Arab. It is only a wise man who despises himself. It is only a fool that trusts his own judgment.

Syriac.-If you wish to be a king become a wild ass—i.e., if you wish to be master of yourself withdraw from society as the wild asses do.

The Body a Tent. 2 Cor. 5. 1-4.

All men are but passengers and pilgrims through this world; not real possessors of anything, but only tenants. and occupiers in this transitory life. Some dwell in stately palaces; and many more in poor cottages; but all are born to the same mortality. If the poor man's hut drops into decay, he dies never the sooner; and if the house of the rich is founded upon a rock, he lives never the longer.

The holy patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, inhabited no lofty cities, built no strongholds, but lived in tents or tabernacles, with which they removed from place to place, as God was pleased to order them, Heb. 11.9; very remarkable in their case, in the land which God had promised to them for an inheritance: thereby signifying that they did not accept of the earthly land, but looked for a better country, that is, an heavenly. The children of Israel, journeying to Canaan, lived by encampments in a wilderness, removing their tents from place to place for forty years, and ending their days in that unsettled way of life. Even when the people were fixed in Canaan, good men still devoted themselves to live as sojourners and pilgrims; thus the Rechabites, who renounced the pleasures and possessions of the world, dwelt in tents as their holy fathers had done before, Jer. 35. 7. Even God himself was pleased to partake of the condition of his people; making himself even under the law, that stranger upon earth which he was to be afterwards under the Gospel as the place of his worship in the wilderness, and long afterwards, was not fixed as a house, but movable as a tent and a tabernacle; and when Christ

the Word was made flesh he is said to have tabernacled amongst us; living as one who renounced this world and all its possessions; more unprovided with house and land than the foxes of the earth or the birds of the air. The passage from this world to the other is much more easy to those who live in this manner. The man of the world, who fixes his abode here, is violently torn away at his death, like the banyan tree pulled up by the roots, and has no prospect after it: but he who lives in a tent can easily remove.

It was an act of faith in Abraham to dwell in tabernacles in the land of promise as in a strange country. His practice in this respect was a perpetual confession that he regarded himself only as a stranger and traveller on the earth, and that "he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God." The feast of tabernacles was appointed to remind the children of Israel of the wanderings of their forefathers in the wilderness (when they dwelt in tents), and thus to suggest to them continually the same thought, that this life is only a pilgrimage, and that our true home is elsewhere, that we have here no continuing city, but seek one to come. The Jews even now live in tents or booths made of trees when this feast comes round. Tents were sometimes placed on the house-tops, 2 Sam. 16. 22; sometimes under trees, Gen. 18. 8.

The Moguls lived often in tents, miles in circumference, which cost many lacs of rupees, being decorated with silk and gold; still they were but tents, and exposed to being blown down by storm or consumed by fire.

By faith the righteous continually regards the body as a tent or tabernacle, a frail and uncertain habitation, suited to the condition of one who is only a traveller to his true home, offering no effectual protection against the many dangers to which he is exposed-a dwelling-place which may be struck or taken down in a moment, opened to heat or cold, rain or lightning. Peter (1 Pet. I. 14)

G

regarded the putting off his tabernacle as emancipation. This short life is the first steps of a ladder, the top of which, like Jacob's, is lost in the glories of heaven.

Hebrew. The corruptible body presseth down the soul; The earthly tabernacle weigheth down the mind.

Bhagavatgita.

As men abandon old and threadbare clothes to

put on others new;

So casts the embodied soul its worn-out frame to enter other forms.

Telugu.-Though a vessel be broken a new one is easily procured. Is it, then, marvellous that after a man's death he should acquire a new body? 2 Cor. 5. 2.

Bengal.-When a cow dies, she is taken up and carried to the river. When a man dies they cover him up too, and do the same.

Turk.-The Tartar who lives in a city believes himself in prison.

Probodh Chandroday.-You should consider the society of friends as a momentary flash of lightning.

