THE CRETANS.

            The character of these islanders, as exhibited eighteen centuries ago, is recorded in Titus 1: 12. Many of the converts made from among them to the faith by Paul, seem to have been so inveterately imbued with their old habits of thought and action, that he despaired of making any thing of them that was even respectable in the eyes of the heathen. Quoting one of their own prophets or wise men, he says:

“The Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, slow bodies;” and he adds, as the result of his own experience with them, “this testimony is true.”

It was true not of the pagan Cretans only, but of the prominent persons in the body of Christ also in the island. These were “liars,” or as he says, “unruly and vain talkers, and deceivers.” The word “Cretan” then with us comes to designate a class of persons who profess to be “pious,” or religious, but who bridle not their tongues; but talk in an unruly and reproachful manner. We have had to do with a great many such in our time, whose pleasure it has been to prophesy evil things concerning us. The last exercise of their gifts in this way was to predict that we had absconded and should never return. The wish was father to the thought. The result, however, has proved them Cretans; and shown also that if we are able to make but few prophets for the truth, we can make false ones by the hundred. Our return has proved our detractors to be “liars;” and will be a lesson to them we hope for the future, not to judge of the principles and motives by which we are actuated, by their own evil and unsanctified imaginations.