into the depths of worldliness with safety, and there grope for pearls, with just so much of heaven's air as will keep them from suffocating, and no more; and some, alas! as at times is the case with the diver, are suffocated in the experiment. -Cheever.

RELIGION, ITS BLESSEDNESS.-If I could choose what of all things would be at the same time the most delightful and useful to me, I should prefer a firm religious belief to every other blessing; for this makes life a discipline of goodness; creates new hopes when all earthly ones vanish; throws over the decay of existence the most gorgeous of all lights; awakens life even in death; makes even torture and shame the ladder of ascent to paradise; and far above all combinations of earthly hopes, calls up the most delightful visions of the future, the security of everlasting joys, where the sensualist and the skeptic view only gloom, decay, annihilation, and despair. Sir H. Davy.

RELIGION, ITS BLESSEDNESS. -I have known what the enjoyments and advantages of this life are, and what the more refined pleasures which learning and intellectual power can bestow; and with all the experience that more than threescore years can give, I, now on the eve of my departure, declare to you (and earnestly pray that you may hereafter live and act in the conviction), that health is a great blessing,competence, obtained by honorable industry, a great blessing, —and a great blessing it is to have kind, faithful, and loving friends and relatives; but that the greatest of all blessings, as it is the most ennobling of all privileges, is to be indeed a Christian. Coleridge.

Religion, its dignITY.—A wise man that lives up to the principles of religion and virtue, if one considers him in his solitude as taking in the system of the universe, observing the mutual dependence and harmony by which the whole

frame of it hangs together, bearing down his passions, or swelling his thoughts with magnificent ideas of Providence, makes a nobler figure in the eye of an intelligent being than the greatest conqueror amidst all the solemnities and pomps of a triumph.-Tatler.

RELIGION, ITS DUTIES.-The duties of religion sincerely and regularly performed, will always be sufficient to exalt the meanest, and to exercise the highest understanding. That mind will never be vacant, which is frequently recalled by stated duties to meditations on eternal things; nor can any hour be long, which is spent in obtaining some new qualification for celestial happiness.

RELIGION, ITS INFLUENCE.-True religion shows its influence in every part of our conduct; it is like the sap of a living tree, which penetrates the most distant boughs.

RELIGION, ITS INFLUENCE. They who suffer the persuasion of a future happiness to operate as it ought on their practice, constantly experience their practice adding strength to their persuasion-the better they become by their belief, the more confirmed they become in it.—Essays on the Employment of Time.

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RELIGION, ITS INFLUENCE. -The contemplation of the Divine Being, and the exercise of virtue, are in their nature so far from excluding all gladness of heart, that they are perpetual sources of it. In a word, the true spirit of religion cheers, as well as composes the soul. It banishes, indeed, all levity of behavior, all vicious and dissolute mirth, but in exchange fills the mind with a perpetual serenity, uninterrupted cheerfulness, and an habitual inclination to please others as well as to be pleased in itself.—Spectator.

RELIGION, ITS JOY.-The joy of religion is an exorcist to the mind; it expels the demons of carnal mirth and madness.- -Cecil.

Religion, its offERS.—If we were to be hired to religion, it is able to outbid the corrupted world with all it can offer us, being so much richer of the two in everything where reason is admitted to be a judge of the value.-Halifax.

RELIGION, ITS PLEASURES.-Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.—Solomon.

RELIGION, ITS PLEASURES.—True religion and virtue give a cheerful and happy turn to the mind; admit of all true pleasures, and even procure for us the highest.—Addison.

Religion, its PLEASURES.-Religion is a cheerful thing; so far from being always at cuffs with good-humor, it is inseparably united to it. Nothing unpleasant belongs to it, though the spiritual cooks have done their unskilful part to give an ill relish to it. A wise epicure would be religious for the sake of pleasure; good sense is the foundation of both, and he is a bungler who aimeth at true luxury, but where they are joined.-Saville.

RELIGION, ITS PLEASURES.-Religion is so far from barring men any innocent pleasure, or comfort of human life, that it purifies the pleasures of it, and renders them more grateful and generous; and besides this, it brings mighty pleasures of its own, those of a glorious hope, a serene mind, a calm and undisturbed conscience, which do far out-relish the most studied and artificial luxuries.—Dean Shirley.

RELIGION, ITS POWER FOR THIS WOrld.— -The religion of the gospel has power, immense power, over mankind; direct and indirect, positive and negative, restraining and aggressive Civilization, law, order, morality, the family, all that elevates woman, or blesses society, or gives peace to the nations, all these are the fruits of Christianity, the full power of which, even for this world, could never be appreciated till it should be taken away.-T. Edwards.

RELIGION, ITS PRINCIPLE EVERYWHERE THE SAME.——' --The humble, meek, merciful, just, pious, and devout souls are everywhere of one religion, and when death has taken off the mask, they will know one another, though the divers liveries they wear make them strangers.—Penn.

RELIGION, NARROW VIEWS OF.-A narrow-minded religionist sees religion not as a sphere, but as a line; and it is the identical line in which he is moving. He is like an African buffalo, sees right forward, but nothing on the right hand or the left. He would not perceive a legion of angels or of devils at a distance of ten yards on the one side or the other.-J. Foster.

RELIGION, OPPORTUNITIES FOR.-Religious opportunities are like the books of the Sibyl, more and more valuable, the fewer there are that remain.

RELIGION, RITUALISTIC.-A ritual religion is generally. light and gay, not serious in its spirit; all religions being so, which cast responsibility into outward observances.Martineau.

RELIGION, TALK ABOUT.-The pious man and the atheist always talk of religion; the one of what he loves, and the other of what he fears.-Montesquicu.

RELIGION, THE CHRISTIAN.- We live in the midst of blessings till we are utterly insensible to their greatness, and of the source from whence they flow. We speak of our civilization, our arts, our freedom, our laws, and forget entirely how large a share is due to Christianity. Blot Christianity out of the page of man's history, and what would his laws have been-what his civilization? Christianity is mixed up with our very being and our daily life; there is not a famil iar object around us which does not wear a different aspect because the light of Christian love is on it—not a law which

does not owe its truth and gentleness to Christianity—not a custom which cannot be traced, in all its holy, healthful parts, to the gospel.-Sir A. Park.

RELIGION, THE CHRISTIAN.-Should a man happen to err in supposing the Christian religion to be true, he could not be a loser by the mistake. But how irreparable is his loss, and how inexpressible his danger, who should err in supposing it to be false.-Pascal.

RELIGION, THE CHRISTIAN.-Our religion is one that dares to be understood; that offers itself to the search of the inquisitive, and to the inspection of the severest and most awakened reason. For being secure of her substantial truth and purity, she knows that for her to be seen and looked into, is to be embraced and admired, as there needs no greater argument for men to love the light than to see it.-John

son.

RELIGION, THE CHRISTIAN.-Our religion, awing those whom it justifies, and comforting those whom it reproves, so wisely tempereth hope with fear, that it abases us infinitely more than unassisted reason could do, and yet without driving us to despair, while it exalts us infinitely more than the pride of our nature could do, yet without rendering us vain.— Pascal.

RELIGION, THE CHRISTIAN.-Christianity is the good man's text; his life, the illustration.

RELIGION, THE CHRISTIAN.-The Christian religion is one that diffuses among the people, a pure, benevolent, and universal system of ethics, adapted to every condition of life, and recommended as the will and reason of the Supreme Deity, and enforced by sanctions of eternal punishment.— Gibbon.

RELIGION, THE CHRISTIAN.-The great comprehensive