and the hypocritical Scribes and Pharisees, with the whole estate of the elders of the nation? Do you not know that it was this immoral doctrine of universal salvation that so enraged that wicked people against the. Son of God? If they had not been fully persuaded that he was the Saviour of all men, what in all the world could have so incensed them against him? Sir, it is astonishing that you should neglect such palpable proofs, recorded in the Scriptures, and stand up in your desk, pronouncing a long string of empty assertions, until you and your hearers were weary; and after all, they were not convinced.

Doctor, you had better make another appointment for the purpose of convincing the good, but ignorant people of this city, that immorality was never known in the world until, the doctrine of universal salvation was set up and believed. And before you again attempt this necessary work, a labor so much needed, make yourself perfectly acquainted with this method which I have recommended. Begin your task at the right end, and go on regularly; be careful that you do not forget to add the weight of history to your conclusive arguments. Show your hearers that all the abominable persecutions which have deluged the world in blood, were all set on foot and carried on by universalists. Quote history, and prove that Nero was a believer in the final salvation of all mankind, by Jesus Christ; and that it was this belief which caused him to set fire to the city of Rome, and lay the crime to the Christians. Show, moreover, that the whole of the ten persecutions which preceded the reign of Corstantine, in which many millions of professed Christians lost their lives, were all carried on by universalists. But do not stop here; go on and

demonstrate your subject by showing that all the persecutions practiced by Christians against Christians, were entirely owing to a belief that finally all mankind will be made holy and happy. Give your hearers, sir, to know that the Roman Inquisition is, and always has been, an engine of universalism; and after you make them understand that more than fifty millions of protestants have been put to death by those abominable believ ers in universal salvation, go on and prove from history, that all the persecutions which have been carried on by the protestants, were owing to their belief that God is good and gracious to all mankind, and will finally make all holy and happy. I beg you would not forget that those who hung the Quakers in Salem, were universalists. Make this truth known to your hearers, and assure them that the very spirit of universal grace is the spirit of persecution. Show them, also, that all the crimes. which have been committed in our country, and for which many have been executed, were all committed by universalists; and that there is not now a criminal in confinement, who is not a believer in this demoralizing doctrine.

Sir, you must not think your work is done until you prove, on the other hand, that the spirit of everlasting condemnation and eternal punishment, is the meek and humble spirit of Jesus; that it is the spirit of charity, which suffereth long and is kind; that such as believe in endless punishment are so tender hearted that they would rather suffer death, in the most cruel manner, than to persecute others. I beg you not to forget to state the fact, that John Calvin would never have put Dr. Servetus to death, in so cruel a manner, had not Calvin been a universalist.

When you shall have made all

these things evident, your undertaking will be accomplished; and you will hear the weleome sentence, well done, good and faithful servant. Yours, &c

HOSEA BALLOU.

"ROCK OF AGES."

In reading or reciting this poem, a pleasant effect is produced by singing the quoted lines of the hymn. "Rock of Ages, cleft for me,"

Thoughtlessly the maiden sung, Fell the words unconsciously

From her girlish; gleeful tongue;
Sung as little children sing,

Sung as sing the birds in June;
Fell the words like light leaves sown
On the current of the tune----
"Rock of Ages, cleft for me,

Let me hide myself in Thee."

Felt her soul no heed to hide

Sweet the song as song could be,
And she had no thought beside;

All the words unheedingly
Fell from lips untouched by care,
Dreaming not that each might be,
On some other lips, a prayer-
Rock of Ages, cleft for me,

Let me hide myself in Thee."

"Rock of Ages, cleft for me-”

'Twas a woman sung them now, Pleadingly and prayerfully;

Every word her heart did know, Rose the song as storm-tossed bird Beats with weary wing the air, Every note with sorrow stirred,

Every syllable a prayer"Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in Thee." "Rock of Ages, cleft for me—”

Lips grown aged sung the hymn Trustingly and tenderly,

Voice grown weak and eyes grown dim

"Let me hide myself in Thee."
Trembling though the voice, and low,
Rose the sweet strain peacefully
As a river in its flow;
Sung as only they can sing,

Who life's thorny paths have pressed; Sung as only they can sing

Who behold the promised rest.

"Rock of Ages, cleft for me,”

Sung above a coffin-lid;

Underneath, all restfully,

All life's cares and sorrow hid, Never more, O storm-tossed soul! Never more from wind or tide, Never more from billows' roll

Wilt thou need thyself to hide. Could the sightless, sunken eyes, Closed beneath the soft gray hair, Could the mute and stiffened lips,

Move again in pleading prayer, Still, aye still, the words would be, "Let me hide myself in Thee."

