indignantly he flung back the warning admonition of his Master, and replied, "If I should die with thee, I will not deny thee in any wise," Mark xiv. 31; and yet before the cock crew twice, he denied him thrice. Never was Saul more elated than when, urgent on his high-minded mission, with hot, burning zeal, he bitterly breathed out "threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord," and yet it was then that he fell to the very ground, Acts ix. Often have I quoted, and often do I yet hope to quote, the wellknown lines of honest John Bunyan :

"He that is down needs fear no fall;

He that is low no pride;

He that is humble ever shall

Have God to be his guide."

Now, think not that I mean to censure or repress any lively emotions of zeal, any ardent desires to do more than ordinary for God's glory and man's good that may spring up either in your heart or mine; for that is not the case. It is only when this zeal and these desires make us discontented with our station, and disqualify us for our plain, common-place, and intelligible duties, that I would suspect the presence of that pride which requires to be humbled. Oh! it is a precious thing to possess an humble and willing mind,

ready to do God's bidding, not only in carving the top stones of the temple, but also in hewing wood and drawing water.

The higher we climb, the greater is our danger; the faster we run, the more likely are we to stumble. It may be that a sudden sense of my peculiar infirmities has abated the sky-scraping attitude of mind in which I began to pen down these observations, and made me more than usually afraid of high-mindedness; but it seems as though it would be, at this moment, a relief to me to take the lowest place; to sit in the gate with Mordecai, rather than with Haman to approach the throne of the king Ahasuerus. Old Humphrey is in his altitudes no longer, and his parting words are not, "Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, rejoice!" Phil. iv. 4; but rather, "Let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall," 1 Cor. x. 12; and, "Be not high-minded, but fear," Rom. xi. 20.

ON THE GAY DREAMS OF

YOUTH.

IT is said that "men are but children fully grown;" and if I were to be asked in what childish amusements they mostly indulge, I would say, in the game of bubble-blowing. We begin to blow our bubbles early in childhood, and we keep it up, with little intermission, to old age.

With what delight does the young urchin gaze on the glittering globe of soap and water that he has fairly launched into the air! There it goes! mounting up with the breeze that blows, and again descending low. One moment as high as the house, and at another almost touching the ground. Onward! onward it holds its course, escaping every danger, till, at last, it bursts as it strikes against the edge of a tombstone in an adjoining churchyard.

The bubbles of our after years too, bear a strong family likeness to those of our childhood. Some burst as soon as blown. Some vanish suddenly in the air; and if any of them mount over

the churchyard wall, they are sure to disappear amid the tombs.

“Wishing" is a losing game to all who play at it; and yet, who is there that altogether refrains? I never heard but of one man who could say, I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content," Phil iv. 11.

Let us take a stripling from among the many who are, at this moment, banqueting on the airy food of future greatness; who are, in other words, engaged in bubble-blowing, and enter for a moment into his golden dreams. It is true, he may

He

be poor; but the Rothschilds were not always rich, though, at last, they amassed millions. has heard of Whittington, a poor friendless lad, quitting London with his bundle in his hand, and turning back again to wealth and renown, beckoned by the bells ringing out musically, as he fancied, the words,

"Turn again, Whittington,

Thrice Lord Mayor of London."

Why, it is very possible that, some day, he may be as great a man as Whittington, who had only a cat with which to make his fortune. Not that he has, at present, any very bright prospects before him in real life; but that only renders the more bright the vision of his fancy.

Well, then, it is a settled thing with him that he will be a merchant, and sail the seas in a ship of his own, carrying out beads to barter with Africans for ivory and ostrich feathers; and bales of cloth to exchange for gold. There is no preventing his future prosperity; he will soon become rich, in his own imagination, and ride in a coach and six!

And now the bubble is at its height! Poor fellow! what a pity that he cannot keep it in the air! Alas! down it must come, breaking against the very ground. The poor lad works at a trade, marries early, has a large family; his health fails him, his friends forsake him; want springs upon him like an armed man, he becomes sick and infirm, and he receives pay from the parish.

Or, suppose his youthful dream to be of another kind his bubble, though equally frail with that I have already blown for him, may take a different direction. He is studious and fond of books, and it may be that he is poetical. Say that Chevy Chase, or the ballad of the Children in the Wood, first lures him to the flowery pathways of poesy. He reads, grows abstracted and imaginative, and "mutters his wayward fancies" as he goes. Goldsmith wins him, Cowper and Montgomery delight him, Gray fires him, and Byron works him up almost to frenzy, and it is well if