PERSECUTION.-The Inconsistency of

There is nothing certainly more unreasonable, more inconsistent with the rights of human nature, more contrary to the spirit and precepts of the Christian religion, more iniquitous and unjust, more impolitic than persecution. It is against natural religion, revealed religion, and sound policy.—Mansfield.

PERSECUTION.-The Noble Endurance of

We may behold the ocean heaving in its fearful grandeur; we may look upon the evening sky glowing with its countless hosts of suns and worlds; we may gaze at the raging waters which thunder down Niagara's front in the deep bass of Nature's awful voice; yet to see individuals patiently enduring tribulation, and at last courageously meeting death, rather than yield to a wicked and fanatical superstition, is more noble than these. It is the struggle of right against wrong,-of good against evil,-of Christ in the soul against Satan in the passions.-G. W. Montgomery.

PERSECUTION.-Religious

Religious persecution is the bane of all religion; and the friends of persecution are the worst enemies religion has.-Hazlitt.

PERSECUTOR.-Woe to the

Are we not creatures of one hand divine,

Formed in one mould, to one redemption born,-
Kindred alike where'er our skies may shine,
Where'er our sight first drank the vital morn?

Brothers,-one bond around our souls should twine;
And woe to him by whom that bond is torn,
Who mounts by trampling broken hearts to earth,

Who bows down spirits of immortal birth!-Manzoni.

PERSEVERANCE.-Delight in Service necessary to

No man is persevering as he ought, but he that delights in the service of God. If a man goes to his prayers as children go to school, or give alms as those that pay contribution, and meditate with the same willingness with which young men die, this man acts a part which he cannot long personate, but will find so many excuses and silly devices to omit his duty, such tricks to run from that which will make him happy; he will so watch the eyes of men, and be so sure to do nothing in private; he will so often distinguish and mince the duty into minute and little particles, he will so tie himself to the letter of the law, and be so careless of the intention and spiritual design, he will be punctual in the ceremony and trifling in the secret, and he will be so well pleased when he is hin. dered by an accident not of his own procuring, and will have so many devices to defeat his duty, and to cozen himself, that he will certainly manifest that he is afraid of religion, and counts it a burden. But if we delight in it, we enter into a portion of the reward as soon as we begin the work, and the very grace shall be stronger than the temptation in its very pretence of pleasure; and therefore it must needs be pleasing to God, because it confesses God to be the best master, religion the best work, and it serves God with choice and will, and

reconciles our nature to it, and entertains our appetite; and then there is no ansa or "handle" left, whereby we can be easily drawn from duty, when all parties are pleased with the employment.-Bishop Taylor.

PERSEVERANCE-Rewarded by God.

If there be one thing on earth which is truly admirable, it is to see God's wisdom blessing an inferiority of natural powers, where they have been honestly, truly, and zealously cultivated.-Dr. Arnold.

PERSUASION-Defined.

Persuasion is the act of influencing the judginent and passions by arguments or motives. It is different from conviction. Conviction affects the understanding only; persuasion the will and practice. It may be considered as an assent to a proposition not sufficiently proved. It is more extensively used than conviction; which last is founded on demonstration natural or supernatural. But all things of which we may be persuaded are not capable of demonstration.-Dr. Blair.

PERSUASION.-Evangelical

Evangelical persuasion, to accomplish its main design, must often direct itself to specific subordinate purposes. Explanations are to be made; prejudices to be overcome; objections to be answered; perverseness to be rebuked; delusions to be dispelled; errors to be corrected; alarms to be raised; but in fulfilling these particular offices, the spirit of the Gospel is always the same: one benevolent, recovering, saving intent animates and guides all its addresses.-Dr. Skinner.

PERSUASION.-The Necessity of

While instruction is certainly to be regarded as one of the great purposes of the pulpit, it is certainly not the terminus ad quem; it must be subordinate to its other great purpose-that of persuasion, that is--the moving of the soul by means of the truths which are handled by the preacher. His duty is not exhausted when he has laid down his message, like a cargo of coal, at his hearer's door, leaving him to accept or reject it as he may please; he must prevail on him, if possible, to open his door, admit his goods, and place them in safe custody under lock and key. Knowing the terror of the Lord, he is to persuade men. is this business-this moving of the springs of human hearts, and bending them God-wards, that constitutes the great difficulty of the preacher's office. Bat the more a preacher recognizes this as the great end of his labour, the more successful, with God's help, will his preaching be; and the greater the number of such preachers in a Church, the more remarkable and the more pervading will be the influence of its pulpit.-Professor Blaikie.

