T. S. Arthur

“ I would rather grope in the vale of poverty all my life, and keep my conscience clean, than stand high up among the mountains of prosperity with a taint thereon.
"God knows best," he added, after a pause, speaking in a more subdued tone. "And I recognize the hand of His good providence in this wreck of my worldly hopes. To gain riches at the sacrifice of just principles is to gather up dirt and throw away goodly pearls."
"How is it with your family?" I asked. "They must feel the change severely."
"They did feel it. But the pain is over with them also. Poor weak human nature! ”

“ How wonderful is its affection for light—taking in the rays eagerly, dissolving them, and sending them forth again to gladden the eyes in rich prismatic beauty! And to what mental quality must the diamond correspond? As it loves the sun's rays, in which are heat and light—must it not correspond to the affection of things good and true?—heat being of love, and light of truth or wisdom? The wearer of diamonds, then, should have in her heart the heavenly affection to which they correspond. She should be loving and wise. ”

“ Fanshaw," continued his friend, "that you have not tested your faith by higher and better things—by things real and substantial."
"What is more real than a house, or a ship, or a bill of exchange?" asked Mr. Fanshaw.
"Imperishable love—incorruptible integrity—unflinching honor," was replied.
"Do these exist?" Mr. Fanshaw looked incredulous.
"We know that they exist. You know that they exist. History, observation, experience, reason, all come to the proof. We doubt but in the face of conviction. Are these not higher and nobler things than wealth, or worldly honors; than place or power? ”

“ I followed, for a sudden fear came into my heart.
"Edward! what ails you? Are you sick?" I heard my mother ask, in an alarmed voice, as I came into her room. My father had laid himself across the bed, and his face was concealed by a pillow, into which it was buried deeply.
"Edward! Edward! Husband! What is the matter? Are you ill?"
"Oh, father! dear father!" I cried, adding my voice to my mother's, and bursting into tears. I grasped his hand; it was very cold. I leaned over, and, pressing down the pillow, touched his face. ”

“ She was sitting with her eyes cast down, and a look of sorrow on her pale, thin face—I had not before re-marked the signs of emaciation—that touched me deeply.
"Polly," said I, with as much kindness of tone as I could express, "it is the lot of all to have trouble, and each heart knows its own bitterness. But on some the trouble falls with a weight that seems impossible to be borne. And this is your case. Yet it only seems to be so, for as our day is, so shall our strength be. ”

“ And your love would confer upon its precious object the richest blessings. Dear friend! Lift your thoughts a little way above the clouds that sorrow has gathered around your heart, and let perception come into an atmosphere radiant with light from the Sun of Truth. Think of your child as destined to become, in the better world to which God has removed him, a wise and loving angel. ”

“ Markland began to feel ashamed of his momentary weakness. But, he was not now, wholly, at the mercy of the guests who had so long tormented him. Compassion, Good-will and Kindness were now his guests also; and they had other and pleasanter suggestions for his mind. The child's "God bless you, sir," they repeated over and over again, softening the young voice, and giving it increasing power to awaken tender and loving states which had formed themselves in earlier and purer years. Tranquility, so long absent from his soul, came in, now, through the entrance made by Compassion. ”

“ If there has been no genuine love of the neighbor—no self-abnegation—no self-denial for the good of others, all the rest will go for nothing, and you will pass over to abide forever with spirits of a like quality with your own.
Who made us your judge? We judge no man! But only point to the law of Christian life as given by God himself. If you wish to dwell with him, you must obey his laws; and obedience to these will make you nothing less than a Christian gentleman—that is, a gentleman in heart as well as in appearance. ”

“ When a man sets himself up to be of better quality than we, and calls himself by a name significant of heavenly virtue, we judge him, naturally, by his own standard, and watch him very closely. If he remain as hard, as selfish, as exacting, and as eager after money as before, we do not put much faith in his profession, and are very apt to class him with hypocrites. His praying, and fine talk about faith, and heavenly love, and being washed from all sin, excite in us contempt rather than respect. We ask for good works, and are never satisfied with anything else. ”