SCRIPTURE ILLUSTRATION.

numerous

There is harmony and agreement in truth, which can never be the result of error and misconstruction. The Scriptures may be considered under the figure of a majestic tree; the roots of which are invisible to man, and support it, as the Author of revelation supports the truth He has promulgated. The trunk of the tree. answers to the great leading truth of revelation, relative to the being, character, and purpose of God. The principal branches, to the conclusions resulting from the great truth first the mentioned; while smaller branches and ramifications of the vegetable show the diffusive evidence, all in kind, of the truths of revelation. Agreement is the test of truth-disagreement of falsehood. When we discover a tree bearing two kinds of fruit, we are convinced that one kind is illegitimate, and the contrivance of the husbandman, who has grafted a strange scion into the tree, of a different quality. Thus the translators of the Scriptures have grafted sprouts from the Calvinistic and other trees, into the Scripture tree. This deception can always be discovered with as much certainty, as the deception practiced by the husbandman. The fruit is not of a kind and quality. First ascertain the fruit of the tree, and the fruit of any branch that differs, must be the spuri

ous work of man.

God is the author of truth--" God is love." Love, then, is the root, the cause of all, and the fruit must not, cannot, be hatred! "The tree," says Christ," is known by its fruit"-Here, then, is the grand criterion. Love, infinite, immutable, and ever-existing, is the great root or cause, from which proceeds all the good to man. If evil is produced, it cannot be of a legitimate origin, but must cease when its cause is removed. The root is love-the trunk of the tree is of the same quality of the root, and so are the branches; and the fruit is the product, the very quintessence and virtue, and excellence of the vegetable. Thus of God's revelation to man. Love made it. Love is the subject of it. Love is the object of it. And as it commenced in love, it will end in love; when it shall be fulfilled in every heart, and God's universal beneficence live and reign in every bosom. For the "tree of life" bears fruit for the healing of the nations, and its roots are continually wet and fructified by "the pure river of the waters of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and the Lamb." (See Rev. 22: 1.

CURIOSITIES OF COAL.

Does any one except a practical chemist ever to stop to think of all the substances which we get from pit coal and the almost inconceivable variety of their uses? Everybody is familiar with those of them that are in daily use, such as gas, illuminating oils, coke, and paraffine, but of the greater part few persons know even the names, science advances so rapidly and its nomenclature is so extensive and so abstruse. It is no won

der that merchants and manufactures take advantage of this ignorance to foist upon the public articles of food, of drink, or for the toilet that, if they

are

not always dangerous to the health, have not in them a particle of the substances which they pretend to contain. Though pit coal has been known for some hundreds of years, the discovery of its numberless products is confined to the present century. Illuminating gas was unknown a hundred years ago. Petroleum has

been in use only about forty years, and it is scarcely more than fifty since some one discovered that stone coal was inflammable. Nearly all the other products derived from soft coal have been discovered and applied in the interests of science or of fraud within the last twenty-five years. The first thought in regard to coal is that it is made to give heat or warmth; the next that one of its principal uses is to illuminate. But there are obtained from it the means of producing over four hundred colors, or shades of colors, among the chief of which are saffron, violet blue, and indigo. There are also obtained a great variety of perfumes-cinnamon, bitter almonds, queen of the meadows, clove, wintergreen, anise, camphor, thymol, (a new French odor), vaniline, and heliotropine. Some of these are used for flavoring. Among the explosive agents whose discovery has been caused by the war spirit of the last few years in Europe are two called dinitrobenzine, or bellite, and picrates. To medicine coal has given hypnone, salicylic acid, naphthol, phenol, and antipyrine. Benzine and naphthaline are powerful insecticides. There have been found in it ammoniacal salts useful as fertilizers, tannin, saccharine (a substitute for sugar), the flavor of currants, rasp berry, and pepper, pyrogallic acid and hydroquinone used in photogra phy, and various substances familiar or unfamiliar, such as tar, rosin, asphaltum, lubricating oils, varnish. and the bitter taste of beer. By

means of some of these we can have wine without the juice of the grape, beer without malt, preserves without either fruit or sugar, perfumes without flowers, and coloring matters without the vegetable or animal substances from which they have been hitherto chiefly derived.

What is to be the end of all this? Are our coal beds not only to warm and illuminate, but to feed and quench the thirst of posterity? We know that they are the luxuriant vegetation of primal epochs stored. and compressed in a way that has made them highly convenient for transport and daily use. They are nature's savings laid up for a rainy day of her children, the human race, and it is probably because they are composed of the trees, the foliage, the plants, the roots, the fruits, and the flowers of the ancient world that they now so largely supply the place of our forests, plains, fields, and gardens. San Francisco Chronicle.

HOW I BECAME A MINISTER.

