word from the lips of Christ, and the mind of the world was free.

Later, a mountain mass of superstition had gathered round the Church, atom by atom, and grain by grain. Men said that the soul was saved by doing and believing what the priesthood taught. The heroes of the Reformation spoke. They said the soul of man is saved by the grace of God: a more credible hypothesis. Once

tained that civilization. Think of their low, aims, their mean lives, their conformation only a little higher than that of brute creatures, and a painful sense of degradation steals upon you. So great, and yet so mean! And so of individuals. There is not one here whose feelings have not been deeper than we can fathom; nor one who would venture to tell out to his brother man the mean, base thoughts that have crossed his heart during the last hour. Now, this rid-more the mind of the world was free-and free dle He solved. He looked on man as fallen, by truth. but magnificent in his ruin. We, catching that - thought from Him, speak as He spoke. But Done that were born of woman ever felt this, or lived this like Him. Beneath the vilest out side he saw that--A human soul, capable of endless growth; and hence He treated with what, for want of a better term, we may call respect, all who approached Him; not because they were titled Rabbis, or rich Pharisees, but because they were men.

3. Truth respecting immortality.

He taught that this life is not all; that it is only a miserable state of human infancy. He taught that in words; by His life, and by His

Resurrection.

This, again, was freedom. If there be a faith that cramps and enslaves the soul, it is the idea that this life is all. If there be one that expands and elevates, it is the thought of immortality; and this, observe, is something quite distinct from the selfish desire of happiness. It is not to enjoy, but to be, that we long for, to enter into a more and higher life; a craving which we can only part with when we sink below human ity, and forfeit it.

This was the martyrs' strength. They were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might attain a better Resurrection. In that hope, and the knowledge of that truth, they were free from the fear of pain and death.

Christ's gospel did not promise political freedom, yet it gave it more surely than conqueror, reformer, patriot, that gospel will bring about a true liberty at last. This not by theo ries, nor by schemes of constitutions, but by the revelations of truths. God, a spirit; man his child, redeemed and sanctified. Before that spiritual equality, all distinctions between peer and peasant, monarch and laborer, privileged and unprivileged, vanish.

Slavery is that which cramps powers. The worst slavery is that which cramps the noblest

powers.

There is a tendency always to think, in the masses; not what is true, but what is respectable, correct, orthodox, authorized, that we ask. It comes partly from cowardice; partly from indolence, from habit, from imitation; from the uncertainty and darkness of all moral truths, and the dread of timid minds to plunge into the investigation of them. Now, truth known and believed respecting God and man frees from this, by warning of individual responsibility. But responsibility is personal. It cannot be delegated to another, and thrown off upon a church. Before God, face to face, each soul must stand, to give account.

Do not, however, confound mental independence with mental pride. It may, it ought to co-exist with the deepest humility. For that mind alone is free which, concious ever of its own feebleness, feeling hourly its own liability to err, turning thankfully to light, from whatever side it may come, does yet refuse to give up that right with which God has invested it, or to abrogate its own responsibility; and so, humbly, and even awfully, resolves to have an opinion, a judgment, a decision, of its own.

"It is not enough to define the liberty which Christ promises, as freedom from sin. Many circumstances will exempt from sin which do not yet confer that liberty, where the spirit of the Lord is.' Childhood, paralysis, ill health, the impotence of old age, may remove the capacity and even the desire for transgression, but the child, the paralytic, the old man, are not free through the truth. Therefore, to this definiates is free by his own will. It is not that he tion we must add, that one whom Christ liberwould, and cannot; but that he can, and will not. Christian liberty is right will, sustained by love, and made firm by faith in Christ."

Worse therefore than he who mana-I cles the hands and feet is he who puts fetters on the mind, and pretends to demand that men shall think, and believe, and feel, thus and thus, because others so believed, and thought, and felt, before.

