useful to me, I should prefer a firm religious belief to every other blessing; for it makes life a discipline of goodness,-creates new hopes, when all hopes vanish; and throws over the decay, the destruction of existence, the most gorgeous of all lights, awakens life even in death, and from corruption and decay calls up beauty and divinity; makes an instrument of torture and of shame the ladder of ascent to paradise; and far above all combinations of earthly hopes, calls up the most delightful visions and plains and amaranths, the gardens of the blest, the security of everlasting joys, where the sensualist and the sceptic view only gloom, decay, annihilation, and despair.-Davy.

BELIEF.-The Flower and Fruit of Religious

The living belief which has really been implanted in the soil of thought and feeling, cannot but bear its proper flower and fruit in the moral and intellectual life of a thoughtful and earnest man.-Canon Liddon.

BELIEF.-The Foundation of

Belief rests upon evidence of the kind that is not absolutely demonstrative, or irresistible; hence it is susceptible of various degrees of strength, proportioned either to the intrinsic force of the evidence, or to the power of the understanding to perceive its force.-I. Taylor.

BELIEF-General.

Upon the great field of human life, belief is the general rule; disbelief belongs only to the exceptions from that rule; he, therefore, who always believes, will be much less often in the wrong than he who always doubts.-I. Taylor.

BELIEF-Influenced by Passion.

Men easily believe what their passions suggest to them, and the weakest reasons which persuade them are to them demonstrations. After they have thus deceived themselves, the decisive way wherewith they discourse of what they believe serves to deceive others, or at least they fancy they have persuaded them with reasons the weakness whereof would be palpable if they were free from passion.-Leclerc

BELIEF.-Irrational

He is a fool who believes he knows neither what nor why.-Feltham.

BELIEF.-Men Easy of

Men may indeed be too easy of belief; but it is just as great a weakness to be too full of suspicion. Reverence for antiquity may impose upon us; but fondness for novelty may do the same thing.-Bridges.

BELIEF.-Rational

Rational belief stands mid-way between credulity and scepticism; both of which are faults, as well of the understanding as of the temper.-I. Taylor. BELIEF.-An Unclouded

In all the articles comprised in the Creed, the sky of my belief is serene, unclouded by doubt. Would to God that my faith, which works on the whole man, confirming and conforming, were but in just proportion to my belief-to the full acquiescence of my intellect, and the deep consent of my conscience!S. T. Coleridge.

BELIEFS.-The Characterestic Influence of

Brutes act from blind

All intelligent actions are resolvable into beliefs. impulse, man from motives; and motives imply beliefs. All moral character is built upon, and ever modified by beliefs.-Dr. Thomas.

BELIEVER.-The Assertion of a

It is a great assumning to say-"I am a believer," for in this same breath you say "I am born of God, I am a heaven-born creature, I am of a divine original; I am stamped with His image; I am governed by His Spirit."-Howe.

BELIEVER.-The Happiness of a

All joy to the believer! He can speak—

Trembling, yet happy, confident yet meek

"Since the dear hour that brought me to Thy foot,
And cut up all my follies by the root,

I never trusted in an arm but Thine,

Nor hoped but in Thy righteousness divine:
My prayers and alms, imperfect and defiled,
Were but the feeble efforts of a child;
Howe'er performed, it was their brightest part
That they proceeded from a grateful heart;
Cleansed in Thine own all-purifying blood,
Forgive their evil and accept their good;
I cast them at Thy feet; my only plea

Is what it was-dependence upon Thee;

While struggling in the vale of tears below,

That never failed, nor shall it fail me now.-Cowper.

BELIEVER.-The Preference of a

God knows I had rather be a believer than a king.-T. Adams.

BELIEVING. The Means of

There are three means of believing:-by inspiration, by reason, and by custom. Christianity, which is the only rational institution, does yet admit none for its sons who do not believe by inspiration. Nor does it injure reason or custom, or debar them of their proper force: on the contrary, it directs us to open our minds by the proofs of the former, and to confirm our minds by the authority of the latter.-Pascal.

BELL.-The Curfew

Solemnly, mournfully,

Dealing its dole,

The curfew bell

Is beginning to toll.

Cover the embers,

And put out the light;
Toil comes with the morning,
And rest with the night.

Dark grow the windows,

And quenched is the fire;

Sound fades into silence,-
All footsteps retire.

No voice in the chambers,
No sound in the hall;
Sleep and oblivion

BELL.-The Mission of the

BELL.-The Passing

Reign over all!-Longfellow.

