ligion, I find none so accurately descriptive of it as this: that it is such a belief of the Bible, as maintains a living influ ence on the heart and life.- Cecil.

RELIGION. Religion, in its purity, is not so much a pursuit as a temper; or rather it is a temper, leading to the pursuit of all that is high and holy. Its foundation is faith; its action, works; its temper, holiness; its aim, obedience to God in improvement of self, and benevolence to men.—Edwards.

RELIGION. The religion of Christ reaches and changes the heart, which no other religion does.-Howels.

RELIGION.-Political eminence and professional fame, fade and die with all things earthly. Nothing of character is really permanent but virtue and personal worth. These remain. Whatever of excellence is wrought into the soul itself, belongs to both worlds. Real goodness does not attach itself merely to life; it points to another world. Political and professional fame cannot last forever, but a conscience void of offence before God and man, is an inheritance for eternity. Religion, therefore, is a necessary, an indispensable element in any great human character. There is no living without it. Religion is the tie that connects man with his Creator, and holds him to his throne. If that tie is sundered or broken, he floats away a worthless atom in the universe, its proper attractions all gone, its destiny thwarted, and its whole future nothing but darkness, desolation, and death. A man with no sense of religious duty is he whom the Scriptures describe in so terse but terrific a manner as 'living without God in the world.' Such a man is out of his proper being out of the circle of all his duties, out of the circle of all his happiness, and away, far, far away from the purposes of his creation.-Daniel Webster.

RELIGION.—If you are not right towards God, you can

never be so towards man; and this is forever true, whether wits and rakes allow it or not.-Lord Chatham—to his Nephew.

RELIGION. Take away God and religion, and men live to no purpose, without proposing any worthy and considerable end of life to themselves.-Tillotson.

RELIGION.-Whether religion be true or false, it must be necessarily granted to be the only wise principle, and safe hypothesis for a man to live and die by.-Tillotson.

RELIGION. The religion of a sinner stands on two pillars; namely, what Christ did for us in the flesh, and what he performs in us by his Spirit. Most errors arise from an attempt to separate these two.- Cecil.

RELIGION. If it be the characteristic of a worldly man that he desecrates what is holy, it should be of the Christian to consecrate what is secular, and to recognize a present and presiding divinity in all things.-Chalmers.

RELIGION. The moral virtues, without religion, are but cold, lifeless, and insipid; it is only religion which opens the mind to great conceptions, fills it with the most sublime ideas, and warms the soul with more than sensual pleasures.—Addison.

RELIGION-Religion is the best armor in the world, but

the worst cloak.-Newton.

RELIGION.-Those who make religion to consist in the contempt of this world and its enjoyments, are under a very fatal and dangerous mistake. As life is the gift of heaven, it is religion to enjoy it. He therefore, who can be happy in himself, and who contributes all that is in his power towards the happiness of others (and none but the virtuous can so be and so do), answers most effectually the ends of

his creation, is an honor to his nature, and a pattern to man kind. Addison.

RELIGION.-If it were only the exercise of the body, the moving of the lips, the bending of the knee, men would as commonly step to heaven as they go to visit a friend: but to separate our thoughts and affections from the world, to draw forth all our graces, and engage each in its proper object, and to hold them to it till the work prospers in our hands, this, this is the difficulty.—Baxter.

RELIGION.-Men will wrangle for religion; write for it; fight for it; die for it; anything but live for it.-Colton.

RELIGION. The greatest actions, when they are not animated by religion, have no other principle than pride; and consequently they are poisoned by the root which produces them -Marquis of Halifax.

RELIGION. How admirable is that religion, which, while it seems to have in view only the felicity of another world, is at the same time the highest happiness of this.—Montesquieu.

RELIGION, ADVANTAGE OF THE CHRISTIAN.-Indisputably the believers in the gospel have a great advantage over all others, for this simple reason, that if true, they will have their reward hereafter; and if there be no hereafter, they can but be with the infidel in his eternal sleep, having hadthe assistance of an exalted hope through life, without subsequent disappointment.-Lord Byron.

RELIGION AND FREEDOM.-It was religion, which, by teaching men their near relation to God, awakened in them the consciousness of their importance as individuals. It was the struggle for religious rights, which opened their eyes to all their rights. It was resistance to religious usurpation, which led men to withstand political oppression. It was re

ligious discussion, which roused the minds of all classes to free and vigorous thought. It was religion, which armed the martyr and patriot in England against arbitrary power; which braced the spirits of our fathers against the perils of the ocean and wilderness, and sent them to found here the freest and most equal state on earth.—W. E. Channing.

RELIGION AND HYPOCRISY.-It is one thing to take God and heaven for your portion, as believers do, and another thing to be desirous of it, as a reserve when you can keep the world no longer. It is one thing to submit to heaven, as a lesser evil than hell; and another thing to desire it as a greater good than earth. It is one thing to lay up treasures and hopes in heaven, and seek it first; and another thing to be contented with it in our necessity, and to seek the world before it, and give God that the flesh can spare. Thus differeth the religion of serious Christians, and of carnal worldly hypocrites.— Baxter.

RELIGION AT HOME.

"Let them learn first," says Paul,

to show piety at home." Religion should begin in the family. The holiest sanctuary is home. The family altar is more venerable than that of the cathedral. The education of the soul for eternity should begin and be carried on at the fireside.

RELIGION HAS HIGHER THAN CIVIL ENDS.-I would as soon think of making galaxies and star-systems, to guide little herring vessels by, as of preaching religion that constables may continue possible.-Carlyle.

RELIGION IN SOCIETY.-A man who puts aside his religion because he is going into society, is like one taking off his shoes because he is about to walk upon thorns.

RELIGION IN THE WORLDLY.-Too many persons seem to use their religion as a diver does his bell, to venture down

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 blessingcompetence, 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