melt his hatred, and your own. "It is better to give than to receive." A good heart is as much affected by the good it does, as by that which is bestowed on it. Make experiment of one act of kindness, and you will be led on to try another. The difficulty of doing good for evil is in the first instance. When the barrier of pride and passion is once broken down, the better feelings expand, the heart melts in its own warmth, your enemy begins to think he is mistaken, his enmity abates, his stern repulsiveness is relaxed, and a space is opened for better sympathies.

Thus only can you heal the wound, which an injury you believe yourself to have received, has inflicted on your temper. So long as resentment rankles in your heart, you are harassed with fierce emotions, a prey to self-inflicted torture. And there is no other balm to assuage the anguish of a soul torn by revengeful passions, but in sincerity and truth to forgive the object of revenge.

"Forgive, and ye shall be forgiven." If any argument will prevail upon those crude antipathies and harsh resentments-if any reflection will subdue the haughty temper, that is quick to discover provocation, and rush impetuous to revenge-it is the recollection, that every one of us must appear as debtors, to sue for pardon and pity, at the judgment-seat of God, trembling under his all-seeing eye, as our offences against him are summed up in fearful arraignment, casting ourselves on his compassion, and crying out for mercy, which is promised only to such as have shewn mercy. Who are you, that seize your fellow-servant by the throat, and drag him to prison, because he cannot pay a hundred pence ?-a poor wretched debtor, who owe ten thousand talents-who, whatever patience your Lord may have, whatever time he may allow, whatever facilities he may afford, can never acquit yourself of the obligations you have contracted. Look into your own life: sift your own con

science; that soiled memory of the past; those secret longings for forbidden gain; those vain pictures of corrupt imagination shake out, and expose to view your offences against God and man: throw into a heap every sin of thought, and word, and deed: lay on the top of all your wilful and presumptuous sins, uppermost, where they are in truth, next to the eye of heaven: consider that you will stand at the last tribunal, and all these laid bare before the angels, and saints, and all the hosts of heaven, and Christ the judge of all: consider the emotions of that moment, when the scales are on the balance-the anxieties, the hopes, the fears, the plea, not for justice, but mercy, only, merely, mercy, pity, pardon, grace—and then say, who is the fellow-sinner, that you will not forgive, because he has been betrayed into offending you by infirmities like your own.

St. Stephen, in the forefront of the host of martyrs, has set an example how to love, and to forgive the deadliest foes.

When he was stoned, he kneeled down, and looked up steadfastly to heaven, and cried with a loud voice, "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge."

And if a Christian, harassed by petty provocations, burns to retaliate if his angry passions conjure up the image of his victim writhing beneath the infliction. of his vengeance, and tortured under agonies of his arm, which should have been powerful to save; bring him to Gethsemane, to that perfect Being, whose conscience reproached him with no wrong; and he shall see the Son of Man bending under persecution and treachery; he shall see his Lord buffeted and spit upon; he shall see the Christ led out to Golgotha crowned with thorns, and ridiculed with the mockery of a purple robe; he shall see him suffer and die; but die for his tormentor's salvation, and praying for his murderers in his last breath: "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do."

See! he bears our griefs, and carries

our sorrows: the chastisement of our

peace is upon him. See his "troubled gestures, and the bloody sweat! strange symptoms of the pangs that rend his righteous heart!" See him bend on the earth! See him struggle on the cross! See the body fainting, and life expiring! but mercy unextinguished! "This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise."

Humble yourself, proud, angry man! Be something of that to your fellow, which your Maker is to you; and learn a lesson of peace from him who brought it down from above.

But to note other subjects which fall within the scope of the sixth commandment, there are some, who create occasion of death or injury by neglect and carelessness; and for fatal accidents by fire, and water, and enterprise, which a little care might have prevented, they are too apt to console themselves with the reflection, that injury was not intended. Yet the injunctions of God's word leave little room for the consolation: