to be noticed, and that is Prospective Work. Sabbath evening, too often the period set apart for untimely sleep, letter-writing, or gossiping conversation, has been beautifully called "the seed-time for eternity," and it is also the pledge and earnest of the Sabbatism of eternal life. If we take no part in the work of the Holy Sanctuary here, how shall we be pillars in the temple of our God? If we value not the rest of the earthly day, how shall we enter into the rest that remaineth for the people of God? If the Sabbath of twenty-four hours is to us a weariness, how shall we endure that Sabbath which hath no end? It is necessary then to keep ever in view, amidst our Sabbath duties, the important one of making ourselves ready for a Sabbath that is not of earth. We must struggle against our backwardness to the work, against our discouragements,-against our weariness,—against our want of spirituality, because unfitting us for the adoration, the activity, the delight in spiritual things, which must be elements of the coming glory. We must rejoice in the Sabbath as in the beautiful streaks of the light which groweth into noon-day sun, as in the first refreshing drops of the rill, which spreadeth into the mighty ocean.

"He shall assist me to look higher,

Where keep the saints, with harp and song,

An endless Sabbath morning;

And in that sea commixed with fire,
Oft drop their eyelids, raised too long

To the full Godhead burning."

ELIZABETH BARRET BROWNING.

XXIV.

THOUGHT WORK.

"The thoughts of the diligent tend only to plenteousness; but of every one that is hasty, only to want."-PROV. xxi. 5.

"The gentler charms which wait on female life,
Which grace the daughter and adorn the wife,
Be these our boast; yet these may well admit
of various knowledge and of blameless wit,
Of sense, resulting from a nurtured mind,
Of polished converse, and of taste refined."

HANNAH MORE.

"The key-stone of thy mind--to give thy thoughts solidity,

To bind them in an arch-to fix them as the world is in its sphere,

Is to learn from the book of the Lord, to drink from the well of His wisdom."

MARTIN TUPPER.

The miser thinks

To think is no uncommon employment. about his gold, the young lady thinks about her bonnets and balls, the gossip thinks about her neighbours; yet is Thought a comparatively rare achievement. "My friend," said John Foster, "to have thought far too little, we shall find among the capital faults in the review of life. To have in our nature a noble part that can think, would be a cause for infinite exultation if it actually did think, as much and as well as it can think, and if to have an unthinking mind were not equivalent to having no mind at all. The mind might, and it should be kept in a state of habitual exertion, that would save us from needing to appeal for proof of its existence to some occasion yesterday when we did think, or to-morrow when we shall.”

Equally important for the welfare, equally constituting a part of the work of both sexes, Thought requires to be specially cultivated by woman, as it is more opposed to the natural constitution of her mind, and frequently altogether omitted in her education. Woman, therefore, must educate herself to think. She will thus become a more harmless member of society, for the woman of reflection rarely gossips, rarely propagates scandal, rarely sows discord amongst her neighbours. She will be a

better companion and helpmeet for thoughtful men, and a safer friend for thoughtless women. She will be equally fitted, as the case may be, to become the cheerful "old maid,”—the respected teacher of the children of others, or the intelligent instructress of her own.. She will escape the evils of ignorance and vacancy of mind, on the one hand, and on the other, the imputation of being learned over-much. No "blue stocking" was ever a thinking woman; ignorant of all that remains to be known, she prides herself upon the little that she knows; and, incapable of understanding the humility which is inseparable from true knowledge, she forces upon others her petty and superficial attainments. The woman of reflection, moreover, will not contract her feminine sphere, by occupying a corner of it, and allowing the rest to be wasted ground, but she will never advance a step on the outside of the magic circle. "emancipated woman"-to use a popular American phrase was ever a woman of Thought; she emancipates herself, because she has not thought, or has thought to very little purpose, of the noble place, and the influential duties which God has given her, nobler than the place of any man,- -more blessed and angel-like than the duties of any other created being. She emancipates herself, by throwing aside the mighty power that is her own, and trying to grasp in vain, the intellectual strength, the unshackled freedom of her brother's position. She emancipates herself, in short, because she has not mind enough to enter into the mind of God.

