THE POWER OF WISDOM. Pantingly forth, as if it press'd her heart: Cried 'Sisters! sisters! Shame of ladies! sisters! Kent! father! sisters! What, i' the storm? i' the night? Let pity not be believed!' There she shook The holy water from her heavenly eyes, And clamour moisten'd: then away she started King Lear, Act iv. Sc. 3, 1. 11. He covets less Than misery itself would give; rewards His deeds with doing them; and is content To spend the time, to end it. 71 Coriolanus, Act ii. Sc. 2, 1. 130. Self-knowledge. Not the truth of which any one is, or supposes himself to be, possessed, but the upright endeavor he has made to arrive at truth makes the worth of the man. For not by the possession, but by the investigation, of truth are his powers expanded, wherein alone his ever-growing perfection exists. Possession makes us easy, indolent, proud. If God held all truth shut up in his right hand, and in his left nothing but the ever restless instinct for truth, though with the condition of ever and for ever erring, and should say to me, Choose! I should bow humbly to his left hand, and say, Father, give! pure truth is for Thee alone. LESSING, quoted by Lowell," Among My Books," First Series, p. 347. A soul with good intent and purpose just SOPHOCLES, Fragments, 1. 88. Surely people must know themselves; so few ever think about any thing else. Yes, they think what they have, what they shall get, how they shall appear, what they shall do, perchance now and then what they shall be, but never, or hardly ever, what they are. Guesses at Truth. Go to your bosom ; Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know That's like my brother's fault: if it confess A natural guiltiness such as is his, 1 I have more understanding than all my teachers: for thy testimonies are my meditation. - Psalm cxix. 99. SELF-KNOWLEDGE. Let it not sound a thought upon your tongue Measure for Measure, Act ii. Sc. 2, l. 136. I and my bosom must debate a while, King Henry V., Act iv. Sc. 1, l. 31. Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear, Look, what thy memory can not obtain Commit to these waste blanks, and thou shalt find Better conquest never canst thou make Than arm thy constant and thy nobler parts Against these giddy loose suggestions. Sonnet, lxxvii. King John, Act iii. Sc. 1, 1. 290. 1 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye. - Matt. vii. 5. I will chide no breather in the world but myself, against whom I know most faults. As You Like It, Act iii. Sc. 2, l. 297. Happy are they that hear their detractions and can put them to mending. Much Ado about Nothing, Act ii. Sc. 3, 1. 238. Let me be ignorant, and in nothing good, But graciously to know I am no better. Measure for Measure, Act ii. Sc. 4, l. 76. The Duty of showing Mercy. The ostentation of hypocrites is ever confined to the works of the first table of the law, which prescribes our duties to God. The reason is twofold: both because works of this class have a greater pomp of sanctity, and because they interfere less with their desires. The way to convict a hypocrite therefore is to send him from the works of sacrifice to the works of mercy. Whence the text: “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the orphans and widows in their affliction; " and that other, "He who loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how shall he love God whom he hath not seen?" SIR FRANCIS BACON, Meditationes Sacræ. Portia. Antonio. I do. Portia. Do you confess the bond? Then must the Jew be merciful. Shylock. On what compulsion must I? tell me that. 1 1 Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. - Matt. iv. 7. |