WORDS OF WISDOM

Marlborough Express, Volume XXX, Issue 80, 6 April 1894, Page 4

WORDS OF WISDOM

Kindred Souls.— There is love which is not the love only of the thoughtless and tho young— there is "a love which sees not with the eye. which hears not with the ears ; bill m which soul is enamoured of soul. Ihe cave-nursed Plato dreamed of such a love— his followers have sought to imitate it ; bin it is a love which only high and noble natures can conceive — it hath nothing m common with the sympathies and ties of coarse affection.—E. Ji. J.ytton.

Good Deeds. — Live for something. Do good, and leave behind you a monument ol virtue that the storms "of time can never destroy. Write your name by kindness, love, and mercy on the hearts of the thousands you come m contact with year b;, year, and you will never bs forgotten. No; your name, your deeds, will be as legible on ♦he heart you leave behind as the stars on the brow of evening. Good deeds will shint as bright on the earth as the stars of heaven. — Dr. Chalmers.

Diligence.— The certainty that life can not be long, and the probability that it will be much shorter than Nature allows, ought to awaken every man to the active prosecution of whatever he is desirous to perform. It is true that no diligence can ascertain success; death may intercept the swiftest career ; but he who is cut oft m the midst cf an honest undertaking has at least the honour of falling m his rank, and has fought the battle, though he missed the victory.

The Beauty of Holiness. — And perfect the day shall be when it is of all men understood that the beauty of holiness must be m labour as well as m rest. Nay, more, if it may be, m labour ; m our strength rather than m our weakness ; and m the choice of what we shall work for through the six flays, and may know to be good at their evening time, rather than m the choice of what we pray for on the seventh, of reward and repose. — Ruskiri.

Fate. — There are three great principles Of life which weave its warp and woof, apparently incompatible with each other, yet they harmonise, and m their blending create this strange life of ours. The first is, our fate is m our own hands, and our blessedness and misery the exact result of our own acts. The second is, "There is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will." The third is, "The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong;" but time and chance happen to them all. Accident, human will, the shaping will of Deity — these things make up life. — P. W. Eobertson,

Duty.— Duty, be it m a small matter or a great, is a duty still ; the command of Heaven, the eldest voice of God. It is only they who are faithful m a few things who will 'be faithful over many things ; only they who do their duty m every-day and trivial matters who will fulfil them on great occasions. We all admire and honour the heroes d£ Alma and Balaclava; we all trust m God that we should have done our duty also m their place. The best test of this is — Can we do our duty m our own place ?

Insight m Women. — Those who have suffered sharply, see keenly ; and it is difficult to conceal much from women. They have the strangest facility m reading physiological languages — tones, gestures, bearing, and all those countless signs which make the face and eyes such tell-tales of the soul. They will look into your eyes and see you think, listen to your voice and hear you feel. The coy and subtile world or emotion— now infinitely timid and reticent, now all gates flung down for the floods to pour — is their domain. They are at home mit all, from the rosy fogs of feeling to the twilight borders of intelligence.

A Great Purpose. — There is something inexpressibly delightful m having the mind filled with a great and a noble purpose — such a purpose as may lawfully absorb all the feelings of the heart, and kindle every desire of the soul. Who ever reared a dwelling perfect enough to meet the desires of the soul ? Who ever had the thirst quenched by drinking here ? And who ever bad an earthly object engrossing the heart which did not leave room for restlessness and a desire for change ? Not so when the glory of God fills the soul, and the eye is fixed on that as the great end of life. — Dr. Todd.

Departed Friends. — The woodruff, that holds up handfuls of little white crosses m Ihe pleasant woods and shady glens, yields no scent till its life has ebbed — beautiful emblem of those who delight us while they live, out of the serene abundance of their kindly hearts, but whose richer value we Only begin to know when they are gone away, and of whose white souls we then say inwardly, "He, being dead, yet speaketh." So the hay-field, that rolls like sea-waves, is scentless when we pass it uncut ; we hear the measured sweesh of scythe, death lays each green head low, and Ddour rises like mist. — Leo. H. Grindon.

Patience. — All one's life is a music, if one touches the notes rightly and m time. But there must be no hurry. There is no music (n a "rest"; butthere is the making of music m it ; and people are always missing that part of the life-melody, the scrambling on without counting. Not that it is lazy to count, but nothing on which so much depends ever Is lazy. People are always talking about perseverance and courage and fortitude ; but patience is the finest and worthiest part of fortitude, and the rarest, too. For patience lies at the root of all pleasures as well as of all powers. Hope, herself, ceases to be herself, ceases to be happiness, when impatience companions her.

Brave Living. — The man who is satisfied with any given state of things that we are likely to see on earth must have a creeping imagination ; on the other hand, he who is oppressed by the ills around him, so as to stand gaping at them m horror, has a feeble will and a want of practical power, and allows his fancy to come m, like too much wavering light, upon his work, so that he does not see how to go on with it. A man 01 sagacity, wnne ne apprenenas a great deal of the evil around him, resolves what part of it he will be blind to for the present, m order to deal best with what he has m hand ; and as to men of genius, they are not imprisoned or rendered partial even by their own experience of evil, much less are their attacks upon it paralysed by their full consciousness of its large presence. — Sir Arthur Helps. The Holiness of Home.— What is man without home affections, which, like so many roots, fix him firmly m the earth, and permit him to imbibe all the juices of life ? Energy, happiness — does it not all come from them ? Without family life where would man learn to love, to associate, to deny himself ? A community m little — is it not it which teaches us how to live m the great one ? Such is the holiness of home, that to express our relation with God we have been obliged to borrow the words invented for our family life. Men have named themselv.es the sons of a Heavenly Father ! Ah ! let us preserve these chains of domestic " union ; do not let us unbind the human sheaf, and scatter its ears to all the caprices of chance, and of the winds, but let us rather enlarge this holy law, and let us carry the principles and the habits of home beyond its bounds ; and, if it may be, let us realise the prayer of the Apostle of the Gentiles when he exclaimed to the new-born children of Christ, " Be ye like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind " —Souvestre.