In Judea, life was become a set of forms, and religion a congerics of traditions. One living

In that incomparable poem, Cowper's Task, near the close of the fifth Book, there is a delineation of Christian freedom, that, in my estimation, surpasses in beauty and fidelity any thing have met with in English literature. lines extracted from it are here subjoined :

A few

"He is the freeman whom the truth makes free,
And all are slaves beside. There's not a chain
That hellish foes, confederate for his harm,
Can wind around him, but he casts it off
With as much ease as Sampson his green wyths.
He looks abroad into the varied field

Of nature, and though poor perhaps compared

}

has been to give us a Sunday religion, to make people think that the day is specially for their religious service, and to cause them to confine their religious acts almost exclusively to it; to make them think that there is a time holier than any other time, and that duty binds more imperatively one day in the week than all the other six; that virtue is more virtuous and sin more sinful then than at any other time. Virtually to a very great extent, the Christian religion has become a one-day religion, and there are not a few to-day who, having the position and assuming the importance of church members holy and elect, baptized and saved, make of their week-day lives a shameful comment and contradiction of their Sunday practice and profession. The rigidity of crced faiths, the setting apart of holy times, have resulted in large divorce between religion and life, and made the former not the pervading, edifying spirit its Master declared it, but the outside of function, profession and season. The stalking, loud mouthed hypocrites, whom Jesus so exposed and scored, were not more truly inimical to the best interests of the faith they pretended to uphold than this race of Sunday Christians.

Time is God's, and all holy; space is God's, and that all holy, too. Man is to be no better one hour than another, and no one place is more sacred than another. God is just as much present at the broker's board, behind the counter, at the work-bench, as he is in the church,

The Sunday has no law of guidance, no uniform spirit of observance. It is a different thing to different classes. To all, more or less, a day of rest from the stated employment of life; to all a day of more or less physical indolence and indulgence; to very many much more of these than is good, than there is any need of, than they would allow were not conscience as sluggish as their bodies. To some it is a day wel come for its religious use and opportunity, for its public and private privileges, a valuable time of reckoning with the soul and calm ascertaining of its exact attitude toward God. With a portion of these the day is ascetic and gloomy, rigidly and formally observed. They try to impose an impossible thing, and make the day a long monotony of church going, Bible read-and the dealings of men are to be just as strictly ing, prayers, with no cheerful intercourse or genial companionship. I believe these really desecrate the Sunday, not in their religious observance, but by their narrow religious spirit, which supposes God's service to be shut up to exercises forced to an extreme on one day. The God whose sun shines just as bright on Sunday as on all other days, asks no formal, unnatural rigidity and gloom upon his Sunday. Others recognize and prize its peculiar adaptation for spiritual refreshing, yet hold it in a quiet gladness, and believe no thing obtrusive which is human and honorable, which helps the happiness of others and the self. They accept the obligation of public and private service, but are getting to feel, more and more, that a perpetual hearing of other men's words. Every regulation of society and the church, and prayers, and going to church, is not the and all legislation with regard to the Sunday, truest language of a man's piety and epitome of should have regard to the best interests of man his obligation. These seem tacitly settling as man. They should remember the compound down to a conviction, which many are yet too being that he is, and should aim to make the timid to assert or approve by anything but their exceptional day of the week-the day on which conduct, that a single public service is enough, toil, and business, and anxiety are intermitted— that the Sunday, as its forerunner the Sabbath, a day not merely for the recuperation of the was made for man, the whole of every man, and that a very small part of him gets its help, when it is spent in any one way, however good that way may in itself be.

The tendency of the narrow ideas of the day

under his law as the thought and service of the Sunday. For our convenience and our help, because of a fitness in things which seem eternal, we do not bring the tables of the money changers into our churches, we do not take our prayers and sermous into the place of business, but the same God rules with unchanged law in each place, in each is to be obeyed and served. Only is the obedience and the service changed in form, not in essence. The Sunday is more especially for the quiet service of heart and lip, for the offering of the formal sacrifice of devotion; the week for the offering of obedience, in duty, and toil, and temptation, the after and concluding part without which the Sunday form is isolate, cold and incomplete.