I was born an English child and an Episcopalian, and was educated to think, that all Dissenters--as we called all of those who differed from the church of England in faith, were terribly wrong.

A long sickness of nearly seven years-which confined me to my bed the greater part of that time, modified views. I began to think, and my the result was, a belief in baptism by immersion. It is not my intention to say anything about this experience, except to remark that as soon as I was physically able, I was baptized by immersion and joined the Close Communion Baptist Church. Of course this removed me from Episcopalian influence, and opened the way for other changes.

I was baptized in London, I think 1849-and came to America in 1851.

And circumstances cast my lot among a small body of Baptist people in Cincinnati, of the kind called "hard shell." I was at that time a Calvinist, because I had been so taughtand because I felt that I should not have chosen God, had he not first chosen me. But I never reasoned about it-I was afraid to reason; I had been taught that to reason on God's purposes, was to fall into the devil's trap. It was hard to accept this doctrine, but I was raised with a perfect veneration for the letter of the Bible. I thought that God had a right to do, whatever he had the power to do and the Bible seemed to teach this doctrine distinctly. I feared God terribly; and as I could not do any better, I put the doctrine away, and thought free grace any

how.

I became acquainted with a Methodist worker, a grand man, and I can see now, that he was a circumstance in the shaping of my life. I went to the Methodist church, and got into trouble with my own-because I began to question and doubt the truth of the faith of my church, and my doubts must be removed.

I believed in hell-and the thought of what God must be, if such a place really existed, shook me through and through. I could only cling to the atonement- and to Christ as I saw him.

Bro. Tabor-it may seem to you that I am writing for effect-so far from it. I am keeping back so much, that I am fearful of losing the real point, at which I aim.

When the members of my church learned that I was not as fully a believer in the binding nature of baptism and close communion, as I had been, I was called before the church. An old deacon came to labor with me, and he made matters worse. Speaking of sin and the

atonement, he told me that "the atonement was complete and perfect for the elect. That all the sin the elect could commit, past, present, and to come, was atoned for by Christ -that I was one of the elect, and could not sin because I was born of God."

I thought a while, and saw at once, that if the atonement was as it had been preached to me, it must be sofor Christ died before I had a being. And the horrible injustice and meanness of punishing the innocent Saviour for my sins, before I had a being, confounded me. I left the churchand do believe that I should have been an atheist--but I could not deny the existence of God-I had to believe in my spiritual life-and I could not be an unbeliever in the Christ.

I read the words "If any man lack wisdom let him ask of God, who giveth to all liberally, and up braideth not, and it shall be given him." Bro. Tabor, I took that word of promise, and I have proved it to be a glad grand truth. I did lack wisI did lack wisdom, and I did ask of God. I did this blindly sometimes, but surely I got what I wanted. I was urged to speak outside of churches-for Oh how I did hate creeds-and mistrust church teachers. I need not tell you how it came about, but I did speak with the Bible close to me-and with a trust in God that grew-though it sometimes failed for a time. Look at the last verses of the sixteenth Psalm-there is the full idea.

I took the Bible for my guide, and hell as a place of literal torment, soon disappeared before its light, the Orthodox view of the atonement went next--and the grand idea of what God must be, burst through all the darkness and flooded my soul with a joy that was unspeakable.

After the death of my husband, I settled in a Universalist community

and found that I was one, though I had read nothing on the subject but that grand old Universalist book, the Bible and had heard only one sermon. But I cannot tell what it has

been to me. My work is my life, and I think that I have a long time before me for work. And nothing gives me so much happiness, as to work for the cause of Christ, especially if I can work among those who are ignorant of our faith-or among the Orthodox who are in earnest, and distressed with doubts and fears as I

was.

One day I was laughing and talking with three or four girls, feeling at the time that I was one of them: when one of them said to me-Aunt Mary, how in the world did you come to be a minister? Well, I answered, opportunity opened the door-nec+8sity took me by the shoulder and pushed me through-and fate closed the door behind me-and it was so. Bro. Gurthrie took me into the church -Bros. Curry, Crossly, and Gurthrie, fellowshiped me, fellowshiped me, from a body of Quakers, called Old Abolitionists.

I have once or twice tried to think that I ought to retire from church work; but I cannot see my way out— but I can see my way inside--so I shall continue to labor until duty becomes plain. But one thing I can say from the heart-I never had the truth more clearly revealed to me thau now,--and it was never so great a source of joy and rest as now. If I fail in anything, it is in giving expression to that joy and rest I feel, to others.

REV. MARY T. CLARK.

CHRIST'S MIRACLES.

It is amazing that so many persons can think that the miracles can be discarded, and no harm be done to Christ. Were there nothing else to demonstrate the falsity of this supposition. Christ's own estimate of