“ Lowe that she gazes down, wonder and admiration mingling with awe and self-accusation.
There is a slight convulsive cough, with a fleeting spasm. The white lips are stained. Mrs. Lowe shudders. The stain is wiped off, and all is still as before. Now the slanting sun rays touch the pillows, close beside the white face, lighting it with a glory that seems not of the earth. They fade, and life fades with them, going out as they recede. With the last pencil of sunbeams passes the soul of Mary Carson.
"It is over!" The physician breathes deeply, and moves backwards from the bed. ”

“ Your child would have grown to manhood intellectually, as well as bodily. And you would not have had it otherwise. Growth—development—the going on to perfection, are the laws of life; and more emphatically so as appertaining to the life of the human soul. That life, in all its high activities, burns still in the soul of your lost darling, and he will grow, in the world of angelic spirits to which our Father has removed him, up to the full stature of an angel, a glorified form of intelligence and wisdom. He cannot linger in feeble babyhood ”

“ Then Doubt and Distrust crept in through the unguarded door, and soon after their entrance Markland began to think uneasily of the future; to fear lest the foundations of worldly prosperity were not sure. These troublesome guests were busiest in the night season, haunting his mind with strange pictures of disasters, and with suggestions touching the arbitrary power of God, whom he feared when the thought of him was present, but did not love. "Whom He will He setteth up, and whom He will He casteth down." ”

“ But we cannot help thinking of the quality when we look upon its sign. With a beautiful face, when first seen, do we not always associate a beautiful soul? And when a lady adorns herself with the most beautiful and costly things in nature, how can we help looking, to see whether they correspond to things in her mind! For one, I cannot; and so, almost involuntarily, I keep turning my eyes upon Miss Harvey, and looking for signs of her quality. ”

“ Markland went back into his counting-room, almost wondering at the peace he felt. Taking up a newspaper, he read of a rare specimen of statuary just received from Italy, the property of a well-known merchant. Envy did not move quickly enough. The old love of beauty and nature, which envy, detraction, greed of gain, and their blear-eyed companions, had kept in thrall, was already in a freer state; and found in good-will, kindness and tranquility, congenial friends. ”

“ Does it not show you that, amid all human wrong and disaster, the hand of Providence moves in wise adjustment, and ever out of evil educes good, ever through loss in some lower degree of life brings gain to a higher degree? Consider how, in an unpremeditated way, you are brought into contact with a stranger, and how his life and experience touching yours, give out a spark that lights a candle in your soul to illumine chambers where scarcely a ray had shone before ”

“ The first are made in an instant of time, and often pass as quickly; the latter are slowly wrought in the loom of life, through daily experience and careful thought. Herein lies the ground of my faith in God;—it is an inwrought conviction. First I had the child's sweet faith transfused into my soul with a mother's love, and unshadowed by a single doubt. Then, on growing older, as I read the Bible, which I believe to be God's word, I saw that its precepts were divine, and so the child's faith was succeeded by rational sight. ”

“ The easy touch of Mrs. Grant did not awaken her. So she called louder, and shook the sleeper more vigorously. At this, Mary started up, and looked around in a half-conscious, bewildered manner. Her cheeks were like scarlet.
"Come, dear—tea is ready," said Mrs. Grant.
"Oh! Yes." And Mary, not yet clearly awake, started to leave the room instead of approaching the table.
"Where are you going, child?" Mrs. Grant caught her arm.
Mary stood still, looking at Mrs. Grant, in a confused way.
"Tea is ready." Mrs. Grant spoke slowly and with emphasis. ”

