is the consequence of crime. Its effects can not be eradicated; they can only be forgiven.-BEECHER.

Character Invaluable.

There was a famous sculptor in Paris who executed a great work. It stands today in the Gallerie des Beaux Arts. He was a great genius, and this was his last work; but, like many a great genius, he was very poor, and lived in a small garret. This garret was his workshop, his studio and his bedroom. He had this statue almost finished in clay, when one night a frost suddenly fell over Paris. The sculptor lay on his bed, with the statue before him in the center of the fireless room. As the chill air came down upon him, he saw that if the cold got more intense the water in the interstices of the clay would freeze, and so the old man rose and heaped the bedclothes reverently upon the statue. In the morning, when his friends came in, they found the old sculptor dead; but the image was saved! That is the greatest thing about you. Preserve that at any cost-the image into which you are being changed by the unseen Sculptor, who is every moment that you are in His presence working at that holy task.—Henry Drummond.

The Permanence of Character.

The force which moves men to deny that character tends to a final permanence, bad as well as good, is sentiment and not science. It is a form of sentiment peculiar to luxurious ages, and not to the great and strenuous Let the tone of an age change, and this sentiment

ones.

changes. It is what the Germans call a Zeit-geist, and by no means an Ewigkeit-geist-a spirit of the day, and not a spirit of eternity. Even self-evident truth has sometimes very little power to exorcise what reasoning did not inculcate. But it is the business of science to make all ages great and strenuous. When science has done her perfect work in the world, the lawless liberalism characteristic of luxurious and relaxed ages will have no authority.

It is scientifically incontrovertible that the past can not be changed; and, therefore, it is sure that, if regret for what ought not to have been is pain, there will be pain in the universe forever; and part of it will be God's own.

This planet moves through space enswathed with light. The radiance of the sun billows away to all quarters of infinity. Behind the globe a shadow is projecting; diminishing, indeed—lost at last in the immeasurable vastness of the illuminations of the scene. The stars sing

there; the suns are all glad. No doubt, if Richter was right in saying that the interstellar spaces are the homes of souls, there is unfathomable bliss in all these pulsating, unfathomable spaces, so far as they are regions of loyalty to God. There can be no blessedness without holiness, and so there can not be bliss where loyalty does not exist. Behind every planet there will be that shadow; and as surely as there can not be illumination on one side without shadow on the other, so surely a record of sin will cast a shadow forever, and some part of that shadow will sweep over the sea of glass, and not be invisible from the Great White Throne.-JOSEPH COOK.

Harmony of Character.

A man may take a dollar or a half-dollar and hold it to his eye so closely that he will hide the sun from him. Or he may so focus his telescope that a fly or a boulder may be as large as a mountain. A man may hold a certain doctrine very intensely-a doctrine which has been looming upon his horizon for the last six months, let us say, and which has thrown everything else out of proportion, it has become so big itself. Now, let us beware of distortion in the arrangement of the religious truths which we hold. It is almost impossible to get things in their true proportion and symmetry, but this is the thing we must be constantly aiming at. We are told in the Bible to add to your faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge balance," as the word literally means-balance. It is a word taken from the orchestra, where all the parts—the sopranos, the basses, the altos and the tenors, and all the rest of them-must be regulated. If you have too much of the bass, or too much of the soprano, there is want of harmony. That is what I mean by the want of proper focus-by the want of proper balance-in the truths which we all hold. It will never do to exaggerate one truth at the expense of another, and a truth may be turned into a falsehood very, very easily, by simply being either too much enlarged or too much diminished.-HENRY DRUMMOND.

Character Influenced by Environment.

I see reflected in a

Every man is a reflector. That is the principle upon which this is based. In your face you reflect your nationality. I ask a man a question, and I find out in ten seconds whether he is a Northerner, or a Southerner, or a Canadian, or an Englishman. He has reflected in his very voice his country. I ask him another question, and another and another, and I see reflections flit over the mirror from all points of the compass. I find out in five minutes that he has a good mother. mirror that he has been reading Herbert Spencer, and Huxley, and Darwin; and as I go on watching him as he stands and talks to me, his whole life is reflected back from it. I see the kind of set he has been living in-the kind of companions he has had. He can not help reflecting. He can not help himself showing the environment in which he has lived-the influences that have played around him. As Tennyson says: "I am a part of all that I have met." whom we habitually reflect. that that applies even to the mals that they are influenced and organically changed by the environment in which they live.-HENRY DRUM

MOND.

Now, we become like those I could prove from science physical framework of ani

Character an Achievement.

Characters are achieved-not received.

They grow

out of the substance of the man's soul. They are not put on as a beggar might put on a stolen coat. They mature like fruit from the vital fluids of the tree. This is a sign of their genuineness; they grow with use. A

false limb wears out, wastes, with use. grows stronger and better with use. achievement.-CHARLES H. FOWLER.

A natural limb Character is an

Character the Crown of Life.

The crown and glory of life is character. It is the noblest possession of a man, constituting a rank in itself, and an estate in the general good-will; dignifying every station and exalting every position in society. It exercises a greater power than wealth, and secures all the honor without the jealousies of fame. It carries with it an influence which always tells; for it is the result of proud honor, rectitude and consistency-qualities which, perhaps, more than any other, command the general confidence and respect of mankind.—SMILES.

Character the Product of Daily Life.

Character is the product of daily, hourly actions and words and thoughts; daily forgivenesses, unselfishness, kindness, sympathies, charities, sacrifices for the good of others, struggles against temptation, submissiveness under trial. Oh, it is these, like the blending colors in a picture, or the blending notes of music, which constitute the man.-J. R. MACDUFF.

Condensed Comments.

You can not dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.-FROUDE.

In character, in manner, in style, in all things, the supreme excellence is simplicity.-LONGFELLOW,