Travellers inform us of a poison tree found in the island of Java, which is faid by its effluvia to have depopulated the country for twelve or fourteen miles around the place of its growth. It is called Bohan Upas. Poisoned arrows are prepared with the juice of it. Condemned criminals are fent to the tree to get this juice, carrying with them proper directions how to obtain it, and how to fecure themselves from the malignant exhalations; and are pardoned if they bring back a certain quantity of the poison; but, by the register there kept, not one in four is faid

to return.

"Anger refteth in the bofom of fools."-ECCL. vii. 9. from anger, and forfake wrath."-Ps. xxxvii. 6.

"Ceafe

Upon the margin of the filvery flood,
Come, fee the Lion in his wrathful mood.
His roar terrific echoing rocks rebound,
And nature trembles at the dreadful found;
His furious tail he works from fide to fide,
His briftly mane he shakes with awful pride;
His eyes, wild rolling, glare with ftartling light,
With paw upraifed, he ftands prepared for fight.
And wherefore ftands he thus with warlike look ?
He fees his image in the quiet brook.

Man, born to reafon, like the foolish beast,
Lets rage hot boiling fefter in his breaft;
The caufe as futile: he himself poffeff'd
Of evil tempers, colours all the reft.

Look! here is the Lion, the king of beafts. See where he ftands, maddened with rage.

The

favage monarch is alone; the beafts of the field hide themselves when he is angry; his dreadful roar makes them tremble in their dens; the echoing hills reply to the found thereof. Now he becomes hot with paffion. He lashes with his furious tail his heaving fides; he fhakes thunder from his fhaggy mane; his eyes dart lightning. See, he has raised his murderous paw; he is ready to grapple with his foe. Terrible he looks in the season of his wrath.

But what has enkindled his rage? What is the cause of this fierce commotion? Nothing but his own fhadow. He fees his reflected image in the placid stream. Face anfwers to face; every indication of paffion is faithfully reflected. He beholds no common foe. He prepares himself for mortal combat.

The above engraving is an emblem of Anger, and of the worthless causes that oftentimes give rife to it. Anger is one of the most fierce and deadly paffions that agitate the human breaft and afflict mankind. Let anger afcend the throne of the human mind, and all other paffions, affections, and interests are trampled under foot. A brother lies fwimming in his blood; a village is depopulated with the edge of the fword; cities burn amid the conflagration of fire; and kingdoms, given over to the horrors of wrath, become defolate, pass into oblivion, and are known no more. But who can declare the miseries that flow from anger?

Anger, as a finful paffion, is never justifiable;

but it oftentimes exifts without any real cause whatever. Like the lion in the picture, the man is angry at the reflection of himself; it is his own image that he fees. He imagines, and this is all; his own evil temper colours all befides. The object of his wrath is innocent, perhaps as quiet as an unruffled lake.

Be fure, before you give way to anger, that your neighbour has injured you, and then-forgive him. But even if an apparent caufe does exift, fuppofe fome one has injured me. Is not this enough? He that finneth wrongeth his own foul; fhall I therefore fin and wrong mine? To have an enemy is bad; to be one is worse. And why should I inflict felf-punishment for the crime of another?

There is a degree of madness connected with anger. The angry man is brutifhly infane. This is fo wherever it is seen; whether we regard it in the conduct of Xerxes, who flogged the waves, and caft fetters into the fea to bind it, because it broke his bridge of boats,-or in its daily outbreaks around us.

But is there no cure for this contagious evil? There is. What is it? When Athenodorus was about to retire from the court of Auguftus Cæfar, he gave the emperor this advice: Remember, whenever you feel angry, that you neither fay nor do anything until you have repeated all the letters of the alphabet." This is good but the following is better: When a man feels himself finking into the gulf of angry paffion, looking by

faith on the Lord Jefus Chrift, let him exclaim: "Lord, fave or I perifh!" The rising storm will pass away, and all will be calm and peaceful. "The wife will let their anger cool, At least before 'tis night; But in the bofom of a fool, It burns till morning light.”