Shanti Shatak.--Our place is like a terrible wilderness; our body like a building with much fleshy latticework in it; our earthly friends are like travellers whom we meet by chance and are soon separated from.

Life a Vapour.—Jas. 4. 13, 14.

The Lalita Vistara compares life to the view of a dance to the lightning-to a torrent rushing from the mountain,—and so said Sakhya Muni, the Budhist, when tempted to remain in his father's palace.

Shanti Shatak.-Human existence is like a bottomless gulph, and human life like the fleeting scum of its rolling waves.

Maha Mudgar.-Life is quivering like a drop of water on a lotus-leaf.

Firdusi.

Look at the heavens, how they roll on,
And look at man, how soon he's gone;

A breath of wind and then no moreA world like this should man deplore. Bengal.-An employ the shadow of a cloud.

The Wages of Sin is Death.-Roм. 6. 23.

The wicked are said to be holden with the cord of their own sins, Prov. 5. 22; such was Saul: hence death to the wicked is called the king of terrors, Job 18. 14; it is likened to a wolf, Ps. 49. 14; a flood, Ps. 90. 5; dark. ness, Job 10. 22.

God's punishment of sin or wages is compared to dashing in pieces like a potter's vessel; treading down as the mire of the street or ashes; grinding to powder; melting as a snail; gnashing of teeth. Even in this life the wages are sickness, Deut. 28. 59; famine, Mat. 24. 7; war; fear, Job 18. II. In the next it will be the blackness of darkness, 2 Peter 2. 17; the wine of God's wrath, Rev. 14. 10; everlasting contempt, Dan. 12. 2.

The devil is a bad master; his servants work hard, they are fed with husks in this life, Luke 15. 16. The pay of sin is sickness, Lev. 26. 16; famine, Lev. 26. 19; war, Lev. 26. 17.

China-Unjustly got wealth is snow sprinkled with hot water; lands improperly obtained are but sandbanks in a stream.

China. When the melon is ripe it will drop of itself. China. The day will come when the tumour will be

punctured.

Urdu.-The cow will speak in the thief's belly, Gen. 4. 10. Malay. When is it the ants die if not in sugar?

Providence a Wall of Fire to protect the Good.
ZECH. 2. 5.

Babylon had walls 300 feet high and 70 feet thick, so that six carriages could drive abreast, yet the city was taken owing to the gates having been left open when the people were drunk. The walls of Gaur in Bengal were

100 feet high. The walls of Jericho were high, but they fell down at the command of God, Jos. 6. 20, who often destroys walls by earthquakes.

Eastern shepherds and travellers, to protect themselves. and their flocks from wild beasts at night, make fires all around them, over which the most furious animals dare not pass, not even the tiger, being afraid of fire.

The righteous is travelling as a pilgrim through this world, a howling wilderness; the devil is a dragon, and the wicked as lions are ready to devour him, but he sleeps secure, surrounded with God a Wall of Fire; so the Jews walked through the Red Sea, the waters standing up on both sides as a wall, Ex. 14. 22.

Turk.-The nest of a blind bird is made by God.

Russian.-Without God not to the threshold, with him, beyond the sea.

Veman.-Just as a showman plays his puppets, while he lies hidden, so does the Deity, while he conceals himself, admirably govern man.

No Discharge in Death's Warfare.-ECCL. 8. 8.

Death is a warfare in which the arrows of pain and fear are discharged, Eccles. 8. 8. The wicked are driven away by death, and all their joys end; the righteous desire to depart, and all their sorrows end. Death is abolished by taking away its sting-sin, 2 Tim. 1. 10.

Turk.-Death is a black camel which kneels at every man's. gate.

Arab.-Caution secures not cowards against death; it comes from the sky.

Urdu.-He who is prepared to die, what will he not

attempt ?

Arab. When fate arrives the physician becomes a fool.
Tamul.-The ocean is knee deep to him who is dying.
Turk.—There are two things which no man fixedly regards,.
the sun and death.

Sanskrit.-All rivers go to the ocean.