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.

Tre 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,

To make the music and the beauty needs
The master's touch, the sculptor's chisel keen.

Great Master, touch us with Thy skillful hand;
Let not the music that is in us die!
Great Sculptor, hew and polish us, nor let,

Hidden and lost, Thy form within us lie!

Spare not the stroke! Do with us as Thou wilt!
Let there be naught unfinished, broken, marred;
Complete Thy purpose, that we may become
Thy perfect image-Thou our God and Lord!
HORATIUS BONAR.

Living Not in Vain.

As the untimely death of the good is our strongest moral assurance of the Resurrection, so the life wearily worn out in doubtful and perilous conflict with Wrong and Woe is our most conclusive evidence that Wrong and Woe shall yet vanish forever. Luther, dying amid the agonizing tears and wild consternation of all Protestant Germany; Columbus, borne in regal pomp to hi grave by the satellites of the royal miscreant whose ingratitude and perfidy had broken his mighty heart-these teach us, at least, that all true greatness is ripened and tempered and proved in life-long struggle against vicious. beliefs, traditions, practices, institutions; and that not to have been a Reformer is not to have truly lived.

Life is a bubble which any breath may dissolve; Wealth or Power a snow-flake, melting momently into the treacherous deep across whose waves we are floated on

to our unseen destiny; but to have lived so that one less orphan is called to choose between starvation and infamy, to have lived so that some eyes of those whom Fame shall never know are brightened and others suffused at the name of the beloved one-so that the few who knew him truly shall recognize him as a bright, warm, cheering presence, which was here for a season and left the world no worse for his stay in it-this, surely, is to have really lived-and not wholly in vain.-HORACE GREELEY.

We Live in Deeds.

We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths;
In feelings, not in figures on a dial.
We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives
Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.
And he whose heart beats quickest lives longest;
Lives in one hour more than years do some
Whose fat blood sleeps as it slips along their veins.
Life is but a means to an end-that end-
Beginning, mean and end to all things-God.

P. J. BAILEY.

"None of Us Liveth Unto Himself."

God has written upon the flower that sweetens the air, upon the breeze that rocks the flower on its stem, upon the rain-drops which swell the mighty river, upon the dew-drop that refreshes the smallest sprig of moss that rears its head in the desert, upon the ocean that rocks every swimmer in'its chambers, upon every penciled shell that sleeps in the caverns of the deep, as well as