God has only one method of salvation, the Cross of Christ. God can have only one; for the Cross of Christ means death to evil, and life to good.-F. W. ROBERT

SON.

Paint your ideal friend, and you will find that you have been but copying the portrait of Jesus Christ.—F. C. WOODHOUSE.

He was Himself forsaken, that none of His children might ever need to utter His cry of loneliness.-J. H. VINCENT.

CHRISTMAS.

An Ideal Christmas.

Our age does not want the cost of Christmas to increase, but it does want its good will to men to deepen with each passing year. Since we stood at this festival, last year, our planet has carried our race once around the great sun, five hundred millions of miles, holding our homes and our world always within the reach of the radiant light. In all that long journey the earth has never been away from the touch of that transforming love. But each December asks the sun to look down upon a larger human race, greater cities, greater arts, greater sciences, richer fields, more blessed homes. Must the heart of man stand still? It, too, must hasten forward, and put millions of miles between itself and its cold or savage centuries. The scenes of barbarism must give place to the scenes of friendship. Five hundred friendly Indians are said to have been sent to persuade their warlike fellows to accept peace. Persuasion is better than guns. It is a higher art. The white man can

not afford to be swift to shed blood. Persuasion is the art which has made all the rators who have lived, and beneath all the great books of the world lies the art of persuasion. Last week, when word came of the violent death of certain Indians, there came into this city an Indian who had graduated in Oxford, England, and who, a scholar of the highest type, is a near friend of many scholars in Oxford and London. He passed from the wild forest to the learning of Europe. No one talking

with this dark-visaged scholar will dare say a dead Indian is the only good one. The maxims of an army often differ widely from the maxims of a Christ; but this we know, that the maxims of Jesus will bloom in immortality when the world's military trappings shall all be forgotten dust.-SWING.

Christmas and the Feasting of the Thousands.

In the story of the feeding of the multitude, there was more food after the feast than there was in its beginning; for the feast began with what one boy had in a basket, but it took twelve boys and twelve baskets to carry away the fragments left on the tables and the grass. The explanation is given us in the statement that the Divine Lord presided at the out-door table, and had made starvation turn into a banquet. The story illustrates well the multiplication of beauty when a great religion and a great philosophy repose beneath it, for what was one basketful when the hungry ones began to eat becomes afterward more basketfuls than many hands can carry away from the blessed field. Christmas is the twelve baskets full found remaining from the first simple arts, and it should be an adequate explanation for us that a great Savior has passed over the banqueting ground.— SWING.

Thanksgiving and Christmas.

While Thanksgiving has its foundation on Plymouth Rock, Christmas rests upon the Rock of Ages. —CHARLES Dudley Warner.

CHRISTIANITY.

Christianity a Life.

Christian experience is not merely something that comes into a man's life when he becomes conscious of his sins; it is not merely a new series of duties he enters upon. It is coming into friendship with that great, noble Person in whom God is manifest to us; the giving of our lives so thoroughly to Him that we become like Him; our natures shaped upon His nature, till our life is His life and His life is our life. That is what it is to be a Christian. O Christians, remember this at the very beginning of our Christian life! Christianity and Christian experience is not the repenting of sin; it is not the doing of new duty. But it is the bringing of our life into conformity with the life in which God is manifest to us-the life of our Lord Jesus Christ. I climb a hill upon its darkened side. There is no sun that lights me, but I know upon the other side there is light; and as I go I stumble over ugly roots that trip me up. are around me, and I go stumbling on.

The dark shades

That is not the

real purpose of my climbing the mountain. The obstacles are the incidents. But now I am up to the top! There billows the sun before me, and I am illumined by his glory.

Now, that is just the way with Christians. It is not the experience of sin, it is not the conviction and wretchedness of sin, that is the object of the Christian life. The soul humbled under its sins has only just reached the threshold of the new Christian experience. I beg