PRIESTS.-A Prayer to Christ for

Oh, by Thine own sad burthen, borne

So meekly up the hill of scorn,

Teach Thou Thy priests their daily cross

To bear as Thine, nor count it loss !-Keble.

PRIESTS.-The Vestments of the

The ordination, and the vesture of them that ministered in the Tabernacle is in this wise rightly applicable to the priesthood of the Church, that the outward splendour which in their case shone brightly in ornamented vestments, shall now, spiritually understood, be inwardly conspicuous, deep-seated in the hearts of them who serve in holy ministry to God-and that in the acts (good works) of these our Christian priests there should be an outward glory also, a glory beyond what is to be seen in the good works of the faithful generally.-Bede.

Holiness on the head,

Light and perfection on the breast,
Harmonious bells below, raising the dead,
To lead them unto life and rest,

Thus are true Aarons drest.-G. Herbert.

PROFESSION.-Indebted to a

I hold every man a debtor to his profession; from the which as men of course do seek to receive countenance and profit, so ought they of duty to endeavour themselves, by way of amends, to be a help and ornament thereunto.—Lord Bacon.

PROFESSION—a Trade.

Religious profession was, at first, a conflict-a sacrifice; now it is become a trade.-R. Cecil.

PROFESSION and PRACTICE.

We need not bid, for cloistered cell,
Our neighbour and our work farewell;
Nor strive to wind ourselves too high
For sinful man beneath the sky;
The trivial round, the common task,
Would furnish all we ought to ask-
Room to deny ourselves, a road

To bring us daily nearer God.-Keble.

PROFESSOR.-A Learned

One trembles when, after beholding the Son of Man commanding the elements, and despoiling the tomb, and declaring that He would return to judge by His Word the quick and the dead,-to see some poor, wretched, accountable mortal seated in a professor's chair, and handling the Word of God as he would handle Terence or Thucydides,-retrenching, adding, praising, blaming; lopping off parts as containing mistakes, inconclusive arguments, rash assertions, and the like! Yet, pass but a few years, and the learned professor shall be in his tomb; while not a particle of this Divine Book shall have passed away; and when the Son of Man shall descend from heaven by this Book shall all be judged.-Professor Gaussen.

PROFESSOR.—A Punctilious

He was a man that would keep Church duly, rise

Early before his servants, and e'en for

Religious haste, go ungartered, unbuttoned,

To morning prayer;

Dine quickly upon high days; and when I

Had great guests, would e'en shame me, and rise from
The table, to get a good seat at an

Afternoon sermon.-Shakspeare.

PROFESSORS.-False

The Gospel has come to them in form alone, and not in power; in letter alone, and not in spirit. On Sundays they wear the showy appearance of piety, but during the week throw it off with their Sunday clothes. They would blush if they were called saints, and yet count it an insult if they were denied the name of Christians. They make clean the outside of the cup and platter, and appear in the gaudy and tinselled garments of worldly morality, but in their hearts they deny the crucified Saviour, and count His Gospel as an idle tale.-Garnier. PROMISE.-The First

No sooner had man fallen than started forth the first grand promise-that promise of promise-that promise which contains all other promises; and this before one cry for mercy was uttered-before one tear of real penitence fell. It burst forth from the long-suffering of God.-J. H. Evans.

PROMISES.-Christ in the

The whole spiritual firmament glows with promises, as with stars of varied magnitude, but of enduring fixity. But all their force, and beauty, and sweetness are from Christ.-Dr. Cumming.

PROMISES.-Comfort of the

The promises are wells of comfort to the Church, and believing prayer is the vessel to draw the water out of the wells.-W. Secker.

PROMISES.-The Foundation of the

Every promise is built upon four pillars:-God's justice and holiness, which will not suffer Him to deceive; His grace or goodness, which will not suffer Him to forget; His truth, which will not suffer Him to change; His power, which makes Him able to accomplish.-Salter.

PROMISES.-Meditation on the

The promises, as they must be read in the Scripture with diligence, so must they be called to remembrance by many serious musings and actions of our thoughts upon them, else they will never prove strengthening and reviving cordials. Roses are sweeter in the still than on the stalk; and promises are more fragrant in the heart than in the book. The grapes hanging on the vine do not make the wine that cheers the heart of man, but the grapes that are squeezed and trodden in the wine-press; no more do the promises as they stand in the Bible work joy and gladness, but as they are pondered in the mind, and like pressed grapes have their juice and virtue drawn from them, which by a percolation in the thoughts turns into a most sovereign and precious liquor.—Spurstowe.

