915. DOUBTS. Prayer for deliverance from
WHILE faith is with me I am blest,
It turns my darkest night to day;
But, while I clasp it to my breast,
I often feel it slide away.

Then, cold and dark, my spirit sinks,
To see my light of life depart;
And every friend of hell, methinks,
Enjoys the anguish of my heart.
What shall I do if all my love,

My hopes, my toil, are cast away;
And if there be no God above

To hear and bless me when I pray?

If this be vain delusion all,

If death be an eternal sleep,
And none can hear my secret call,
Or see the silent tears I weep,

Oh help me, God! for Thou alone
Canst my distracted soul relieve;
Forsake it not it is Thine own,

Though weak, yet longing to believe.

Oh drive these cruel doubts away,

And make me know that Thou art God! A faith that shines by night and day, Will lighten every earthly load.

If I believed that Jesus died,

And waking rose to reign above, Then surely sorrow, sin, and pride

Must yield to peace, and hope, and love.

And all the blessed words He said
Will strength and holy joy impart,
A shield of safety o'er my head,
A spring of comfort in my heart!

Anne Bronté.

916. DOUBTER'S PRAYER. The
FEVER'D by long unrest, of conflict weary,
Sicken'd by doubt, writhing with inward pain,
My spirit cries from out the midnight dreary,
For the old days of long-lost peace again.

Gone is my early Heaven, with all its radiant story
Of fiery throne, and glassy sea, and sapphire blaze;
Its white-robed throng, palm-bearing, crown'd with
golden glory;

Its ceaseless service of unhinder'd praise.

Vanish'd my early Faith, with all its untold treasure Of steadfast calm, and questionless repose; Barter'd away-lost for a heap'd-up measure

Of strife, and doubt, and fears, and mental woes. No light, no life, no truth! now from my soul for

ever

The last dim star withdraws its glimmering ray; Lonely and hopeless, never on me, oh, never!

Shall break the dawn of the long looked-for day.

Rudder and anchor gone, on through the darkness lonely

I drift o'er shoreless seas to deeper night, Drifting, still drifting-oh, for one glimmer only, One blessed ray of truth's emerging light!

Out of the depths I cry-my anguish'd soul revealing,

Light in the darkness shining! shed Thy lifegiving ray;

Low at the cross I fall-I plead for aid and healing, Oh, Christ, reveal Thyself, and turn my night to

day!

The prayer is heard, else why this strange returning
To stranger peace, to calm unknown before?
The peace of doubt dispell'd, the calm of vanquish'd
yearning,

A deeper, truer rest than that of yore.

Oh, Saviour-Man! Priest, but in garments royal!
Oh, Light! oh, Truth! Thyself the inner life!
While at Thy cross I kneel in homage loyal,
I hear unmoved the weary din of strife;

Content to wait till days of darken'd vision,

And lisping speech, and childish thought are done, And knowledge vanishes in faith's fruition,

As fading stars before the morning sun.-I. L. B.

917. DOXOLOGY. A Woman's

PRAISE God, from whom all blessings flow,
Praise Him who sendeth joy and woe,
The Lord who takes, the Lord who gives,—
Oh praise Him, all that dies, and lives!

He opens and He shuts His hand;
But why, we cannot understand:

Pours, and dries up, His mercies' flood,

And yet is still All-perfect Good.

We fathom not the mighty plan,
The mystery of God and man;

We women, when afflictions come,-
We only suffer and are dumb.

And when, the tempest passing by,

He gleams out, sun-like, through our sky,
We look up, and, through black clouds riven,
We recognize the smile of Heaven.

Ours is no wisdom of the wise,

We have no deep philosophies:

Child-like, we take both kiss and rod;

For he who loveth, knoweth God!

D. M. Muloch Craik.

918. DREAMS. Causes of

I TALK of dreams, Which are the children of an idle brain; Begot of nothing but vain fantasy; Which is as thin of substance as the air, And more inconstant than the wind.

Shakespeare.

Dreams are but interludes which fancy makes;
When monarch reason sleeps, this mimic wakes;
Compounds a medley of disjointed things,
A mob of cobblers, and a court of kings:
Light fumes are merry, grosser fumes are sad;
Both are the reasonable soul run mad:

;

The master passion of the soul display'd
The huge deformity, conceal'd by day,
Warning the sleeper to beware, awake.
And oft in dreams, the reprobate and vile,
Unpardonable sinner-as he seem'd
Toppling upon the perilous edge of Hell-
In dreadful apparition, saw before
His vision pass, the shadows of the damn'd
And saw the glare of hollow, cursed eyes,
Spring from the skirts of the infernal night;
And saw the souls of wicked men, new dead,
By devils hearsed into the fiery gulf;
And heard the burning of the endless flames;
And heard the weltering of the waves of wrath.
And sometimes, too, before his fancy pass'd
The Worm that never dies, writhing its folds
In hideous sort, and with eternal Death
Held horrid colloquy; giving the wretch
Unwelcome earnest of the woe to come.-Pollok.

921. DREAMS. Marvels of

AND yet, as angels in some brighter dreams
Call to the soul when man doth sleep,

So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes,

And into glory peep.-Vaughan.

