Pike County Democrat, Volume 27, Number 43, Petersburg, Pike County, 5 March 1897 — Page 3

$lu gikf Counts ifJWftat tK. HcC STOOPS, editor and PieprUior. PETERSBURG. - - INDtANA. SONQ OF THE PINES. Drear forest, hark! From pise trees dark, A whisper comes to thee; A sweet, low sons Ss borne along To each bare, denuded tree. The needles fine Of kingly pine Are tuned to sweetest key. Ad organ note From north wind’s throat Floats from the Polar sea. A countless train Takas up the strain Among the forest band; In hearts forlorn Few life Is bora With the pine tree's chorus grand. Their heads bow low ’Neath winter’s snow. Submissive to the power That knoweth best. The winter's rest Will bring a brighter hour. Drear forest, wait? The frozen gate Will soon unbar the spring. Then through the pines And swaying vines The warm eouth wind will s*ng. —Mary (3 Hopkins, in Ladies' World. ROSE PEMBERTON’S TEST

H, DEAR! I wish I could be a heroine myself,” pouted Rose Pemberton. tossing aside the norel which ! she had just finished with a deep sigh of discontent. “I'm pretty enough. I’m sure” —casting an ap

preciatiye glance at the mirror opposite, in which her piquant face and curling golden hair. were pleasingly reflected— “but nothing ever happens—nothing ever will happen, either, so far as 1 can •ee—th4* has the least bit of romance in it. Jlust this same old humdrum life; I’m tired and sick of it. If something startling would only occur! If I couhl: even fall desperately in love with some one—" Here the low. discontented murmur ©f Rose’s voice ceased, and a faint blush crept iijito her pretty cheeks as her thoughts drifted away toward a certain “some one” who had never formed a partof that humdrum life of which she had so often and so bitterly complained. Rose had numberless admirers, as the prettiest girl in the village always will have, and she could recall an almost equal dumber of flirtations which had served to brighten the monotony of her village life.

Hut they were tame annirs; ner neari had n«ker been really interested far a • moment. As for the grande passion Rose knew nothing of it save in her day dreams and In the page* of her favorite novels. She had laughed at her would-be lovers, and declared her conviction that there is no such thing as love in real life. But of late pretty Rose had secretly begun to entertain a somewhat different opinion on that subject. • A handsome, intellectual face and a pair of laughing brown eyes were the direct cause of her change of heart. Yet their owner seemed in no haate to enroll himself on the list of her admirers. Indeed. Rose knew him only by sight, for Wilbur Severance was a stranger in the village*; she’ had seen him in church two or three times, and occasionally on the street; but he had never1 sought an introduction to the belle of the place, and, beyond a passing glance of admiration., had not evinced any special notice of her attractions. Perhaps that was the very thing which had awakened Rose's interest in him. At all events, she often caught hersejf dreaming of those handsome brown eves, and wondering what she should say if Mr. Severance were ever to tell her the story of love which she had sio often heard from other lips. But there was little danger of that, apparently. Rose bit her lip in chagrin os that thought forced itself upon her, even while she was contemplating her graceful image in the mirror; and, catching up her wide-brimmed garden hat, She suddenly quit the room and the house, and went hurrying down the path with a kind of desperate determination in her heart to get away from the fullness of everyday existence and wrin^ an adventure of some sort from the Unwilling hands of Fate. *Tll go down to the river.” she said, after* • moment of indecision at the gatev “and if I can find a boat, I'll row about in the roost dangerous places 1 can find. And I hope something will happen; but it won’t,” she added, sarcastically, “unless I upset the boat on purpose.”

