base and disobedient as against the Father who waits for you in the heavenly land. I call you to the service of this God--magnificent in glory, transcendent in beauty, but, most of all, glorious because long-suffering, abundant in mercy, "forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin.” To this God I call you. In Him trust. Live by Him

here. Die in the faith of Him. Rise toward him. Rejoice with Him forever and forever. --BEECHER.

God's Love in Nature.

There's not a flower that decks the vale,
There's not a beam that lights the mountain,
There's not a shrub that scents the gale,

There's not a wind that stirs the fountain,
There's not a hue that paints the rose,
There's not a leaf around us lying,

But in its use or beauty shows

True love to us, and love undying.

GERALD GRIFFIN

The Skeptic.

Did the skeptic ever contemplate the landscape a the close of the year, when seeds and grains and fruits have ripened, and stalks have withered, and leaves have fallen, and Winter has forced her icy curb even into the roaring jaws of Niagara and sheeted half a continent in her glittering shroud, and all this teeming vegetation and organized life are locked in cold and marble obstructions, and after week upon week and month upon month have swept with sleet and chilly rain and howling storm over

the earth, and riveted their crystal bolts upon the door of Nature's sepulcher-when the sun at length begins to wheel in higher circles through the sky, and softer winds to breathe over melting snows-did he ever behold the long-hidden earth at length appear, and soon the timid grass peep forth; and anon the autumnal wheat begin to paint the field, and velvet leaflets to burst from purple buds, throughout the reviving forest, and then the mellow soil to open its fruitful bosom to every grain and seed dropped from the planter's hand-buried but to spring up again clothed with a new and mysterious being; then, as more fervid suns inflame the air and softer showers distill from the clouds and gentler dews string their pearls on twig and tendril, did he ever watch the ripening grain and fruit, pendent from stalk and vine and tree; the meadow, the field, the pasture, the grove, each after his kind arrayed in myriad-tinted garments, instinct with circulating life; seven millions of counted leaves on a single tree, each of which is a system whose exquisite complication puts to shame the shrewdest cunning of the human hand; every planted seed and grain, which had been loaned to the earth, compounding its pious usury thirty, sixty, a hundred fold—all harmoniously adapted to the sustenance of living Nature, the bread of a hungry world; here a tilled corn-field, whose yellow blades are nodding with the food of man; there an unplanted wilderness, the great Farm, where He "who hears the raven's cry" has cultivated with His own hand His merciful crop of berries, nuts, acorns and seeds, for the humbler families of animated Nature; the solemn clephant, the browsing deer, the wild pigeon whose flutter

ing caravan darkens the sky, the merry squirrel which bounds from branch to branch in the joy of his little life -has he seen all this? Does he see it every year and month and day? Does he live, move, breathe and think in this atmosphere of wonder-himself the greatest wonder of all, whose smallest fiber and faintest pulsation are as much a mystery as the blazing glories of Orion's belt? And does he still maintain that a miracle is contrary to experience? If he has, and if he does, then let him go, in the name of Heaven, and say that it is contrary to experience that the august Power which turns the clods of the earth into the daily bread of a thousand millions of souls could feed five thousand in the wilderness.-EDWARD EVERETT.

The Patience of God.

Once, looking from a window on a land

That lay in silence underneath the sun

A land of broad, green meadows, through which poured Two rivers, slowly widening to the sea

Thus as I looked, I know not how nor whence,

Was borne into my expectant soul

That thought, late learned by anxious-witted man,

The infinite patience of the Eternal Mind.

R. W. GILDER.

There Is a God.

There is a God! The herbs of the valley and the cedars of the mountain bless Him. The insect sports in His beam. The bird sings Him in the foliage. The

thunder proclaims Him in the heavens. The ocean declares His immensity. Man alone has said: "There is no God." Unite in thought at the same instant the most beautiful objects in Nature. Suppose that you see, at once, all the hours of the day and all the seasons of the year-a morning of Spring and a morning of Autumn, a night bespangled with stars and a night darkened by clouds, meadows enameled with flowers, forests hoary with snow, fields gilded by the tints of Autumn-then alone will you have a just conception of the universe. CHATEAUBRIAND.

A Test.

A little boy came to his father and laid his hand upon his knee, looking up wistfully. "Do you want a penny, child?" The sweet face glowed, and the answer came: "No, papa; only you." So it is with the child of God. He does not want the good things of the world onemillionth part so much as he wants to know his Father's love. This is a true test for each of us, and by it we may know whether we are really in the faith.-FRANCES E. WILLARD.

Herbert Spencer Not an Atheist.

Herbert Spencer, who is to our century what Francis Bacon was to the sixteenth, repudiates over and over again the charge of materialism. He has recently said. "It is impossible to give more emphatic denial or to assign more conclusive proof than I have repeatedly done in rebutting this charge. My antagonists must continue

to vilify me as they please. I can not prevent it. Practically they say it is convenient to call you a materialist, and you shall be a materialist whether you like it or not."

Perhaps these are the strongest utterances against the flood-tide of that crude opinion which would rule out of the universe the power behind all other powers whom we call God. It should cause us to be thankful and take courage that one whose intellect has come nearer than almost any other to encircling the mighty realm of thought thus far attained by man deems himself wounded and slandered by the intimation that he has not seen and felt the power of that endless life from which all our lives have sprung.-FRANCES E. WILLARD.

Revelations of God.

Life, love, joy! What are these in their tale to the spirit, as Spring sends them flowing into our hearts? They are a revelation of the Being of God. Its first attribute is infinite life. In this world of decay and death, where sorrow, apathy and dullness play so large a part, it is unspeakable comfort to know that there is above us and in our God an eager, unwearied, universal life. Nothing in Spring gives me so much joy as that thought. It is God's life that is moving everywhere, breathing ir the sunlight, in the blossom, flowing in the running water, growing in the corn, singing in the birds, glittering in the dew that nourishes the grass- the inexhaustible fountain of God's life that makes the world in the rushing of its stream. - STOPFORD A. BROOKE.