Signs of the Times, Vol. 8, No. 1. (1/5/1882)

Signs of the Times

Jan 5, 1882

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 5, 1882

THE OLD YEAR AND THE NEW.

By Sarah E. Clough

O FLEETING years! though oft the theme Of poet's song and waking dream. Still, oft as changing seasons bring The burden of their offering, And winter covers hedge and tree With robes like loving charity; As oft doth memory linger round The past, as on enchanted ground. And muses join to sing the praise, Or chant the dirge of by-gone days.

If we could know all that has been, Or, could all scenes of joy or sin, Which the old year has seen and known In panoramic views be shown— What lights and shades of life would be Depicted in that scenery! There, side by side with wealth and fame, And cultured mind, and honored name, Would be such views of want and sin, That hearts would ache to look within: And scenes where love and beauty reign Be followed close by scenes of pain.

For chimes of merry marriage bells Have mingled with sad funeral knells; And those who dreamed earth's joys their own, Have waked to find earth's hopes have flown; And aching hearts and empty arms, To whom the world has lost its charms, Long for loved voices, though they know The white lips rest beneath the snow; And where were peace and joy before Are homes that will be homes no more; For life and death, and woe and mirth Dwell side by side o'er all the earth.

But we will not 'mid shadows dwell But on the sunshine look as well. No day so clouded but some light Has cheered its darkness ere the night: No life so cheerless but some rays Of God's love light its darkest days. And the old year much joy has brought. And powers unseen much good have wrought. And some have sought the path of right Which leads from darkness into light, Who long had wandered far astray, And follow now the narrow way.

And all in some way have been blessed, By many a wayside fount refreshed, And pleasant memories of the past Will linger long as life shall last; And if some crosses have been given, They serve as stepping stones to Heaven.

Sometimes we mourn in bitterness, And sadly question, why it is, That joy is always mixed with pain And loved ones ne'er will come again. The troubled spirit finds its rest In the sweet answer, "God knows best." For not a sparrow e'er can fall Without his notice, and through all His wisdom and his love are shown; He surely careth for his own.

And now the old year's brightest hours, Have faded with the summer flowers; May all its bitterness and woe Be buried 'neath its winter's snow! And chastened hearts, tried as by fire, Rise in new strength, fresh zeal inspire! Hope bid each doubting thought be gone And gird the New Year's armor on: And labor still, for o'er the land The ripe fields wait the reaper's hand!

And labors past will not suffice For present duty, when there lies Within the reach of every one, Work for the Master to be done. Some heart to cheer 'mid toil and strife, Some one to lead to the fount of life, Some burden to bear for a weak one tried; And a world to tell that Christ has died.

The work is great, but our strength is sure, And the hope of reward to those who endure. Not all can be reapers on life's great plain, But they can be gleaners of golden grain; And the life that is richest in deeds of love Shall be richer far in the home above—

Where we'll bring our sheaves to the Master's feet When the work he has given is all complete, When the old years fade from mortal view, And the years to come are forever new. —By Sarah E. Clough.

General Articles.

By Ellen G. White

A Happy New Year.

BY MRS. E. G. WHITE.

"I COME, I come, the glad New Year! O welcome me to your friendship dear; O give me room by the social hearth, Where the holy joys of home have birth; Let me come with love that shall ne'er grow cold, As comes a friend that is prized of old; Let me whisper of help from the Lord above To the toiling heart in its work of love, And point to the peace and bliss of Heaven, The crown to the faithful mother given, Shining with jewels forever fair, She won to Christ by her holy care."

Another year of life is now in the past. A new year is opening before us. What will be its record? What will we each inscribe upon its spotless pages? The manner in which we spend each passing day will decide this question. Fathers and mothers, while you wish your children a Happy New Year, will you strive in the fear of God to make it a happy year? Will you seek to lead your dear ones to the true source of peace and joy? Will you consecrate your own hearts to God, that you may exert a sanctifying influence upon your children? Will you separate them from sin and sinners, and by living faith connect them with God?