turning into u« wuxung road mat led out of the village, she soon came to the river and found a fragile shell of a boat dancing at anchor the w aves, as tf[ left there by fate for her especial use. Rose unfastened the chain and vat soon shooting swiftly down the stream, keeping time with her oars to her own reultrss thoughts. All at once a sound, breaking the stillness of the sceqe, drew her attention to the shore; and with that glance Rose's heart gave a mad bound, and then seemed to stop beating, for there on the bank, only a few feet distant, busily arranging a pile of fishing-tackle, sat the hero of her present thoughts—the handsome stranger with the laughing brown eyes. And they were quietly laughing at her now. Rose thought, aa a blush of confusion dyed her cheeks. The sudden start she gave jostled one of the oars out of her grasp, and, reaching to recover it, the “something" which ate had so rerlrlsaily wished far

bapptMd; tor th» next instant, to bar disgust, ska found herself overboard, and floundering about* in the water, looking as little like her ideal heroine as could well be imagined. - Mr. Severance hastened at once to her rescue, and when he had brought her, pale and exhausted, to the shore, Rose, glancing shyly upward, saw those brown eyes, no longer laughing at her, but full of a grave anxiety that thrilled her heart. “I am not at all injured,” she said, replying to that look, “and I hope my boat isn’t, for I must try my luck with it again by starting home at once.” “But your strength is quite exhausted,” he said, decidedly, as she rose slowly to her feet. “I shall cow you back to the point from which ‘you started, and then, if you will permit me, I shall accompany you to your home. I really think it unsafe for you to go alone,” he added, seeing the tide of crimson that swept back suddenly to her white cheeks. Rose offered but faint objections; and thus began the acquaintance which was destined to prove so eventful to both. And Rose was happy. It was just in the flush of her happiness that Rose met at a village hotel, whose landlady's daughter was one of her friends, a lady who had come there hoping to regain her lost health. Pale and delicate, but still very lovely, was Caryl Stewart, and very soon she and the village belle were fast friends. “My physicians say that my ailment is consumption,” said Caryl Stewart one day, smiling a slow, sad smile that went straight to Rose’s heart; “but I know better than they. Rose. I know that I ani dying of a breaking heart. Some day 1 will tell you. You wiil come in again to-morrow?” she questioned, lifting her dark eyes with a wistful look. “Oh, yes," returned Rose, with a bright smile. “I will come in any day —every day. Miss Stewart.” She was thinking of that conversation when Wilbur Severance came to see her later in the evening. But she could not remain melancholy kmg in his presence now, particular^* as he had come for the express purpose of asking for her heart and hand. Rose had often pictured this moment to herself, and she had honestly re- j solved to be all sweetness and sincerity to this man whom she loved with all her soul. But—how it was she copld never tell —somehow her old willful spirit of coquetry seemed to take possession of her all in a moment, and she laughed, teased aud evaded her lover’s questioning with a persistent willfulness that amazed herself. "I will answer you to-morrow evening,” was the reply he finally coaxed from her saucy lips. “1 must have a little time to reflect upon so dreadfully serious a matter. Mr. Severance.” But there was that in the happy, laughing Hue eyes that belied the willful lips, and Wilbur Severance went away with a cheerful heart in spite of all The following day Rose paid her j promised visit to Miss Stewart, and it was then that the invalid made her a confidante. Caryl Stewart had been betrothed, when scarcely more than a child, to a

HE BROUGHT HER TO THE SHOREI. youth but little older than herself. The arrangement had been made entirely by the parents of the two. But ais they grew older, with a better understanding of the situation, Caryl realized that her whole heart was involved in the matter, while her fiance proved indifferent, and finally rebelled outright against the bonds which he had no part in creating. In her pride Caryl had granted him his freedom, though she broke her own heart by doing it. Other suitors she had had, but she would never love again to her dying day. “And that will not be far off,” she ended, pathetically, “unless 1 can win his love. And 1 don’t quite despair of doing that yet. Rose. Away from all rivals, and free from the business-like fetters that once prejudiced him against me more than all, when he realizes, at last, that his love, and only that, can save my life—do you think, dear little Rose, that my hope of yet winning him is such a wild one, after all?” “No, indeed, I do not, Mias Stewart,” she earnestly replied. “I don’t think he could help but learn to love you, did he know all the truth. If he could ; be here to see you—” “He is here, and I hare met him several times, though he doesn’t know the mad hope that brougfit me here—as yet. I have merely told him that 1 came here for my health. I think you know him also. Rose,” she added, slowly, watching the girl's face from beneath her long, dark lashes. “His name ia WiiI bur Severance."

