sorrowing. My father and my mother were | reality is so terrible, the passing through the my own, my sister is another's, and I have none else. Oh, the drear emptiness of life! Have I not friends? Yes, and friends are kind and pitiful, but their pity is the very thing I cannot bear. Like the stricken deer who hides himself from his companions so I fain would hide myself from my friends. And they all have their own occupations, their own homes, their own loves and affections, what have I who have nothing, to them? Have I not my work? Yes, and work is well as an incident in life, and I have enjoyed it, for it has helped me to help those I love; but just now, the object of work gone, I turn from it in bitterness of soul. Have I not God and religion to comfort me? Yes, I recall the precious words I have said to others in bereavement, I read them over to myself, but the sorrow is here still, and the weight and the anguish. I go to the house of God, and the good minister prays for me as for one affiicted and cast down, that the Lord will lift me up and be very merciful to me, but the words fall upon me as drops of water upon the hard and flinty rock. I think only of her in whose company I used to go to the house of God, and I am not comforted. Have I no faith, no trust? Do I not believe in the goodness of God? Assuredly. I have faith that I shall meet the loved again, but then there is the desert to be crossed, and crossed alone. I have trust. Trust that God will do all for the best and for my soul's good, but as the flesh quivers under the surgeon's knife though we trust the hand that guides the knife, so my heart quivers under this sore dispensation. I believe in God's goodness. I believe he will lead me in the way best for me, but though the child fully trusts the father's hand that leads him, nevertheless he often treads the path stumbling and blinded with tears. God pity all such with his infinite pity, all who see nothing in life worth the living it out. How have I written of sorrow, bereavement and death! but now the experience has come to myself the words like apples of Sodom, turn to very ashes. The shadow so different to seeing the same shadow falling upon others. Where is my strength? I, who have said that death is but a release, a passing into life? I say so still. Death is not to be dreaded. It is not death that appals me, it is life. Where is my strength? I, who have said that life is such a glorious thing, that it has such great opportunities, such fields for endeavor and achievement! Can I not make life worth the living? How many times have I said "Life is what we make it." Can I not live out what I have written and said to others, and prove that my words are not a mockery? But, standing here in the shadow of bereavement, all life's pleasures and even its highest aims seem trivial compared to death and eternity. O mother of mine! I long for thee with the longing of the unweaned child, and longing thus for thee I ponder again upon this mystery of death. Why comes there no sign nor token to satisfy this passionate yearning? I know well all that the wise and good have told us, how that the glories of that better world it were not well for us mortals to know, so much do they transcend all of which our imagination has ever conceived. I know well how we have conjectured and speculated upon the purposes of the Almighty, but still it all remains a mystery, and I stand before it awed and dumb, and still, like an inevitable hand, the bare fact of my bereavement holds me. There is no escape. Submission, then! I do submit, and I will try to submit unmurmuringly, but what shall I do with all the days and years? Speak not of them, take them not all at once, the present day is enough. True, true, but it is the present day which is more than I can bear. What shall I toil for now? what live for? is the refrain of my life. Live for the good of mankind; there are hearts to be cheered, wrongs to be redressed, opportunities that must not be wasted. I cannot grasp them now, I feel all this, I know all this, but I say, "leave me alone with my sorrow for a while; my heart does not yet respond to these things." "I don't know what she will do, I am sure; I should not think she would like to stay here alone." This is what I heard Mrs. Hatch remark to a neighbor concerning me. This then is what they say. They forget that it is my home, and that all about it is sanctified by those who have gone, and who seem nearer to me here than they could seem in any other place. Would life be less lonely elsewhere? I think not. We read that the Lord sent laborers into his vineyard. If he has work for me in any other vineyard, he will surely make it plain to me in his own good time. I stand and wait. MILE-STONES IN MY PILGRIMAGE. "W BY MRS. F. W. GILLETTE. "Pray ye for those who never pray. "ALICE CARY. INNIE, go up to the Court House with me this afternoon?" "Oh, uncle! pray