No

Original thought in a woman, is likely to be crude and unprofitable; hence it requires a large infusion of the thoughts of others. Reading will therefore form a prominent part in the employments of those who are aroused to a sense of the wonderful elements of work, which exist in the unseen regions of Thought? Some people-clever, active, and useful, in their own waymaintain that reading is a mere selfish indulgence, which takes up a great deal of time, and is of no use in practical life. Others are of opinion, that to fill the mind with other people's ideas, is a sort of mental plagiarism; thus a young man once remarked, that he was not reading much for fear of hurting his eyes and

his originality! To read aright, so as not on the one hand to
interfere with the practical duties of life, and on the other, not
to impair the individuality of the mind, it is necessary to read
WHY do we read? If only to wile away the

with a purpose.
vacant hour, or to post through miles of paper, or to gain the
credit of being "a great reader," our books may be consigned
to the flames for all the good they do us. As the body requires
nourishment, so does the mind, not taken at random, but regu-
larly, and with consideration, so as to suit the mental diet to
the mental constitution; and as the body without sustenance
could not fulfil its appointed services, so the mind, if left unfed
and unstrengthened, could not perform its varied and important
work. Why then do we read? Let it be to fit us for thinking,
for living, for working; let it be to honour Him, who having
given us the magnificent palace of the mind, cannot be pleased
when it is left unfurnished and untenanted, and consequently
rendered by degrees useless and uninhabitable. But How do we
read? If our reading be designed for anything better than "much
talk and little knowledge," it is equally important and difficult
to know how to read! more difficult than our early exploits in
alphabet and spelling-book, for it requires patient and laborious
mental operations, to meet the mere external one of pouring
in knowledge at eye and ear. A master of the subject says,—
"Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge;
it is thinking makes what we read ours. We are of the rumi-
nating kind, and it is not enough to cram ourselves with a great
load of collections; unless we chew them once again they will
not give us strength and nourishment. .. To which let me
add, that this way of thinking on, and profiting by what we
read, will be a clog and rub to any one only in the beginning;
when custom and exercise have made it familiar, it will be de-
spatched, in the most occasions, without resting or interruption
in the course of our reading."*

Let us read, then, so as to increase, to elevate, to furnish thought. Let us read patiently,-not excitedly rushing through a book to know the end of it, or to begin another in haste, or * Locke on the Conduct of the Understanding.

to have the satisfaction of getting through so many volumes. Let us read systematically,-not adhering too pertinaciously to our own rule, and the rules of others, but modifying, altering, and increasing a judicious course of reading, according to our better acquaintance with our own mental wants and peculiarities. It is well not to despise the aid of notes and abstracts, so as to gather up fragments which might otherwise be lost to our memories, to record our own impressions,-make our own reflections and illustrations, and thus prove our own progress. Let us strive against that besetting sin amongst us,-superficiality. If all were as candid as Hannah More's heroine, the following confession would not be a very uncommon one

"I seized on learning's superficial part,
And title-page and index got by heart,
Some learn'd authority I still would bring,
To grace my talk, and prove-the plainest thing:
This the chief transport I from science drew,
That all might know how much Cleora knew."

HANNAH MORE's Search after Happiness.

If we read hastily, we shall think hastily, and thus we shall not only be scantily supplied with materials for the honey, but we shall be destitute of the skill, patience, and perseverance needful for forming the cells, and filling them with the precious store. But WHEN do we read? Although man's education is so much more thorough, and occupies so much longer time, yet it is not so decidedly pronounced to be “ finished," as that of woman after eighteen years of masters and governesses, calisthenics and guitars. When a girl has gone through a good deal of what receives the name of reading, in London or Edinburgh, Bath or Brighton, she thinks that the time for it is past, and that, if she reads any more, it is only for the purposes of amusement or fashion; but if she is to be superior in future life to a faded belle or an elderly butterfly, reading, and its inseparable vocations of thinking and learning, if begun in childhood and youth, must not stop there, but must go on through middle life, to the days of old age. That was an ingenious as well as instructive device of Michael Angelo, which represented an old man