“Wilbur Severance!" * One moment Kote’i little hand was i pressed tightly over her hearts and her i very breathing seemed to cease. Then she spoke, almost in her nans) steady tones. “Yea, 1 know Mr. Severance; we are

quite food frieuda,” aha said. -And X think he will come buck to you yet* Mina Stewart; indeed I am mm almost sure he will.” And rising quickly she murmured a few parting words, then touching her cold lips lightly to Caryl Stewart’s brow, hastened from the room. “Oh, why didn’t I tell him ‘Yes’ at once last night, when I loved him so!” cried Rose, in anguish of heart, os she hurried home. “Then It would all have been settled, and nothing could have changed it, but now—” Her resolve was already taken; and when Wilbur called that night she gave him his answer promptly enough. It was “No.” “You cannot mean, Rose, that yon have deliberately intended to deceive me?” he cried. “Surely no woman under heaven could have a heart so hard and false as that! Do not trifle this time, Rose. Whatever yonr answer is now, it must be your final one.” “It is final,” she answered, steadily. “I shall regret the loss of your friendship, but 1 can never be your wife, Mr. Severance. That is my deliberate final answer.” “And I hurled back the lie iu the teeth of all those who tried to warn me against you for what you are—a soulless coquette,” he said, with a bitter laugh. “I might have saved my happiness, but I would not, and—well, I deserve my fate for being such a fool.” He turned on his heel to go, but Rost stepped quietly before him. She held a small basket of fruit and flowers in her hand. “I should like to ask you to do me one little favor,” she said, coldly, not seeming to have noticed his bitter words. “I have a friend at the hotel, which you will pass as you go home. She is ill—very ill, indeed, and I wish to rend her these. I premised, but as I could not go myself, I must ask you to take them for me—and this note,” she added, offering it. “Don’t refuse, please, she will be so disappointed. And if you will kindly take them up to her parlor yourself—I never trust these things to the careless servants there. It is the only service 1 shall ask of you,” she added, with a half pleading little smile as she saw him hesitate. Of course he had no choice but to accept the trifling task, and. with a cold, distant bow, he took both basket and note from her hand and went his way. And When the door had closed behind him. Rose sank back into her chair and sobbed until her heart was ready to burst. “I have sent him to her, and surely she can find some way to win him back again.” she moaned, as she thought of the desolation she had brought upon her own happiness. How long she sat there weeping Rose never knew. But ages after, so it seemed, a step sounded beside her, and Wilbur's own voice was tenderly calling her name. “Look up, my .Rose, and let me tell you what has happened.” he was saying s^dly, yet with a deep undertone of joy in his loving voice. “I executed your errand, and before I could leave, Caryl, in some way. made me understand the state of her feelings toward me. You know the whole story. Rose, so I need not repeat it. Then, in my pity for her, and my bitter anger toward you, I was weak enough to offer to renew that old engagement. I need not teLl you that she eagerly accepted, and then, in her joy or the agitation of the moment, she fell to coughing severely. and ruptured a blood veasel. Yes—” in answer to Rose's horrified cry—“she is dead now, my darling, but not before she had made me understand the sacrifice you tried to make for her. She knew that you loved me. Rose. And now 1 shall not ask you for that answer, dear; I shall take it thus;” and ha kissed her quivering lips. “My love— n y heroine!” he added, proudly. itose had never once thought of it in that light; but no one now ever hears from her sweet lips that old-time, foolish wish: “Oh, if I could be a heroine!”—Dublin World.

