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happen to have no opinion or conscience of their own.- Col

ton.

BELIEF OF THE SKEPTIC.-A skeptical young man one day conversing with the celebrated Dr. Parr, observed, that he would believe nothing which he could not understand. Then, young man, your creed will be the shortest of any man's I know."

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BENEFICENCE.-There is no use of money equal to that of beneficence; here the enjoyment grows on reflection, and our money is most truly ours when it ceases to be in our possession.-Mackenzie.

BENEFITS.-Time, which gnaws and diminishes all things else, augments and increaseth benefits; because a noble action of liberality, done to a man of reason, doth grow continually by his generously thinking of it and remembering it.— Rabelais.

BENEFITS JUDGED BY THE INTENTION.-There needs no greater subtlety to prove that both benefits and injuries receive their value from the intention, when even brutes themselves are able to decide this question. Tread upon a dog by chance, or put him to pain upon the dressing of a wound; the one he passes by as an accident; and the other, in his fashion, he acknowledges as a kindness: but offer to strike at him, and though you do him no hurt at all, he flies yet in the face of you, even for the mischief that you barely meant him. Seneca.

BENEVOLENCE.-Doing good is the only certainly happy action of a man's life.-Sidney.

BENEVOLENCE.—He who receives a good turn should never forget it he who does one, should never remember it.— Charron.

BENEVOLENCE AND GRATITUDE.—It is another's fault if he be ungrateful, but it is mine if I do not give. To find one thankful man I will oblige a great many that are not so.— Seneca.

BENEVOLENCE, EARLY.—I had rather never receive a kindness, than never bestow one: not to return a benefit is the greater sin, but not to confer it is the earlier.-Seneca.

BENEVOLENCE NOT TO BE PUT OFF.-Rich people who are covetous, are like the cypress-tree, they may appear well, but are fruitless; so rich persons have the means to be generous, yet some are not so, but they should consider they are only trustees for what they possess, and should show their wealth to be more in doing good, than merely in having it. They should not reserve their benevolence for purposes after they are dead, for those who give not till they die, show that they would not then if they could keep it any longer.-Bishop

Hall.

BENEVOLENCE, THE TRUE SPIRIT OF. When Fenelon's library was on fire, " God be praised," said he, "that it is not the dwelling of a poor man.'

BEST THINGS.-A firm faith is the best divinity; a good life the best philosophy; a clear conscience, the best law; honesty, the best policy; and temperance, the best physic.

BIBLE. It is the light of my understanding, the joy of my heart, the fulness of my hope, the clarifier of my affec tions, the mirror of my thoughts, the consoler of my sorrows, the guide of my soul through this gloomy labyrinth of time, the telescope sent from heaven to reveal to the eye of man the amazing glories of the far distant world.

BIBLE.-The Bible is a window in this prison of hope, through which we look into eternity.-Dwight,

BIBLE, ARGUMENT FOR.-Bad men or devils would not have written it, for it condemns them and their works,-good men or angels could not have written it, for in saying it was from God when it was but their own invention, they would have been guilty of falsehood, and thus could not have been good. The only remaining being who could have written it, is God -its real author.

BIGOTRY.-Bigotry murders religion, to frighten fools with her ghost.-Colton.

BIOGRAPHY.-The remains of great and good men, like Elijah's mantle, ought to be gathered up and preserved by survivors; that as their works follow them in the reward of them, they may stay behind in their benefit.-M. Henry.

BIRTH. Of all vanities and fopperies, the vanity of high birth is the greatest. True nobility is derived from virtue, not from birth. Titles, indeed, may be purchased; but virtue is the only coin that makes the bargain valid.—Burton.

BIRTH.-What is birth to a man, if it shall be a stain to his dead ancestors to have left such an offspring?—Sir P. Sidney.

BIRTH, WHEN AN HONOR.-Distinguished birth is indeed an honor to him who lives worthily of the virtue of his progenitors. If, as Seneca says, "Virtue is the only nobility," he is doubly a nobleman who is himself virtuous, and also descended from a virtuous ancestry.

BLAME OF SELF.-Some blame themselves to extort the praise of contradiction from others.

BOOKS-Books are standing counsellors and preachers, always at hand, and always disinterested; having this advantage over oral instructors, that they are ready to repeat their lesson as often as we please.-Chambers' Dictionary.

Books.

I deny not, but that it is of greatest concernment in the church and commonwealth, to have a vigilant eye how books demean themselves as well as men; and thereafter to confine, imprison, and do sharpest justice on them as malefactors; for books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a progeny of life in them to be as active as that soul was, whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragons' teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet on the other hand, unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book: who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. -Milton.

BOOKS, BAD.-Some books, like the city of London, fare the better for being burnt.—Tom Brown.

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BOOKS, BEWARE OF BAD ONES.- Why, what harm will books do me?" The same harm that personal intercourse would with the bad men who wrote them. That "A man is known by the company he keeps," is an old proverb; but it is no more true than that a man's character may be determined by knowing what books he reads. If a good book can be read without making one better, a bad book cannot be

read without making one the worse. A person may be ruined by reading a single volume! Bad books are like ardent spirits; they furnish neither " aliment" nor "medicine:" they are "poison." Both intoxicate-one the mind, the other the body; the thirst for each increases by being fed,

and is never satisfied; both ruin-one the intellect, the other the health, and together, the soul. The makers and venders of each are equally guilty and equally corrupters of the community; and the safeguard against each is the same-total abstinence from all that intoxicates mind or body.

BOOKS, EVIL.-A wicked book is the worse that it cannot repent.

BOOKS, GOOD.-A good book, in the language of the booksellers, is a saleable one; in that of the curious, a scarce one; in that of men of sense, a useful and instructive one.- Chambers' Dictionary.

BOOKS, HOW USED.-We of this age have discovered a shorter and more prudent method to become scholars and wits, without the fatigue of reading or thinking. The most accomplished way of using books at present is twofold: either first to serve them as some men do lords, learn their titles exactly, and then brag of their acquaintance; or seo ondly, which is indeed the choicer, the profounder, and politer method, to get a thorough insight into the index by which the whole book is governed and turned, like fishes by the tail. For to enter the palace of learning at the great gate, requires an expense of times and forms; therefore, men of much haste and little ceremony are content to get in by the back door.-Swift.

BOOKS, HOW VALUED.-Books, like proverbs, receive their chief value from the stamp and esteem of ages through which they have passed.—Sir W. Temple.

BOOKS, POISONED.-It has long been the policy of the devil to keep the masses of the world in ignorance; but finding at length that they will read, he is doing all in his power to poison their books.-Kirk.

BOOKS, THEIR ABUSE.-Books, while they teach us to re

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