It should be the work of every parent to cultivate all that is good, and true, and noble, in his children. It is his duty to correct their faults, to restrain their waywardness, even as the Lord required Eli to restrain his sons. Fathers and mothers, make the word of God your guide in the education of your children, ever considering what will be for their future good, rather than what is for your present convenience. The mother may bestow upon her daughters an education that will be invaluable, by training them to bear their share of the family burdens. The father may give his sons a capital of more worth than gold or lands, by teaching them to love useful employment, instead of seeking happiness in idle amusements or dissipation. Parents, now is the time to form in your children habits of industry, self-reliance, and self-control; to cultivate economy and business tact. Now is the time to teach them courtesy and benevolence toward their fellow-men, and reverence and love for God.

You may make a happy new year for your children, if you faithfully discharge your duty. Home should be the most sunny and attractive spot on earth; and it may be made such by pleasant words and kind acts, and, underlying all, a steadfast adherence to the right.

By their neglect to exercise proper restraint, many parents are creating great unhappiness for their children. The youth who are left to constantly seek for pleasure in amusement or selfish gratification are not happy, and never can be happy while following this course. Fathers and mothers, teach your children that the only way to be truly happy is to love and fear God; and enforce the lesson by your example. Let them see that the peace of Christ is ruling in your heart, and that his love pervades your life. Practical religion is the need of the present hour. You cannot teach this to your children unless you possess it yourselves.

Let us enter upon the new year with our hearts cleansed from the defilement of selfishness and pride. Let us put away every sinful indulgence, and seek to become faithful, diligent learners in the school of Christ. A new year opens its unsullied pages before us. What shall we write upon them?

Children, you greet your father and mother with a "Happy New Year," but will you make it a happy year to them? It is in your power to do this. Your conduct, more than everything besides, will make a happy or an unhappy year for your parents. You may cause their hearts to throb with joy or pain. Whatever dishonors your Saviour, whatever causes a stain upon your character, brings anxiety and distress to the heart of godly parents. You cannot give them a happy new year if you live only for self-gratification.

Seek to begin this year with right purposes and pure motives, as beings who are accountable to God. Ever bear in mind that your acts are daily passing into history by the pen of the recording angel. You must meet them again when the Judgment shall sit and the books shall be opened.

How often your lips utter the kindly greeting, "I wish you a happy new year," and then in a few moments speak impatient, fretful words. How many children are ever ready to dispute about trifles, unwilling to make the smallest sacrifice for others. To such the new year will bring no real happiness. They may indulge in boisterous mirth, but their hearts know no peace nor joy. Will you not come with penitence and humility to Jesus, that he may cleanse you from the impurity of sin, and fit you for his heavenly kingdom? All who do this will have the happiest new year that they ever experienced. It will bring joy in Heaven and joy on earth.

Many have been seeking some rare gift to bestow upon their friends. Will you not, children, bring to Jesus the gift which he prizes above all others—the gift of your heart? While others at the holiday season adorn themselves to please the eye of their friends, will you not seek the adorning which Heaven values—the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit? If we bring to God the first gift, the value of every other is enhanced; for love makes it not merely a passing compliment, but a precious offering. From the softened heart in which the peace of Christ abides, will flow forth sincere wishes, kindly words and deeds, and worthy, appropriate offerings.

Many are the gifts and greetings that have been exchanged on New Year's day, by parents and children, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, friends and acquaintances. When it is over, many feel a sense of relief. They have discharged their duty in bestowing presents, and smiles, and compliments for the occasion, and there the matter is supposed to end. The next day, and the next, and onward to the end of the year, bring fretful, passionate words, faultfinding, recrimination, and careless neglect of the dear ones of the household. Oh, such a new year is one that angels will be grieved and ashamed to register. It is anything but happy. Friends and relatives bestow a gift of sorrow, a burden of unkindness, that crushes out hope, and makes the grave look desirable.

Do we truly wish our loved ones a happy new year? Then let us make it such to them by kindness, by sympathy, by cheerfulness, by unselfish devotion. If we connect with God, the source of peace, and light, and truth, his Spirit will flow through us as a channel, to refresh and bless all around us. This may be the last year of life to us. Shall we not enter upon it with thoughtful consideration? Shall not sincerity, respect, benevolence, mark our deportment toward all?

Let us withhold nothing from Him who gave his precious life for us. Fathers and mothers, bring to him your children, in the freshness and bloom of youth, and devote them to his service. Let us all consecrate to God the property he has intrusted to us. Above all, let us give him ourselves, a free-will offering. Let us do his will, live for his glory, and he will give us a Happy New Year.

