the inheritance of light, and be ever progressing in the wonderful knowledge to be revealed hereafter, withcut fear of weariness. Our scripture then fully reveals the unceasing activity of heaven. No night here! Then will there be one bright eternal day. The ineffable glory of heaven will be obscured by no darkness or cloud. No shadow can dim the magnificence of its splendor. Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor heart of man conceived its transcendent beauties. The sun of heaven will never go down, for that sun is the sun of Righteousness-"the Lamb of God is the light thereof;" and in that light will all heaven's hosts rejoice. As they walk the shining pathways-as they roam by the peaceful rivers, as they view the mellowed landscapes, so serenely beautiful, what strains of praise, outgushing from hearts filled with unmingled bliss, will arise, and how will anthems of selectest har monies proclaim the glory of God, and the Lamb that was slain. The sweet anticipations of such scenes as these should lead us all as Christians to greater growth in grace, and to more fervent devotion to the cause of our master. So may the sunshine of heaven illumine even here our soul, and enable us to realize with greater truthfulness, that "there shall be no night there."

SPRING.

Spring has once more returned to cheer us with its enlivening influence. It is the most charming season of the year. Every thing puts on a new and bewitching dress, and the face of Nature assumes a different aspect. Winter with its stern image has departed. Its cold and chilling blasts and icy sheen have given place to a more pleasant atmosphere. The trees are shooting forth in bright verdure, and are already bedecked with beau

See

teous blossoms. It is a most glorious sight to a careful observer, to watch the progress of the foliage. First appears the small, tender stalk gradually expanding beneath the genial rays of the sun, spreading each tiny leaf, until they reach maturity. the lofty oak raised from the acorn, extending its branches and affording shade for the weary and care-worn traveler. The first sound that greets the ear on awaking is the notes of the merry songsters, as they carol their morning lay. Spring is surely a season for enjoyment. All nature

seems to partake of the gaity of the season. In May and June the flowers shine forth in all their glory, wafting their delicious perfume on the breeze; the velvet emerald turf glowing with brilliant dew drops, all betoken mirth and cheerfulness. To the indigent class of people, Spring is indeed a welcome visitor; after struggling through the dreary winter, with nothing to shelter their heads from the keen wind. The widow and fatherless turned from their wretched hovel, miserable as it is, exposed to the rude taunts and jests of an unfeeling world, how they long for the approach of Spring! March is dull and unpleasant. Vestiges of winter still remain. But they are soon chased away by pleasant April, like some heartless coquette, one moment in tears, and the next, the clouds quickly disappeared, and all is sunshine again. Then comes May, "Blooming May," shedding its healthful and invigorating influences on all

we murmur and complain. But we should strive to bear all our trials and afflictions; and be able to say--"thy will Oh, God, not mine, be done."

CLARA.

A TALK WITH THE BOYS AND
GIRLS.

Do our American boys and girls ever pause, in their work or play, to reflect upon the responsibilities that a few more years will bring to them and the preparation they need to help them to meet these inevitable obligations? Let us cousider the matter for a moment. In a brief space of time our lads and lasses will be directing political affairs, determining questions of diplomacy and adjusting social relations. In their daily association with parents and teachers are they being fitted for the duties of American citizenship? Together with a knowledge of history and political economy they should acquire principles of purity and charity, of justice and honesty. It cannot be doubted that these qualities are the practical dynamic forces of a well developed symmetrical Christian character; and even a politician can be a Christian. We hope both boys and girls will remember this, for the time will undoubtedly come when the right of suffrage will be extended to women, and they should be able to use intelligently the power this right would give them.

In the conduct of vast public affairs requiring judgment and discretion, the applied principles of the religion of Christ, reconciling high ideals with the actual every-day phase of our complex existence, would soon lift the world into a higher moral atmosphere than we have yet breathed. It is possible for a strong loyal man or woman to walk bravely into the dust of human struggle and yet hold fast to all those

qualities that make for honor and righteousness. The world needs today, as never before, intelligent and pure-minded leaders, strong of heart, and clear of vision, valiantly to combat with evil and wisely to sustain and encourage the good. We need clean loyal people in our homes and streets; in our marts of trade and halls of justice; in legislative assemblies and executive mansions. And while there is now honor and intelligence to be found in high places, while the world with its increasing population still stumbles slowly onward striving to secure, for all, righteous laws and just administration, it is yet necessary that the boys. and girls of these United States. should prepare themselves conscientiously for the duties of citizenship, that they may be able intelligently to cope with the many unsolved problems which the present age will bequeath to them.