Lift it gently to the steeple,
Let our bell be set on high;
There fulfil its daily mission,
Midway 'twixt the earth and sky.
As the birds sing early matins
To the God of Nature's praise,
This its nobler daily music

To the God of Grace shall raise.
And when evening shadows soften
Chancel-cross, and tower, and aisle,
It shall blend its vesper summons
With the day's departing smile.
Year by year the steeple music

O'er the tended graves shall pour

Where the dust of saints is garnered,

Till the Master comes once more.-Neale.

Every man's passing bell hangs in his own steeple. We begin to die as soon as ever we begin to live.-W. Secker.

Hark! 'tis the bell with solemn toll,

That speaks the spirit's flight

From earth to realms of endless day,
Or everlasting night!-Gisborne.

BELL.-The Striking of the

The bell strikes one. We take no note of time
But from its loss.-Dr. E. Young.

BELLS.-An Address to

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying clouds, the frosty light;
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow;
The year is going-let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Ring out a slowly dying cause,

And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

BELLS.-Evening

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;

Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,

Ring in the Christ that is to be.-Tennyson.

Those evening bells! those evening bells!
How many a tale their music tells,
Of youth, of home, and that sweet time
When last I heard their soothing chime.

Those joyous hours are passed away;
And many a heart that then was gay,
Within the tomb now darkly dwells,
And hears no more those evening bells.

And so 'twill be when I am gone-
That tuneful peal will still ring on;

While other bards shall wake these dells,

And sing your praise, sweet evening bells !-T. Moore.

BELLS.-The Music of

To my mind there is no music so delightful as that of the Church bells, provided there is nothing in the occasion of their being rung which grates upon one's feelings. The music speaks to us as no other music does or can. What call is there more eloquent than the chimes "going for Church?" What voice more reproachful than theirs to one who disobeys their summons? What sound so solemn as the deep-toned knell? What so happy as the marriage peal? What joys and sorrows, what hopes and fears, the dear old Church bells can tell of! How the old memories of half-forgotten home-scenes come back to us when we listen to their merry Christmas ringing! Nothing like them to fill the armchairs that have so long stood empty-to tenant the old places with the once familiar forms which have long gone from us! Nothing like them to revive the bright and happy hours that are past! What a joyful song of thanksgiving they sang at our harvest festival last year! And what joyful hope there was in their music at Easter!-Field.

BELLS. Sabbath

Sweet Sabbath bells! I love your voice,
Still saying to my heart "rejoice!"
Whether from lofty spire ye sound,
With paven streets and towers around;
Or chime the gentler village bells,
O'er meadows green and leafy dells;—
Ye seem to speak a world at peace,
Where toil and care a season cease-

A holy rest, a joyous hour,

A stainless calm where no clouds lower,
Gladness and love to earth come down,
And smiling heaven without a frown;
A triumph over sin and woe,
(Sweet gift!) a Sabbath sent below,
Whence heaven-born faith may re-ascend,
And view the God of all our friend:
Sweet Sabbath bells! Ye speak to me,

Pure joy and tranquil ecstasy!-Edmeston.

BELLS.-The Sound of

Of all sound of all bells-bells, the music nighest bordering upon heaven— most solemn and touching is the peal which rings out the old year. I never hear it without a gathering-up of my mind to a concentration of all the images that have been diffused over the past twelvemonth; all I have done or suffered, performed or neglected, in that regretted time.-Lamb.

BELLS.-The Village

Oh, merry are the village bells that sound with soothing chime

From the dim old tower, grown grey beneath the shadowy touch of Time! They give a murmur of delight to earth, and sky, and seas,

That mingles with the running streams, and floats upon the breeze.

BELLS.-Wedding

Hear the mellow wedding bells,

Golden bells!

What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!

Through the balmy air of night

How they ring out their delight!
From the molten golden notes,
And all in tune,

What a liquid ditty floats

To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats
On the moon!

Oh, from out the sounding cells,
What a gush of euphony voluminously wells!
How it swells!

How it dwells

On the Future! how it tells

Of the rapture that impels

To the swinging and the ringing

Of the bells, bells, bells,

To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells !-Poe.

BENEVOLENCE.-Definitions of

Carrington.

Benevolence is not merely a feeling, but a principle; not a dream of rapture for the fancy to indulge in, but a business for the hand to execute.-Dr. Chalmers.

Benevolence the minister of God.-Carlyle.