PRONUNCIATION.-Faults of

To say nothing of the ill usage sometimes offered to that unfortunate letter in our alphabet, which makes the name of Jezebel so much safer for some persons to pronounce than that of her husband, has not its antecedent neighbour "g" a right to complain of the use made of it by some public speakers, when its lot falls at the end of a word? Is it not sometimes turned into a base cacophony of half "g" and half “k” (kingk)? and sometimes made to disappear as absolutely as when a dele is put against it in a printer's proof? Against the inveterateness of this last provincialism no scholarship is free. Often we are asked to pray for our clergy, that "they may have a true knowledge and understandın' of God's Word," as well as "set it forth by their preachin' and livIN';" nay, not satisfied with this, it is much if he who ministers for us does not send us home with only a mutilated blessin'! But these are not the only faults of pronunciation which many persons seem to be at no pains to conquer (conker). What are the great merits of the letter " z," for instance, that, with some readers, we cannot be exhorted to the duty of general confession, without being told that "the Scripture moveth us in sundry plazes?" or that we cannot have a sentence in which the pronoun "us" occurs, without being reminded of the land that Job came from? Or, what again are the offences of the letter "r," that, by men from some counties it should first (fust) be cast out of the Church (Chutch), and after that perhaps, be joined on bodily to the ranks of her enemies (renemies)? For many of these peculiarities, no doubt, the authority of the frequent provincial usage may be cited; and if "use" makes the "right," it may be said-Why should the "country" be obliged to take its laws from the "town?" But whether the country do so or not, it is quite clear that the preacher should; and for this reason that, while the standard or normal dialect of a language is neither unintelligible nor unpleasing to those who may be familiar with certain provincial peculiarities, the Doric of the provinces does become unpleasant, and often something more, to those who are familiar only with the Attic of the capital. In these days of rapid locomotion, all parts of the country are brought closer together. We shall soon, it may be believed, neither speak in local dialects, nor regulate time by local clocks; but shall all approach nearer to the same standard of vernacular pronunciation, just as chronometers along the lines of railway all keep one solar time.-D. Moore.

PROOF-Differs from Evidence.

Proof is employed chiefly in relation to facts or physical objects, while evidence is applied to that which is intellectual or moral.-Crabbe.

PROOFS Needed by Sceptics only.

Would you prove the magic of the night, the rich harvest, the flowering meadows, to a man who, from dawn to twilight, and often under the moon, traverses the fields, who draws his scythe through the grass glittering with dew, who returns in the evening by the sides of rivers in which the stars are reflected? But what eloquence would be necessary-what power of description and reasoning, to bring all this, living and real, to the child of a miner,—some poor, dwarfed creature, who, in the bowels of the earth, a smoking lamp fastened to his head, pushes his track along a dark gallery? To him who sees, belief is easy; the thing exists; I touch it; it is mine. To him who sees not, you must bring faith; and he who names faith to a sceptic, names conflict.-Gasparin.

PROPHECIES.-The Centre of the

We are not to suppose that each of the prophecies recorded in the Old Testament expressly points out and clearly characterizes Jesus Christ; yet, taken as a whole, this grand system refers to Him; for "the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy." Nay, He is the only person that ever existed, in whom all the prophecies meet as in a centre.-Buck.

PROPHECIES.-The Connection and Variety of the

Though written by different men in different ages, the prophecies have yet a visible connection and dependency, an entire harmony and agreement one with another. At the same time that there is such perfect harmony, there is also great variety; and the same things are foretold by different prophets in a different manner, and with different circumstances.-Bishop Newton.

PROPHECIES.-The Evidence of the

Though the evidence be but small from the completion of any one prophecy taken separately, yet that evidence, being always something, the amount of the whole evidence resulting from a great number of prophecies, all relative to the same design, may be considerable; like many scattered rays, which, though each be weak in itself, yet, concentrated into one point, shall form a strong light, and strike the sense very powerfully. Still more: this evidence is not merely a growing evidence, but is indeed multiplied upon us, from the number of reflected lights which the several component parts of such a system reciprocally throw upon each; till at length the conviction rise unto a high degree of moral certainty.-Bishop Hurd.

