Cambridge Pieces Part 5

8. "Charity is but the compa.s.sion that we feel for our own vices when we perceive their hatefulness in other people." Charity, then, is but another name for selfishness, and must be eschewed accordingly.

9. A great French king was walking one day with the late Mr. B., when the king dropped his umbrella. Mr. B. instantly stooped down and picked it up. The king said in a very sweet tone, "Thank you."

10. The Cam is the river Jordan. An unthinking mind may consider this a startling announcement. Let such an one pray for grace to read the mystery aright.

11. When I've lost a b.u.t.ton off my trousers I go to the tailors'

and get a new one sewn on.

12. Faith and Works were walking one day on the road to Zion, when Works turned into a public-house, and said he would not go any further, at the same time telling Faith to go on by himself, and saying that "he should be only a drag upon him." Faith accordingly left Works in the ale-house, and went on. He had not gone far before he began to feel faint, and thought he had better turn back and wait for Works. He suited the action to the word, and finding Works in an advanced state of beer, fell to, and even surpa.s.sed that worthy in his potations. They then set to work and fought l.u.s.tily, and would have done each other a mortal injury had not a Policeman providentially arrived, and walked them off to the station-house.

As it was they were fined Five s.h.i.+llings each, and it was a long time before they fully recovered.

13. What can 10 fools do among 300 sinners? They can do much harm, and had far better let the sinners seek peace their own way in the wilderness than ram it down their throats during the night.

14. Barnwell is a place near Cambridge. It is one of the descents into the infernal regions; nay, the infernal regions have there ascended to the upper earth, and are rampant. He that goeth by it shall be scorched, but he that seeketh it knowingly shall be devoured in the twinkling of an eye, and become withered as the gra.s.s at noonday.

15. Young men do not seem to consider that houses were made to pray in, as well as to eat and to drink in. Spiritual food is much more easily procured and far cheaper than bodily nutriment; that, perhaps, is the reason why many overlook it.

16. When we were children our nurses used to say, "Rock-a-bye baby on the tree top, when the bough bends the cradle will rock." Do the nurses intend the wind to represent temptation and the storm of life, the tree-top ambition, and the cradle the body of the child in which the soul traverses life's ocean? I cannot doubt all this pa.s.ses through the nurses' minds. Again, when they say, "Little Bo- peep has lost her sheep and doesn't know where to find them; let them alone and they'll come home with their tails all right behind them," is Little Bo-peep intended for mother Church? Are the sheep our erring selves, and our subsequent return to the fold? No doubt of it.

17. A child will often eat of itself what no compulsion can induce it to touch. Men are disgusted with religion if it is placed before them at unseasonable times, in unseasonable places, and clothed in a most unseemly dress. Let them alone, and many will perhaps seek it for themselves, whom the world suspects not. A whited sepulchre is a very picturesque object, and I like it immensely, and I like a Sim too. But the whited sepulchre is an acknowledged humbug and most of the Sims are not, in my opinion, very far different.

Footnotes:

{1} This was called to my attention by a distinguished Greek scholar of this University.

{2} The Hauenstein tunnel was not completed until later. Its construction was delayed by a fall of earth which occurred in 1857 and buried sixty-three workmen.--R. A. S.

{3} Mr. J. F. Harris has identified Butler's rooms in the third court of St. John's College.--R. A. S.

{4} As Walmisley died in January, 1856, this piece must evidently date from Butler's first year at Cambridge.--R. A. S.

{5} William Selwyn D.D., Fellow of St. John's Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity, died 1875.--A. T. B.

{6} Charles Clayton, M.A., of Gonville and Caius, Vicar of Holy Trinity, Cambridge, 1851-65. Died 1883.--A. T. B.