It

religion as easily as a plowman puts off his jacket. will be a terrible day for them when the heavens are on fire above them and the world is ablaze under their feet. If a man calls himself my friend, and leaves the ways of God, then his way and mine are different. He who is no friend to the good cause is no friend of mine.-SPURGEON.

Friendship with an Angry Man.

Make no friends with an angry man. As well make a bed of stinging nettles or wear a viper for a necklace. Perhaps the fellow is just now very fond of you; but beware of him, for he who barks at others today without a cause will one day howl at you for nothing. Don't offer him a kennel down your yard unless he will let you chain him up. SPURGEON.

GAMBLING.

Is Gambling Wrong?

Gambling is the staking of property upon mere hazard. The only difference between it and stealing is that in gambling the loser chooses to risk the loss of his property. Gambling stands in the same relation to stealing that dueling does to murder, the victim in each case taking the chance of becoming the victor. And just as dueling is murder, so gambling is stealing. The means employed or the methods adopted—you may call them what you please; they may be what you will-may in

clude not only card-playing and the dealing in pool, policy shop or lottery tickets, but also betting, raffling and dealing in stocks and real estate when there is no real purchase made or delivery given, and the giving away of prizes for the first answers, or the first discovery of faces published in newspaper advertisements. But, be the means and methods what you will, call them by what names you please, if you propose to get property upon any hazard you propose to get it by gambling; and the man who, upon any hazard, wins property is morally a thief and guilty of stealing. He who loses is an accessory to the crime. Now, in face of this view of the subject, the question seems almost needless: Is gambling wrong?-J. E. STARR.

Arguments Against Gambling.

Listen to a conversation about gambling; and, where reprobation is expressed, note the grounds of the reprobation. That it tends toward the ruin of the gambler; that it risks the welfare of family and friends; that it alienates from business and leads into bad companythese, and such as these, are the reasons given for condemning the practice. Rarely is there any recognition of the fundamental reason. Rarely is gambling condemned because it is a kind of action by which pleasure is obtained at the cost of pain to another. The normal obtainment of gratification, or of the money which purchases gratification, implies, first, that there has been put forth equivalent effort of a kind which, in some way, furthers the general good; second, that those from whom

the money is obtained get, directly or indirectly, equivalent satisfaction. But in gambling the opposite happens. Benefit received does not imply effort put forth, and the happiness of the winner involves the misery of the loser. This kind of action is, therefore, essentially anti-social. It sears the sympathies, cultivates a hard egoism, and so produces a general deterioration of character and conduct.-HUGH PRICE HUGHES.

The Deceitfulness of Gambling.

When the Inquisition House, at Madrid, was destroyed by order of Napoleon the commanding officer found an image of a beautiful virgin. The workmanship was most perfect, its proportions were correct, and beauty rested on each chiseled feature. This image was an instrument of torture. The victim was commanded to go up and embrace the virgin, and as he placed his lips against the cold lips of the marble a spring was touched, an internal machine was set in motion and the arms of the virgin, filled with sharp daggers, arose and encircled the poor sufferer, and, cutting into his flesh, mangled him in a most horrible manner and destroyed his life. Gambling is such an image. It looks well at a distance, but it is armed with knives which will cut-not only the body, but the soul. Fly from the gambler's house, as from the door of death. Fly from the gambler himself. He will strive to ruin thee. Poison is in his heart and falsehood on his tongue. He seeks thy ruin.-D. C. Eddy.

GENTLENESS.

Gentleness to Animals.

Thus the new ideas about the rights of dumb brutes, the rights of children, the rights of the heathen myriads, must be repeated and repeated until they shall become a mode of modern thought. As men can learn a new language until at last they think in it and dream in it, and speak it as unconsciously as they breathe, so an age can gradually move into a doctrine of benevolence which shall be with it always and reach out toward all the forms of life. Men and women will be kindness incarnate because they will not know anything else than love and equity. Few persons can remember when certain principles and emotions came to their own hearts. How can one find the day and the hour, when the truth was coming for years? As the cultivated mind loves the Spring time more at forty than it does at twenty, and loves music more in life's close than in life's morning, so the great truths of Church and State and duty and happiness spend many years in getting fully into the soul. In youth kindness is intermittent; in middle life it becomes perennial.SWING.

The Might of Gentleness.

Even power itself hath not one-half the might of gentleness.-LEIGH HUNT.

GIVING.

Ostentatious Giving.

It is easy for you to make a big show in Church registers of collection. It costs you nothing. But it must be estimated, as Ambrose put it long ago, not in the light of what is given so much as in the light of what remains behind. We must say that; we must honestly say that; we must say all that, and not a syllable less than that. Many that were rich cast in much." But there was this drawback: It was a time of grinding; it was a time of robbing the poor; a time of harshness; a time of oppression and injustice. Many were the rich men who, like the Pharisee, would rob widows' houses and grind the faces of the poor, and then seek to muzzle inconvenient criticism by giving ostentatiously and largely to the Temple, where it was seen and known and recorded. Just as we have men today, engaged in that traffic which, perhaps more than any other agency, blights the body and soul of thousands and thousands, and fills the land with woe. Yet they come ostentatiously and give—say, £50,000 to endow a cathedral-and expect that God's servants will be so impressed and so depressed by them and the greatness of their gift that we shall not dare to criticize nor ask: "Is the money clean or unclean? How did you come by it?" Time was-and the Church was poor then-when to such givers, coming with illgotten wealth and coming in such a tone and spirit, Christ's representatives would have said: "Thy money perish with thee!" Go and pay the widow for her hus