She could hardly have said any words so favourable to Harry's cause. The squire was on the defensive for his own side in a moment. "Sandal-Side is Harry is one God only The long "What has Julius to do with it?" he cried. not his property, and please God it never will be. kind of a sinner, Julius is another kind of a sinner. knows which kind of sinner is the meaner and worse. and the short of it, is this: Harry must have five hundred pounds, Charlotte is willing to give the balance of her interest account, about three hundred pounds, towards it. Will you make up what is lacking out of your interest money? Eh? What?" "I do not know why I should be asked to do this, I am sure." "Only because I have no ready money at present. And because, however bad Harry is, he is your brother. And because he is heir of Sandal, and the honour of the name is worth saving. And because your mother will break her heart if shame comes to Harry. And there are some other reasons too; but if mother, brother and honour don't seem worth while to you, why, then, Sophia, there is no use wasting words. Eh? What?" "Let father have what is needed, Sophia. I will pay you back." Very well, Charlotte; but I think it is most unjust, most iniquitous, as Julius says " "Now, then, don't quote Julius to me. What right had he to be discussing my family matters, or Sandal matters either, I wonder? Eh? What?" "He is in the family." "Is he? Very well, then, I am still the head of the family. If he has any advice to offer, he can come to me with it. Eh? What?" 66 Father, I am as sick as can be to-night." "Go thy ways then. Mother and I are both poorly too. Goodnight, girls, both." And he turned away with an air of hopeless depression, that was far more pitiful than the loudest complaining. The sisters went away together, silent, and feeling quite "out" with each other. But Sophia really had a nervous attack, and was shivery and sick with it. By the lighted candle, in her hand, Charlotte saw that her very lips were white, and that heavy tears were silently rolling down her wan checks. They washed all of Charlotte's anger away; she said, "Let me stay with you till you can sleep, Sophia; or I will go, and ask Ann to make you a cup of strong coffee. You are suffering very much." "Yes, I am suffering; and father knows how I do suffer with these headaches, and that any annoyance brings them on; and yet, if Harry cries out at Edinburgh, everyone in Seat-Sandal must be put out of their own way to help him. And I do think it is a shame that our little fortunes are to be crumbled as a kind of spice into his big fortune. If Harry does not know the value of money, I do." "I will pay you back every pound. I really do not care a bit about money. I have all the dress I want. You buy books and music, I do not. I have no use for my money except to make happiness with it; and, after all, that is the best interest I can possibly get." "Very well. Then, you can pay Harry's debts if it gives you pleasure. I suppose I am a little peculiar on this subject. Last Sunday, when the rector was preaching about the prodigal son, I could not help thinking that the sympathy for the bad young man was too much. I know, if I had been the elder brother, I should have felt precisely as he did. I don't think he ought to be blamed. And it would certainly have been more just and proper for the father to have given the feast and the gifts to the son who never at any time transgressed his commandments. You see, Charlotte, that parable is going on all over the world ever since; going on right here in Seat-Sandal; and I am on the elder brother's side. Harry has given me a headache to-night; and I dare say he is enjoying himself precisely as the Jerusalem prodigal did before the swine husks, when it was the riotous living." "Have a cup of coffee, Sophy. I'll go down for it. You are just as trembly and excited as you can be." Very well; thank you, Charlotte. You always have such a bright, kind face. I am afraid I do not deserve such a good sister." "Yes, you do deserve all I can help or pleasure you in." And then, when the coffee had been taken, and Sophia lay restless and wide-eyed upon her bed, Charlotte proposed to read to her from any book she desired; an offer involving no small degree of selfdenial, for Sophia's books were very rarely interesting, or even intelligible, to her sister. After reading an hour, Charlotte said: "Sophia, you are sleepy now." Yes, a little. You can finish to-morrow." Then she laid down the book, and sat very still for a little while. Her heart was busy. There is a solitary place that girdles our life into which it is good to enter at the close of every day. There we may sit still with our own soul, and commune with it; and out of its peace pass easily into the shadowy kingdom of sleep, and find a little space of rest prepared. So Charlotte sat in quiet meditation until Sophia was fathoms deep below the tide of life. Sight, speech, feeling, where were they gone? Ah! when the door is closed, and the windows darkened, who can tell what passes in the solemn temple of mortality? Are we unvisited then? Unfriended? Uncounselled? "Behold! The solemn spaces of the night are thronged "MEN at some time are masters of their fates." HE IS NOT HERE-AN EASTER MEDITATION. How many Christians there are who do not know that Easter has arrived! They still seek the living among the dead. The elaborate collection of monuments in Greenwood, Mount Auburn, and other cities of the dead are silent witnesses to our unfaith. The very phrase, "city of the dead," is pagan. To see, as one may any sunny day in spring or summer, figures veiled in black, draping with flowers the grassy mound, or sitting there dejected, in silent and inactive sorrow, is one of the saddest sights this sad world affords. We never see it without longing to cry out to them, "Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here; he is risen." It is right to lay reverently aside the clothing of the departed. But who would seek for companionship with the cast off garments of a companion? Is imagination so poor a faculty that love can recall the loved one only by association? And are there no better associations than those with the dumb lips, closed eyes, lifeless face and form? those of the coffined figure laid beneath the sod? We do not await a resurrection at the last day. "He that liveth and believeth in me shall never die." Resurrection is a continuous fact. God does not by and by create