whole man, for the repair of waste and vigor, but of preparation and strengthening for the week to come :-for, as Arnold, the teacher of Rugby, has well said, "Our Sunday is the beginning of the week, and not the end." The

day must address itself to the wants of no ex- I would put the soul in harmony with that, and clusive part, but to the whole of the man. He halt whenever I found any jarring with it. I is not refreshed and strengthened by merely a would frown upon all who make the day a religious use which exercises but a part of his waste and sin, whether in respected or disrepu nature, calls into play and puts vigor into but table classes. I would do all that I could to part of his capacity; he is not strengthened make it the day when the poor and the overand refreshed by the mere indolence of the worked should have glad refreshing. I would body, the listless, aimless, joyless dawdling of make it, indeed, holy day to them. O, broththe Sunday which we mis-name rest, which ers and sisters! shall we not so help the time, does even the body no real good; he is not shall we not so help others, that there shall strengthened and refreshed by taking his brain grow because of it a nobler manhood, a broader off from its absorption, or by devoting the whole brotherhood, a more liberal faith? Shall we day exclusively to his domestic affections, or by not make the first day holy unto the Lord, inshutting himself up to himself in a solitary and deed, by making it serve to build in man that selfish enjoyment of leisure. Man is a many-which shall lift him toward God? sided being. His nature is complex. He wants repair and support in every part. The day which calls a halt in the ceaseless march of daily energy and demand, should be for the repair of the breach and waste which all life inakes. The soul, the heart, the brain, the body, should have just and equal thought and care, and each should issue out of the Sunday into the week, rejoicing in the new energy with which it is supplied for the race still to be

run.

You may call this very lax and very fatal, and perhaps some social or ecclesiastical thunder may be launched against it. Never mind. The set is that way, and the day must come when the more enlightened spirit of our religion shall triumph, and we shall, on the Sunday, the Lord's day, have a glorious festival worthy of that Lord s spirit-a day not for the affliction of man's body or man's soul, a day when it shall be lawful to do good in no technical, ecclesiastical sense of charity, but good to the whole man, good to his jaded body and cramped spirit and fettered and pinched life. The Sunday rests on no divine law. It stands upon high, moral expediency. In all time since Christ died good men have observed it. It is a good day. It may be a better day. Give it the benefit of a liberal spirit, hedge it with no unworthy restraint, let it be free. The man who breaks society's needed law that day, let him be punished as any other; what few extra laws must be made to prevent the sordid from trade, or any from turning liberty into license, none will object to, but there let prohibitory law stop, and throw the day open to man, by argument, by example, striving to show him how much more truly he will serve himself, as well as his fellow and his God, by using its hours so as to quicken the best and most varied life in him.

I believe we may make it the gladdest, holiest, welcomest, best of days. Sad, indeed, would be the time when it should cease to dawn with a peculiar sense of quiet and repose. think something of ineffable calm takes possession of and satisfies at one's very waking.

J. F. W. Ware.

Study thy God, Christian; roll over His sweetness in thy mind; see what thou hast laid up in Him; read over daily his glorious names; walk through those chambers of His presence, His glorious attributes. Let thy spirit be so filled with God, and so raised above carnal joys, that it be no damp upon thee to have nothing but God. Live above, in that serene air which is not defiled with earthly exhalations.-Alleine.

A CUP OF COLD WATER.

There is a pleasant story told of a man living on the borders of an African desert, who carried daily a pitcher of cold water to the dusty thoroughfare, and left it for any thirsty traveller that might pass that way. There is something so quiet and spontaneous, so genial and unselfish in this little act of kindness, that it meets an instinctive response from the common heart. It is such a little thing, and yet so full of blessing to the weary pilgrim, panting with thirst amid burning wastes and under tropical skies! There is such an outgleam of goodness from the humble deed, that it touches our hearts with genial sympathy, and glowing impulses of kindness for the needy and sorrowing of our world. Such humble deeds of pity need but an infusion of the Christian element, to make them not only beautiful in the eyes of men, but beautiful in the sight of Him, who said: "And whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones, a cup of cold water only, in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward."

