is to communicate it at right times, to proper persons, in suitable places, and in a becoming spirit. Secondly: The wrong use of words. "The mouth of fools poureth out foolishness." "Out

of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh." The fool's heart is full of folly, and folly flows from his lips. Foolish words are either words without meaning, empty jargon, or words of bad meaning, the vehicles of filth, insubordination, and blasphemy. Bishop Horne well remarks that, "Among the sources of those innumerable

calamities which from age to age have overwhelmed mankind, may be reckoned as one of the principal, the abuse of words."

(No. CXXXIII.)

GOD'S INSPECTION OF THE WORLD.

"The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good." -Prov. xv. 3.

THE language of the Bible is often very anthropomorphitic. It often represents God as having the bodily parts of men-hands, feet, head, back, heart, eyes, ears, tongue, &c. It also sometimes represents Him as having the mental passions of men-revenge, jealousy, indignation, hope, disappointment, regret, &c., &c. All this, of course, is an accommodation to our limited faculties and modes of thought. The text is an instance of this feature of divine revelation, it speaks of the "6 eyes of the Lord." God is a Spirit, an infinite Spirit, and therefore has no parts. The language, however, expresses that which undoubtedly belongs to God, an infinite capacity of discernment. God knows at every moment everything, in every place. The Bible is full of this doctrine. (Psa. cxxxix.; Prov. v. 21; Jer. xvi. 17; 2 Chron. xvi. 9.) The

text suggests a few thoughts concerning God's inspection of

men.

I. The inspection is PERSONAL. He does not inspect men through the eyes of others, but through his own. We often get our knowledge of men from the observation of others. Earthly kings get their knowledge of their subjects thus; but God gets his knowledge of us from Himself. When He comes to judge the world, He will not, like earthly judges, depend for information from the testimony of witnesses. No one will be able to give Him any fresh information. No eloquence will change the judgment that He has formed. He knows all" of Himself."

II. His inspection is UNIVERSAL. "His eyes are in every place." There is no place where they are not: on ocean, or on land, in society, and in solitude, in the bustle of business, and in scenes of recreation; wherever we are his eyes are. We cannot go from those eyes, we cannot escape their glance an instant. If we ascend to heaven, they are there; if we plunge into hell, they are there. They penetrate the lowest abysses; they peer into the profoundest darkness.

III. His inspection is THOROUGE. "Beholding the evil and the good." There is nothing in the history of man that is not either good or evil. There is no third, no neutral quality. He knows all the good and all the evil. In the most incipient, as well as in the most developed, stages "There is not a word on our tongue, but, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether." This subject urges, First: Courage for the good. Ye men of truth and virtue, who struggle here against a mighty odds, take courage under your trials and afflictions. The great Master sees you. His eyes are

(No. CXXXIV.)

urges,

THE SPEECH OF THE WISE AND THE

SPEECH OF THE FOOLISH.

"A wholesome tongue is a tree of life: but perverseness therein is a breach in the spirit. The lips of the wise disperse knowledge: but the heart of the foolish doeth not so."-Prov. xv. 4 and 7.

It would seem that Solomon could not say enough about speech; it occurs to him again and again. As he thinks of it, some new point strikes him, and he notes it down. Let us notice what he here says about the speech of the wise and the foolish :

I. THE SPEECH OF THE WISE. First: It is a healing speech. The wholesome tongue, or, literally, as in the margin, a healing tongue, is a tree of life. There are wounded souls in society; souls wounded by insults, slanders, bereavements, disappointments, losses, moral conviction.

There is a speech that is healing to those wounds, and that speech is used by the wise. There are societies, too, that are wounded by divisions, animosities; the social body bleeds. There is a speech which heals social divisions, and the wise employ it. Secondly: It is a living speech. "It is a tree of life." It is at once the product

and producer of life. The speech of the wise is not the vehicle of sapless platitudes, it is the offspring of living conviction. It is a germ falling from the evergrowing tree of living thought, and it produces life, too. "Cast forth," says Carlyle, "thy act, thy word, into the everlasting, evergrowing universe: it is a seedgrain that cannot die, unnoticed to-day; it will be found flourishing as a banyan grove-perhaps, alas! as a hemlock forest, after a thousand years." But the word of the wise is not as a hemlock seed; it is a seed that falls from that tree of life, which is to be the healing of the nations. Thirdly: It is an enlightening speech. The lips of the wise disperse knowledge." The words of the wise are beams reflected from the great Sun of Truth, and they break upon the darkness with which error has clouded the world. Solomon was himself an exemplification of this enlightening speech. "He taught the people knowledge; yea, he gave good heed, and sought out, and set in order many proverbs. The preacher sought to find out acceptable words; and that which was written was upright, even words of truth." (Eccles. xii.