Offer the Sacrifices of Righteousness

"OFFER the sacrifices of righteousness, and put your trust in the Lord."

Spiritualism a Satanic Delusion.

MATERIALIZATION.

A LONDON paper says that according to prophecy there is soon to be a "perfect avalanche of spirit manifestations, one of the most astonishing interventions, or influxes, the world has ever known."

Mr. J. M. Peebles, in an address at Minstrel Hall, San Francisco, describes his three days' experience with the Eddy Brothers in Vermont. He said that "eight spirits materialized and walked the stage." One of the spirits was weighed on a Fairbanks' scale. "The first time she tipped the beam at eighty-eight pounds, and the second at sixty-five pounds, proving that she can change her material weight at will. The spirits affirmed that within a year or two they would be able to appear as public lecturers, and after the delivery of an oration to vanish from the stage in full view of the audience."

Madame Blavatsky, a Russian lady of high rank, witnessed the materializations at the Eddy performances, and in "fourteen nights saw one hundred and nineteen spirit forms, recognized seven of them, and talked with them in Georgian, Persian, Russian, Tartar, German, English, etc."

Mr. B. L. Ford., of Denver, Colorado, reports in the R. P. Journal the new phenomena witnessed at his hotel. He says:—

"A face appeared. I advanced toward it, and asked for the name, which was given as Gen. Bledsoe. I asked whom he wanted. He replied 'Bill Bright,' a gentleman who was present at the time. Mr. Bright recognized Mr. Bledsoe, and they had a pleasant conversation for ten minutes. The recognition was mutual and positive.

"Following this, nine spirit faces were materialized and seen by all of the persons present. My father came, and I did not recognize him; he gave his name verbally and correct. I asked if it was my father. He replied 'Yes.' I then asked if my mother was present. 'Yes,' and then the curtain parted and I saw her face, talked with her, and knew her as certainly as ever I had in life. She held her face near me and caressed me. She died in Greenville, South Carolina, in July, 1870, at 87 years of age, which is a matter of record in our own family Bible. Mr. Mott gave seven seances here, at which I saw fifty-five spirit faces. . . . . We had a glorious time, and a heavenly pentecost. Fathers met their sons, husbands their wives, grandmothers their grandchildren, and knew them as they were known. The grandchildren wept as though their relations had just died. One of our associate Judges met his mother twice, and knew her. They held a long conversation. He told the circle, 'This is certainly my mother,' and then bid her good-bye very much affected."

Mr. J. J. B., of Ohio, is converted to Spiritualism by seeing the materialized form of his wife's father.

"From this phenomenon, we learn that some unseen intelligence was present to collect material and develop the life-like form of the father, as he appeared a short time before his death. That it was his spirit, is very likely, if not altogether certain, from the fact that it succeeded so well in developing a fac simile of his person. If it was his spirit, we learn that he was still living in spirit-life, some thirty-eight years after the death of his physical body, and that he came and stood before his daughter and showed himself to her husband, who had never seen his earth-life form before. This wonderful phenomenon has removed all suspicion from my mind with regard to future life. It has settled the question with me that man is positively a spiritual being, destined to live beyond the death of his physical body. If one who left the physical form some thirty-eight years since still lives, why not all? If one can return and materialize so as to be seen, why not others, conditions being equal?"

Robert Dale Owen spoke of the new manifestations as follows:—

"All my former experience in Spiritualism, favored as I have been, pales before the new manifestations witnessed by me in the course of last month. After the strictest scrutiny, with every facility promptly afforded me by the mediums to detect imposition had it been attempted, I here avow my conviction that the phenomena are genuine; that I have again and again, on more than twenty occasions, seen, heard, touched, forms to appearance human and material, and to sense tangible."

MODERN SPIRITUALISM IDENTICAL WITH ANCIENT HEATHENISM.

Floating in the air.—At the house of Dr. Gray, New York City, "Mr. Henry C. Gordon, a medium, was taken up bodily, and conveyed about the room, without any visible power to support him. . . . He would float about the room in the air for several minutes."—Three-fold Test, p. 64.

