August 28

He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed.—PROV. xiii, 20.

I am a part of all that I have met.

TENNYSON.

No life

Can be pure in its purpose and strong in its strife,

And all life not be purer and stronger thereby.

OWEN MEREDITH.

Our Lord Himself, in one of His earnest talks, bade His followers beware of certain men whose influence was harmful and only harmful and all the more harmful because it was secret and subtle and unseen. Beware, He said, of the leaven of the Pharisees. If the influence of men works secretly as the hidden leaven works in the meal, how careful we should be both of the influence we exert and of the influence to which we submit ourselves. It is not a small matter, this choice of companionships. Young men have been harmed for life by one hour in the company of bad, wicked men, and on the other hand young men have been blessed all their days by half a dozen words spoken wisely and tenderly in the proper time. Better walk the path of life alone on to the end than walk in the company of fools. Happy are those companionships that, formed in early years, grow rich in sacred influences as the years pass on. Walking with the wise and the devout and the true, life becomes a sacred education through all its years, a sweet and gracious preparation for the happier fellowships of heaven. Inter-Ocean.

There is no sort of wrong deed of which a man can bear the punishment alone; you can't isolate yourself and say that the evil which is in you shall not spread. Men's lives are as thoroughly blended with each other as the air they breathe; evil spreads as necessarily as disease. Every sin causes suffering to others besides those who commit it.

GEORGE ELIOT.