PERSUASION.-The Power of

There is a way of winning, more by love
And urging of the modesty, than fear:
Force works on servile natures, not the free:
He that's compelled to goodness, may be good;
But 'tis but for that fit; where others, drawn
By softness and example, get a habit :

Then if they stray, but warn 'em, and the same

They would for virtue do, they'll do for shame.-Jonson.

It

PHILOSOPHY and SCRIPTURE.

The utmost that philosophy can pretend to have is words only, and empty sounds in comparison. Ten thousand such volumes of Seneca and Epictetus can never lie so close at our hearts, or give that sweet repose to spirits in perplexity, as this single text from St. Paul rightly applied would do:-" Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory."-Dean Stanhope.

PIETY.-The Blessedness of

A soul in commerce with her God is heaven;
Feels not the tumults and the shocks of life,
The whirls of passions and the strokes of heart.
Dr. E. Young.

PIETY.-The Commanding Influence of

It is no unusual thing for men of the most abandoned character to be struck with profound awe, and restrained from their vile purposes by the presence of an eminently pious person. There is a power in real piety which commands the reverence of those who hate it; and this the proudest sinners often so far feel as to be unable to carry on their violent opposition against it, while yet no saving change is effected upon them.-Robinson.

PIETY.-Danger sometimes Associated with

When once pious affection or devout imagination have seized the reins of religious thought, it is easy for individuals or schools to wander far from the beaten paths of a clear yet sober faith, into some theological wonderland,-the airiest creation of the liveliest fancy, where, to the confusion and unsettlement of souls, the wildest fiction and the highest truth may be inextricably intertwined in an entanglement of hopeless and bewildering disorder.-Canon Liddon.

PIETY.-Degrees in

It is with piety as with the mysterious ladder that was exhibited to the patriarch Jacob, the foot of which rested on the earth, but the summit reached the skies; it is only by degrees that we can ascend, but it is by degrees that we can finally arrive at the highest elevation of which our nature is capable. The first step we take in mounting a ladder is that which disengages our foot from the earth; so, in the scale of religion, the first step towards the attainment of good is the estranging ourselves from the practice of evil.—St. Basil.

PIETY-should Precede Theology.

The way to begin a Christian life is not to study theology. Piety before theology. Right living will produce right thinking.—II. W. Beecher.

PIETY-the Source of Virtue.

Are virtue, then, and piety the same?

No piety is more; 'tis virtue's source;

Mother of every worth, as that of joy.-Dr. E. Young.

PIETY. A Steady, Masculine

Nothing is so glorious in the eyes of mankind, and ornamental to human nature, setting aside the infinite advantages which arise from it, as a strong, steady, masculine piety; but enthusiasm and superstition are the weaknesses of

human reason, that expose us to the scorn and derision of infidels, and sink us even below the beasts that perish.-Addison.

PIETY-Stretched.

Piety, stretched beyond a certain point, is the parent of impiety.-S. Smith.

PLAIN.—An Injunction to be

Let your preaching be plain. Painted glass is most curious, plain glass is most conspicuous.-P. Henry.

PLAINNESS.-The Advantage of

Your sermons cannot well be too plain. To frame a discourse in this way, as it is the usefullest way of preaching, so it will afford full scope and exercise for all the talents which the ablest of us may possess.-Bishop Hurd.

PLAINNESS-the Beauty of Preaching.

Better the grammarian should reprehend than the people not understand. Pithy plainness is the beauty of preaching. What doth a golden key that opens not ?-Dr. Jenkyn.