9, 10.)

kill people, and their authors should be denounced as murderers. The poison of asps is on their lips, and their words instil it into the constitutions of men. Secondly: The speech of the foolish is an empty speech. "The heart of the foolish doeth not so." The heart is here the antithesis to the lips. The meaning unquestionably is, that the foolish man does not disperse knowledge, but that the wise does. The fool has no knowledge to disperse. He has never sought after knowledge, therefore is ignorant; and, being ignorant, his speech cannot enlighten.

(No. CXXXV.)

DIVERSE FAMILIES.

"A fool despiseth his father's instruction: but he that regardeth reproof is prudent. In the house of the righteous is much treasure: but in the revenues of the wicked is trouble."-Prov. xv. 5, 6.

THESE two verses are a domestic sketch. Two families appear before us. In the one there is filial

folly; in the other, filial wisdom: in the one, enjoyable riches; in the other, troublesome wealth.

I. THERE IS FILIAL FOLLY AND FILIAL WISDOM. Notice-First:

Filial folly. "A fool despiseth

his father's instruction." A father's instruction is the best

kind of instruction. (1.) The instruction of authority. A father has a right to instruct his child. The great God expects it of him. "Train up a child in the way he should go," &c. (2.) It is the instruction of experience.

He seeks to give to his child what he has learnt not merely from books or from other men, but from his own long and tried life. (3.) It is the instruction of love. Who feels a deeper interest in his son than he? His counsels are those dictated by the deepest and di

vinest affections of the human heart. What egregious folly it is for a son to despise such instructions? Despise-not merely neglect, or reject, but to regard it with contempt. A state of mind lost to everything that is true and noble in sentiment. Secondly: There is filial wisdom. "He that regardeth reproof is prudent"-wise. It is wise because it is one of the best means (1) to avoid the evils of life. A father's instruction points out the slippery places in the path of life, the rocks ahead on the voyage. (2) It is the best means to attain the possible good. A father's instruction will point to the direction where the good things lie. He is wise, therefore, to attend to such instructions.

II. THERE IS ENJOYABLE RICHES AND TROUBLESOME WEALTH. First: There is enjoyable riches. "In the house of the righteous is much treasure." Whatever is possessed in the house of the righteous, whether children, friends, books, money, is a treasure. A little that a righteous man hath is better than the riches of many wicked. The righteous man enjoys what he has. His treasures have been righteously won, are righteously held, and righteously used, and in all he has righteous enjoyment. Secondly: There is troublesome wealth. "In the revenues of the wicked is trouble." The wealth of the wicked, instead of yielding real happiness engenders anxieties, jealousies, appre hensions, and greatly trouble the spirit. The wicked man often in getting his riches has trouble; he has to go against the dictates of his conscience, and to war with the nobler instincts of his being. In keeping them, too, he has trouble. He holds them with a nervous grasp, fearing lest they should be snatched from his grasp. In leaving them he has

trouble. This wealth gives terror to his dying-bed. "There is a

sore evil which I have seen under

the sun, namely, riches kept for the owners thereof, to their hurt."

UNUTTERABLE GROANS.

How comes it to pass that groans made in men by God's Spirit cannot be uttered? I find two reasons thereof. First, because these groans are so low and little, so frail, faint, and feeble, so next to nothing, these stillborn babes only breathe without crying. Secondly, because much diversity, yea, contrariety, of passion is crowded within the compass of a groan, they are stayed from being expressive, and the groans become unutterable. How happy is their condition who have God for their interpreter! who not only understand what they do, but what they would say. Daniel could tell the meaning of the dream which Nebuchadnezzar had forgotten. God knows the meaning of those groans which never as yet knew their own meaning, and understands the sense of those sighs which never understood themselves.-Meditations on all Kinds of Prayer. THOMAS FULLER.

VARNISH.

Varnish, varnish; if a thing have grown so rotten that it yawns palpably, and is so inexpressibly ugly that the eyes of the very populace discern and detect it, bring out a new pot of varnish, with the requisite supply of putty, and lay it on handsomely. Don't spare varnish; how well it will all look in a few

Varnish

days if laid on well! alone is cheap and is safe; avoid carpentering, chiselling, sawing, and hammering on the old quiet house; dryrot is in it, who knows how deep? don't disturb the old beams and junctures: varnish, varnish, if you will be blessed by God and men! This is called the constitutional system, conservative system, and other fine names; and then at last has its fruitssuch as we see. Mendacity hanging in the very air we breathe; all men become unconsciously, or half or wholly consciously, liars to their own souls and to other men's; grimacing, finessing, periphrasing, in continual hypocrisy of word, by way of varnish to continual past, present, future misperformance of thing; clearly sincere about nothing whatever, except in silence, about the appetites of their own huge belly, and the readiest method of assuaging these. THOMAS CARLYLE.