Iamblichus, on ancient mysteries, says:— "The inspiration is indicated by the motions of the whole body, and of certain parts of it. . . . the body likewise is seen to be elevated, or increased in bulk, or to be borne along sublimely in the air."—Iam. Dem. Myst.

Speaking Mediums.—"He (the spirit) sometimes makes some stupid man to speak wisely, etc."—Idem.

Divine for Money.—"At Corinth, a certain Chaldean stranger is just now disturbing the whole city with his wonderful replies to questions asked him, and is disclosing the secrets of the Fates to the public for payment."—Apuleius, Met., lib. 2.

Mediums mostly Females.—"Those who are precedaneously inspired by the mother of the gods, are women; but the males that are thus inspired are very few in number, and such as are more effeminate."—Iam. Dem. Myst.

Fire Test.—"Their energies likewise, are not at all human; for inaccessible places become accessible to those that are divinely inspired. They are thrown into fire, and over rivers, like the priests in Castabalis, without being injured!"—Idem.

The Planchette.—They also had in those days a spirit machine (as described by the same authors) which had a circular plate, on which was "skillfully engraved the twenty-four letters of the alphabet:" the pointer, "falling at regular intervals upon single letters, composed heroic verses conformable to the questions asked," etc. This reminds us of the modern "Spiritoscope" invented by Dr. Hare, and the "Planchette." Thus we see that modern Spiritualism is only a revival of the spirit wonders of ancient heathenism, and that the demons are at their old tricks, for their own amusement in deceiving men, and exciting them to behold, wonder, adore, and perish.

Similarity of appearance.—A Platonic philosopher and disciple of Porphyre, of the third century, in his Book of Mysteries gives the following description of spirit mediums as they appeared among the Egyptians, Assyrians, and Chaldeans:—

"Some are agitated throughout the whole body; others in some of their members; others, again, are entirely quiet. Sometimes there are pleasing harmonies, dances, and according voices, and sometimes the reverse. Again the body either appears taller, or larger, or is borne aloft through the air, or is affected by the opposite of these. . . . The true cause is no other than illumination emanating from the very gods themselves, and spirits coming forth from them, and an obsession by which they hold us fully and absolutely, absorbing all our faculties even, and exterminating all human motions and operations, even to consciousness itself."

STRANGE INCONSISTENCIES.

1. They reject the Bible as unworthy of confidence, because they say it is contradictory, and then blindly cling to a system composed of absurdities and contradictions which are beyond all description!

2. They declare the God of the Bible to be unjust, because in his general judgments he destroyed infants, etc. But they exalt the God of nature manifested in various sublimities, "tiny flowers," etc.; forgetting that their god, nature, in the fury of tornadoes, earthquakes, pestilences, and famines, has swept off hundreds of millions of innocent mothers and infants!

3. They teach that "whatever is, is right," and yet condemn in the most unsparing terms those who expose their deceptions!

Let not Spiritualists think they have grounds to complain of unfairness, for our quotations are from many of their best writers and speakers. Many of the utterances were published in their leading papers without protest. They are not the hasty utterances of excited speakers in the heat of debate, but they were coolly written out and published by their own men; We do not rely upon testimony of their enemies, but, "out of their own mouths, they are condemned." "Their rock is not as our Rock, even our enemies themselves being judges." Deut. 32:31.

Spiritualists are very ready to refer to the fall of any one who was professedly a Christian, as a palliation. But there is no parallel in the case. Spiritualists of note openly advocate and practice abominable things, and are fellowshiped by the body, and are known from year to year as leading writers and speakers. They teach immoralities openly and boldly, with so few exceptions that it must be regarded as general!

4. They ridicule the idea of the Creator raising up again the same particles composing human bodies, after they have been dissolved and scattered, and yet they teach that the soul of man is composed of particles like condensed steam, and that it resurrects itself!

A. J. Davis says:— "How can one (spirit) extricate itself from the depths of an avalanche where it has been buried? how shall it escape from the mountain of earth and stones? To this question I am impressed to answer that when a human being is overwhelmed by such a catastrophe—is thus fearfully buried, thus crushed to death, as it is termed—the spirit escapes the body and the mass of materials, according to the law of gravitation, to a position above the earth, where the re-organization of the elements can, without obstruction, easily take place."—Philosophy of Spiritual Intercourse, pp. 128, 129.

