Attempt > Volume 1 and Select writings

THE ATTEMPT
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animated with the noblest zeal to make Britain a free, a pure, a brave, a religious
nation, and always the first Protestant power in Europe.” It has been too much the
custom to adopt extreme views on the subject of Knox and the history of the
Covenanters ; those who argue for them, forgetting their weaknesses—those who argue
against them, ignoring their virtues. Let us take them as God made them, keen,
upright, God-fearing souls; the only men with force enough to stem the currents of
their day and do their work manfully, in the spirit of our old proverb, “ He that tholes,
overcomes.” They and their great leader alike rest in their graves, and thinking of
the white hones that have mouldered among the grass and heather of the land they
loved so dearly and died for so bravely, let us respect them for their earnestness, their
courage, and their truth.
They realize, some more, some less, the description of “ our old Scottish severe
unsparing character; calm to coldness outside, burning to fierceness, tender to agony
within; ” and reading over the oaths under which they hound themselves, their sons
might do worse than lay them to heart. There must be somewhat noteworthy and
grand in the men who could engage “ for ourselves, our followers, and all other under
us, both in public, in our particular families, and personal carriage, to endeavour to
keep ourselves within the hounds of Christian liberty, and to he good examples to
others of all godliness and soberness, of righteousness and of every duty we owe to
God and man. ”
Elsie Sthivelyne.
Ip***! IgMaglmix
Most people are accustomed to think of Metaphors as figures of speech used
chiefly in poetry, or in literary compositions of that kind to which the embellishments
of the imagination are an appropriate ornament. Yet, if we carefully note the senses
in which words are used in common life, we shall find that a great part of our ordinary
speech rests upon an actual, though almost unconscious use of metaphors. Thus the
words or phrases which are literally applicable only to outward things, have come to
he applied with almost equal readmess to an entirely different class of objects, and in
many cases the original meaning is almost lost sight of in the metaphorical one.
When we speak of “ concocting ” a scheme, we have no vision of pots and pans;
when we speak of being “ edified,” we have no thoughts about stone and lime. We