don't. You know I 'wouldna' refuse your slightest wish, but how can I? I would not hear those three boys sentenced to life-imprisonment for kill ing their gray-haired old father, if our whole village were offered me as a reward. Poor, miserable creatures! I should feel like running to them, and asking, How could you? Oh, how could you? You - his boys, who sat upon his knee in childhood, and rested your little heads against his breast; who sat at his table, and were fed from his hand. Oh, how could you draw the life-blood from that heart, and lay the wasted body of that ola father under the swamp-mud and the stagnant water?' I should want to lift their blood-stained hands to heaven and help them to say, 'God be merciful to us, such fearful sinners!' I could not sit through it as so many can, unless it were a duty from which I could not be relieved." witness, and wants some of her friends with her." "Oh, how I should think she would hate to be a witness. Perhaps her evidence may condemn those men to close imprisonment for weary years." "But she is a woman of sense, child, and knows that such persons must not be allowed to roam about the world, injuring whomsoever they desire. She knows that there must be some way-and no doubt she wishes it were the best way to punish or to discipline the wicked. And, Winnie, child, you had better begin now to school your heart, and to learn that sympathy alone will not reform the maliciously sinful." "Oh, I have schooled it time and again, but the trouble is, it don't stay schooled." "I see how it is. You are a baby, frightened at the flutter of a rose-leaf, and such are not good for much in the every day duties of life." "Shame, uncle Ned, to talk so to me! Who held your arm and helped the surgeon about the splints and the bands when that arm was broken? Who smoothed back the flesh and bound it on Nelly's finger after she had torn it off in the mill-cogs? Who nursed your own wife through that fearful fever and never winced, when even you gave out? Ah, uncle, you know it is only when I can do nothing that I am a coward." "You must not always expect to relieve, but you must learn to look upon suffering and be helpless. The world is full of sorrow, and the sooner you harden your heart to it, the better for you." "I see. Well, God help me to bear other's burdens!" We entered the Court House, and crowded our way along toward the witness stand, where I was given a seat and uncle went in to the jury-box. Before the desk, beside his lawyer, sat the burglar, his dark brown hair Uncle, don't you pity hanging around his low forehead, and his "Well, little Miss Faint-heart, run and get your bonnet; that is all over. They were sentenced this morning." 66 Poor fellows! "Not allowable. Until this witness is a shown criminal his testimony is worth as much as your own would be." How I blessed that Judge for his justice and his humanity. How the heart of the poor witness blessed him too! I could see it in the bright light that leaped to his teardimmed eye, and in the quiver of his lip as he looked up to the Court, with a "thank you" upon his face. defence, they brought in a young man as witness in the burglar's favor; after the testimony, when the people's lawyer called upon this same witness to take the stand for crossexamination, he obeyed, but a deep, dark flush overspread his face, and he turned toward the desk of the Court as though he could not be seen by the audience; but it was useless. Before him stood the people's lawyer, not one spark of sympathy in his glittering eyes. In a tone of cruel command, he exclaimed, "Witness, turn your face to that jury." Slowly the crimson face moved from its concealment until one cheek and one eye could be partially seen by the jury. "Turn your face to that jury!" thundered the people's lawyer, and the face, scarlet with mortification, came round. "Where do you live?" exclaimed the show its inmates how to get in love with lawyer. "I live at Silver Creek when I am at home," answered the youth, in a voice hardly to be understood. "When you are at home! Where do you live now?" roared the lawyer. When the sun went down, the trial was over, and the next morning the condemned, in their chains, were marched away to prison. How that trial haunted me by night and by day! How I thought if I were Judge and Jury, the criminals would all go free, unless I could make the prison over, and goodness. And then I laughed and clapped my hands, and told uncle Ned that I wished I could do it. "Do wha", puss?" Why, child, half of these prisoners never had a home." The blood went back from the crimson face, the eye that was bloodshot filled with." Well, then, put out trees and bushes, tears, the hand drew tremblingly across the and fill the yards with flowers. I'm sure cold, damp forehead, and then the pale lips they would like that." answered — oh, so sadly!"I live in jail now." "You live in jail, do