PLAINNESS.-The Want of

Some men are not plain from ignorance and indolence. It is much easier to be unintelligible than intelligible. "Ah, my brethren," said Archbishop Usher, "how much learning it takes to make things plain!" And we may add, labour, too. Some are not plain from pride of learning. Some are not plain from a desire to tickle the fancy, and excite the imagination. And so they covet a "skyrocket brilliancy," and delight in rainbows, and meteors, and earthquakes, and water-falls, and blooming trellises, and showers of gems, and torrents of fire, and "trooping seraphim," and the "silver chiming of the spheres," and the "weltering chaos of demolished worlds." Some are not plain from a false taste and a faulty training. They think when they enter the pulpit they must be mounted on stilts; and so they give themselves laboriously to seeking out "great swelling words," and constructing cumbrous sentences; and hence become puffy, pompous, bombastic. If there is any nourishment in their productions, it is so absorbed in sponge and fungus as to be indigestible. And some are not plain from a fondness for the abstruse. From inclination or habit, they have come to deal much in what is hidden, and remote, and difficult to be comprehended; and to present things in a blind, circuitous manner. Possibly they would like to be called “intellectual” preachers; writers of "great" sermons; men of a "logical grasp" of mind. Hence their sermons are to a great extent metaphysical disquisitions; efforts

"to sever and divide

A hair 'twixt north and northwest side."

Common truths are tortured into obscure propositions, and plain erms are eschewed for those that are professional. The mind is entertained with the difference between the "immanent" and "eminent" volitions; the "relations of the infinite and the impossible," and the like. The sentences bristle with scholastic technicalities, and you are compelled to hear of “divine causation," and the "selfdetermining power of the will," and the "objective" and "subjective," the "governmental" view of the atonement, and a "supralapsarian" and "sublapsarian" theories; as if the production were an essay for the class-room, rather than a sermon for the pulpit. What folly all this! Christ did not preach in this manner.

GG

He was the plainest preacher in the world. Nor did the Apostles, who used "words easy to be understood," and avoided things which "minister questions rather than godly edifying." Nor did the earnest men of God in any time. Ask Luther how he preached-whose words were "half-battles"—and he will tell you it was not in a way to suit the "learned men and magistrates," of whom he had many as hearers, but for "the poor, the women and children and servants," of whom he had many more. It is a rule that may be everywhere observed-that whatever God makes is simple, plain, elementary. Man only complicates and

obscures. The nearer we reduce things to a naked simplicity, the nearer we approach perfection. And the last, place for complication and obscurity is the pulpit.-Dr. Fish.

PLEASURE.-Intellectual

Intellectual pleasure is as much more noble than that of sense as an immortal spirit is more noble than a clod of earth.-Howe.

PLEASURE Sacrificed to Duty

He who can at all times sacrifice pleasure to duty approaches sublimity.— Lavater.

PLEASURES.-Devotion in Relation to

It is an error to imagine that devotion enjoins a total contempt of all the pleasures of human society. It brings amusement under due limitation, without extirpating it. It forbids it as the business, but permits it as the relaxation of life; for there is nothing in the spirit of true religion which is hostile to a cheerful enjoyment of our situation in the world.-Dr. Blair.

POOR.—Accommodating Preaching to the

In accommodations of our preaching style to the lowest intellectual strata of our congregations, there is a danger lest the plain should become too plain,-lest the simple should border too closely upon the childish, and the familiar degenerate into the common, and the poor of our flock should be offended at the insult offered to their mental inferiority, as if the discourse were one specially prepared for the poor man with a vile raiment," and which we should not think of offering to "a man with a gold ring and goodly apparel." Now the poor do not like these condescensions on the part of educated men; they do not feel at all flattered by the mean estimate thus formed of their capacity. Nor is there any reason why they should. In point of original intellectual endowments, there is no difference between the scholar in the pulpit and the artizan in the pew. The poor may be our inferiors in mental culture, but not in rational power, not in shrewdness of perception, not in common sense. They can follow the steps of a well-constructed argument; they can appreciate noble thoughts, and love a flowing style. Moreover, even if the poor should be low in the intellectual scale, is it our duty to keep them in that state? Surely the duty of a public instructor is to advance his people in knowledge-to try their young strength by little and little. as the mother-bird teaches her young to fly, till they can leave their nest fearlessly, and soar with her to higher things.-D. Moore.

POOR.-A Benefaction to the

This should be like oil, which, when poured from one vessel to another, flows in silence, and with a soft and gentle fall.-Scriver.