What Did. The author of “Thoughts for the People” tells a suggestive anecdote of a man who scandalized an entire community by spending most of his time indoors, engaged in reading and study. This waste of golden hours gave particular pain to an energetic farmer, who finally asked the new neighbor why he did not work for a living. The apparent idler replied, in Yankee fashion, by a question about a plow he had seen in the farmer's barn. “It's the best plow ever made,” the farmer answered. “It does twice the work of an old-fashioned plow. But I don’t see what that haa to do with the question of your earning your living.” *T invented that plow,” said the other, calmly. It is seldom possible to fix the exact value of another man’s achievements. It is never safe to estimate his work by the noise he makes. A prisoner in the treadmill is one of the most active men on earth —but what does his industry profit? Great works grow slowly and in silence, and the man who promises least may some day command the most potent forces.—Youth’s Companion.

Walnut Shell Lore. In Lithunian folk-lore a walnut shell plays the part of Noah's ark. “Once the great god Pramzimas, while eating walnuts, looked down from his castle in the sky and the two giants. Wind and Water, were having a high old time. Pramzimas saw that if the floods continued the people would be drowned; so he was kind enough to throw half of a walnut shell, which he had in his hand, into the flood, and it floated to the mountain peak where the.people had gathered for refuge. Now, this walnut shell was large enough to hold all the people and to float them safely till the deluge had subsided.”—Cincinnati Enquirer. —Nothing make a man mad quicker than for his wife to criticise any bargain he has made.—Waaklactea Haem

TALMAGE’S SERMON. I«eesons From Isaiah’s Description of the Seraphim’8 Wings. Humility at lapnfwtkn ud BmiWN Toward God—W® Host Keep Mot* las—God GItm the Soul Wings tor Flight. Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage took for the •abject of the following sermon:4 ’Wings of Seraphim,” basing it on the text: With twain he covered his face, with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.— Isaiah vL, 2. In a hospital of leprosy good King Uzziah had died, and the whole land was shadowed with solemnity, and theological and prophetic Isaiah was thinking about religious things, as one is apt to do in time of great national bereavement, and, forgetting the presence of his wife and two sons, who made up his family, he has a dream, not like the dreams of ordinary character, which generally come from indigestion, but a vision most instructive and under the touch of the hand of the Almighty. The place, the ancient temple; building grand, awful, majestic. Within that temple a throne higher and grander than that occupied by any czar or sultan or emperor. On that throne the eternal Christ. In lines surrounding that throne, the brightest celestials, not the cherubim, but higher than they, the most exquisite and radiant of the heavenly inhabitants, the seraphim. They are called burners because they look like fire. Lips of fire, eyes of fire, feet of fire. In addition to the features and the limbs which suggest a human being, there are pinions which suggest, the lithest, the swiftest, the most buoyant and the most inspiring of all unfntelligent creation—a bird. Each seraph had six wings, each two of the wings for a different purpose. Isaiah's dreatq quivers and flashes with these pinions. Now folded, now spread, now beaten in locomotion. ‘'With twain he covered his feet, with twain he covered his head, and with twain he did fly.” The probability is that these wings were not all used at once. The seraph standing there near the throne, overwhelmed at the insignificance of the paths his feet had trodden as compared with the paths trodden by the feet of God, and with the lameness of his locomotion amounting almost to decrepitude as compared with the Divine velocity, with feathery veil of angelic modesty hides the feet. “With twain he did cover thy feet." Standing there overpowered by the over-matehing splendors of God's glory, and unable longer with the eyes to look opon them, and wishing those eyes shaded from the insufferable glory, the pinions gather over the countenance. “With twain he did cover the face.” Then, as God tells this seraph to go to the farthest outpost of immensity on message of light and love and joy, and get back before the first anthem, it does not take the seraph a great while to spread himself upon the air with unimagined celerity, one stroke of the wing equal 16 10,000 leagues of air. “With twain he did fly.” The most practical and useful lesson for you and me—when we see the seraph spreading his wings over, the feet—is the lesson of humility at imperfection. The brightest angels of God are so far beneath God that He charges them with folly. The seraph so far beneath God, and we so far beneath the seraph in service, we ought to be plunged into humility, utter and complete. Our feet, how laggard they have been in the Divine service. Our feet, howmany missteps they have taken. Our feet, in how many paths of worldliness and folly they have walked.