And

Not only in African deserts may such deeds be done. Our world is a spiritual Sahara, a vast desert full of pilgrims that are way-worn and weary, to whose fainting lips may be pressed, by loving hands, the cup of cold water. here we touch what is the special beauty of the benediction of Christ upon the kindly deed, however humble. There may be wanting the talIents, or position, or means, for great achievements or enlarged beneficence, but Christ tells Ilus, that the least gift to one of His needy disci

It

DOING GOOD BY PROXY.

ples for His sake, shall not lose its reward. may be but a look or warm grasp of sympathy to some disconsolate spirit; it may be but a visit to some lonely couch of sickness with your flowers and the divine promises and the offered prayer; it may be but a word of encouragement to some one weary with the conflict of life; it may be your helping hand to some neglected child you have led to the Sabbath-school, and taught the way to virtue and to heaven; it may be but the genial sunshine of your heart, diffusing joy among the loved ones at home-phan, and the friendless. We have lying-inwhatever it may be of kindness and love to any one of Christ's disciples, in His name, and for His sake, He takes it as a flower of remem brance, and will press it in the Book of Life, and keep it forever. Yes, these little generosities of every day life, these ministries of charity that run along the by-ways of a great city, blessing the poor and neglected-those pulses of love that run through our homes and circulate around the globe-are beautiful.

Let no one say, however limited or lowly his sphere, that there is nothing in the common routine of daily life to inspire him with the aim and effort of noble living. Does not the teaching of Christ invest the humblest deed of a lov. ing heart in his service, though it be but the giving of a cup of cold water, with a divine beauty and glory? What would we greater, than what, in opportunity, God hath given to us all? And shall we let the fewness of our talents dis courage us, in constant and genial living for Christ, and His needy disciples, or allow the humbleness of our earthly fortunes to shade the brow that may be radiant with the crown of virtue? No, rather let us use our gifts and opportunities, though feeble and few, in such ways of kindness and charity and Christian living, as shall make us a blessing to our generation, and give us here the earnest of heaven.

"This world's not 'all a fleeting show,'
For man's illusion given,-
He that bath soothed a widow's woe,
Or wiped an orphan's tear, doth know,
There's something here of heaven."
Lutheran Observer.

A MOTHER'S PRAYER. It was a custom of his mother's to pay each night a visit to the cot of her twin boys, and repeat over them Jacob's blessing: "The God which fed me all my life 1ng unto this day, the angel that redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads." Gen. xlviii. 15, 16. So fascinating was this to George, that in mature years he has told a friend how he used to lie awake watching for it, pretending to be asleep, that he might enjoy it to the full.-Extracts from the "Life of George Wilson."

Spare moments are the gold-dust of time.

Every great city in Christendom has its benevolent societies and charitable institutions. There is no human sorrow of a physical character that has not been provided with an organized remedy. We have charities for the sick, the deaf, the dumb, the blind, the aged, the poor, the ignorant, and the feeble of mind. We have associations for the prevention of pauperism and for the prevention of cruelty to animals. We have homes for the outcast, the orhospitals, and free pharmacies, and admirable systems of out-door relief. We have the ear that hears every cry of distress, and the hand that is ever ready to relieve it. However it may be with other races, the Anglo-Saxonwhether in his old home or in his new home-is always as prompt with his purse as with his tongue to alleviate the miseries that he sees around him. Yet one thing is lacking in our phi lanthropy. We carry our inherited business habits into fields wherein we should reverently take off the shoes of commerce from our feet. Where the cry of misery is heard, God is in the midst of it, as he appeared in the midst of the burning bush. It is not meet that we should send our servants into his presence; we should go ourselves, and do his bidding with reverent and jealous zeal.

Let us illustrate our full meaning by examples-impersonal, but real; for we have watched the operation of this modern method of doing good by proxy in a dozen states and during a dozen years. We have organized new charities; we have assisted in creating others; and we are familiar with the history and management of large numbers. We do not mention these facts for any poor purpose of self-praise; but that the thoughts we write may carry, as they thus ought to carry, that greater credit which results of long and careful experience obtain over the untried theories of the closet.

There is a real need of organized charity. It is not possible, for example, for an unaided individual to secure that reform in the condition of the tenements of the poor; or the education of the deaf, dumb, and blind; or the proper treatment of the insane; or even that constant care of the indigent classes, which civilization and religion compel us at our social peril to secure. If we suffer filth and foul atmosphere to encircle the homes of the poor, the fevers and diseases, physical, moral, and mental, that they breed will surely find us out, and cause us to pay, in our own persons or in our own families, the dread penalty of our criminal neglect. But all these organized agencies should be regarded as anxiliary or transitional; not as sufficient in themselves and permanent in their nature. While, as citizens, we must act as a society; as Christians, we must act as individuals as well.