During the past few weeks the eyes of all the civilized world have been directed to the German empire, and loval hearts everywhere have sympathized with the Ge man people in their anxiety for the life and health of their beloved prince, now their ruler. Why do these people love and venerate Emperor Frederic? Not because he is a prince of the Hohenzollern dynasty but because they recognize in his indomitable courage and steadfast integrity, his broad humanity and sincere Christianity, his fitness to guide the destinies of a great nation. What is it that has united those rare qualities in his character? Not chance, not desultory study nor the pomp and magnificence of royal life, but intense application to severe tasks, a conscientious devotion to the duty of self-culture and a rigid adherence to disciplinary rules. And of the Empress Victoria, justly beloved by the

German people for her high-bred simplicity, her warm sympathies and gentle winning manner, we read in the story of her girlish days that there is no other example in history of a well-planned systematic education in political economy having been begun so early in life as that of the Princess Royal of England under the guidance of her eminent father. Royal children, born with the expectation of possible kingship, are early set to the daily learning of necessary and arduous tasks, thoroughly instructed in military, civil, and religious duties, and conscientiously submitted to severe mental discipline, that they may be enabled wisely to decide grave questions of state. But our American voters, frequently required to make momentous decisions at the ballot-box, receive in many cases no preparation whatever to enable them intelligently to exercise their constitutional prerogative of sovereignty! Cannot our boys and girls arouse themselves from indifference and careless mirth and follow the example of these illustrous and royal personages whom all the world admires?

We hear much, in this our land of free speech, of freedom and liberty, those much-abused words which of late, it would seem, are used to cover all sorts of abuses and excesses. Are not those who cry most loudly for liberty desirious only of unrestrained license to do evil? This explains much of the clamoring for special legislation excusing the saloons from that beneficent law which closes our business places and gives us the Christian Sunday of rest and quiet. The profligate loudly and profanely declares that he has a right to drink, to gamble, to indulge in this vice or the other. If he desires real liberty of thought and action he should assert his freedom to refrain from immoral

practices, and defend his right to keep sober, to be pure and manly in word and deed. These are rights that infringe no law of man or God. It is worse than idle to boast of liberty when enslaved by strong drink or vicious habits.

English-speaking people have adopted the views of John Stuart Mill on liberty as the fundamental principle for the solution of all practical questions of social rights and duties. This profound thinker would guarantee to every man the greatest possible degree of freedom consistent with the maintenance of a well-ordered society; making each individual personally responsible for whatever wrong deeds of his may affect the general welfare. His views harmonize with those principles of English jurisprudence which regard law as essential to the enjoyment of personal liberty and not an encroachment upon it. It is Auerbach, I think, who originated that sublime phrase, "free under the law." Can there in the whole universe be any freedom other than this? The freedom of the planet is to revolve in majestic splendor in its own orbit around the sun. The bird, abiding in the law of the wing, is the free denizen of the air, while the freedom of the fish is to remain in the water. The whole natural world is subordinated to law, outside of which can be only disorder and chaos. Man has been given intelligence and wisdom to formulate for himself such laws as are necessary to restrain evil tendencies and to protect society from moral decay and dissolution; and in our country every citizen is essentially a legislator. If all our voters and statesmen could assimilate into their lives the sacred laws of honor and justice, of purity and truth, thus making them living forces, what would become of our conscienceless corporations, our cor

rupted suffrage, our saloons and gambling hells and all other wrongs and abuses that exist in the name of liberty? The answer is obvious.

The years will pass swiftly bringing that period when the boys of today will be taking their places as the stalwart men of the republic. They will find grave political complications requiring wise statesmanship; they may find confusion and disorder necessitating the calm and dignified exercise of judicial and executive authority; there may be armies to organize and disband; there will be national friendships to sustain and national rights to be protected; there will be affairs of state requiring diplomatic adjustment; there will be social questions to be wisely and justly determined the rights and advancement of the poor, the proper use of wealth, the sacredness of the marriage relation, the restriction and improvement of the criminal classes. The men who are to meet these responsibilities, and the women, who are to aid them with wise encouragement and active intelligent co-operation, are daily acquiring knowledge, forming habits and assimilating principles that shall guide and control them in the discharge of these duties. Is it too much to require of our boys and girls a practical knowledge of history, political economy and civil government? Is not much valuable time flittered away in useless accomplishments and an idle smattering of this branch and the other, soon to be forgotten?