Neither God nor seraph intended to put any dishonor upon that which is one of the masterpieces of Almighty God—the human foot. Physiologist and anatomist are overwhelmed at the wonders of its organization. The 4‘Bridgewater Treatise*' written by Sir Charles Bell, on the wisdom and goodness of God as illustrated in the human hand, was the result of the $40.000 bequeathed in the last will and testament of the earl of Bridgewater for the encouragement of Christian literature. The world could afford to forgive his eccentricities, though he had two dogs seated at his table, and though he put six dogs alone in an equipage drawn by four horses ■end attended by two footmen. With his large bequest inducing Sir Charles Bell to write so valuable a book on the wisdom of God in the structure of the human hand, the world could afford to forgive his oddities. And the world could now aijford to have another earl of Bridgewater, however idiosyncratic, if he would induee some other Sir Charles Bell to write a book on the wisdom and goodness of God in the construction of the human foot. The articulation of its bones, the lubrication of its joints, the gracefulness of Its lines, the ingenuity of its cartilages, the delicacy of its veins, the rapidity of Its muscular contraction, the sensitiveness of its nerves. 1 sound the praises of the human foot. With that we halt or climb or march. It is the foundation of the physical fabric. It is the base of a Godpoised column. With it the warrior braces himself for battle. With it the orator plants himself for euloginm. With it the toiler reaches his work. With it the outraged stamps his indignation. Its loss an irreparable disaster. Its health an invaluable equipment. If yon want to know its value, . ask the man whose foot paralysis hath shriveled, or machinery hath crushed, or surgeon's knife hath amputated. The Bible honors it. Especial care: “Lest thou dash thy foot against a stone;” “He will not sutler thy foot

W UV VUI iCXT* UVi OVUUM ble." Especial charge: “Keep thy foot when thou goest to the House of God.” Especial peril: “Their feet shall slide In due time.” Connected with the world’s dissolution^, “He shall set one foot on the sea and the other on the tartk* Give me the history of jroor foot, sad

I will give you the history of your life* ] time. Tell me up what steps it hath gone, down what declivities, and in whatroads and in what directions, and I will know more about you than I want to know. None of us could endure the scrutiny. Our feet not always in paths of God. Sometimes in paths of worldliness. Our feet, a Divine and glorious machinery for usefulness and work, so often making missteps, so often going in the wrong direction. God knowing every step, the patriarch saying: “Thou settest a print on the heels of my feet.* Crimes of the hand, crimes of the tongue, crimes of the eye, crimes of the ear not worse than crimes of the foot. Oh, we want the wings of humility to cover the feet. Ought we not to go into selfabnegation before the all-searching, all-scrutinizing, all-trying eye of God? The seraphs do. How much more we? “With twain He covered the feet.” All this talk about the dignity of human nature is braggadocio and sin. Our nature started at the hand of God regal, but it has been pauperized. There is a well in Belgium which once had very pure water, and it was stoutly masoned with stone and brick; but that well afterward became the center of the battle of Waterloo. At the opening of the battle the soldiers with their sabers compelled the gardener, William von Kylsorn, to draw water out of the well for them, and it was very pure water. But the battle raged, and S00 dead and half dead were flung into the well for quick and easy burial; so that the - well of refreshment became the well of death, and long after, people looked down into the well- and they saw the bleached skulls, hut no water. So the human soul was a well of good, hut the armies of sin have fought around it, and fought across it and been slain, and it has become a well of skeleI tons. Dead hopes, dead resolutions, dead opportunities, dead ambitions. An abandoned well unless Christ shall reopen and purify and fill it as. the well of Belgium never was. Unclean, unclean. Another seraphic posture in the text: “With twain he covered the face.” That means reverence Godward. Never so much irreverence abroad in the world as to-day. You see it in the defaced statuary, in the cutting out of figures from fine paintings, in the fact that military guard must stand at the graves of Lincoln and Garfield, and that old shade trees must he cut down for firewood, though 50 George P. Morrises beg the woodcutter to spare the tree, and that calls a corpse a cadaver, and that speaks of death as going over to the majority, and substitutes for the reverent terms father and mother, “the old man” and “the ,old woman.” and finds nothing impressive in the ruins of Baalbec or the columns of Karnac, and sees no difference in the Sabbath from other days except it allows more dissipation, and reads the Bible in what is called higher criticism, making it not the Word of God, but a good book with some fine things in it. Irreverence never so much abroad. How many take the name of God in vain; how many trivial things said about the Almighty. Not willing to have God in the world, they roll up an idea of sentimentality and humanitarianism and impudence and imbecility, and call it God. No wings of reverence over the face, no taking off of shoes on holy ground. You can tell