“ Doubt and Distrust only heralded the coming of Fear, Anxiety, Solicitude, Suspicion, Despondency, Foreboding. Markland had only to open his eyes and look around him, to see, on every hand, the unsightly wrecks of palaces once as fair to the eye as that which he had raised with such labor and forethought, and as he contemplated these, Doubt, Distrust, and their companions, filled his mind with alarming thoughts, and so oppressed him with a sense of insecurity that, at times, he saw the advancing shadows of misfortune on his path. ”

“ Is there not a hunger of the soul as well as of the body? May we not be spiritually athirst, and strangers?—naked, sick, and in prison? This being so, can we confidently look for the invitation, 'Come, ye blessed of my Father, if our regard for the neighbor have not reached beyond his bodily life? If we have never considered his spiritual wants and sufferings, and ministered thereto according to our ability? Just in the degree that the soul is more precious than the body, is the degree of our responsibility under this more interior signification of Scripture. ”

“ The religion that makes a man a better husband, father, man of business, lawyer, doctor, or preacher, I reverence, for it is genuine, as the lives of those who accept it do testify. But your hypocritical pretenders I scorn and execrate."
"It is, perhaps, almost too strong language, this, as applied to Mr. Gray," said I.
"What is a hypocrite?" asked the merchant.
"A man who puts on the semblance of Christian virtues which he does not possess."
"And that is what Mr. Gray does when he assumes to be religious. A true Christian is just. ”

“ In dispensation, not in possession, lies the secret of enjoyment; a fact which nature illustrates in a thousand ways, and to which every man's experience gives affirmation. "Very good doctrine for the idle and thriftless," said Mr. Henry Steel, a gentleman of large wealth, in answer to a friend, who had advanced the truth we have expressed above.
"As good doctrine for them as for you," was replied. "Possession must come before dispensation. It is not the receiver but the dispenser who gets the higher blessing." ”

“ No amount of worldly riches could give me the deep satisfaction I now possess. As for the false friend who robbed me, I leave him in the hands of the all-wise Disposer of events. He will not find, in ill-gotten gain, a blessing. It will not make his bed soft; nor his food sweet to the taste. A just and righteous God will trouble his peace, and make another's possessions the burden of his life."
"But that will not benefit you," said Mr. Fanshaw. "His suffering will not make good your loss."
"My loss is made good already. I have no complaint against Providence. ”

“ My mother repeated the injunction, and I flew down stairs with the order for James, our waiter, to go in all haste for the family physician. When I returned, my mother, her face wet with tears, was endeavoring to remove some of my father's outer garments. Together we took off his coat, waistcoat and boots, he making no resistance, and appearing to be in partial stupor, as if under the influence of some drug. We chafed his hands and feet, and bathed his face, that wore a deathly aspect, and used all the means in our power to rekindle the failing spark of life. ”

“ Like their father, they could not bear prosperity. But all is changed now. Misfortune has restored them to a better state of mind. They emulate each other in service at home; their minds dwell on useful things; they are tender of their mother and considerate of their father. Home is a sweeter place to us all than it has been for a long time."
"And so what the world calls misfortune has proved a blessing."
"Yes. In permitting my feet to stumble; in letting me fall from the height I had obtained, God dealt with me and mine in infinite love. We give false names to things. ”

“ If we leave wide open the doors of our houses, or neglect to fasten them in the night season, thieves and robbers will enter and despoil us at will. So if we leave the heart, unguarded, enemies will come in. But if we open the door only to good affections—which are guests—then we shall dwell in peace and safety. We have all opened the door for enemies; or let them enter through unguarded portals. They are in all the heart's guest-chambers. They possess the very citadel of life; and the measure of their possession is the measure of our unhappiness.
Markland was an unhappy man ”

“ In some families they are treated with a thoughtful kindness, in strong contrast with what they receive in other families. If sensitive and retiring, they learn to be very chary about asking for anything beyond what is conceded, and bear, rather than suggest or complain."
"I've no patience with that kind of sensitiveness," replied Mrs. Lowe; "it's simply ridiculous; and not only ridiculous, but wrong. Is every sewing-girl who comes into your house to be treated like an honored guest?" ”