What company is a crock for a brazen kettle? It shall strike against it, and be crushed. 3 A rich man doeth wrong, and threateneth to do more; 4 If thou art of use to him, he useth thee; 5 But, if thou answer not his need, he forsaketh thee. If thou hast aught, he will live with thee, Yea, make thee bare; but he will take no trouble. 6 He hath made use of thee, and will make thee err; Though he laugh at thee, yet he will give thee hope; 7 He will say fine things to thee, and ask, What dost thou need? And he will make thee ashamed by his feasts, Until he shall empty thy stores twice or thrice, After this he shall see thee, and pass by thee, 8 Take heed lest thou be led astray, And be humbled through thy love of good cheer. 9 If a great man invite thee, draw back modestly, And so much the more will he invite thee. 10 Press not forward, lest thou be pushed back; Yet stand not so far back as to be forgotten. Try not in thy words to make thyself his equal, Nor trust to his many speeches; 11 12 For, by freely talking, he will tempt thee, And with smiles draw out thy words. Merciless to himself is he that guards not his words, 13 Guard them, and take great care; For thou walkest by the side of thy ruin. 15 Every creature loveth its like, And every man his neighbor. 16 All living things keep with their kind, 18 What concord between a hyæna and a dog? What concord between a rich man and a poor man? 19 The prey of lions is wild asses in the desert; Thus the food of the rich is the poor. 20 The loathing of the proud is humiliation; 21 So the poor man is loathed by the rich. If the rich man totters, his friends hold him up; But a poor man falling is pushed down by his friends. 22 If a rich man hath slipped, many will defend him; If he say what is not fit to be said, yet they justify him: 23 The rich man speaks, all else are silent, And his speech they extol to the clouds. The poor man speaks, and they say, Who is that? And, if he should stumble, they bring him down to the ground. 24 Riches are good, if they are without sin; But poverty is evil only in the judgment of the godless. CORRECTION.- In chap. vi. 30, for "hyacinthine bonds" read "hyacinthine bands." CHRISTIAN Age.- One in advanced life must feel the more keenly the uncertainties of his stay; must feel how slight is the tenure that binds him to those material interests with which he is surrounded. Standing, as he does, so near the border-line of his mortality, listening ever to the approaching surf, and feeling the air and the spray, as they come in from this vast infinitude beyond, his mind must be quickened to more heavenly musings, and his heart attuned to the divinest praise; and, while the things of mortal sense are sliding from his grasp, he must feel the pressure of an Infinite arm drawing nearer and nearer to his spirit. As this veil of flesh grows thin, through it more brightly the Eternal shines. Our past experiences will not be darkened by shadows stealing in through the opening of this mystic future; for there will come a flood of supernatural light that will disperse all shadows, uncover every experience, and thus rally the innumerable witnesses of by-gone years. This is the great judgment-season in life; and before the tribunal of serious reflection, are arrayed those faithful witnesses who will unfold anew those experiences which belong even to the earliest period of the heart's history. Rev. J. F. Brown. NEW PUBLICATIONS. Chambers's Pocket Miscellany. We have received three volumes of this series, republished by Gould & Lincoln. Each one is full of entertaining and instructive matter, compressed into a small compass. The contents are various, and are among the best specimens of the "literature of the Rail." Facts of Intemperance, and their Claims on the Public Action of the People. Rev. William R. Alger has consented to the publication of a lecture on this subject, which had been previously delivered in many places with most excellent effect. It is a thorough handling of the mischief; and a vivid arrangement of words and reasons puts a fresh aspect of horror and disgust on an old sin. A cordial tribute of gratitude is due to every good man who will strike so vigorous a blow at this rooted abomination, · the constant gangrene of society, and the fatal intermeddler with all our plans of social amelioration. The Minister and Parish. Rev. Alonzo Hill, under this title, has published a sermon, relating his parochial experience in Worcester, through twenty-five years of prosperous and useful labor; and offering many reflections of general interest. An involuntary feeling of respect goes out to such a workman, standing faithfully a quarter of a century at his post. And by its historical and moral value, this discourse adds new strength to Dr. Hill's claims for honor in the churches. The Camphene Lamp; or, Touch not, Taste not, Handle not. BY MARY HINCKLEY. Sold by Crosby, Nichols, & Co. - A pleasant Temperance Story, wherein