irom tne way tney taiK tney could have made a better world than this, and that the God of the Bible shocks every sense of propriety. They talk of the love of God in a way that shows you they believe it does not make' any difference how bad a man is here, he will come in at the shining gate. They talk of the love of God in a way which shows you they think it is a general jail delivery for all the abandoned and the scoundrelly of the universe. No punishment hereafter for any wrong done here. The Bible gives two descriptions of God, and they are just opposite, and they are both true. In one place the Bible says God is love. In another place the Bible says God is a consuming fire. The explanation is plain as | plain can be. God through Christ is ! love. God out of Christ is fire. To win the one and to escape the other we have only to throw ourselves body, mind and soul into Christ’s keeping. '‘No,” says Irreverence, “I want no atonement, I want no pardon, I want no intervention; I will go up and face God, and I will challenge Him, and I will defy Him,and I will ask Him what He wants to do with me.” So the finite confronts the infinite, so a tack hammer tries to break a thunderbolt, so the breath* of human nostrils defies the everlasting God, while the hierarches of Heaven bow the head and bend the knee as the King’s chariot goes by. and the archangel turns away because he can not endure the splendor, and the chorus of all the empires of Heaven comes in with full diapason, ‘‘Holy, holy, holy!” Reverence for sham, reverence for the old merely because it is old, reverence for stupidity, however learned, reverence for incapacity, however finely inaugurated, I have none. But we want more reverence for God, more reverence for the sacrments, more reverence for the Bible, more reverence for the pure, more reverence for the good. Reverence a characteristic of all great natures. You hear it in the roll of the master oratories. You see it in the Raphaels and Titans and Ghiriandajos. You study it in the architecture of the Aholiabs and Christopher Wrens. Do not be flippant about God. Do not joke about death. Do not make fun of the Bible. Do not deride the eternal. The brightest and mightiest seraph can not look un | abashed upon him. Involuntarily the wings come up. "‘With twain He covered his face.”

« no is uus uou oeiore wnom me arrogant and intractable refuse reverence? There was an engineer by the name of Strasicrates, who was in the employ of Alexander the Great, and he offered to hew a mountain in the shape of his master, the emperor, the enormous figure to hold in the left hand a city of ]^«0 inhabitants, while with