you? What are you in jail for? How many times have you been in jail before now?" The witness trembled, -a sort of boyish shame seemed to overcome him, and a tenderness, such as he had known at his mother's knee perhaps, evidently surged all through his heart, and the tears fell over his face down on to the blue collar of his shirt. He was about to answer his merciless questioner, when the Judge arose slowly and with his usual dignity and grace, leaned a little over the desk toward the suffering boy, and in that unstudied attitude the whole court-room saw an expression of sympathy for the witness, and said slowly and distinctly, "The Court objects. What is your object in putting these questions, sir? "I wish to prove, your honor,” replied the people's lawyer, "that this boy has lived in jail so much that his testimony is good for nothing." 66 Ah, puss, some of them could not even see the daisies when you had led them where they grew." "But uncle!" "What, little philanthropist ?" "Some way and some time." "Bless God! You and I can work for it." "Yes, dear." WHAT the sun is to nature, what God is to the stricken heart which knows how to lean upon him, are cheerful persons in the house and by the wayside. They go unob trusively, unconsciously about their silent mission, brightening up society around them with the happiness beaming from their faces. We love to sit near them, we love the glance of their eye, the tone of their voice. Little children find them out, oh, so quickly! amid the densest crowd, and passing by the knotted brow and compressed lip, glide near, and, laying a confiding little hand on their knee, lift their clear eyes to those loving faces. Editorial Department. The Demand of Christianity. However much we may say,-and we can never say too much, concerning the gifts and blessings which Christianity brings to us, we shall miss very much of its highest value if we regard ourselves simply as God's beneficiaries, on whom his benevolence expends itself with no thought or desire of a return. Christianity does, indeed, give us everything, but it asks everything; and in this resides, perhaps, its most vital worth and power, both in the individual soul and in the life of humanity. The messenger of heaven, it comes to us with both extended hands. The one holds "riches and honor," all the best gifts of Gol to men. The other reaches out to us a white and open palm, into which we are to lay our In the kingdom of heaven as in earthly governments the first demand made upon us is that of loyalty. own. And this means so.nething more than a loyalty in name. The Christian call is not to ease but to toil; not to repose but to warfare. The world judges both rightly and wrongly when it calls the life of the Christian a bard one. It is not a hard thing to begin to be a Christian. By all that is attractive in goodness, all that is inspiring in devotion, all that is irresistible in beauty and glory, the heart of man turns naturally to the heavenly ways. But while it is easy to set one's face Zionward, to press on steadily and unswervingly in that way is not always easy. The kingdom of heaven must be taken by force, not by passive acceptance. Eighteen centuries have not disproved the Saviour's words, "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow me." To be a Christian in the highest and only worthy sense,-to be Christlike, which means to have Christ's own absolute loyalty to truth and right,-this is no smooth and flowery road. Would we have it so? Would the ChrisVOL. XLIV.-5 tian life be that grand and glorious thing it now is if it were less difficult of attainment? We prize most that which costs us most; and the true life is not less desirable but more, because strait is the gate and narrow the way that leads thereto, and few there be that find it. The kindest parent is not the one of weak indulgence, gratifying every desire and demanding no service of his child; but he who exacts most, constantly keeping his child up to the highest level of its ability, is he who displays towards it, however hard it may seem at the time, the truest and most considerate kindness. This, in infinitely higher range, is the manner of God's dealing with us. He be stows his gifts upon us as if we were indeed made in his image and capable of a worthy response. He respects our individuality, and recognizes our ability to give as well as to receive. And for the transcendent blessings he bestows upon us he will be satisfied with nothing less than our highest and utmost in return. His demands upon us as revealed in Christ are the most exacting that could possibly be made. He asks nothing less than our entire self-surrender. He will brook no rival in our regard. He asks a love and service so entire and so intense that if in the comparison a man seem not to hate his own father and mother, wife and children, and all he has formerly held supreme, he is unworthy the heavenly