Now, this glimpse at the rise and fall of this great lawyer, proclaims aloud the insufficiency of all but the grace and truth of God to keep man morally erect. Not gigantic intellectual powers --had these sufficed, Bacon would have been steadfast as a rock. Not worldly success--Bacon sat at the right hand of royalty, and kept the conscience of a king. Not great trust--the Lord High Chancellor of England was the foremost subject in that respect. Not celebrity --with that, Bacon might have been satiated. Not greatness--without goodness, that is a tinkling cymbal. What then? The answer which experience, history, and the Word of God combine to give, is this, "I am what I am by the grace of God that is in me." The man who dims the light of that lamp which was kindled in heaven, has already tottered to his fall. But truth would have "fallen in the streets," had all lawyers acted thus. There have been some, however, who repelled such things with high-toned integrity and honour, and we now turn to a contrast to Lord Chancellor Bacon--to one "In whom The British Themis gloried with just cause." SIR MATTHEW HALE. Sir Matthew Hale was one of those upright men whom all the good delight to honour. With his conscience quickened by habitual contact with the Word of God, and his whole soul familiar with the heavenly standard, he repudiated all that was disreputable in his profession. Pure religion presided over his practice; and while honouring God, he was honoured by him. As soon as Hale was convinced of the injustice of any cause, he immediately declined to advocate it, and utterly refused to plead against the truth. He at least frowned upon all that was false and unfair. As a judge, he repressed every attempt to ensnare or mislead a witness. He felt that, when such things are done under the very shadow of the judge's bench, where the great ends of truth and justice should be inviolably promoted, gross guilt may be expected to reign in other spheres. He, therefore, shunned as a sin all that savoured of finesse; and, braced for duty by the truth of God, no influence, no entreaty, not even a monarch's smile, could induce him to swerve from the path in which a good man ought to go. In short, his pleadings as an advocate were characterized by the same integrity, and the same Christian consistency as the other actions of his life. Indeed, to act otherwise, or to be one thing as a lawyer and another as a man, is one of the numerous conventional snares laid for conscience which tend to meanness as surely as they encourage immorality. It seems a truism, "It is as great a dishonour as can be inflicted, for man to say otherwise than he knows to be true, for the love of a little money;" and yet what crowds are thus degraded!