the burning-fluid and rum help each other out of the house, to the manifest gain of all parties. The American Journal of Insanity. Published by the New York State Lunatic Asylum, Utica. Also, The Opal; a Miscellaneous Journal, edited by the patients in said Asylum. In different ways, these two publications exhibit the enlightened and merciful care exercised in behalf of that disease which so many tendencies of the age go to produce, and which the age ought to take in charge as a special department of its Christian philanthropy. It is a relief to feel assured that lunacy can never hereafter be regarded otherwise than with considerate compassion. And there is a melancholy sort of interest in turning over the literary diversions of the inmates of a well-conducted Retreat like this at Utica. "The gospel was not given only for learned men. There are at least nineteen in twenty, if not ninety-nine in a hundred, of those for whom the Scriptures were written, that are not capable of any certain or effectual conviction of their divine authority by such arguments as learned men make use of."-"We cannot rationally doubt but that things that are divine have a godlike, high, and glorious excellency in them, that does so distinguish them from the things that are of men, that the difference is ineffable, and therefore such as, if seen, will have a most convincing, satisfying influence upon one, that they are what they are, namely, divine."- Jonathan Edwards: Treatise on the Religious Affections. IN the pages of our last number, attention was directed to the needlessly vague conceptions of Christianity which prevail in many quarters. It may be thought that we have pledged ourselves to attempt a little more definiteness in this way, and are bound to give our answer to the question, "What is Christianity?" Let the present paper be accepted as a partial and poor fulfilment of any such pledge. The question, "What is Christianity?" must be answered many times before it will have been completely answered. We can hardly hope to describe, in a single sentence, the Faith which claims all things past, present, and to come, a Faith so filled with the spirit, the fulness of the Infinite One, that, almost like him, it reaches beyond our measures. All the various replies which various readers of the Bible have given to our question, are nearer right than any one of them; they all help to express the world-wide doctrine and work of Christ, the way of our deliverance through him. Our answer for the present is singly and simply this: " Christianity is strictly, literally, a revelation from This is an answer which all Christians alike return; the unvarying reply from the beginning of the Christian era to this day; a reply so general and so obvious that it may seem idle to insist upon it, and yet one of those familiar matters which, as we are in the habit of saying, may be passed over in a careless way, and of which the younger portion of the generation upon the stage certainly need to be reminded. When Christianity came into the world, when it burst into life in the Holy Land and in the cities of the Roman empire, it came and was received as a communication from Heaven, as an inspiration from the Almighty Father; not as a new way of human thinking or of human feeling, — not as a discovery or device of human intelligence, a step forward in human progress, but as a fresh gift from the Source of all wisdom and all love. The message which the apostles carried about with them was not a message from one man to another, but from God to all of us. It was an unfolding of the Divine Mind. It was a lifting of the veil which hides from us the deep things of eternity. It was a gift of the Divine Glory to man. Its essence, its heart, that which made it a gospel, was a word from the mouth of God. This view of Christianity is absolutely fundamental. Should it ever be generally slighted, the peculiar value of the gospel would be so far lost. With the mission of Jesus, there began a great movement in the mind, the heart, the life of the world, a movement still vigorously advancing, and whose triumphs in store are greater even than its triumphs already secured. The kingdom of God came then, and it is to be established. There are Christian views of religion and of morality, of life in all its aspects, of suffering, of death, and of a future state: it infinitely concerns the health and the peace of the individual soul and the welfare of our race, that they be true, answering to realities, of God and not of man, coming from a source above any earthly fountain. Clearly trace any lesson back to Christ; show that it is a Christian lesson, and it should be enough. This should stamp it as divine. "Believest thou this?" said the Saviour to Martha; and her reply was, "Yea, Lord, I believe that thou art the living God;" and, so believing, your words must be truth to me. We want to have this faith in Christianity Christ, the Son of the |