you up from all our rides and parties and balls-you, Mary, so young and happy.

M: Dear Lucy, I love God, and I love the Saviour, and I love religion --but I love the innocent pleasures of life, too.

L: Yes; but if you join the church you will have to give them all up, and put on a long face, and look so sad and sorrowful. O, Mary, it will be painful to see you there!

M: By no means, dear Lucy, for my religion is cheerful and happythe Religion of Love. Do you suppose that God, who makes the sunlight, and the rainbows, and the flowers, and gives us the capacity to laugh and sing and be happy, would make his religion to be cheerless, gloomy and disconsolate? No, Lucy, my religion is bright and beautiful as the sunlight and flowers, and as cheerful and happy as Love itself!

L: Tell me, Mary; is that the reason you decorate your church and your children with the beautiful flowers, and sing and rejoice and are happy together? I have been taught to dread the very name of God and the awful future, and almost to hate religion!

M: You are sadly mistaken Lucy. God is our infinite Father, and he will love us forever and ever, and save us from all sin and sorrow. Could you not love such a God, and such a religion?

L: Yes, indeed, with all my heart! O, Mary-then we shall not lose you, atter all! Thank the Lord for that. M: No, Lucy, you will lose me from nothing that is innocent and happy. But will you not come with me to the arms of the Saviour, and sing and pray and worship the God of Love?

L: Yes, dear Mary, for your relig ion is so cheerful, so happy, so divine!

M: [M. and L. arm in arm.] So you see, Christian friends, my sister. had the common opinion about the sadness of religion, and was fearful of losing me from her occasional merry-makings; and you also see, that while there is no danger of her losing my company in this beautiful world, she has found what is far better, for this world and the next--the Pearl of great price--the religion of Love.

L: Yes, children, and let me advise you all to come to this fold of the Good Shepherd, and we will do you good, and be happy together.

THE FATHER.

Philip said to Christ, "Show us the Father and it sufficeth us." This passage contains much in a little. Men are influenced by what they see and know and meditate upon. To see and meditate upon good makes one good. To see and think much about evil, often makes one bad. On this principle Philip thought it enough if Jesus would show them the Father. To reveal the Father would be to reveal the whole truth, all theology, doctrine, moral excellence. It would be to reveal the infinite perfections of the Divine Being. Nothing more than this could be needed; for the quickening force of such a revelation would redeem any soul.

It was the mission of Christ to show the Father. This was the sum of his work. It was to make known the divine glories. Through this revelation he sought to save the world, Philip said it was enough. Then it was not his mission to show any other being. It was not his mission to show the devil. And why? Because, if to show the Father would save the world, to show the devil would damn the world. If it would bless a soul to see the Father, it

would curse him to see the devil. To show the two would balance each other.

If it was Christ's mission to show the Father, it is the mission of all his ministers to preach the Father. And they are not authorized to preach anything else. It is enough to preach the Father. To preach the devil would be to injure men. Does not this account for the fact that so many Christians are not half Christianized. They have seen the devil instead of the Father. They have heard more of darkness than light, more of evil than good, more of Satan than God. On the principle that "evil communications corrupt good manners,' this has made them what they are. If they could see the Father and nothing more they would be better.

REV. G. S. WEAVER.

MIGHTY MEN.

Dr. Adam Clarke said, that "the old proverb about having too many irons in the fire was an abominable old lie. Have all in it, shovel, tongs and poker." multiplicity of employments, as the want of system in them, that distracts and injures both the work and the workman. Wesley said, "I am always in haste, but never in a hurry, leisure and I have long taken leave of each other." He traveled about 5,000 miles in a year; preached about three times a day, commencing at five o'clock in the morning, and his published works amounted to about two hundred volumes! Ashbury traveled 6,000 miles a year, and preached incessantly. Coke crossed the Atlantic eighteen times, preached, wrote, traveled, established missions, begged from door to door for them, and labored in all respects, as if, like the apostles, he would "turn the world upside down."

