LAW.

Law Everywhere.

Laws appear everywhere. We find them in the domain of beauty. They forbid the architect to put a small column under a mighty dome, and will not permit him to sacrifice power to beauty. They command the painter to care for Nature, and not to make wheat ripen in the snow and not to make the robins sing in the leafless trees of Christmas. They issue orders to literature, and tell it to exclude debasing ideas and to admit the truths of most value and of greatest application. They issue orders to religion, and tell it to create in humanity the most possible of virtue and hope. Appearing at all other points of thought and action, laws spring up in the State to help the public hold what justice and progress it may have found. These laws our marching citizens must respect. All damage done property, all disregard of American rights, the rights of individuals or of corporations, must be instantly checked, because the law of the land is the progress we have made in the ages up to this date. With that taken away, we fall back into the abyss of barbarism. Our Nation may or may not have climbed very high from its barbaric starting point, but it must hold what it has gained. Our laws of property have been passed by the millions acting in their best hours; they must not be set at naught by bands of itinerants acting in their bad hours.-SWING.

Condensed Comments.

They are the best laws by which the King hath the justest prerogative and the people the best liberty.— LORD BACON.

When the State is most corrupt, then the laws are most multiplied.-TACITUS.

LIFE.

The Voyage.

As to some distant bourne
A traveler journeys o'er the mazy sea,
I, too, shall journey for a far country,
Whence I shall not return.

And, as upon the shore

Friends, waiting, stand and fondly say farewell,
And wave their hands, their constant love to tell,
When words avail no more,

Until, adown the bay,

He sails into the mist and fades from sight-
E'en so, iuto the distance and the night,
I, too, shall fade away.

But, though beyond our view,
Shut in by sea and sky, o'er water drear,
He holds his destined course with hope and cheer,
And makes his port anew-

So, from this earthly strand,

When o'er the trackless sea I, too, must sail,
Shall I not o'er the storm and night prevail,

And gain my Promised Land ?

The End of Life.

J. LOTON.

The end of life is not to do good, although many of us think so. It is not to win souls, although I once thought so. The end of life is to do the will of God. That may be in the line of doing good or winning souls, or it may not. The maximum achievement of any man's life, after it is all over, is to have done the will of God. No man or woman can have done any more with a life; no Luther, no Spurgeon, no Wesley, no Melancthon can have done any more with their lives; and a dairy maid or a scavenger can do as much. Therefore, the supreme principle upon which we have to run our lives is to adhere, through good report or ill, through temptation and prosperity and adversity, to the will of God, wherever that may lead us. It may take you away to China, or you who are going to Africa may have to stay where you are; you who are going to be an evangelist may have to go into business, and you who are going into business may have to become an evangelist. But there is no happiness or success in life till that principle is once taken possession of.-HENRY DRUMMOND.

The Master's Touch.

In the still air the music lies unheard;

In the rough marble beauty hides unseen;