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Intellectual Pride.

"THERE is nothing which so perverts the heart, as intellectual pride. The calamities which have most afflicted and debased our race, have sprung from the abuse of the free and gifted intellect. In the perversity of a corrupt will, and in the excesses of a presumptuous understanding, man has frightfully abused the powers entrusted to him for high and holy purposes. Too often, the extent of human knowledge is the measure of human crime. As if to impress indelibly upon the soul of man, the terrible consequences of a presumptuous intellect, a jealous Deity has enforced. the lesson with special revelations. He has not only bestowed upon us the godlike capacity of reason, to collect and compare the fruits of experience, in the ages which have been gathered to the past, but He has suspended the arm of the Cherubim, that we might enter the forbidden paths of paradise, to read, beneath the tree of knowledge, the price of disobedience. And He has unbarred the gates of Heaven itself, that in the fall of the angelic hosts, we might tremble at the instant and irremediable ruin which followed the single sin of thought. One truth, we therefore know that, unaccompanied with an upright heart and a chastened will, with the morality that springs from religion, the measure of man's intellect is the measure of his ruin. The pride of wealth inspires contempt, and the pride of place awakens resentment. They are human follies, and are punished by human measures but the pride of intellect, wherein the gifted wars with the Giver, is a crime which the dread Creator has reserved for special retribution. LIEU. LYNCH'S DEAD SEA.

Virtue is made for difficulties, and grows stronger and brighter for such trials.

Inward Influence of Outward Beauty.

BELIEVE me, there is many a road to our hearts besides our ears and brains: many a sight, and sound, and scent, even of which we have never thought at all, sinks into our memory, and helps to shape our characters: and thus children brought up among beautiful sights and sweet sounds, will most likely show the fruits of their nursing by thoughtfulness, and affection, and nobleness of mind even by the expression of the countenance. Those who live in towns should carefully remember this, for their own sakes, for their wives' sakes, for their childrens' sakes. Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful. Beauty is God's hand-writing-a way-side sacrament: welcome it in every fair face, every fair sky, every fair flower and thank for it, Him, the fountain of all loveliness, and drink it in, simply and earnestly with all your eyes: it is a charmed draught, a cup of blessing.

POLITICS FOR THE PEOPLE.

MAN of the People! not on swords and spears,
Is the reliance of the coming years!
Not by the cannon's throat shall Truth proclaim,
Her mighty mission-not with blood and flame,
Inscribe her lessons in the book of Time;
Her strongest weapons shall be words sublime:
Her armies, thoughts: her banners, printed sheets:
Her captains; voices crying in the streets!

CHARLES MACKAY.

LET the mind's sweetness have its operation,
Upon thy person, clothes and habitation.

George For and his Coadjutors.

BY THOMAS EVANS.

IN tracing the history of the Christian Church, from its earliest establishment, through the periods of its decline, until it reached that long and dark night of apostacy which for ages preceded the Reformation, we find, that in proportion as the life and substance of religion decayed, a multitude of ceremonies were introduced in its place, little, if at all, less onerous than the typical institutions of the Mosaic law. This has ever been the result, when the ingenuity of man has attempted to adorn the simplicity of spiritual religion. There is a natural activity in the human mind, which prompts it to be busy, and can with difficulty submit to that self-renunciation which the Gospel enjoins. It is much easier for a professor of religion to be engaged in the performance of rites and ceremonies, than to yield his heart an entire sacrifice to God. Objects presented to the mind through the medium of the natural senses, produce a powerful impression, and are more easily apprehended, than those truths which are addressed to the intellectual faculties only, and are designed to subdue and control the wayward passions of the human heart. It is not surprising, therefore, that instead of that worship of the Almighty Father, which is in Spirit and in Truth, and which requires the subjection of the will and activity of man, and the prostration of the whole soul in reverent humility before God, a routine of ceremonies and forms should have been substituted, calculated to strike the eye and ear with admiration.

As the period of degeneracy was marked by the great amount and increase of these ceremonies, so, when it pleased the Most High to raise up individuals, and enlighten them to see the existing conceptions, and how far the professed Christian Church had departed from original purity, and to prepare them for in

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struments in working a reformation, one of their first duties, was to draw men off from those rites by which their minds had been unduly occupied, and on which they had too much depended, instead of pressing after experimental religion in the heart.

This, of necessity, was a progressive work. The brightness of meridian day bursts not at once upon the world. There is a gradual increase of light, from its earliest dawn until it reaches its fullest splendour; yet the feeblest ray which first darts through the thick darkness, is the same in its nature with the most luminous blaze. It makes manifest those things, which the Divine controversy is against, and leads back to the state of Gospel simplicity and purity, from which the visible Church has lapsed. And although the light may not be sufficiently clear to discover all the corruptions, nor the state of the world such as to bear their removal, yet those holy men, who act up faithfully to the degree of knowledge with which they are favoured, are worthy of double honour, as instruments for correcting the growing evils of their day, and preparing the way for further advancement in the Reformation.

It is interesting to observe, that the different religious societies which have arisen since the reformation, all aimed at the attainment of greater degrees of spirituality, and a more fervent piety than was generally to be found among the sect from which they sprung. The idea, that forms were too much substituted for power, and a decent compliance with the externals of religion, for its heart-changing, work, appears to have given rise to them all. Each successive advance lopped off some of the ceremonial excrescences, with a view of making the system more conformable to the apostolic pattern. In the early part of the seventeenth century, considerable progress was made in this work, tending to prepare the way for that more full and complete exemplification of the original simplicity of the Gospel, which was exhibited to the world by George Fox and his coadjutors.

It is no arrogant assumption to assert, that to whatever point

GEORGE FOX AND HIS COADJUTORS.

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in the Reformation we turn our attention, we find the germ of those principles, which were subsequently developed and carried out by the founders of our Society, actuating the Reformers and leading them to results approaching nearer to those attained by FRIENDS, in proportion to the faithfulness and measure of light bestowed on the individual.

Opinions very similar to those held by our Society, on the subjects of the indwelling and guidance of the Holy Spirit, baptism and other ceremonies, superstitious rites, war, oaths, and a ministry of human appointment and education, were promulgated by individuals at different periods, antecedent to the rise of Friends, though not advanced as distinguishing tenets by any considerable body of professors.

From the dawn of the reformation, the spirit of religious inquiry had been kept alive and strengthened by the very efforts used to suppress it.

The shackles with which priesteraft had attempted to bind the human mind, had been in some measure broken, and an earnest desire awakened after the saving knowledge of the truth, as it is in Jesus. This was increased by the troubles of the times. The nation was torn by intestine strife. Civil war, with all its attendant evils, raged throughout England, and the property, as well as the lives of the subjects, were at the mercy of a lawless soldiery. Many were stripped of their outward possessions; reduced to poverty and want, and often obliged to abandon their homes, and flee for the preservation of their lives.

This melancholy state of affairs, had a tendency to loosen their attachments from the world, by showing the precarious tenure of all earthly enjoyments, and to induce men to press after those substantial and permanent consolations, which are only to be found in a religious life.

Where the ecclesiastical and civil power were so frequently shifting hands, and the national form of religion changing with every change of rulers, new sects and opinions arising, and dif

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