prosperity? Was the whole life of the King of Israel a series of deliverances and mercies? Was the suffering Job, when the hand of God was upon him, inspired with a faith and hope that no sophistry nor taunts could shake? God is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever; their example, therefore, and the example of all the holy saints recorded in Scripture, serve to support us under the ills of life, to strengthen our faith and patience, to animate our hope in God; he is still the strength of his people. These "things were written for our learning, that we, through patience and comfort of the Scriptures, might have hope." In the Scriptures of truth, then, we thus find God revealed as our Almighty Guardian and Father; and our hope is strengthened by the most affecting promises and animating examples. If the sacred writings advanced no further, the pious reader of them might still find consolation and hope. But it is their principal aim to delineate and unfold the spiritual and everlasting salvation of the Lord Jesus Christ; and in this respect they raise the exercise of hope to its highest fervor and enjoyment.- Posthumous Works. OBBES, THOMAS, an English philosopher; born at Westport, Wiltshire, April 5, 1588; died at Hardwicke, December 4, 1679. His father was a clergyman, by whom he was sent at the age of fifteen to Magdalen College, Oxford, where for five years he devoted himself to the study of logic and the Aristotelian philosophy. He became private tutor to several young noblemen, with whom, at various times, he traveled on the Continent. In 1640, on the approach of the civil war, he went to Paris, where he resided for ten years. In 1642 he was appointed mathematical tutor to the Prince of Wales, afterward King Charles II., who then resided at Paris. The later years of his life were passed at the seat of the Earl of Devonshire, who had formerly been his pupil. Hobbes wrote largely in both English and Latin. His principal works are Elementa Philosophica de Cive (1642); Human Nature and De Corpore Politico (1650); Leviathan, or the Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Political (1651); A Letter on Liberty and Necessity (1654); Decameron Physiologicum (1678); Autobiography, in Latin verse, translated by himself into English verse (1679); Behemoth, or the History of the Civil Wars in England, published soon after his death. A complete edition of the Works of Hobbes, in 16 vols., edited by Sir William Molesworth, appeared in 1839-45. THE NECESSITY OF THE WILL. The question is not, whether a man be a free agent, that is to say, whether he can write or forbear; speak or be silent, according to his will; but whether the will to write, and the will to forbear, come upon him according to his will, or according to anything else in his own power. I acknowledge this liberty, that I can do if I will; but to say, I can will if I will, I take to be an absurd speech. It is true, very few have learned from tutors, that a man is not free to will; nor do they find it much in books. That they find in books, that which the poets chant in the theatres, and the shepherds on the mountains, that which the pastors teach in the churches, and the doctors in the universities, and that which the common people in the markets and all mankind in the whole world do assent unto, is the same that I assent unto — namely, that a man hath freedom to do if he will; but whether he hath freedom to will, is a question which it seems neither the bishop nor they ever thought on. A wooden top that is lashed by the boys, and runs about, sometimes to one wall, sometimes to another, sometimes spinning, sometimes hitting men on the shins, if it were sensible of its own motion, would think it proceeded from its own will, unless it felt what lashed it. And is a man any wiser when he runs to one place for a benefice, to another for a bargain, and troubles the world with writing errors and requiring answers, because he thinks he does it without other cause than his own will, and seeth not what are the lashings that cause that will? ON PRECISION IN LANGUAGE. Seeing that truth consisteth in the right ordering of names in our affirmations, a man that seeketh precise truth hath need to remember what every name he useth stands for, and to place it accordingly, or else he will find himself entangled in words as a bird in lime-twigs the more he struggles, the more belimed. And therefore in geometry, which is the only science that it hath pleased God hitherto to bestow on mankind, men begin at settling the significations of their words, which settling of significations they call definitions, and place them in the beginning of their reckoning. -- By this it appears how necessary it is for any man that aspires to true knowledge to examine the definitions of former authors; and either to correct them where they are negligently set down, or to make them himself. For the errors of definitions multiply themselves according as the reckoning proceeds, and lead men into absurdities, which at last they see, but cannot avoid without reckoning anew from the beginning, in which lies the foundation of their errors. From whence it happens that they which trust to books do as they that cast up many little sums into a greater, without considering whether those little sums were rightly cast up or not; and at last, finding the error visible, and not mistrusting their first grounds, know not which way to clear themselves, but spend time in fluttering over their books, as birds that, entering by the chimney, flutter at the false light of a glass window, for want of wit to consider which |