enjoy it with a meek, cheerful, thankful heart. I will tell you, scholar, I have heard a grave divine say that God has two dwellings, one in heaven, and the other in a meek and thankful heart; which Almighty God grant to me and to my honest scholar! And so you are welcome to Tottenham Iligh Cross.

THE SPOTLESS CHARACTER OF CHRIST.

JEREMY TAYLOR,

[When the Pilgrims landed on the rock at Plymouth,

Jeremy Taylor was a boy seven years of age. He becanis divines. His writings are described as possessing an almost tion of the character of Christ has probably never been

one of the most eloquent and imaginative of all the English angelic purity of feeling and delicacy of fancy. His delinea

equaled.]

of it, he would be so transported and amazed, and so admire the glory of it, that he would not willingly turn his eyes from that first ravishing object to behold all the other various beauties this world could present to him. And this, and many other like blessings, we enjoy daily. And for most of them, because they be so common, most men forget to pay their praises; but let not us, because it is a sacrifice so pleasing to him that made that sun and us, and still protects us, and gives us flowers, and showers, and stomachs, and meat, and content, and leisure to go a-fishing. Well, scholar, I have almost tired myself, and, I fear, more than almost tired you. But I now sce Tottenham High Cross, and our short walk thither will put a period to my too long discourse, in which my meaning was, and is, to plant that in your mind with which I labor to possess my own soul; that is, a meek and thankful heart. And to that end I have showed you that riches without them (meekness and thankfulness) do not make any man happy; but let me tell you that riches with them remove many fears and cares. And, therefore, my advice is, that you endeavor to be honestly rich or contentedly poor; but be sure that your riches be justly got, or you spoil all; for it is well said by Caussin, "He that loses his conscience has nothing left that is worth keeping." Therefore, be sure you look to that. But his nature was so sweet, his manAnd, in the next place, look to your ners so humble, his words so wise and health, and if you have it, praise God, composed, his comportment so gravo and value it next to a good conscience; and winning, his answers so reasonable, for health is the second blessing that his questions so deep, his reproof so se we mortals are capable of a blessing vere and charitable, his pity so great that money can not buy-and, therefore, and merciful, his preaching so full of value it, and be thankful for it. As reason and holiness, of weight and aufor money (which may be said to be the thority, his conversation so useful and third blessing), neglect it not; but note, beneficent, his poverty great, but his that there is no necessity of being alms frequent, his family so holy and rich; for I told you there be as many religious, his and their employment so miseries beyond riches as on this side profitable, his meekness so incomparablo, them; and if you have a competence, his passions without difference, sava

BESIDES that God gave testimony from heaven concerning Jesus, he also gave this testimony of himself to have come from God, because that he "did God's will;" for he that is a good man, and lives, by the laws of God and of his nation, a life innocent and simple, prudent and wise, holy and spotless, unreproved and unsuspected, he is certainly by all wise men said, in a good sense, to be the son of God; but he who does well and speaks well, and calls all men to glorify and serve God, and serves no ends but of holiness and charity, of wisdom of hearts and reformation of manners, this man carries great authority in his sayings, and ought to prevail with good men in good things, for good ends, which is all that is here required.

and the authority of his sermons, and his free reproof of their hypocrisy, and his discovery of their false doctrines and weak traditions, he had branded the reputations of the vicious rulers of the people, and they resolved to put him to death, they who had the biggest malice in the world, and the weakest accusations, were forced to support their want of articles against him by making truth to be his fault, and his office to be his crime, and his open confession of what was asked him to be the article of condemnation; and yet, after all this, they could not per suade the competent judge to condemn him, or to find him guilty of any fault; and, therefore, they were forced to threaten him with Cæsar's name, against whom then they would pretend him to be an enemy, though in their charge they neither proved, nor indeed said it against him; and yet to whatsoever they objected he made no return, but his si lence and his innocence were remarkable and evident, without labor and reply, and needed no more arguments than the sun needs an advocate to prove that he is the brightest star in the firmament.