call. Ah, how inspiring is that spirit of devotion which characterized the early Christianity, in the days when it cost something to be a Christian! The power of Christ and his truth shows not so vividly in all he said or did as in its effect upon the hearts of those first followers, making them glad and proud to be accounted worthy to meet his almost superhuman demand. It was indeed a plain and simple rule of life that he gave them; not hard to understaud, and winning, as the truth always wins, for its own heavenly sake. Simply to love the Lord God with all the heart, and therefore to love and labor for all mankind as his children, that was an easy thing to accept; but to carry it out to its very end, that was not an easy thing; it never was and never will be. Yet how solidly they stood by that demand; how royally they bore on its banners in the teeth of an opposing world! Who can read without a swelling heart that eleventh chapter to the Hebrews which details those glorious instances of the steadfastness of faith "by which the elders obtained a good report," and which ends with that grand summing up of the unnamed heroes and martyrs, who had trials of cruel mockings and scourgings, bonds and imprisonment, who were stoned, sawn asunder, tempted, and slain with the sword; who hid in deserts and mountains, in dens and caves of the earth; who wandered about in sheep-skins and goat skins; destitute, afflicted, tormented,-closing at last with that quiet yet most sublime climax,—“of whom the world was not worthy." And even surpassing this devotion of those who had "received not the promise" was that of the great body of early Christians, so many of whom sealed their loyalty with their blood. With what a barbed arrow of rebuke does that early loyalty pierce the pretensions of Our more favored age! Verily, as Mr. Beecher has tersely said, "if those poor wretches of Alexandria and Corinth and Rome could be Christians, it ought not to be an impossible thing for us." The history of those early days will ever be the glory of the Church. The individual life, crushed out by persecution, flowed into the life of Christianity, in a great spiritual tide whose wave shall be felt through the ages. The world never lets such heroism die, or ceases to thrill at its recall. Brave old Tertullian had the vision of prophecy when he hurled back his defiance at the Roman Emperor; the blood of the martyrs has been the seed of the church. And it has been this spirit that has carried the life and power of the church through all the Christian ages. The Christian names which history has loved to perpetuate have been those of men who have stood simply loyal to their convictions though, like Origen and Luther and Melancthon, it were in the very face of gainsaying world; men who have stood up against the wrong, strong only in the power of the right, and, singlehanded have fought the battle to the end, dying it may be in the smoke of the conflict long before any sign of victory appeared; men whose long lives have been one constant protest against national sins, against social injustice or spiritual intolerance,-men, in a word, who have made truth their law and luty their guide, lead them whithers ever it would. These are the names that stand as beacon-lights along the hills of progress. This is the spirit which under Providence has preserved the true Christianity in the earth, and given a new luster to its history through each succeeding age. A rough and toilsome road these brave spirits found it, but a light streams back from their ascending way which shall make plainer and easier the path for all who shall go after them. And doubtless there never was a time when the prospects of the church were brighter, when the number of hearts loyal to Christ and his work were greater than in our own day. Nevertheless there is much in the very tendency of the times to tempt us to esteem too lightly the demand which our Christian faith lays upon us. The very triumphs of our civilization, the ascendency of skill over labor, the numberless expedients for making the way of life smooth and easy, all these may easily become stumbling blocks in our Christian progress. They are after the motto of gaining much and giving little; and we are in danger of forgetting that Christianity knows no such motto. There is a dangerous liberalism, falsely so called, that seeks to lessen the distinctions between right and wrong, and counsels the easiest and pleasantest rather than the truest way; and its syren voice is very easy to follow. We hear too much of policy and expediency, not enough of principle. If one has patience to follow our late records of legislation, for instance, what a sad comment will be find it on our pretensions as a Christian nation. It is almost enough to make one feel that jus tice and integrity are dying out of the earth and to exclaim as truth-lovers have exclaimed many times before, |