Professional truth-tellers may be trusted to profess that they are telling the truth. Street Preachers These are the costermongers and barrow men of the religious world. Providence and Othello Providence, in making the rain fall also upon the sea, was like the man who, when he was to play Othello, must needs black himself all over. Providence and Improvidence i We should no longer say: Put your trust in Providence, but in Improvidence, for this is what we mean. ii To put one’s trust in God is only a longer way of saying that one will chance it. iii There is nothing so imprudent or so improvident as over-prudence or over-providence. Epiphany If Providence could be seen at all, he would probably turn out to be a very disappointing person—a little wizened old gentleman with a cold in his head, a red nose and a comforter round his neck, whistling o’er the furrow’d land or crooning to himself as he goes aimlessly along the streets, poking his way about and loitering continually at shop-windows and second-hand book-stalls. Fortune Like Wisdom, Fortune crieth in the streets, and no man regardeth. There is not an advertisement supplement to the _Times_—nay, hardly a half sheet of newspaper that comes into a house wrapping up this or that, but it gives information which would make a man’s fortune, if he could only spot it and detect the one paragraph that would do this among the 99 which would wreck him if he had anything to do with them. Gold-Mines Gold is not found in quartz alone; its richest lodes are in the eyes and ears of the public, but these are harder to work and to prospect than any quartz vein. Things and Purses Everything is like a purse—there may be money in it, and we can generally say by the feel of it whether there is or is not. Sometimes, however, we must turn it inside out before we can be quite sure whether there is anything in it or no. When I have turned a proposition inside out, put it to stand on its head, and shaken it, I have often been surprised to find how much came out of it. Solomon in all his Glory But, in the first place, the lilies do toil and spin after their own fashion, and, in the next, it was not desirable that Solomon should be dressed like a lily of the valley. David’s Teachers David said he had more understanding than his teachers. If his teachers were anything like mine this need not imply much understanding on David’s part. And if his teachers did not know more than the Psalms—it is absurd. It is merely swagger, like the German Emperor. [1897.] S. Michael He contended with the devil about the body of Moses. Now, I do not believe that any reasonable person would contend about the body of Moses with the devil or with any one else. One Form of Failure From a worldly point of view there is no mistake so great as that of being always right. Andromeda