It is not so much the

At

near seventy years of age, he

started to Christianize India! It is said that Luther preached almost daily; he lectured constantly as a professor; he was burdened with the care of all the churches; his correspondence, even as now extant, fills many volumes; he was perpetually harassed with controversies, and was the most voluminous writer of his day. The same, or even more might be said of Calvin. While in Strasburg, he preached or lectured every day. In a letter to Farei, dated from that city, he says that on one day he had revised twenty sheets of one of his works, lectured, preached, written four letters, reconciled several par ties who were at variance, and answered more than ten persons who came to him for advice. In Geneva he was pastor, professor, and almost magistrate. He lectured every other day; on alternate weeks he preached daily; he was overwhelmed with letters from all parts of Europe; and was the author of works (amounting to nine volumes folio) which any man of our generation would think more than enough to occupy his whole time. And this amid perpetual infirmity, headache, catarrh, strangury, gravel, stone, gout. Baxter says of himself, that, before the wars, he preached twice every Sabbath, and once in the week, besides occasional sermons, and several regular evening religious meetings. Two days in the week he catechized the people from house to house, spending an hour with each family. Besides all this, he was forced, by the necessity of the people, to practise physic; and as he never took a penny from any one, he was crowded with patients. In the midst of all these duties, though afflicted with almost all the diseases which man is heir to, he wrote more books than most of us can find time to read.

All these men were poor. We find Luther begging the elector for a new

coat, and thanking him for a piece of meat; Calvin selling his books to pay his rent; and Baxter was a curate with sixty pounds a year.-Sketches and Incidents.

THE DOCTRINE OF ENDLESS PUNISHMENT TESTED BY ITS FRUITS

The doctrine of eternal punishment ought to be denied, because of its evil fruits. A good tree does not bring forth corrupt fruit, and we owe to this doctrine all the slaughter and cruelty done by alternately triumphant sects in the same God. It gave birth to the Inquisition; it burnt thousands of innocent men and women for witchcraft; it tortured and rent the bodies and souls of men; it depopulated fertile lands; it ruined nations; it kept the world for centuries in darkness; held back civilization; and in all ages urged on the dogs of cruelty and fanaticism to their accursed hunting.

So dreadful were its deeds, that a door of escape was provided from its full horror by the church of the time. The doctrine of purgatory and prayers for the dead was the reaction from its terrors, and it saved religion. Unrelieved of this merciful interposition, eternal punishment would have Islain the world.

Those were its fruits in the past, and on this account we ought to deny its truth. But now we ought to fight against its lies day by day; for we, who do not believe it, have no notion of the harm it is doing to those who do believe it. We are bound to contend against it if we have any desire that a nobler Christianity should prevail among men, for its teaching drives them into infidelity and atheism. The less-educated classes, who yet feel strongly, and perhaps more strongly than the educated, the things of the conscience. and the heart, say that it denies all

their moral instincts. And so it does. It makes them look on God as an unreasoning and capricious tyrant, and they turn from Him with dread and hate. It makes them consider the story of redemption as either a weak effort on the part of an incapable God to save man, or a mockery by Him of his creatures on the plea of a love which they see as derisive, and a justice which they see as favoritism. And till we free the Christian church from the taint of this terrible doctrine, we have failed to remove the greatest impulse to infidelity among the working classes, an impulse much greater than any given by all the materialism of philosophers, of all the mouthing of iconoclasts.

As to its influence on uneducated men, it is this: it throws an air of fiction over the whole of Christian teaching. These men cannot believe it if they believe in God. It represents, even apart from God, no idea at all to their minds. They know, being accustomed to reasoning, that the idea of everlasting punishment is inconceivable. But they are told that it is bound up with the whole of the Christian doctrine; that if they do not believe it they cannot believe the rest. They do not like to leave openly their church or sect, and to profess themselves unbelievers; they are thus driven to a mere conventional assent, till, by degrees, Christianity (infected in their minds. by this false doctrine) drops altogether out of their heart as a life-impelling power. They see what they believe to be a fiction walking about unchallenged and unreproved among doctrines which, unaccompanied by this traitor, they could receive as honest and true, but which, bound up with it, they must reject. And, sooner or later, they do reject the whole. The one black sheep has in

fected all the flock, and all the flock are slain.

It has as evil a result in the case of those who are silent about it, but accept it for it makes them unconsciously false. Of all who teach it, who believes it? Only a few! The rest think they do, but do not. If they did, it would tell more vitally on their lives. A living faith in any truth influences the whole life, changes character, modifies or rules. all our dealings with men; and the belief in eternal evil (for eternal punishment means eternal evil) has scarcely any power over the daily thoughts and acts of men. In more than half the acts and thoughts of those who say they hold it, it is implicitly denied. More than half of those they meet are damned to eternal torture, to torture endlessly renewed with exquisite skill, so that when countless ages have rolled away, it cannot be said to have begun, and into every moment an eternity of pain is pent; and, believing this of half their friends, and relatives, and fellow-men, as they say, they can eat and drink peacefully, and get children for whom that fate is reserved, and move without infinite horror among men. Nonsense! they do not believe it all. Do you mean to say there are a hundred persons in England who believe in eternal evil as they believe in eternal goodness? It is not true what they confess with their lips, and they might as well know their own minds and say at once: "No; we do not be lieve it. It has no influence at all on our lives." That is just what they do not do, and they reap their reward. They sow to lies, and they reap lieing within. They think by asserting and asserting to convince themselves and the world of their faith. The world smiles behind its sleeve, while they spend half their

time when they write, or talk, or preach, in diligently hiding away the fact that they do not believe what they say they do, till all teaching becomes unreal.

