There are believers who by God's grace, have climbed the mountains of full assurance and near communion, their place is with the eagle in his eyrie, high aloft; they are like the strong mountaineer, who has trodden the virgin snow, who has breathed the fresh, free air of the Alpine regions, and therefore his sinews are braced, and his limbs are vigorous; these are they who do great exploits, being mighty men, men of renown. -C. H. SPURGEON.

If you have not the faith of assurance, practice at least the faith of adherence. That, at least, is in your power. Cleave to God exactly as if you were certain of being accepted of Him at last; and thus fulfilling His own conditions, you will be accepted of Him, whether you are assured of it beforehand or

not.

-JACQUES BONNEVAL.

ATHEISM.

The thing formed says that nothing formed it; and that which is made is, while that which made it is not! The folly is infinite. -JEREMY TAYLOR.

That the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, I will no more believe than that the accidental jumbling of the alphabet would fall into a most ingenious treatise of philosophy,

- DEAN SWIFT.

A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion. - FRANCIS BACON.

Atheism is rather in the life than in the heart of man.

Atheism can benefit no class of people; neither the unfortunate, whom it bereaves of hope, nor the prosperous, whose joys it renders insipid, nor the soldier, of whom it makes a coward, nor the woman whose beauty and sensibility it mars, nor the mother, who has a son to lose, nor the rulers of men, who have no surer pledge of the fidelity of their subjects than religion. - CHATEAUBRIAND.

Ingersoll's atheism can never become an institution; it can never be more than a destitution.

- ROBERT COLLYER.

They that deny a God destroy man's nobility, for certainly man is of kin to the beasts by his body; and if he be not of kin to God by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature. - FRANCIS BACON.

No one is so much alone in the universe as a denier of God. With an orphaned heart, which has lost the greatest of fathers, he stands mourning by the immeasurable corpse of nature, no longer moved and sustained by the Spirit of the universe. -JEAN PAUL RICHTER.

Religion assures us that our afflictions shall have an end; she comforts us, she dries our tears, she promises us another life. On the contrary, in the abominable worship of atheism, human woes are the incense, death is the priest, a coffin the altar, and annihilation the Deity.

- CHATEAUBRIAND.

Nothing enlarges the gulf of atheism more than the wide passage that lies between the faith and lives of men pretending to teach Christianity.

STILLINGFLEET.

I want you to have courage to declare yourself to be an atheist, or to serve your god with all your might and power in perfect consecration, whatever or whoever that god may be whether it be the crocodile of the Nile or our Jehovah, "God over all blessed for evermore."

CHARLES F. DEEMS.

Practically every man is an atheist, who lives without God in the world.

It is impossible to conceive any contrast more entire and absolute than that which exists between a heart glowing with love to God, and a heart in which the love of money has cashiered all sense of God - His love, His presence, His glory; and which is no sooner relieved from the mockery of a tedious round of religious formalism, than it reverts to the sanctuaries where its wealth is invested, with an intenseness of homage surpassing that of the most devout Israelite who ever, from a foreign land, turned his longing eyes toward Jerusalem.

Avarice is to the intellect what sensuality is to the morals. -MRS. JAMESON.

Objects close to the eye shut out much larger objects on the horizon; and splendors born only of the earth eclipse the stars. So a man sometimes covers up the entire disk of eternity with a dollar, and quenches transcendent glories with a little shining dust.

- E. H. CHAPIN.

Poverty is want of much, but avarice of every thing.

-PUBLIUS SYRIUS.

Jesus, save me from the infatuation of avarice! I, too, will lay up a treasure, but Thou shalt have the keeping of it. CHRISTIAN SCRIVER.

B.

BACKSLIDING.

I never yet have heard of a good man having fallen when he was trying to do Christ's will and trusting on Christ's help. Every fall without one exception came from venturing upon sinful ground or from venturing upon self-support.

-T. L. CUYLER.

When we read or hear how some professed Christian has turned defaulter, or lapsed into drunkenness, or slipped from the communion table into open disgrace, it simply means that a human arm has broken. The man has forsaken the everlasting arms.

-T. L. CUYLER.

The master will not keep His hand under our arms when we go on forbidden ground. Presumptuous Peter needed a sharp lesson, and he got it. That bitter cry at the foot of the stairs bespoke an awful fall. How many such are rising daily into

God's listening ears.

T. L. CUYLER.

BAPTISM.

Only what coronation is in an earthly way, baptism is in a heavenly way; God's authoritative declaration in material form of a spiritual reality.

-F. W. ROBERTSON.

Oh! for this baptism of fire! when every spoken word for Jesus shall be a thunderbolt, and every prayer shall bring forth a mighty flood.

BEAUTY.

- A. E. KITTREDGE,

Beauty itself is but the sensible image of the infinite.

The gospel allies itself with all that is beautiful in the universe, as truly as with all that is noble and pure.

Eyes raised toward heaven are always beautiful, whatever they be.

What is meant by believing in Christ but just going with trusting and loving hearts, and committing to His love and power ourselves, our souls, and all that concerns us for time and eternity?

-A. H. BOYD.

Begin by regarding every thing from a moral point of view. and you will end by believing in God.

DR. ARNOLD.