the right hand it wa» to hold a basin large enough, to collect all the mourn tain torrents. Alexander applauded him for hia ingenuity, but forbade the enterprise because of its costliness. Yet I have to tell you that our King holds in one hand all the cities of the .earth, and all the oceans, while He has the stars of heaven for His tiara. As you take a pinch of salt or powder between your thumb and two finger*, so Isaiah indicates Qod takes up the earth. He measures the dust of the , earth, the original there indicating that God takes all the dust of all the continents between the thumb and two fingers. YouwVap around your hand a blue ribbon five times, ten times. Yon say it is five-breadths, or it is ten hand* breadths. So indicates the prophet God winds the blue ribbon of the sky around His hand. “He meteth out the heavens with a span.” You know that balances are made of a beam suspended in the middle, with two basins at ~ the extremity of equal heft. In that way what vast heft has been weighed. But what are all the balances of earthly manipulation compared with the balances that Isaiah saw suspended when he saw God putting into the scales the Alps and the Appenines and Mount Washington and the Sierra Nevadas. You see the earth had to be ballasted. It would not do to have too much weight in Europe, os too much weight in Asia, or too much weight in Africa, or in America; so when God made the mountains He weighed them. The Bible distinctly says so. God knows the weight of the great ranges that cross the continents, the tons, the pounds avoirdupois, the ounces, the grains, the millegrammes—just how much they weighed then, and just how much they weigh now. “He weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance.” Oh, what a God to run against; oh, what a God to disobey) oh, what a God to dishonor; oh, what a God to defy! The brightest, the might* iest angel takes no familiarity with God. The wings of reverence are lifted. “With twain he covered the face.” Another seraphic posture in the text. The seraph must always stand still. He mns| move, and it must without clumsiness. There must be celerity and beauty in the movement. “With twain he did fly.” Correction, exhilaration. ! Correction at our slow gait, for we f>nly crawl in the service when we ought to fly at the Divine bidding. Exhilaration in the fact that the soul has wings as the seraphs have wings. What is a wing? An instrument of locomotion. They may not be like seraph's wing, they may not be like bird's wing,' but the soul has wings. God says so: “He shall mount up on wings as eagles.” We are made in the Divine image, and God has wings. The Bible says so: “Healing in His wings.” “Under the shadow of His wings.” Under whose wings hast thou come to trust.” The soul with folded wing now, wounded wing. Aye! I have it now. Caged within bars of bone and under curtains of flesh, but one day to be free. 1 hear the rustle of pinions in Seagrave's poem which wv sometimes sing: Rise, my soul, and stretch thy wings. I hear the rustle of pinions in Alex tinder Pope's stanza, where he says:

I mount, I fly, O Death, where is thy victory? A dying Christian not long ago cried ont: “Wings, wings, wings? The air is full of them, coming and going, coming and going. You have ' seen how the dull, sluggish chrysalid becomes the bright butterfly; the dull and the stupid and the lethargic turned into the alert and the beautifull. Well, my friends, in this world we are in the chrysalid state. Death will unfurl the wings. Oh, if we could only realize what a grand thing it will be to get rid of this old clod of the body and mount the heavens, neither seagull nor lark nor albatross nor falcon, nor condon pitching from highest range of Andes so buoyant or so majestic of stroke. See that eagle in the mountain nest. It looks so sick, so ragged-feathered, so worn out and so half asleep. Is that eagle dying? No. The ornithologist will tell you it is the moulting season with that bird. Not dying, but moulting. You see that Christian sick and weary and worn put and seeming about to expire on what is called his deathbed. The world says he is dying. 1 say it is the moulting season for his soul—the body dropping away, the celestial pinions coming on. Not dying, bnt moulting. Moulting out of darkness and sin and struggle into glory and into God. Why dp you not shout? Why do you sit shivering at the thought of death and trying to hold back and wishing you could stay here forever, and speak of departure aa though the subject were filled with skeletons and the varnish of coffins, and-as though yon preferred lame foot to swift wing? Live so near to Christ that when you are dead people standing by your lifeless body will not soliloquize, saying: “What a disappointment life was to him; how averse he was to departure; what a pity it was he had to die; what ! an awful calamity.” Bather standing there may they see a sign more ! vivid on your still face than the vestiges of pain, something that will indicate that it was a happy exit—the clearance from oppressive quarantine, the cast-off chrysalid, the moulting of ( the faded and the useless, and the ascent from malarial valley to bright shining mountain tops, and be led to say, as they stand there contemplating yoor humility and your reverence in life, and your happiness in death: “With twain He covered the feet, with twain He covered the face, with twain He ilid fly.” Wings! Wings? Wings!

tie Vide Awake. We are commanded to be wide awake, to a world’s need, and when we have shaken off oar lethargy, apathy, in* difference, prejudice, fastidiousness and look around, and see a world lost in sin, then we are able to pray as we ought to.—Rer. G. W. Bidout, Metih odist, Philadelphia.