a spiritual body. There is a spiritual body. In every death there is a resurrection; from every death-bed an ascension. To depart is to be with Christ, not with the worms. Not in some far future epoch, after a long and dreary sleep, but to-day, is the departing soul with its Lord in Paradise. When we commit the body to the earth, we also commit the spirit to God who gave it. When the shell breaks, the bird emerges. The tomb is not a chrysalis; God requires no time to fashion the new attire for the saint. The vision which John saw in apocalyptic vision was not a future but a present one. Now are they before the throne, having washed their robes white and having a song in their moutlis. We have come unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, to the general assembly and church of the first-born which are written in heaven, and to the spirits of just men made perfect. If we have come to this general assembly of the first-born, then it exists. This city of the living God is the city of His living children. It is not a silent city waiting for some general resurrection to people it. To go to the burial-ground in order to recall the departed and mourn them there, is as if a wife or mother should go down to the steamer's dock or the passenger station to recall husband or child who had left her by steamer or train for some distant country. The grave is not even the door through which our beloved have passed; it is the tenement which they have left. The released spirit has no longer need of this habiliment of clay. Nature generously offers to take it and turn it into grass and flowers. And we lock it up in an iron casket in a vain attempt to prevent the kindly ministry of decay. The body is but a fetter that enchains the now free spirit. Why, when the spirit is released, should we sit mournfully by the side of the rapidly rusting fetters? The body is but a narrow cell in which the now free spirit was confined. Why, when the door is opened, and the spirit has gone forth, and nature begins to take the cell to pieces, should we sit mournfully at the empty cell, and long to stop the process of demolition? Fly forth, O soul, from thy cage! We rejoice in thy emancipation, and join in thy song. O sorrowing hearts, sit not down in the gloom of Good Friday over against the sepulcher! The angel has already come; the stone is already rolled away. He is not here. He is risen. See the place where the body of the loved One lay; then go quickly with this song on thy lips: He is risen from the dead; He goeth before me; the Master came and called for him; and where the Master is, there my beloved is also.-Christian Union. ST. CATHERINE OF ENGLAND.* This book is not merely the record of a remarkable life; it is the history of a great religious movement. An organization that in ten years has girdled the globe; which has thous ands of enthusiastic soldiers in many lands; which has organized victory out of opposition and persecution; which has created a series of great and successful philanthropies, is well deserving of our careful study. Like every other great moral movement, the Salvation Army is the child of Providence. Its rapid growth, and the wonderful spiritual results it has achieved, are the seal of the Divine approval. It has not yet incurred the peril of having all men speak well of it, for prejudice and opposition still linger in many minds; but it has won the sympathies of some of the noblest minds of the age. We must discriminate between its accidents and its essence. A burning love of souls; a passionate charity which remembers the forgotten, and which visits the forsaken; which, amid the mirk and mire of the slums, seeks and saves that which was lost; a burning zeal for the glory of God-these are its essence. Its big drums and tambourines and some of its methods, offensive to the nerves of the very refined, are but its accidents. These goodly volumes are like an expansion of the Acts of the Apostles of the early days. They abound in records of triumphs of grace; of assaults on the ramparts of evil; of spiritual victory against phalanxed foes that make one's heart thrill with sympathy, and suffuse the eyes with tears. record is another demonstration of the glorious truth, that God makes the weak things of this world to confound the mighty. "He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree.' Nothing to human eyes was mere improbable than that two humble Methodist itinerants, regarded with Its disfavour by the very churches in which they laboured, should become the leaders of the most aggressive agency for the spread of Christianity among the masses of modern times. Without social prestige or financial support, they have accomplished more for the unchurched masses of Darkest England, than the wealthy and venerable state establishment with all its social influence and vast resources. The Apostles, writing to the Corinthian Christians, enumerates a long, dark catalogue of sinners of the vilest character, and says, "such were some of you, but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified." With wonderful truth may this be applied to the marvelous trophies of Divine grace rescued from vice and made apostles of righteousness through the agency of the Salvation Army. And not merely from the slums and gutters were their ranks recruited, although some of the brightest jewels were rescued from the very mirk and mire. Well-born girls sold War Crys in the streets of Paris, and not a few gave up ease and fortune to be soldiers in this holy war. Like the preaching friars of Wycliffe's time, and like the pious brotherhood of St. Francis of Assisi, these new soldiers of a nobler chivalry than that of arms, went everywhere preaching the Word and making glorious conquests for the truth. The Army leaders have wisely made use of the contagious influence of vast numbers, as when 50,000 assembled at the Crystal Palace demonstration. It was a very marked personality, that of William and Catherine Booth. To an unfaltering faith in God and in His guiding Providence, they added supreme organizing genius and high intellectual power. Catherine Booth, the mother of the Salvation Army, especially, reproduces to our mind, in her own person, the intellectual strength of St. *The Life of Catherine Booth, the Mother of the Salvation Army. By F. DE L. BOOTH-TUCKER. Vol. I., octavo, pp. xxi.-457; vol. II., pp. xxi. -496. London: "International Headquarters." Toronto: William Briggs. Price $4.00. |