p. 79 | Select Paragraphs

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 29, 1885

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No MAN ever made an ill figure who understood his own talents, nor a good one who mistook them.

THE Sabbath is the link between the Paradise which is passed away and the Paradise which is yet to come.—Wylie.

THE virtue of a man ought to be measured not by his extraordinary exertions, but by his every-day conduct.—Pascal.

SEVERAL English life insurance companies charge twenty per cent. less for a total abstainer than for a moderate drinker. This speaks its own lesson.

CYRUS HAMLIN says, "One of the chiefest blessings of good books is that they bring to us the spirit of those who have felt the most deeply and acted the most manfully."

To KNOW how to say what other people only think, is what makes men poets and sages, and to dare to say what others only dare to think, makes men martyrs or reformers, or both.—Schonberg-Cotta Family.

I'VE seen some old broken bowls planted out with the bonniest flowers and mosses, and I've thought if it had not been for their misfortune they would never have come to such honor and beauty.—Edward Garret.

THERE is a tendency in many expositors of Scripture to go beyond their knowledge. They supply the large deficiencies of their knowledge by guesses and conjectures. If, indeed, these guesses were put forth simply for what they really are, pure surmises, less harm would be done, for the reader would be less likely to be imposed upon.—Pacific.

THE narrow man, the vain or the selfish man, imagines manners can be learned from books, as a boy learns the multiplication table, by saying it over and over to himself. Not so. The finest qualities of manners, like noble music, address the soul directly, and are not describable in words. Somewhat of their art may be learned by observing certain elect men and women; but the source of all gentle behavior and lovely manners is a secret of the heart, and there alone a man may find it.—Elizabeth Cumming.

"BEHOLD, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams." There is no way in which we can do more for the Lord, or please him better, than by doing just as he tells us to do. It is a great mistake to suppose that we know better than God knows what is good for us, or what is good for God's cause. And it is a sin, as well as a mistake.—H. Clay Trumbull.

PERSONS who come to you with tales about other people, and tell you things which are prejudicial to their character, will go to others and tell similar tales about you. They may whisper their stories low and softly in your ear, but remember their words are words of deceit, and often words of falsehood, and if you listen to them, and trust them, you do it to your own injury. There is no more despicable character than the sanctimonious whisperer and back-biter, who secretly slanders others and strikes them in the dark, and all under the false pretense of friendship for you. You should avoid such persons, and utterly refuse to listen to their slanders.—Sel.

WHEN a woman steps up to the bar of judgment and shows to the Lord the five talents with which he originally endowed her, with no additional talents of her own accumulating, and the Lord says to her: "You ought to have put them to the exchangers, that when I came I might receive mine own with usury," and she answers, "Dear Lord, you must excuse me, I am a woman, I have wrapped what you gave me in the napkin of femininity," the plea is not going to avail. It is the intention of Providence that a man should be something beside an old boy. It is the intention of Providence that a woman should be something beside an old girl. The gifts of God are stamped with the image and superscription of God. The parable of the talents is pertinent to both sexes.—C. H. Parkhurst.

"MARRIED folks would be happier," says an exchange, "if they tried to be as agreeable as in courtship days if each would try to be a real support and comfort to the other; if household expenses were always proportioned to receipts, if each remembered the other was practically a human being, not an angel; if women were as kind to their husbands as they were to their lovers, if men were as thoughtful for their wives as they were for them when sweethearts; if both parties remembered that they were married for worse as well as for better; if there were fewer silk and velvet costumes, and more plain, tidy house dresses, and street ones, too, for that matter; if there were fewer 'please darlings' in public and more common manners in private; if wives and husbands would take their pleasure as they go along, and not degenerate into mere toiling machines."