PROPHECIES-Fulfilled.

It is sweet to point

To prophecies fulfilled, when spells of good:

To us extinct all ill, all sin, all woe;

The world seems wreathed from end to end with joy,

And garlanded with glory, as the hall

Of some great populous palace at a feast!—P. J. Bailey.

PROPHECIES.-The Obscurities of the

Obscurities there are indeed in the prophecies, for which many good reasons may be assigned, and this particularly-because the prophecies are the only species of writing which is designed more for the instruction of future ages than of the times wherein they are written. If the prophecies had been delivered in plainer terms, some persons might be for hastening their accomplishment, as others might attempt to defeat it; men's actings would not appear so free, nor God's providence so conspicuous in their completion. But though some parts are obscure enough to exercise the Church, yet others are sufficiently clear to illuminate it; and the obscure parts, the more they are fulfilled, the better they are understood. Time, that detracts something from the evidence of other writers, is still adding something to the credit and authority of the prophets. Future ages will comprehend more than the present, as the present understands more than the past; and the perfect accomplishment will produce a perfect knowledge of all the prophecies.— Bishop Newton.

PROPHECIES.-Unfulfilled

They are like ravines, still dark and misty, from whose echoing sides comes up the heavy footfall or terrific cry of sorrows not seen as yet.-Dr. J. Hamilton.

PROPHECY.-The Advantages of

Prophecy is the philosophy of history; it is the key that admits us into the arcana of Providence; it places us in the midst of great verities; nay, it places us behind the scenes, and shows us these verities in their origin, in their order, and in their progression. It permits man, whose short life-time makes him the witness of only a small portion of the actual drama, to behold, under the veil of symbol, the whole series, from the first incipient act which eludes his eye, to the great crowning event which fills a world and fixes the gaze of nations.— Dr. Wylie.

PROPHECY-Defined.

Prophecy is history anticipated and contracted; while history is prophecy accomplished and dilated.-Bishop Newton.

PROPHECY.-The Grandeur of

I am profoundly affected by the grandeur of prophecy. God unveils the frescoed wall of the future, not so much that we may count the figures, and measure the robes, and analyze the pigments, but that, gazing upon it, our imaginations may be enkindled, and hope be inspired, to bear us through the dismal barrenness of the present. Prophecy was not addressed to the reason, nor to the statistical faculty, but to the imagination; and I should as soon think of measuring love by the scales of commerce, or of admiring flowers by the rule of feet and inches, or of applying arithmetic to taste and enthusiasm, as calculations and figures to these grand evanishing signals which God waves in the future only to tell the world which way it is to march.-H. W. Beecher.

PROPHECY.-The Growth of

What a beautiful sermon or essay might be written on the growth of prophecy-from the germ no bigger than a man's hand, in Genesis, till the column of cloud gathers size and strength, and height and substance, and assumes the shape of a perfect man; just like the smoke which comes up and at last takes a genie's shape!-S. T. Coleridge.

PROPHECY.-The Interpreters of

Interpreters of prophecy, during the lest few centuries, have been, most of them, childish and nonsensical. The fact is—when fancy is their guide, men wander as in a maze. They see, like children, gazing into the fire, not what is really before them, but what is in their own heads. Great truths are in the Prophets and in the precious Book of Revelation, but your fanciful theologians turn these sublimities of truth into the toys of children, when they give their imagination license to act as an expositor.-Spurgeon.

PROPHECY.-The Power of

The power of prophecy was fitful and intermitting; in this point it resembled genius. In the fine language of Hushai, it lighted upon the prophet as the "dew falleth upon the ground." Rather, it came upon his head, and stirred his hair, and kindled his eye, and inflated his breast, as a gust of wind comes upon a pine; for, though sudden, its advent was not soft as the dew. It was a nobler demoniac possession. Recovered from it, the prophet resumed his ordinary occupation, and was a common man once more. Then, too, his own words seemed strange to him; he wondered at them, as we can conceive the fabled oak wondering when it had sweltered honey. He searched what the Spirit did signify