Stockton Herald, South Durham and Cleveland Advertiser. — 1883-12-22 (Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland, England)

UNPLEASANT FACTS. (seux rw.D.)  There is no doubt that ;n, human nature there exists a wonderful inconsistency. A person at one moment has the feeling of am angel, aud at the next of a downright devil 1 So there are no specimens that I or anyone else ever met with of positive good or positive evil ; though evil, to my mind, greatly. very greatly, prepondelates in the heart. The sin that, next to murder, stands the highest, is pride; because the indulgence of this sin leads to so many other ones, especially to the herder and more ferocious mutinous of the mind. Immoderate pride is an abomination in whatever Beni it exists, and in whatever rank of life. Pride often begets lying. How often a person is too proud to speak the truth, and thereby expose some weakness either of pocket, intellect, or disposition! Pride fashions pews, and takes up in solitary grandeur the place of a hundred. Pride is sometimes very gracious when there is no possible chance of competition; pride sometimes holds the alms-plate at a church door, and turns up its nose at his neighbour. Ah whoever threads with curious eye the labyrinth of the human soul threads a strange path indeed. Hypocrisy has an enormous influence in the affairs of the world, and what is so infinitely extraordinary is that people are absolutely hypocrites to themselves, persuade their own hearts that black is white, and that they act with commendable strength of mind when they perform most cruel actions. People cajole themselves; and what a miserable shrinking from duty how often is there! Whet clergyman dares go and rebuke to his face a veritable lord guilty of any act of iniquity or oppression, of openly breaking the Sabbath, or of running down some weaker neighbour? And yet this is astern, but,mark me, an unpleasant duty;' therefore it is left undone. Preapective bishoprics forbid it! Prospective turtle soup forbids it! A natural unwillingness to displease forbids it! And the great man, the man of millions, the Dives, goes down to the dust unwarued, uurebuked ; alas! how often unbelieving, unrepenting, and, perchance, unsaved! Hypocrisy for him goes even beyond the grave, for it chisels marble, and writes lies thereon, to convince the next generation a saint's ashes are reposing beneath. How the highest state of civilization, without religion to soften it, becomes the highly tempered steel—only polished up to cut your throat more effectually! What can be more barbatous than paying people for labour so low that the union of industry and honesty (without martyrdom) become almost, if not absolute, impossibilities? And this is truth! Let the many (1 say not all) of the moneyed people of England, look to this and beware I aye, let them beware, lest they bring upon themselves a just, a (keened retribution for their cruelties 1 A bard task-master is generally a man who will smile and simper, and wipe his lips delicately with all the oily vemon of a viper, "faring sumptuously every day," preying upon the heart's-life of his fellowcreatures And this, I maintain, is no overdrawn picture, but a truth as stern tea the grave itself. 'Weak heads and bad hearts—these are the ruin of society Great truths press unfortunately, but slowly, on the human mind. How dimly they peered through the dark night of the Middle Agee, totally obscured sometimes by the hideous blackness of the Inquisition—occasionally hovering over the flaming stake and ghastly scaffold! There is a fearful truth in the words of Mirabean and they may be a  --warning to the too confident millionlries'of the present generation: " Woe to the privileged orders of society ; for the privileges will end; but the people are eternal And human knowledge—what ie it? It cannot tell us how a blade of grass grows upwards, in defiance of the law of gravitation. We see the spirit depart, but we cannot tell whither it goeth—to pardon or to condemnation. We call a man a coward because he refuses to run the risk of rushing into eternity in the very act of disobeying the direct law of his Creator I in fact, he won't fight a duel; and this law of honour on tbepart of Christians is consistent—very! 01 it is a strange world altogether! Number one, however, is the grand secret! The'selfisliness of , human nature destroys others, and, mark me, destroys itself in so doing! Retribution will come on all, sooner or later. "Your sin will find you out." We are punished for sin "as a nation, as families, as individuals." What I maintain is that for a fair day's work there should be a fair day's wages; woe be to those who deny them.