To-day in the thousands of schoolhouses in the United States sit the boys who are to be the future presidents, governors, judges and legislators; and their companions, having, it is to be hoped, become intelligent voters, will then be their supporters or opponents. While teachers and

parents endeavor to instruct and guide, that the burdens of polity and sociology shall be borne by strong hearts and uplifted by willing hands, let the boys and girls themselves strive to possess that disciplined wisdom and humane sense of the right, the just and the true that shall enable them to perpetuate our free institutions, to correct moral and political abuses, and to contribute to enlightened freedom the impetus that the conditions of life may then require. It must be remembered, meanwhile, that truth, wisdom and righteousness come only by painstaking, study, and patient, sustained effort.

Every man and woman should understand the fundamental principles of our government, and the meaning of our institutions, and should be able, from a knowledge of the constitution, to form an intelligent. opinion as to how our national affairs should be conducted. To become a true American requires, withal, an intelligent appreciation of the duties, obligations and restrictions of true freedom, which exists only under just, humane and righteous laws.

MARY E. SHULTS.

PROPRIETY OF OUR NAME.

"Some seem to think the name, Universalist, improper, and seem to be ashamed to own, or confess the doctrine that has the designation of Universalism. I propose to show in this article, that it is a good name, a glorious, heavenly name, a name which no man ought to be ashamed of, but which all ought to be proud to own. The name and the doctrine which it designates, is all drawn from God's word, which teaches

1. That God is the Universal Father. Matt. 2: 10.

2. That God is the Universal Saviour. 1 Tim. 4: 10.

3. That Jesus, as the Son and Sent of God is instrumentally the Universal Saviour. 1 John 4: 14.

4. That God's will is for Universal Salvation. 1 Tim. 2: 4.

5. That God's grace brings Universal Salvation. Titus 2:11.

6. That there shall be a Universal Ingathering of human intelligences into Christ. Eph. 1: 9, 10.

7. That there shall be a Universal Deliverance from sin and suffering. Rom. 8: 23.

8. That there shall come a period of Universal Righteousness. Rom. 5. Isa. 45.

9. That Universal Reconciliation shall ultimately be effected by Jesus Christ. Col. 1: 18.

10. That there shall ultimately come a period of Universal Praise to God, and confession to God's glory. Rev. 5:13. Phil. 2: 9-11.

11. That there shall be a Universal Blessing of all nations, kindreds and families in Christ. Gen. 22. Acts 3.

12. That there shall be a Universal Resurrection to the condition of the Angels of God in Heaven. 1 Cor. 15. Matt. 22. Luke 20.

Now let me ask, should not these sentiments be called Universalism? And should not those who hold them, be called Universalists? O! it is a glorious name-a name full of meaning-embracing UNIVERSAL GOOD? So then, when any body speaks of my religious faith, let him call it UNIVERSALISM; and when any body speaks of me, in reference to my religious sentiments, let him call me UNIVERSALIST ! ! !"

NO PRIDE IN HEAVEN.

The Duchess of Buckinham, noted for her inordinate pride, was much troubled during her last sickness, for fear she would be obliged to mingle in the society of those in heaven

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whom she tauntingly termed "the common people." She at length sent for a clergyman to whom she proposed the question, "whether in heaven some respect would not be had for a woman of such birth and breeding as herself." When the Rev. gentleman informed her that with God there was no respect of persons, that he was equally the Father of the rich and the poor, they were all the work of his hands, she said with a heavy sigh-" Well, if it be so, this heaven must be after all, a strange sort of a place!" The good woman could not understand how she could have any enjoyment in heaven unless she was elevated above the "common herd of mankind!" The same opinion is now prevalent in many of our popular churches. We once heard the wife of a distinguished lawyer remark that, "everybody went to heaven, she hoped there would be a kitchen there for poor people!"

That woman afterwards became so poor, she would have died in the almshouse if her relatives had not rendered her assistance! Did she then wish for a kitchen in heaven for poor people?-Family Journal.

AN ARGUMENT AGAINST ENDLESS MISERY.

God is a being of infinite justice; he cannot do wrong; he cannot therefore inflict endless misery upon his creatures. For, endless misery hav ing no purpose ulterior to itself, must, from the necessity of the case, be an infinite evil; but an infinite evil would be opposed to God; and since whatever is opposed to God must necessarily be wrong; endless misery would be wrong; but we have already proved that God cannot do wrong; he cannot therefore inflict endless misery upon any of his crea

tures.