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echo, however long the interval, will return to the ear and heart of the profane swearer, and resound in awful, thundering accents, filling his soul with terror, remorse and shame, while immortality endures. "A dreadful sound is in his ears."

648. OBEDIENCE.

By learning to obey, you will be qualified to command. Secker. Those children who move in the orbit of obedience, shall enjoy the clearest sunshine of their father's countenance. Fuller. Let your child's first lesson be obedience, and the second may be whatever you will.

If you would secure obedience, show affection. It is a power that succeeds, when others fail.

649. OBEDIENCE TO GOD.

Samuel. Obedience is better than sacrifice.

Em. Obedience to God is the most infallible evidence that creatures can exhibit of their sincere and supreme love to him. God proposed a certain act of obedience to Abraham; and by performing it, he exhibited the highest evidence of supreme love to his Maker. "Now I know that thou fearest me, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from me.” Our Saviour made obedience the infallible test and highest evidence of true love to him. "Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you." It is by obedience, that Christians exhibit the highest evidence to themselves, and to the world, that their love to God is sincere and supreme.

650. OBJECTS, MAGNIFICENT.

Em. Great objects form great minds.

Great objects require great hearts, and great efforts, for their accomplishment.

651. OBLIGATION TO GOD.

Secker. Man not only owes his services, but himself, to God. Ed. Obligation to God- the constant result of our existence, and almost as constantly overlooked by mankind.

The nearer the relations of being, the stronger the ties of obligation.

God and our parents cannot be requited.

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652. OBLIVION.

How soon men and events are forgotten! Each generation lives in a different world.

Ed. The oblivions of time will be the reminiscences of eternity. "God has made his wonderful works to be remembered," and will have infinitely more use for the events of time hereafter, than he has had here.

653. OBSERVATION, SCRUTINY, ETC.

Ed. The way to know everything, is to observe everything, learn everything, and forget nothing.

Ib. A habit of close observation, early established, will bring you into the king's cabinet.

Ib. A habit of acute attention, and close observation, makes the scholar, and the man of science.

Em. Every person ought to have an habitual awe, veneration, and respect for the public eye, which continually observes, and criticises his visible actions and moral conduct. Such a proper respect for the public opinion, appears beautiful in any person, in any rank or condition of life; and while it commands esteem, it leads to that mode of conduct which deserves it. [See 56.]

654. OBSCURITY, AMBIGUITY.

Unintelligible language is a lantern without a light.

Truth is intrinsically simple and plain; error, complex, obscure, contradictory.

Ed. The reason why persons run into ambiguity, and perplex themselves and others, is because they have a delusion instead of a fact in their minds, which they desire to illustrate and defend.

Ib. Blindness of heart beclouds the understanding, conscience, memory, and indeed every one of the intellectual powers, and throws a mischievous obscurity over theological, moral, and even classical science. This blindness prevents a world of intellectual happiness. The remedy is simple, practicable, imperative, and consists in complying with the commands to love God for what he is, and keep the heart with all dili

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gence in this love. The prevalence of this love would annihilate the obscurity of the intellectual and moral world, and the ambiguities of the languages of the world, in a trice, and introduce millennial light and glory.

655. OBSTINACY, STUBBORNNESS.

Whom neither reason nor experience can persuade, is obstinate. Ed. What, then, the sinner, whom reason, conscience, sad experience, Divine invitations, warnings, expostulations, commands, and the fearful penalty of God's law, all fail to persuade ?

Bp. Hall. It is not sin that kills the soul, but impenitence. Ed. Nothing in our world is so obstinate as habitual sins. The envy and enmity of Joseph's brethren were cherished, till "they could not speak peaceably towards him." It is written, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked." The long practice of sin increases it stubbornness. The backslidings of true believers, if cherished, soon become highly obstinate. David mourned over his, Paul called his "the law of sin in my members." All true believers have found their sinful habits and propensities a very obstinate bondage. The many, discover and believe it not. But it is a stubborn fact, that sinful habits, inclinations, and lusts are more obstinate and difficult to subdue than anything else in the world. The greatest emancipation, is to be made free from the bondage of sin. Dreadful beyond description the condition of fallen angels, and lost souls, when the dominion of sin is confirmed forever. 656. OCCUPATION.