We walk in dreams on fairy land, Where golden ore lies mix'd with common sand. Dryden.

922. DREAMS. Nature of

OUR life is two-fold; sleep hath its own world,
A boundary between the things misnamed
Death and existence; sleep hath its own world,
And a wide realm of wild reality,

And dreams in their development have breath,
And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy ;
They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts,
They take a weight from off our waking toils,
They do divide our being; they become
A portion of ourselves as of our time,
And look like heralds of eternity;

They pass like spirits of the past-they speak
Like sibyls of the future; they have power—
The tyranny of pleasure and of pain;
They make us what we were not-what they will,
And shake us with the vision that's gone by,
The dread of vanish'd shadows. Are they so?
Is not the past all shadow? What are they?
Creations of the mind? The mind can make
Substances, and people planets of its own
With beings brighter than have been, and give
A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh.
Byron.

923. DREAMS. Power of
STRANGE is the power of dreams! who has not felt,
When in the morning light such visions melt,
How the veil'd soul, though struggling to be free,
Ruled by that deep, unfathom'd mystery,
Wakes, haunted by the thoughts of good or ill,
Whose shading influence pursues us still?

Mrs Norton.

924. DREAMS. Significance of WHILE o'er my limbs sleep's soft dominion spread, What though my soul fantastic measures trod O'er fairy fields; or mourn'd along the gloom Of pathless woods; or down the craggy steep Hurl'd headlong, swam with pain the mantled pool; Or scaled the cliff, or danced on hollow winds, With antic shapes, wild natives of the brain? Her ceaseless flight, though devious, speaks her nature Of subtler essence than the trodden clod ;

For human weal, Heaven husbands all events,
Dull sleep instructs, nor sport vain dreams in vain.
Young.

925. DREAMS: sometimes significant.

GOD is also in sleep, and dreams advise,
Which He hath sent propitious, some great good
Presaging.-Milton.

But dreams full oft are found of real events The forms and shadows.--Joanna Baillie.

926. DREAMS. Waking

WELL may dreams present us fictions,
Since our waking moments teem

With such fanciful convictions

As make life itself a dream.- Campbell.

927. DRESS. Character and

WHAT! is the jay more precious than the lark
Because his feathers are more beautiful?

Or is the adder better than the eel
Because his painted skin contents the eye?
Oh no; good Kate, neither art thou the worse
For this poor furniture, and mean array.

Shakespeare.

'Tis the mind that makes the body rich: And as the sun breaks through the darkest clouds, So honour peereth in the meanest habit.

Shakespeare.

Rich was his soul, though his attire was poor, As Heaven had clothed His own ambassador. Dryden.

928. DRESS. Differences in

FORTUNE in men has some small difference made:
One flaunts in rags, one flutters in brocade;
The cobbler apron'd, and the parson gown'd,
The friar hooded, and the monarch crown'd.—Pope.

929. DRESS. Extravagance in

HERE, attired beyond our purse, we go For useless ornament and flaunting show: We take on trust, in purple robes to shine, And poor, are yet ambitious to be fine. Dryden.

930. DRESS. Fashions in

OUR dress, still varying, nor to forms confined, Shifts like the sands, the sport of every wind.

Propertius.

Till by Circæan cups thy mind possest
Leaves to be man, and wholly turns a beast.
Think while thou swallow'st the capacious bowl,
Thou lett'st in seas to sack and drown thy soul.
That hell is open, to remembrance call,
And think how subject drunkards are to fall.
Consider how it soon destroys the grace

Of human shape, spoiling the beauteous face;
Puffing the cheeks, blearing the curious eye,
Studding the face with vicious heraldry.
What pearls and rubies does the wine disclose,
Making the purse poor to enrich the nose!
How does it nurse disease, infect the heart,
Drawing some sickness into every part!
It weaks the brain, it spoils the memory,
Hasting on age, and wilful poverty:

It drowns thy better parts, making thy name
To foes a laughter, to thy friends a shame.
'Tis virtue's poison and the bane of trust,

The match of wrath, the fuel unto lust.
Quite leave this vice, and turn not to't again,
Upon presumption of a stronger brain;
For he that holds more wine than others can
I rather count a hogshead than a man.

Randolph.

938. DRUNKENNESS: described. WHEN fumes of wine do once the brain possess, Then follows straight an indisposedness Throughout; the legs so fetter'd in that case, They cannot with their reeling trunk keep pace. The tongue trips, mind droops, eyes stand full of water,

Noise, hiccough, brawls, and quarrels follow after.

Dire was his thought, who first in poison steep'd

The weapon form'd for slaughter-direr his,
And worthier of damnation, who instill'd
The mortal venom in the social cup,
To fill the veins with death instead of life.
Lucretius, tr. by John Dryden.

939. DRUNKENNESS. Folly of
OH that men should put an enemy in
Their mouths, to steal away their brains! that we
Should with joy, pleasance, revel, and applause,
Transform ourselves into beasts.-Shakespeare.

Man with raging drink inflamed
Is far more savage and untamed;
Supplies his loss of wit and sense
With barb'rousness and insolence;
Believes himself, the less he's able,
The more heroic, and formidable;
Lays by his reason in his bowls,
As Turks are said to do their souls,