BETTER THOUGHTS FOE QUIET MOMENTS.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XVI, Issue 294, 10 December 1881, Page 4

BETTER THOUGHTS FOE QUIET MOMENTS.

No one is so blind to his own faults as a man who has the habit of detecting the faults of others.

To rejoice in others' prosperity is to give content to your own lot ; to mitigate another's grief is to alleviate or dispel your own.

Revenge is a momentary triumph, in which the satisfaction dies at once, and is succeeded by remorse ; whereaß forgiveness, which is the noblest of all levenge, entails a perpetual pleasure. You cannot make yourself better by iimply resolving to be better at some time, any more than a farmer can plough his field by simply turning it over in his mind. A good resolution ia a fine starting point, but as a terminus it has bo value.

The great art of those who have to act for and with the young ib to combine in just proportions and wholesome circumstances the dee amount of pleasure with the right amount of dnty. The fashion of the day goes more end more to giving too much pleasure to the young and demanding too little duty. More important than the ttiog you do may be the discipline of tho doing. The highest element* 9t vfc&iji&ier, of

power, and dignity lie within the reach of the lowest and the poorest You are not prajing to the brazen heavens, to the answering rock, to a Cretan Jove, to an unjußt judge, but to Ono who treasures up your prayers, who lets not a tear fall to the ground without liis notice, and who in Sis own good time and way will fulfil a better purpose than your most exalted imagination has ever conceived.

r Jrae bevevolence seeks the benefit of its object ; true affection finds its highest happiness in loving ; true excellence ia most concerned about the value of its work.

Human life is nofc meant to be a garden. Our first parents were expelled from Eden, and none of their posterity nave beea born in a garden since. "We are born under conditions tha* imply more or less trial in the shape of temp utions, and we are t~» live »;nd bring up our children as if life were a discipline.

TLe end of a man is an aciion and not a thought, though it were of the noblest.

We can hardly make a greater mis take than to im *gine that those have most joy who have least sorrow.

Anaer is a mere aaimal impulse. Indignation comes in when that impulse has been adopted by the reason and moral sentiments, and has become a mere rational revolt from evil. "When, therefore, a man is assailed by wrong, he has a right to feel anger ; but he has no right to carry it on. Do not let the s-n go down before you have looked over, and put on this m< ral ground, and held in and regulated the temper of" your mind.

You iiiust bear the common fate of humanity. Temptation will come from duties as well as from wrong-doing. It wilt come from that which is right as well as from that which ia wroDg. It will come from yourselves. In this school we shall have become so educated that in another and brighter realm nobler duties, uader better circumßtan cos, will await us. For every tear we shall have a diamond, and an eternity of blessedness for a hand's breath of schooling and practising against evil.