Spare Hours

We question if as many carefully thought and worded, and rapidly and by no means laboriously written sermons, were composed anywhere else in Britain during his fifty years--ever...

When we got to the top of the street, and turned north, we espied a crowd at the Tron Church. "A dog-fight!" shouted Bob, and was off; and so was I, both of us all but praying t...

There was an incident at this time of his life which I should perhaps not tell, and yet I don't know why I shouldn't, it so perfectly illustrates his character in many ways. He...

One Sunday he had gone with him to church, and left him at the vestry door. The second psalm was given out, and my father was sitting back in the pulpit, when the door at its ba...

This was the close. She sank rapidly: the delirium left her; but, as she whispered, she was "clean silly;" it was the lightening before the final darkness. After having for some...

_The Maid of Lorn_ was a chestnut mare, a broken down racer, thorough-bred as Beeswing, but less fortunate in her life, and I fear not so happy _occasione mortis_: unlike the Du...

I have already spoken; her oddities were endless. We had and still have a dear friend,--"Cousin Susan" she is called by many who are not her cousins--a perfect lady, and, though...

I was saying how much my father enjoyed women's company. He liked to look on them, and watch them, listening[21] to their keen, unconnected, and unreasoning, but not unreasonabl...

Quoth the wylie auld wife, "The thing speaks weel; Our workers are scant--we hae routh o' meal; Giff he'll do as he says--be he man, be he de'il, Wow! we'll try this Aiken-drum."

Though we do not reckon the _imagination_ of Dr. Chalmers among his master faculties, it was powerful, effective, magnificent. It did not move him, he took it up as he went alon...

In pursuing the above inquiry, certain further conclusions, naturally flowing out of what I have attempted to establish, and yet involving results considerably remote from it, h...

Now in children, as we all know, _he_ works chiefly through the senses. The quantity of accurate observation--of induction, and of deduction too (both of a much better quality t...

We must not only have wisdom, which is knowledge assimilated and made our own, but we must, as the Lancashire men say and do, _have wit to use it_. We may carry a nugget of gold...

"_A lady, resident in Devonshire, going into one of her parlors, discovered a young ass, who had found his way into the room, and carefully closed the door upon himself. He had...

The expression, "if it had been possible," has also, I think, a peculiar significance. If the sentence in the 15th verse, beginning, "I bear you record," &c., is thoughtfully co...

It is not philosophy, it is not science, it is not morality, it is not religion, any more than red is or ever can be blue or yellow, or than one thing can ever be another; but i...

"5. Love, Love has Wings, and he Soon out of Sight will flee, Lost in far Ether to the sensual Eye, But the Soul's Vision true Can track him, yea, up to The Presence and the Thr...

And now are we not all the better for this pleasantry? so womanly, so genial, so rich, and so without a sting,--such a true diversion, with none of the sin of effort or of mere...

It is not a mere exercitation of the intellect, it is an endeavor to get nearer God--to assert his eternal Providence, and vindicate his ways to men. We know no performance more...

You have doubtless heard of the story of Lord Brougham going to hear him. It is very characteristic, and as I had it from Mrs. Cuninghame, who was present, I may be allowed to t...

The lesson from all this is, Attend to your bodies, study their structure, functions, and laws. This does not at all mean that you need be an anatomist, or go deep into physiolo...

We have left ourselves no room to speak of the books we have named at the end of this paper. We recommend them all to our young readers. Arnauld's excellent and entertaining _Ar...

"Were all my loud, evil days, Calm and unhaunted as is Thy dark Tent, Whose peace but by some Angel's wing or voice Is seldom rent; Then I in Heaven all the long year Would keep...

This is a subject of the deepest personal as well as speculative interest. In the works of Augustin, of Baxter, Howe, and Jonathan Edwards, and of Alexander Knox, our readers wi...

What we lost, the congregation and the world gained. He gave himself wholly to his work. As you have yourself said, he changed his entire system and fashion of preaching; from b...

But this we may say, we know of nothing in all literature to compare with the volume from which these lines are taken, since David lamented with this lamentation: "The beauty of...

"Though the bent of Arthur's mind by no means inclined him to strict research into facts, he was full as much conversant with the great features of ancient and modern history, a...

There was no separating his thoughts and expressions from his person, and looks, and voice. How perfectly we can at this moment recall him! Thundering, flaming, lightening in th...

George Wilson was born in Edinburgh in 1818. His father, Mr. Archibald Wilson, was a wine merchant, and died sixteen years ago; his mother, Janet Aitken, still lives to mourn an...

The time when I would have liked his look to have been perpetuated, was that of all others the least likely, or indeed possible;--it was, when after administering the Sacrament...

In the same line, and to the same effect, are our Art-Unions and Associations for "the encouragement" of Art; some less bad than others, but all bad, because founded upon a wron...