A mind occupied is a mind fortified.

Old Humphrey. That which tends most to mitigate earthly sorrow, religion excepted, is occupation. This cures one half of life's troubles, and mitigates the remainder. Occupation raises the spirit, while idleness brings it down to the dust. Care is a sad disease; despondency a sadder, and discontent the saddest of the three if we wish to be cured of all these together, next to seeking the Divine support, the prescription is, occupation.

Ed. It is not occupation, but honorable, useful, proper occupation, such as reason, conscience, and God approve, that is the

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antidote for the ills of life. There is an occupation of the head, and hands, and heart, that kills.

Constant occupation prevents temptation. [See 283.] 657. OCEAN.

Cowper. Ocean exhibits, fathomless and broad,

Much of the pow'r and majesty of God.

Ed. Ocean, the world's magnificent, humid element, that rides upon the wings of the wind, and runs in arteries throughout its more solid portions, fertilizing both earth and air, and that embodies itself in its mighty bed, to give full play and sustenance to the races with fins and scales, and afford earth's lords a pathway to span its surface.

658. OMISSION, SINS OF.

Every time you avoid doing right, you increase your disposition to do wrong.

Ed. Sins of omission, so called, always involve sins of commission, or actual sins, which alone constitute our blameworthiness. The omission of known duties to God or man, always involves a present refusal to perform them, and serving ourselves. Sin is not predicable of mere negation. Still it is convenient to use a negative, to express and involve a positive, where the guilt lies.

659. OPINION, OPINIONS.

Men too generally take their opinions upon trust, profess them from impulse, and adhere to them from pride.

Opinion does immense good or harm, in the world.

It is our false opinion of things, which leads us to ruin. Opinion is the great pillar that upholds the commonwealth. Ed. Mankind act strangely in reference to opinions. In the first place, they generally refuse to entertain any that are intrinsically important, practical, and worthy of them. But when they are constrained to receive good opinions, they will not generally avow them with candor and impartiality. What they seem more generally to prefer is, to receive only the more superficial, inconsistent, and worthless classes of opinions, and to hold even these as merchantable commodities—or if they must become opinionated in anything, they seem to give a preference to those

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opinions which have the most affinity with nothing. Something like this appears to be the fact in reference to the opinions of the human race. They seem generally to imagine they are entirely irresponsible for their opinions, when, in fact, every rational being is bound to receive only truthful, good, and useful opinions, and to avow and hold on to them with a grasp stronger than life or death.

660. OPPORTUNITY, OPPORTUNITIES. Omit no opportunity of doing good, and you will find no opportunity to do evil.

Ed. Opportunities are precious, in proportion to the liabilities and consequences of neglecting them.

Ib. Opportunities for sensual pleasures, for temporal interest and happiness, and even for mischief and vice, are more sought and more prized, by mankind in general, than opportunities to secure the everlasting favor of God, and the unspeakable glory and interests of his heavenly kingdom. Solomon therefore selected the right name for sinners, i. e. fools.

Ib. Opportunities for doing and getting good, neglected and abused, occasion everlasting, irretrievable, and immeasurable evils. [See 742.]

661. OPPRESSION.

Sh. Fishes live in the sea, as men do a-land: the great ones eat up the little ones.

Solomon. Oppression maketh a wise man mad. Ed. Who knows but this may be the true key to the madness of the times? Quem Deus, vult perdere, etc. Whom God intends to destroy, he first infatuates.

poor

Ed. Oppression of the the contrivance of the adversary to make the rich and powerful bring upon themselves the oppression of everlasting infamy and punishment, according to their deserts. This is the fearful import of Solomon's declaration, "The robbery of the wicked shall destroy them, because they refuse to do judgment," which makes oppression an infinitely more serious affair than oppressors are aware of. Their marvellous insensibility of their own injustice and cruelty, which