Mr. Davis saw (as a clairvoyant seer) the spirit of a man buried in a well resurrect itself in three hours' time. He says:—

"Particle sought particle, atom sought atom, element sought element, principle sought principle, etc. . . . In due order of progression, I saw developed the perfect development of the head, body, limbs, etc."—Id. p. 131.

He describes it as rising up in appearance like "smoke or steam," having evaporated up through twenty feet of earth, a thin, gaseous, steam-like cloud, and then, by a quivering process, it resurrects itself! O blind Credulity!! to what ridiculous shifts art thou driven when opposed to the right way!

5. They warn us against the Bible as if it was fatal to our eternal interest to follow it, and yet admit that we shall all share the progressive spheres after death! If Spiritualism is true, we are just as well off as they at last; but if the Bible view is true, they are lost. They being judges, we have a double assurance. If there be a doubt (which we do not admit), we are on the safe side of that doubt. Let every Bible believer hold on to the sure foundation.

Moral Law Ever the Same.

By Robert Patterson

It is contended, "that the morality of the Old Testament was narrow and bigoted; requiring indeed, the observance of charity to the covenant people, but allowing Israel to hate all others as enemies, and as well expressed in the text, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy."

But let it be noticed, that this is no text of Scripture, nor does our Lord so quote it. He does not say it is so written, but, ye have heard it said by them of old time. The first part is God's truth: the second is the devil's addition to it, which Christ clears away and denounces. It were easy to quote multitudes of passages from the Old Testament, commending Israel to show kindness to the stranger, and a whole host of promises, that in them all the families of the earth should be blessed; any one of which would sufficiently refute the foolish notion, that the morality of the Old Testament was geographical, and its charity merely national. But the simple fact, that the most sublime sanction of world-wide benevolence which ever fell even from the lips of Christ himself, was uttered by him as the sum and substance of the teachings of the Old Testament, conclusively confutes this dogma. The Golden Rule was no new discovery, unless its author was mistaken, for he says: "Therefore all things that ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them, for this is the law and the prophets." He declares the very basis and foundation of the whole Old Testament religion to be those eternal principles of godliness and charity, which he quotes in the very words of the law: "Then one of them which was a lawyer asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it; thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets." The law and the prophets then taught genuine world-wide benevolence, Christ being witness; and the moral law of the Old Testament is the moral law of the New Testament, if we may believe the Lawgiver.—Dr. Robert Patterson, in "Fables of Infidelity."

A Scientific Frog.

By Dr. E. O. Haven

A DISCONTENTED and curious frog, seeing a couple of men sitting under the shadow of a tree by the side of a stream of water, and engaged in conversation, hopped up to the bank, and seated himself before them to learn something from their conversation.

One of them was a scientific quack, and was just now warmly advocating "the development hypothesis."

"We know nothing of God," said he; "this stream flows on because water runs down hill; the wind blows because nature makes it blow; the sun shines and the plants grow all as the result of law. Who sees any design in it? A man is a fool to believe what he cannot see. What are we men? Only higher developments of some lower animals, such as fishes and frogs!"

And then the men departed. Thenceforth the frog was a philosopher. He held up his head with pride, and endeavored to hop only on his hind legs. He was not particularly proud of his ancestry, but entertained great expectations of his numerous family of pollywogs.

One of them at least he hoped would develop into a little man.

After this he determined to travel and enrich his mind by observation. The first place he visited was a saw-mill, of which he had often heard his father speak. He seated himself upon a log with his back toward a large revolving saw, and began to soliloquize.

"Now, the saw-mill," said he, "my father told me, was designed by a higher power for the purpose of making boards. Nonsense! There is no such thing as design. The mill made itself. It was developed by nature and law. How foolish to believe in what you cannot see!"

In the meantime the miller let on the water, and the log began to glide smoothly and the saw to revolve; and while the frog was absorbed in meditation the saw reached him, and, presto! he was cut asunder, and that was the end of his travels and philosophy.

MORAL: It is not well for frogs or men to know too much, for excess of knowledge and stupidity are sometimes the same thing.—Dr. E. O. Haven.

J. D. RICE

By J. D. Rice

Another Argument for Sunday Keeping.

