PITHY PAPERS.

ON

THINGS THAT COST NOTHING.

If you are in the habit of calling to mind your mercies, and of gratefully acknowledging them, you will not take it amiss that I should refresh your memory by adding to the long list a few that may have escaped your recollection. In a word, you will not object to my reminding you, and my own heart also, of some of the many good things we enjoy which cost us nothing.

We pay, and in many cases smartly too, for what we obtain from our fellow-creatures. I dare say that, whether your years have been few or many, you have never yet met with those who have offered to provide you with food, clothing, or habitation, without payment. Such things are quite out of the question, and this I say without

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the slightest reflection upon humanity. The comforts and conveniences, the bits and drops, we get from our fellow men ought to be requited. Not that there are no good Samaritans in the world, ever ready to supply oil and wine to the afflicted and destitute; to convey them, as it were, to some friendly inn; with a liberal hand to take out "twopence," or as much as may be required, to give to the host on such occasions, with a generous promise as to any further outlay: but these are individual cases of kindness and peculiarity, and will not apply to mankind at large. As a general principle, the commonest food, the coarsest raiment, and the meanest habitations of humanity, are charged to the uttermost farthing. We can reasonably expect valuable gifts from our heavenly Father alone.

Hurried on by hourly occupations, and taken up with daily cares, we seldom look over the lengthy catalogue of gracious gifts that God in his goodness has bestowed. Were we more frequently to catechise ourselves than we do in these things—were we, as schoolboys repeat their past lessons, to number up our past and present mercies, it would prove a most profitable employment. Let us call to mind a few of our bountifully bestowed blessings now.

And first comes the grateful sense of our exist