The Master did not say to the rich man, Go and found a charity; but, "Sell all that thou hast, and give." All of Christ's teachings are addressed to the individual as an individual. He neither sought to save men as organized communities, nor to do good to aggregations of citizens. The modern method is to carry on reform as war is conducted; to regenerate men by the regiment, to be benevolent by battalion. It has been tried and found wanting. The ablest students of social science, as well as the most experienced superintendents of charities, are beginning to admit that the modern method is a failure. We might illustrate this discovery by many quotations, and by the history of many charities; but our space will permit of one or two representative examples only.

of shoes, or another blanket, that our lonely and suffering poor require. It is human sympathy, as well as human aid. No agent has a heart large enough, or can find the days long enough, to do more than disburse eleemosynary gifts. Alas! also, there are few agents who have the heart, even if they had the leisure. For we should never forget that the management of all charities requires men rather of business than of heart. It is a civil necessity which compels this choice and the cases where both are united in a single man are few and far between. Besides, even men of heart soon become accustomed to the sight of distress. Like surgeons, they must learn to look on it with undimmed eyes, or their judgment might destroy their efficiency. But this is bad for the patient, even if it is good for the system. Sometimes-nay, often-a tear and a gentle, loving word are more efficient means of relieving distress than an open haud and a generous order for goods. Agents must ask questions, and even in one sense be impertinent; whereas the individual can afford to be liberal without first being skeptical.

Take the case of orphans. What is it that an orphan needs? A home and parents. What is it that we give him? A trundle bed in a large dormitory; a place in a boy's monastery, or a girl's nunnery; instead of a home, an asylum; instead of a father and a mother, a super intendent and a matron. No class of human beings, next to our own children, have a stronger or holier claim to our warmest love and No, philanthropic institutions have their uses tenderest care than those little motherless wan--important and essential reasons even; but derers. As men and women, they appeal to they are neither adequate nor fitted to perform our sympathies: as Christians they have a all the holy duties of charities. Sustain such right to our love. Each little one is a true as are efficient; but first see that they are real vicegerent; he is a representative of Christ on workers. Take nothing on trust. Follow their earth. There is no mode of denying or evad- agents; visit their buildings; where they carry ing this claim, except by denying and refusing food, convey kindness also. Above all, suppleobedience to the Master himself. For whoso ment them by your own good works. Rememdoeth good unto one of these little ones doeth it ber the frequent saying of Dr. Howe: "There unto him Were Christ once more to assume is no vicarious virtue; true charity is not done the flesh, and to be wrapped in the swaddling- by deputy.”—N. Y. Independent. clothes, and laid at our doorstep, would we dare to consign him to an asylum? To ask is to answer, No. If we consented to give up the babe, it would only be because we knew others, with ampler means and tenderer hearts, would nurse and rear him.

Now, orphan asylums are needed; but only as temporary homes-until some Rachel, weeping for her lost children, shall come and adopt them as her own. The world is ripe enough in goodness to make this plan successful. There are already charities which are conducted on this method, and which find it easy to furnish every little wanderer with a home. Such charity, like mercy, is twice blessed; it blesseth him that gives and him that takes. That love which it calls up in the orphan's heart is repaid a thousand fold by the holy love which it enkin dles in the foster parent's home.

Take the case of the indigent poor. There are those who are satisfied with an annual contribution to some provident society, which agrees to see that it is properly disbursed. This stipu lation it is beyond the power of man to fulfil. For it is not merely an occasional dollar, or a pair

OCCUPATION FOR CHILDREN.

The habits of children prove that occupation is of necessity with most of them. They love to be busy, even about nothing-still more to be usefully employed. With some children it is a strongly developed physical necessity, and, if not turned to good account, will be productive of positive evil, thus verifying the old adage that "Idleness is the mother of mischief." Children should be encouraged, or, if indolently disinclined to it, should be disciplined into performing for themselves every little office relative to the toilet which they are capable of performing. They should also keep their own clothes and other possessions in neat order, and fetch for themselves whatever they want; in short, they should learn to be as independent of the service of others as possible, fitting them alike to make a good use of prosperity, and to meet with fortitude any reverse of fortune that may befal them. I know of no rank, however exalted, in which such a system would not prove beneficial.-Ex. Puper.