I SAY "another," I can hardly call it new, for it is similar to those of the dark ages—a time when the papacy reigned in the height of its glory, and superstition controlled the masses, and pretended miracles, etc., were wrought to sustain the sacredness of the Sunday festival, and "ill luck" and reputed judgments of God followed those who would not keep Sunday. Many yet sit, at least in the border of this darkness, as the following will show:—

Conversing recently with a man upon the Sabbath question he readily admitted that the Bible said the seventh day was the Sabbath, and that it did not call any other day the Sabbath, nor was there any command for any other day, and that if we did just what the Bible said, we would have to keep Saturday. But, says he, "My wife taught me to keep Sunday." She said that I would have no luck hunting on Sunday, and I never could kill a deer on that day, but I have on Saturday; therefore I feel satisfied I ought to keep Sunday and not Saturday! I asked him if his luck should change if he would change. No sir, says he. Why not, says I, it is a poor rule that will not work both ways. To which he could give no answer, but evaded it by saying his forefathers had kept it, and if it was good enough for them it was good enough for him. To which we made answer, If our forefathers were idolaters, as were Abraham's (Josh. 24:2, 14), would we be justified in following their course, especially when it was clearly shown to be contrary to the expressed will of God, as is now shown concerning Sunday-keeping? Then I told him that his luck did not prove anything one way or the other. That others have had as good luck hunting on that day as on any other. But moral duties were not to be decided by such "old wives' fables" (1 Tim. 4:7), but by the word of God. "To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them." Isa. 8:20. See also Ps. 119:105, 130: Jno. 12:48, etc. But it is thus that men are fast leaving the word of God to ascertain their duty, and conjure up something for an excuse to justify them in doing just as they please. They "love to have it so," and so they "hide their eyes from God's Sabbath" (Eze. 22:26), even under the coverings of the "dark ages."

J. D. RICE

Lakeport, Cal., Dec. 19, 1881.

Only "Half a Point."

A GENTLEMAN crossing the English Channel stood near the helmsman. It was a calm and pleasant evening, and no one dreamed of a possible danger to their good ship. But a sudden flapping of a sail, as if the wind had shifted, caught the ear of the officer on watch and he sprang at once to the wheel, examining closely the compass. "You are half a point off the course," he said sharply to the man at the wheel. The deviation was corrected, and the officer returned to his post. "You must steer very accurately," said the looker-on, "when only half a point is so much thought of." "Ah, half a point in many places might bring us directly on the rock," he said. So it is in life. Half a point from strict truthfulness strands us upon the rocks of falsehood. Half a point from perfect honesty, and we are steering right for the rocks of crime. And so of all kindred vices. The beginnings are always small. No one climbs to a summit at one bound, but goes up one little step at a time. Children think lightly of what they call small sins. These rocks do not look so fearful to them.

Walking with God.

By Alexander Maclaren

THERE must be purity of heart if there is to be the vision of God here. If the eye be evil, the light will be intolerable and full of darkness. Muddy water gives no clear reflection, nor does a tarnished mirror flash back the sunlight, and we cannot set the Lord before our face, nor cherish the vivid consciousness of his presence, unless we keep our hearts clear from taint and our lives pure. That is an awful power which men have of forgetting God by simple indulgence in evil. They cannot hide themselves from him, but they can hide him from themselves, and while walking in a world that is all ablaze with the tokens of the present God, see none of the majesty of the glory of which heaven and earth are full.

Nor does it need any very marked indulgence in evil to come to this condition of insensibility. We have only to be indifferent, and we lose the vision. We have but to cease to desire it, and it passes. We have but to give ourselves to present cares and joys and to find our portion in this life, and we may secure almost an entire immunity from any troublesome thoughts about him. It is very easy to hustle the sense of his presence out of our minds. It is very hard to keep it in. Anything is big enough to hide out God from us, as a sixpence held close to the eye will blot the sun from the heaven for us.—A. Maclaren.

The Sillier the Better.

THE Chicago Advance discoursing on novel reading, says:—

An investigation at one of the circulating libraries recently revealed some significant facts. There were three thousand volumes in the library, and they were all fiction. Not a sign of anything else! "A book of any other character would be so much dead loss," was the remark of the Librarian. "I must buy the books that people read or I could not live.

"And what are the books that people read?"

