold.

Like a morning dream, life becomes more and more bright the longer we live, and the reason of everything appears more clear. What has puzzled us before seems less mysterious, and the crooked paths look straighter as we approach the end.— Richter.

Ye who are old, remember youth with thought of like affection.-Shakespeare.

Age should fly concourse, cover in retreat defects of judgment, and the will subdue; walk thoughtful on the silent, solemn shore of that vast ocean it must sail so soon.Young.

Cautious age suspects the flattering form, and only credits what experience tells.Johnson.

If reverence is due from others to the oid, they ought also to respect themselves; and by grave, prudent, and holy actions, put a crown of glory upon their own gray heads.→ Bp. Hopkins.

These are the effects of doting age ; vain doubts, and idle cares, and over caution.— Dryden.

There are two things which grow stronger in the breast of man, in proportion as he advances in years: the love of country and religion. Let them be never so much forgotten in youth, they sooner or later present themselves to us arrayed in all their charms. and excite in the recesses of our hearts an attachment justly due to their beauty.Chateaubriand.

Thirst of power and of riches now bear sway, the passion and infirmity of age.Froude.

Youth changes its tastes by the warmth of its blood; age retains its tastes by habit.Rochefoucauld.

There is not a more repulsive spectacle than an old man who will not forsake the world, which has already forsaken him.Tholuck.

AGITATION.-Agitation is the marshalling of the conscience of a nation to mould its laws.-Sir R. Peel.

Agitation prevents rebellion, keeps the peace, and secures progress. Every step she gains is gained forever. Muskets are the weapons of animals. Agitation is the atmosphere of the brains.- Wendell Phillips.

Those who mistake the excitement and agitation of reform for the source of danger, must have overlooked all history.

We believe in excitement when the theme is great; in agitation when huge evils are to be reformed. It is thus that a state or nation clears itself of great moral wrongs, and effects important changes. Still waters gather to themselves poisonous ingredients, and scatter epidemics and death. The noisy, tumbling brook, and the rolling and roaring ocean, are pure and healthful. The moral and political elements need the rockings and heavings of free discussion, for their own purification. The nation feels a healthier pulsation, and breathes a more invigorating atmosphere, than if pulpit, platform, and press, were all silent as the tomb, leaving misrule and oppression unwatched and unscathed.-P. Cooke,

Agitation, under pretence of reform, with a view to overturn revealed truth and order, is the worst kind of mischief.-C. Simmons.

Agitation is the method that plants the school by the side of the ballot-box. - Wendell Phillips.

AGNOSTICISM.-There is only one greater folly than that of the fool who says in his heart there is no God, and that is the

folly of the people that says with its head that it does not know whether there is a God or not.-Bismarck.

An agnostic is a man who doesn't know whether there is a God or not, doesn't know whether he has a soul or not, doesn't know whether there is a future life or not, doesn't believe that any one else knows any more about these matters than he does, and thinks it a waste of time to try to find out.-Dana.

The term "agnostic" is only the Greek equivalent of the Latin and English "Ignoramus"-a name one would think scientists would be slow to apply to themselves.

Agnosticism is the philosophical, ethical, and religious dry-rot of the modern world.F. E. Abbot,

AGRARIANISM.-The agrarian would divide all the property in the community equally among its members.-But if 80 divided to-day, industry on the one hand, and idleness on the other, would make it unequal on the morrow.-There is no agrarianism in the providence of God.—Tryon Edwards.

The agrarian, like the communist, would bring all above him down to his own level, or raise himself to theirs, but is not anxious to bring those below him up to himself.C. Simmons.

AGRICULTURE.-Agriculture is the foundation of manufactures, since the productions of nature are the materials of art.-Gibbon.

Agriculture not only gives riches to a nation, but the only riches she can call her own.-Johnson.

Let the farmer for evermore be honored in his calling, for they who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God.—Jefferson.

Agriculture for an honorable and highminded man, is the best of all occupations or arts by which men procure the means of living.-Xenophon.

Trade increases the wealth and glory of a country; but its real strength and stamina are to be looked for among the cultivators of the land.-Lord Chatham.