only where zeal or pity carried him on to worthy and apt expressions; a person that never laughed, but often wept in a sense of the calamities of others: he loved every man and hated no man; he gave counsel to the doubtful, and instructed the ignorant; he bound up the broken hearts, and strengthened the feeble knees; he relieved the poor, and converted the sinners; he despised none that came to him for relief, and as for those that did not, he went to them; he took all occasions of mercy that were offered him, and went abroad for more; he spent his days in preaching and healing, and his nights in prayers and conversation with God: he was obedient to the laws and subject to princes, though he was the prince of Judea in right of his mother, and of all the world in right of his father; the people followed him, but he made no conventions, and when they were made, he suffered no tumults; when they would have made him a king, he withdrew himself; when he knew they would put him to death, he offered himself; he knew men's hearts, and conversed secretly, and gave answer to their thoughts, and prevented their questions; he would work a miracle rather than give offense, and yet suffer every offense rather than see God his Father dishonored; he exactly kept the THEY that enter into the state of marlaw of Moses, to which he came to put riage cast a die of the greatest contina period, and yet chose to signify his geney, and yet of the greatest interest purpose only by doing acts of mercy in the world, next to the last throw for upon their Sabbath, doing nothing which eternity. Life or death, felicity or a they could call a breach of a command-lasting sorrow, are in the power of marment, but healing sick people, a charity which themselves would do to beasts, and yet they were angry at him for doing it to their brethren.

In all his life, and in all his conversation with his nation, he was innocent as an angel of light; and when by the greatness of his worth, and the severity of his doctrine, and the charity of his miracles, and the noises of the people, and his immense fame in all that part of the world, and the multitude of his disciples,

MARRIAGE.

JEREMY TAYLOR.

riage. A woman, indeed, ventures most, for she hath no sanctuary to retire to from an evil husband; she must dwell upon her sorrow, and hatch the eggs which her own felly or infelicity hath produced; and she is more under it, bocause her tormentor hath a warrant of prerogative, and the woman may com. plain to God, as subjects do of tyrant princes; but otherwise she hath no ap peal in the causes of unkindness. And, though the man can run from many

hours of his sadness, yet he must return to it again; and when he sits among his neighbors, he remembers the objection that is in his bosom, and he sighs deeply. The boys, and the peddlers, and the fruiterers shall tell of this man when he is carried to his grave, that he lived and lied a poor wretched person.

without love; and if a man be weary of the wise discourses of the apostles, and of the innocency of an even and a private fortune, or hates peace, or a fruitful year, he hath reaped thorns and thistles from the choicest flowers of paradise; for nothing can sweeten felicity itself but love; but when a man The stags in the Greek epigram, whose dwells in love, then the breasts of his wife Inces were clogged with frozen snow are pleasant as the droppings upon the upon the mountains, came down to the hill of Hermon; her eyes are fair as the brooks of the valleys, hoping to thaw light of heaven; she is a fountain sealed, their joints with the waters of the stream; and he can quench his thirst, and ease but there the frost overtook them, and his cares, and lay his sorrows down upon bound them fast in ice, till the young her lap, and can retire home to his sancherdsmen took them in their stranger tuary and refectory, and his gardens of snare. It is the unhappy chance of sweetness and chaste refreshments. No many men, finding many inconveniences man can tell but he that loves his chilupon the mountains of single life, they dren how many delicious accents make descend into the valleys of marriage to a man's heart dance in the pretty conver refresh their troubles; and there they sation of those dear pledges; their childenter into fetters, and are bound to sor-ishness, their stammering, their little row by the cords of a man's or woman's peevishness.

*

*

angers, their innocence, their imperfections, their necessities are so many little emanations of joy and comfort to him that delights in their persons and society.

Man and wife are equally concerned to avoid all offenses of each other in the beginning of their conversation; every ** It is fit that I should infuse a little thing can blast an infant blossom; bunch of myrrh into the festival goblet, and the breath of the south can shake and, after the Egyptian manner, serve the little rings of the vine, when first up a dead man's bones at a feast; I will they begin to curl like the locks of a only show it, and take it away again; new-weaned boy; but when by age and it will make the wine bitter, but wholeconsolidation they stiffen into the hard- some. But those married pairs that live ness of a stem, and have, by the warm as remembering that they must part embraces of the sun and the kisses of again, and give an account how they heaven, brought forth their clusters, treat themselves and each other. shall, they can endure the storms of the north, at that day of their death, be admitted and the loud noises of a tempest, and to glorious espousals; and when they yet never be broken; so are the early shall live again, be married to their Lord, unions of an unfixed marriage-watch- and partake of his glories, with Abraful and observant, jealous and busy, in-ham and Joseph, St. Peter and St. Paul, quisitive and careful, and apt to take alarm at every unkind word. After the hearts of the man and wife are endeared and hardened by a mutual confidence and experience, longer than artifice and pretense can last, there are a great many remembrances, and some things present, that dash all little unkindnesses in pieces. There is nothing can please a man

and all the married saints. All those things that now please us shall pass from us, or we from them; but those things that concern the other life are permanent as the numbers of eternity And although at the resurrection there shall be no relation of husband and wife, and no marriage shall be celebrated but the marriage of the Lamb, yet then shall

filled with joy at its happy surroundings, that it overflows Ye violets tender and sweet roses bright,