"Oh! Mrs. Southworth's, Miss Fleming's, Mary J. Holmes' Miss Braddon's, etc. Mrs Southworth's are the most popular. I have two full sets of them, and could easily use three. They are always out."

"What about Macdonald, George Elliot, Dickens, Thackeray, Black, Hawthorne, etc.?"

"I keep them, of course. I have to, for they are sometimes called for, and by a class of customers that I like to oblige. But I make no profit on them. The sillier a story is the more eagerly it is caught up and read."

"Are your customers mostly young people?"

"No. There are as many middle-aged and old men and women as there are young people, and the silliest novels are as eagerly read by the old as by the young."

"Do you notice in your regular customers—those you have had for years—any improvement in literary taste? Do they call for a higher class of reading than they did five or ten years ago?"

"Very seldom indeed. Those who liked the lower class sixteen years ago, like it still."

The Spirit of Gratitude

SAID a very old man, “Some folks are always complaining about the weather, but I am very thankful when I wake up in the morning and find any weather at all.” We may smile at the simplicity of the old man, but still his language indicates a spirit that contributes much to a calm and peaceful life. It is better and wiser to cultivate that spirit than to be continually complaining of things as they are. Be thankful for such mercies as you have, and, if God sees it will be for your good and his glory, he will give you many more. At least, do not make yourself and others unhappy by your ingratitude and complaints.

A Homely Woman's Charm.

GIRLS who think that it is necessary to be beautiful in order to be attractive, should get bravely over that notion. A young woman's plainness—which, by the way, saves her from a great many annoyances and dangers—need detract nothing from her loveliness, if only her disposition is amiable, her mind cultured, her heart kind and pure.

The story is told of a famous lady who once reigned in Paris society, that she was so very homely that her mother said one day, "My poor child, you are too ugly for any one to ever fall in love with you."

From this time, Madame de Circourt began to be very kind to the pauper children of the village, the servants of the household, even the birds that hopped about the garden walks. She was always distressed if she happened to be unable to render a service. This good will toward everybody made her the idol of the city. Though her complexion was sallow, her gray eyes small and sunken, yet she held in devotion to her the greatest men of her time. Her unselfish interest in others made her, it is said, perfectly irresistible. Her life furnishes a valuable lesson.

The World Owes Me a Living

"THE WORLD OWES ME A LIVING."—The world owes you a living, does it? Then I will tell you what I would do. I would go to work and collect the debt as soon as possible, before it gets outlawed. I have noticed that it makes very little difference how much men owe me, if I do not attend closely to the business of collecting. There are men who owe me enough to make me richer than I have any prospect of being, but the trouble is they do not seem likely to pay; and I am of the opinion that the world is very much like them in this respect.

I will tell you what I would do, if I thought the world owed me a living. I would get me a hoe, and go out somewhere, where I could get a chance at the world, and commence to dig, and drop in a few seeds here and there, as I had opportunity; and I think if the world really owed me a living, by sticking close to it with my hoe, I could collect the debt in the course of the season. This seems the readiest way I can think of to collect what the world owes. The fact is, there are so many creditors of this kind who claim that the world owes them a living, that some of them will lose their debts as sure as fate, if they do not begin early and work hard to collect their claims. The world is no doubt able to pay, provided it can have time. It generally takes the world about six months to get around, after the claims are presented and vigorously hoed in; but the man who delays and dallies about the matter, will find that, while the world may owe him a living, other people will have collected their claims before him, and there will be nothing left when he comes.

"The sluggard will not plough by reason of the cold; therefore shall he beg in harvest, and have nothing."—The Safeguard.

Evidence of Weakness

EVIDENCE OF WEAKNESS.—The minister's remark that he always shouted loudest when he had the least to say, was illustrative of much that we see in life—outside the ministry as well as in it. The consciousness of weakness and inefficiency produces in men a kind of frenzy that expends itself in explosives. The ruder people esteem it as a sign of greatness, but more thoughtful observers know better. The still, small voice is often the strongest—the one that has most of God in it.

Christianity as a Way of Life

CHRISTIANITY is not a thing to be put on or off at pleasure. It is part of the life of a man—the good in him developed—and this it takes time to do; it is growth. We may be enamored with it momentarily; it is not enough; it must be made the controlling principle of life.

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