ELEGANT EXTRACT.

            ‘Dr. Thomas, in his vainglorious speculations, terminating in his Elpis Israel, rather than in the discovery of some new world, on which to inscribe his fame, has covered himself with shame, and reduced his metropolitan church in Richmond to less than half the twelve apostles. In such cases, with a slight modification, we may say with the poet—

“O Sons of earth, attempt you still to rise,

By fables piled on fables to the skies.

Heaven still with laughter the vain toil surveys,

And buries builders in the heaps they raise.’

A.     Campbell, Mill. Harb. P. 329.

There is a little defect in the above, and that is, its entire want of truth. —What our friend styles our ‘speculations’ have very far from terminated in Elpis Israel, as every reader of that book and the Herald well knows, and as he knows too. Neither have we ‘covered ourself with shame,’ save in the estimation of himself and satellites; which is an affair of little moment. We have never owned a ‘church’ in Richmond, or elsewhere; and therefore could not reduce such an one. And as to the ‘fables piled on fables to the skies,’ they are all on his side; and from hell beneath to kingdoms in the stars—presently threaten to overwhelm him and his ‘reformation’ in the confusion of Babylon worse confounded. Our friend is in a pitiable plight. He would like to ‘cover us with shame, indeed, by reducing Elpis Israel to an absurdity, if he could; but he dare not make the venture. His profound ignorance of Moses and the Prophets paralyses him. His only alternative therefore is, to give currency to the gossip of lewd fellows of the baser sort.

EDITOR.

* * *

AN EYE-BEAM EXTRACTOR OF MOTES.

            “We cannot,” says our hyper (?) critical friend of Bethany, “but suspect any man’s want of confidence in himself, or of candour, who will take up an evil report against his neighbour, and reproach his principles and character, and will neither give him a hearing, or make the amend honourable.” M. Harb. V. 2 No. 7.p. 413. These are our sentiments exactly. In the same article, he says, “Mr. Anderson of the New York Recorder cannot defend himself, and therefore dare not allow his readers to hear us.” This is, doubtless, the logical conclusion from the premiss.

            In view, then, of this, and of our friend’s own practice, we respectfully commend the following words of the Lord Jesus to his grave consideration—

“Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge so shall ye be judged. * * * And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, and considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out off thy brother’s eye.”

These are wholesome words which should be memorised by all Eye-Beams, great and small. The Eye-Motes never forget them; because the Eye-Beamers are continually at work upon them practising their spiritual chirurgery, with irritating, but unsanitary, effect. —Their unsuccessful practice is doubtless owing to their neglect of the Great Physician’s prescription. They mat be very dexterous mote-extractors, but then, unfortunately, the cataract in their own crystallines are so opaque that they are apt to mistake their own lesions for that of the wretched patient who happens to fall into their otherwise pretty skilful hands. The principles of our friend’s symptomatology are quite accurate. We commend them to the favourable regard of all his fellow-craftsmen, for whose daily use we reduce them to the following convenient form:

1.      A man who combats an opponent with any other weapons than testimony and right reason is utterly devoid of self confidence, and candour.

2.      When an editor, preacher, or any other person refuses to permit audiences to hear in defence those they assail, it is proof that they know that their cause is too rotten to sustain without damage an examination which truth always courts from its opponents.

EDITOR