READING AND THINKING.-Those who read everything, are thought to understand everything too; but it is not always so. Reading only furnishes the mind with the materials of knowledge: it is thinking that makes what we read ours. We are of the ruminating kind, and it is not enough that we cram ourselves with a great load of collections. Unless we chew them over again, they will not give us strength and nourishment.-Locke.

READING, CONVERSATION, AND CONTEMPLATION.-By reading, we enjoy the dead; by conversation, the living; and by contemplation, ourselves. Reading enriches the memory; conversation polishes the wit; and contemplation improves the judgment. Of these, reading is the most important, as it furnishes both the others.-Colton.

READING, CONVERSATION, AND WRITING.-Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man; and, therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not.-Lord Bacon.

READING FOR THE FAMILY.-Always have a book at hand, in the parlor, on the table, for the family; a book of condensed thought and striking anecdote, of sound maxims and truthful apothegms. It will impress on your own mind a thousand valuable suggestions, and teach your children a thousand lessons of truth and duty. Such a book is a casket of jewels for your household.-T. Edwards.

READING, HOW TO IMPROVE BY.-Think as well as read, and when you read. Yield not your minds to the passive impressions which others may please to make upon them. Hear what they have to say; but examine it, weigh it, and judge for yourselves. This will enable you to make a right use of books-to use them as helpers, not as guides to your

understanding; as counsellors, not as dictators of what you are to think and believe.-T. Edwards.

READING, HOW TO IMPROVE BY.-Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.Lord Bacon.

READING OF CHILDREN.-What blockheads are those wise persons, who think it necessary that a child should comprehend everything it reads.-Southey.

READING WORKS OF THOUGHT.-It is wholesome and bracing for the mind to have its faculties kept on the stretch. It is like the effect of a walk in Switzerland, upon the body. Reading an essay of Bacon's for instance, or a chapter of Aristotle, or of Butler, if it be well and thoughtfully read, is much like climbing up a hill, and may do one the same sort of good. Set the tortoise to run against the hare; and, even if he does not overtake it, he will do more than ever he did previously-more than he would ever have thought himself capable of doing. Set the hare to run with the tortoise, he falls asleep.- Guesses at Truth.

REASON. Reason cannot show itself more reasonable, than to cease reasoning on things above reason.-Sir P. Sidney.

REASON. Polished steel will not shine in the dark. No more can reason, however refined or cultivated, shine efficaciously, but as it reflects the light of divine truth shed from heaven.-John Foster.

REASON. Reason is a very light rider, and easily shook off.-Swift.

REASON. If it is dangerous to be convinced, it is danger

ous to listen; for our reason is so much of a machine, that it will not always be able to resist when the ear is perpetually assailed.-Mackenzie.

REASON.-Reason! how many eyes hast thou to see evils, and how dim, nay, blind, thou art in preventing them.—Sir P. Sidney.

REASON. What men want of reason for their opinions, they usually supply and make up in rage.-Tillotson.

REASON AND REASONING.-Lord Chatham, in his speeches, did not reason; he struck, as by intuition, directly on the results of reasoning-as a cannon shot strikes the mark with out your seeing its course through the air as it moves toward its object.-J. Foster.

REASON AND RELIGION.-The province of reason as to matters of religion, is the same as that of the eye in reference to the external world: not to create objects; nor to sit in judgment on the propriety of their existence, but simply to discern them just as they are.

REASON AND RELIGION.- This has been my object, and this alone can be my defence, the unquenched desire (not without the consciousness of having earnestly endeavored) to kindle young minds, and to guard them against the temptations of scorners, by showing that the scheme of Christianity, though not discoverable by human reason, is yet in accordance with it; that link follows link by necessary consequence; that religion passes out of the ken of reason only where the eye of reason has reached its own horizon; and that faith is then but its continuation; even as the day softens away into the sweet twilight and twilight, hushed and breathless, steals into the darkness.-Coleridge.

REASON, DOES GOD?-Reasoning implies doubt and uncertainty; and therefore God does not reason.

REASONING.-Never reason from what you do not know. If you do, you will soon believe what is utterly against reason.-Ramsay.

REASONING. All reasoning is retrospect; it consists in the application of facts and principles previously known. This will show the very great importance of knowledge, especially of that kind called experience.-J. Foster.

REASONS.-Reasons are the pillars of the fabric of a sermon, but similitudes are the windows which give the best light. The faithful minister avoids such stories, whose mention may suggest bad thoughts to the auditors, and will not use a light comparison to make thereof a grave application, for fear lest his poison go further than his antidote.-Fuller.

RECOLLECTION IN RELIGION.-Recollection is the life of religion. The Christian wants to know no new thing, but to have his heart elevated more above the world by secluding himself from it as much as his duties will allow, that religion may effect its great end, by bringing its sublime hopes and prospects into more steady action on the mind.- Cecil.

RECOMMENDATION.—An upright minister asks what recommends a man; a corrupt minister, who?- Colton.

REFINEMENT OF MANNERS.-Coolness, and absence of heat and haste, indicate fine qualities. A gentleman makes no noise; a lady is serene.-R. W. Emerson.

REFLECTION.-Every man deeply engaged in business, if all regard to another state be not extinguished, must have the conviction, if not the resolution of Valdesso, who, being asked whether he retired from the army in disgust, answered, "that he laid down his commission for no other reason, but because there ought to be some time for sober reflection between the life of a soldier and his death."-Johnson.

REFLECTIONS. The reflections on a day well spent, furnish us with joys more pleasing than ten thousand triumphs.— Thomas à Kempis.

REFORMATION.-One reason why the world is not reformed, is, because every man would have others make a beginning, and never thinks of himself.-Adam.

REFORMATION.-How impotent, often, is the pain of guilt, as a stimulant to amendment and reformation.--J. Foster.

REFORMATION, INTENDED.-How dangerous to defer those momentous reformations, which the conscience is solemnly preaching to the heart. If they are neglected, the difficulty and indisposition are increasing every month. The mind is receding, degree after degree, from the warm and hopeful zone; till at last, it will enter the arctic circle, and become fixed in relentless and eternal ice.-J. Foster.

REFORMATION, PRETENDED.—It is well known what strange work there has been in the world, under the name and pretence of reformation; how often it has turned out to be, in reality, deformation; or, at best, a tinkering sort of business, where, while one hole has been mended, two have been made. -Bishop Horne.

REFORMATION, THE WORK OF TIME.-Reformation is a work of time. A national taste, however wrong it may be, cannot be totally changed at once; we must yield a little to the prepossession which has taken hold on the mind, and we may then bring people to adopt what would offend them, if endeavored to be introduced by violence.-Sir J. Reynolds.

REGRET FOR ERROR.-Right actions for the future are the best explanations or apologies for wrong ones in the past; the best evidence of regret for them, that we can offer, or the world receive.-Edwards.

RELIGION. Whatever definitions men have given of re