The farmers are the founders of civilization and prosperity.-Daniel Webster.

He that would look with contempt on the pursuits of the farmer, is not worthy the name of a man.-H. W. Beecher.

There seem to be but three ways for a nation to acquire wealth: the first is by war, as the Romans did, in plundering their

conquered neighbors-this is robbery, the second by commerce, which is generally cheating; the third by agriculture, the only honest way, wherein man receives a real increase of the seed thrown into the ground, in a kind of continual miracle, wrought by the hand of God in his favor, as a reward for his innocent life and his virtuous industry.-Franklin.

In the age of acorns, before the times of Ceres, a single barley-corn had been of more value to mankind than all the diamonds of the mines of India.-H. Brooke.

The first three men in the world were a gardener, a ploughman, and a grazier; and if any object that the second of these was a murderer, I desire him to consider that as soon as he was so, he quitted our profession, and turned builder.-Cowley.

In a moral point of view, the life of the agriculturist is the most pure and holy of any class of men; pure, because it is the most healthful, and vice can hardly find time to contaminate it; and holy, because it brings the Deity perpetually before his view, giving him thereby the most exalted notions of supreme power, and the most endearing view of the divine benignity.Lord John Russell.

Command large fields, but cultivate small ones.- Virgil.

Whoever makes two ears of corn, or two blades of grass to grow where only one grew before, deserves better of mankind, and does more essential service to his country than the whole race of politicians put together.-Swift.

The frost is God's plough which he drives through every inch of ground in the world, opening each clod, and pulverizing the whole.-Fuller.

We may talk as we please of lilies, and lions rampant, and spread eagles in fields of d'or or d'argent, but if heraldry were guided by reason, a plough in the field arable would be the most noble and ancient arms.-Cowley.

AIMS. (See "ASPIRATION.")

High aims form high characters, and great objects bring out great minds.-Tryon Edwards.

Have a purpose in life, and having it, throw into your work such strength of mind and muscle as God has given you.-Carlyle.

The man who seeks one, and but one, thing in life may hope to achieve it; but he who seeks all things, wherever he goes, only reaps, from the hopes which he sows, a harvest of barren regrets.-Bulwer.

Not failure, but low aim, is crime.-J. R. Lowell.

Aim at perfection in everything, though in most things it is unattainable; however, they who aim at it, and persevere, will come much nearer to it, than those whose laziness and despondency make them give it up as unattainable.-Chesterfield.

Aim at the sun, and you may not reach it; but your arrow will fly far higher than if aimed at an object on a level with yourself.-J. Hawes.

Resolved to live with all my might while I do live, and as I shall wish I had done ten thousand ages hence.-Jonathan Edwards.

It is a sad thing to begin life with low conceptions of it. It may not be possible for a young man to measure life: but it is possible to say, I am resolved to put life to its noblest and best use.-T. T. Munger.

Dream manfully and nobly, and thy dreams shall be prophets.-Bulwer.

In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.-Longinus.

We want an aim that can never grow vile, and which cannot disappoint our hope. There is but one such on earth, and it is that of being like God. He who strives after union with perfect love must grow out of selfishness, and his success is secured in the omnipotent holiness of God.-S. Brooke.

What are the aims which are at the same time duties?-they are the perfecting of ourselves, and the happiness of others.Kant.

High aims and lofty purposes are the wings of the soul aiding it to mount to heaven. In God's word we have a perfect standard both of duty and character, that by the influence of both, appealing to the best principles of our nature, we may be roused to the noblest and best efforts.S. Spring.

Providence has nothing good or high in store for one who does not resolutely aim at something high or good.-A purpose is the eternal condition of success.-T. T. Munger.

ALCHEMY.-Alchemy may be compared to the man who told his sons of gold buried somewhere in his vineyard, where they by digging found no gold, but by turning up the mould about the roots of their vines, procured a plentiful vintage. So the search and endeavors to make gold have brought many useful inventions and instructive experiments to light.-bacon.

I have always looked upon alchemy in nature philosophy, to be like over enthu