the Baptists would be the better if they had another baptism. The Free Churches might be none the worse for being more established in the faith; and even the Methodists might improve their methods. The main question is possession of the one light and fire of God, the flame of divine truth. Those who shine by divine grace are all one in Christ Jesus. What a glory will there be in the one church when all her members shine, and all are one! May such a day come quickly! Amen.-SPUrgeon. Condensed Comments. Truth unmixed What elements of power we wield! with error, flashing as God's own lightning in its brightness, resistless if properly wielded, as that living flame! Oh, what agencies! The Holy Ghost standing and pleading with us to work so that He may help us the very earth coming to the help of the Lord Jesus Christ! And yet I am painfully impressed that we are not wielding the elements of Christian achievement nearly up to their maximum.-T. M. EDDY. Let the Church come to God in the strength of a perfect weakness, in the power of a felt helplessness and a child-like confidence; and then, either she has no strength and has no right to be, or she has a strength that is infinite. Then and thus will she stretch out the rod over the seas of difficulty which lie before her, and the waters shall divide, and she shall pass through and sing the song of deliverance.—Mark HOPKINS. So, from generation to generation, the spiritual Church is rising upward toward its perfection; and, though one atver another the workmen pass away, the fabric remains and the great Master Builder carries on the undertaking. Be it ours to build our portion in a solid and substantial manner, so that they who come after us may be at once thankful for our thoroughness and inspired by our example.-WM. M. TAYLOR. How long must the Church live before it will learn that strength is won by action, and success by work; and that all this immeasurable feeling, without action and work, is a positive damage to it—that it is the procurer of spiritual obesity, gout and debility?—J. G. HOLLAND. Persecution has not crushed the Church; power has not beaten it back; time has not abated its force; and, what is most wonderful of all, the abuses and treasons of its friends have not shaken its stability.-HORACE BUSH NELL. The true safety of the Church is not a creed, not an enactment for expelling those who violate the creed; the presence of God alone can protect His people against the cunning assaults of their foes.-SPURGEON. The Church may go through her dark ages, but Christ is with her in the midnight; she may pass through her fiery furnace, but Christ is in the midst of the flame with her.-SPURGEON. Doubtless there are times when controversy becomes a necessary evil. But let us remember that it is an evil. -DEAN STANLEY. THE CITY. The Sorrows of the City. Is it well that while we range with Science, glorying the Time, City children soak and blacken soul and ser.se in city slime? There, among the gloomy alleys, Progress halts on palsied feet; Crime and hunger cast our maidens by the thousands on the street. There the master scrimps his haggard sempstress of her daily bread; There a single, sordid attic holds the living and the dead. There the smoldering fire of fever creeps across the rot ten floor And the crowded couch of incest in the warrens of the poor. TENNYSON. The City at Night. That stifled hum of Midnight, when Traffic has lain down to rest; and the chariot-wheels of Vanity, still rolling here and there through distant streets, are bearing her to halls roofed-in and lighted to the due pitch for her; and only Vice and Misery, to prowl or to moan like night-birds, are abroad; that hum, I say, like the sterto |