the nail on the head, and Mr. Brown was silently indignant, having sense enough to see the point when he was indirectly called an ass. All asses are fools in some sense, but it is dreadful to be an ass for the want of sense. We see these asses everywhere—in society, in the legislature, in politics, in business, and sometimes in the pulpit-always letting off their mouths in the wrong place, and ever cutting antics at which everybody but the ass blushes. You will generally find him in the likeness of the picture I have drawn of him.

But I must bid adieu to the long-eared family. There are other specimens of the species, but I have said more than enough in these sketches to give a hint to those not mentioned. The unfortunate part of it is that the donkey seldom or never sees himself as others see him, and cannot be made often to so see himself. Stupidity is the nature of the beast, and the cudgel, the only instrument by which he can be impressed, is soon forgotten. Nevertheless, a little education of this character may be of service to the young-the "wild asses' colts"-who may come across these lines. There is no hope for the old thoroughbreds. Train up the young asses in the way they should go, and when older grown they will not do as asses do.

STRAIN OUT A GNAT, SWALLOW A CAMEL.

ERE is another phase of hypocrisy-one of the chief characteristics of the Pharisees. In another picture we see the hypocrite with a beam in his own eye and picking a mote out of his brother's eye. This was an illustration of optical surgery at the hands of a hypocrite, but now we come to a gastronomic feat worthy of the most gigantic gormandizer. He strains out a gnat and swallows a camel, which finds comfortable quarters in his capacious maw.

Jesus said to the scribes and Pharisees: "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretense make long prayers: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought

ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. Ye blind guides, which strain out a gnat, and swallow a camel. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepul-chers, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but within are full of dead men's bones and of all unclean

excess.

This is the most terrible arraignment ever made of a class of people occupying so high a position of honor and respectability in religion, society, or government. In fact, nothing worse could have been said of any other class of men in any other position.. Shutting up God's kingdom against those who would willingly enter, devouring the substance of widows, turning the hard-made proselyte into a worse devil than themselves, leaving undone the weightier matters of the law, full of extortion and excess, whited sepulchers full of rottenness and dead men's bones! What a terrible catalogue of crimes, and what an awful series of denunciations in detail! And yet. these scribes and Pharisees were the most scrupulous, punctilious, and exact observers of all the forms. and ceremonies of religion. They were the most zealously devoted of all people to their creed, as such; so much so that they would compass land and sea to make one proselyte to it. They would pay tithes of mint, anise, and cummin, the smallest and most insignificant shrubs of the garden.

If one of them touched a heathen in the marketplace, he would wash himself all over as defiled. It is said that if one of them had drawn his handkerchief to