They reap their reward, I say. It is a terrible business to have a falsehood domiciled with truth, and for its possessor, when he is only half convinced or not all convinced of its truth, to take the greatest pains to dress it up like the truth. For the falsehood gets no good from the truth, but the truth gets all maimed by the falsehood. They talk of the love of God, and his mercy, and His pity, and His justice, and His righteousness, and His fatherhood, and the goodness of salvation. All the time they are talking, this hideous companion in their own soul is laughing at all these things. Love of God— what of eternal torture? Righteousness of God-what of eternal evil? Good news, salvation-oh, have done with it all! And this, which goes on often in their own minds, goes on still more in the minds of those who listen, until the trail of a lie and its sickly odor defiles their whole religious life.-Christian Life.

WINE AT THE BRIDAL,

It was the bridal eve of Constance Maybury. The summer moon, with her train of silver stars, looked down from her lofty throne on the tasteful mansion of Mr. Maybury, with its elegant surroundings; the magnificent old trees, like giant sentinels, guarding the home of affluence; the gushing spray of the tiny fountains glistening like gems in the pearly moonlight, and falling with a soit lulling murmur into the basin below; the trailing vines, with their perfumed buds and flowers nodding in the gentle evening breeze; all nature seemed rejoicing at the happiness of those two mortals about to be con

summated by the holy marriage tie. Within those elegant apartments, where lights glittered like stars, and music poured a flood of melody to enliven the scene, were gathered the friends and relatives of the happy pair, to witness the ceremony. The noble looking bridegroom with the impress of lofty intellect and untarnished honor stamped upon his manly forehead, supported with an air of tenderness and pride the delicate flower-like girl that leaned confidingly upon his arm, tears of joy and affection trembling in her violet eyes.

The life of Constance Maybury had hitherto been one long dream of happiness. Beautiful and graceful as the flower that bends to the kiss of the summer sunlight, or the playful daliance of the scented breeze, summer hours of joy and gladness only were hers; and it seemed to require but one bliss more, the love of a manly heart, to complete her earthly happiness.

Mr. Maybury presented in his personal appearance the true type of a jolly country gentleman. Although possessed of ample means, his luxurious tastes and habits of living had made very perceptible inroad upon his fortune, while his rubicund face, and portly figure, and a close observer might notice the trembling hand, told of too long indulgence at the sparkling wines, which ever graced his board. Yet he deemed himself safe, and from his lofty pedestal of pride he looked down upon his fallen brother with pitiless contempt, wondering how man could make himself so beastly, and blind himself to the fact that his excesses were becoming greater each day.

The son-in-law of Mr. Maybury, Edward Leigh, seemed well worthy the fair bride, whose eyes rested upon his face with a look of perfect

trust, as if she there read its truthfulness. Smiles and tears and words of love were interchanged, as they received the congratulations of friends and relatives, and with it all the wine went round. To the utter astonishment of all assembled the bridegroom refused the glass. Mr. Maybury's brow grew dark; to him it seemed so utterly absurd. Al. though acquainted before with his principles of utter abstemiousness, at such a time it seemed inexplicable, going too far altogether.

"Look here, my boy," said he in a half whisper, "do you know you are exciting the attention of the whole company, by thus absurdly refusing to drink wine at your wedding? Refuse to pledge your bride? See," said he, turning to Constance, who stood in an attitude of embarrassment, poising the glass upon her snowy hand, "she has pledged you in the wine, and now offers you the glass."

The eyes of his gentle bride were suffused with tears as she noticed the disparaging looks and remarks that were going around, and she again offered him the glass, murmuring as she did so, "Only this once, dear Edward, for my sake."

A shiver, as of some mortal anguish, crept over the young man's face, as he took the glass from her hand, and holding it aloft, he passed the other arm firmly around his frembling bride, and in a voice touchingly modulated with crowding emotions, he addressed the company:

"My friends, you have all noticed with surprise, and perhaps displeasure, my refusal to-night to pledge my bride in the wine-cup's tempting draught. To you it seemed inexplicable, almost an act of cruelty; to me it involves the happiness of a lifetime. Within that glass there lurks a demon, that with mocking