"HAVING in my youth notions of severe piety," says a celebrated Persian writer, "I used to rise in the night to watch and pray, and read the Koran. One night, as I was thus engaged, my father awoke. 'Behold,' said I to him, thy other children are lost in irreligious slumber while I alone wake to praise God.' 'Son of my soul,' he answered, 'It is better to sleep than to wake to remark the faults of thy brethren.'" And yet the world—ah! and the church too—abound with persons who make it their concern to attend to everybody's business but their own. These persons are the meanest specimens of humanity Providence permits to live. They pry into the private affairs of every family in the neighborhood; they know the exact state of neighbors' feelings toward one another; they understand everybody's faults; no blunder or impropriety escapes their vigilant watchfulness. They are particularly posted up in everything connected with the minister and his people, and any little circumstance calculated to create a disturbance, excite a jealousy, or to alienate ministers and people, is sure to be eagerly seized and widely circulated. They go from house to house, from village to village, from minister to people, throwing out insinuations and whispering suspicions which are the offspring of their own cruel minds. No reputation is too spotless, no institution too sacred, no interest too precious for them to attack. Their black and nauseous pills of malicious slander are all coated with pleasant smiles and loud professions of love. They have no higher ambition than to be well informed in regard to other people's business, to retail scandal among all within the circle of their influence, and exult in fiendish triumph over the bruised heart and wounded feelings and blighted reputation of their victim. There are in this world other daggers than those of steel, and other poniards than those that wound and lacerate the body. The man who circulates foul and unfounded slanders against his fellow-man is an assassin of the deepest dye; and many a man's character has been ruined by these secret assassins. A good man once remarked upon this subject, "Whenever I hear anybody slandering another I just turn to the Old Testament, and point them to that command of God recorded in Lev. 19:14, 'Thou shalt not curse the deaf.'" Yes, he who backbites and slanders his fellow-men is cursing the deaf, inasmuch as they cannot hear what is being said. Anybody can soil the reputation of an individual, however pure and blameless that reputation may be, by uttering a suspicion that his enemies will believe and his friends never hear of. There is an animal haunting some of the less inhabited parts of North America that is said to emit a fluid of such intolerable odor that it nearly suffocates man or beast that comes within its range; and what is still worse, this noisome stench is all but indelible. If it once taints a piece of furniture or a garment, it is next to impossible to be rid of it while a splinter or a shred of an article remains. No amount of washing or scrubbing or exposure to the air can cleanse, nor can all the perfume of Arabia sweeten the thing it has touched. Slander seems to have the same tenacious quality of clinging to any object that has once been polluted by its obscene breath. Contempt for such graceless creatures should know no bounds, nor can we command any words by which to express our sense of the infinitude of this diabolical and widespread evil. Such factors of social wrong deserve the severest punishment, and sooner or later they will receive retribution in proportion to the magnitude of their offense against the law of God and the interests of injured humanity. "Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? who shall dwell in thy holy hill? He that walketh uprightly and worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart. He that backbiteth not with his tongue, nor doeth evil to his neighbor." "Whoso privily slandereth his neighbor, him will I cut off." Robert Burns, although occasionally coarse, is seldom otherwise than happy in the severity of his satire. Respecting the characters of whom we write we cannot forbear introducing a stanza or two referring to Christ's false friends. He says:— I own I'm not the thing I should be,
Nor am I o'er the thing I could be;
But Heav'n knows, I rather would be
An atheist clean
Than under gospel colors hid be,
Just for a screen.
All hail, Religion! maid divine!
Pardon a muse sae mean as mine,
Who in a rough, imperfect line
Thus daurs to name thee:
To stigmatic false friends of thine,
Can ne'er defame thee. —Primitive Methodist (Eng.)