deeper significance of human existence were terms largely emptied of the meaning with which they had been charged by the Gospel of the Son of God. Grim shadows had suddenly fallen upon the colossal graves in which were buried objects distinctly Christian, and they wrapped their gloomy folds over many other interests affecting human society and human life.

Great ideals had perished, noble influences were dead, bright hopes ceased to sing in countless hearts of happier days to come; and over tens of thousands of the dying there spread the pall of a great despair.

It seemed to me that out of the past eighteen hundred years, all that had been done in Christ's name and by Christ's spirit, and truth, and power, had also passed away; and behold, the brightest things of time, the redeeming forces and influences had all gone out in that momentous shock of which I have spoken. The march of the centuries had been reversed by the movements of those memorable midnight hours, and I found myself looking upon an age and world from which had disappeared the highest organizations, interpretations, examples, consolations, hopes, songs, joys and grand substantial facts of history. It was a Christless world that lay spread out before me, marked by myriads of hopeless ruins, and bereft of that which had been its glory and its crown; and as the great moral darkness crept over me I seemed to hear a voice full of deep solemnity and a pathos which words cannot describe, crying out: "They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him."

Dear reader, this was a dream, and yet it is vastly more than a dream; for let men say what they will about the place and power of Christianity in our world to-day, and of its slow progress in human affairs, if that Christian system should be displaced and entirely removed to-morrow from the world, and be no more, instead of our picture being in any sense overdrawn, it would be found to be an understatement of the results which would inevitably follow its removal from the earth. The hold of the Gospel is deep and strong upon the age and world of to-day, and unbelief has undertaken a gigantic task when it attempts to unseat this divine and beneficent power.

SACKVILLE, N.B.

CHIME out, O joyful bells !
All worldly discords drown!
Yield up your green, O trees!

To make a Christmas crown!

Give up your best, O earth,

Make room, O human heart, That He who comes this day May nevermore depart.

THE NEED OF THE WORLD.

BY THE LATE REV. DR. NELLES.

IF I were called upon to state, in brief, what is the need of our time, I should not hesitate to say, the enforcement of the Gospel of Christ on its spiritual and practical side; in this I would include a simplification of some Christian creeds, and the throwing overboard of a good deal of rubbish which was, perhaps, never of much service, and is of decided disservice in the present day. In fact in making Christianity a practical power over the earth it will be necessary to keep close to the teaching and spirit of the New Testament, which requires a firm and emphatic repudiation of a good deal which has passed and still passes for Gospel.

The scepticism of our time and of past time has been very much occasioned and fostered by erroneous conceptions of God and religion. It would be very hard to be a Christian if this meant the approval of the ecclesiastical system of the Church of Rome, or the cruel dogmas of Augustine, and Edwards, and Calvin. A protest is still to be lifted against types of theology which make theology incredible, and the world a hideous enigma. But if, on the other hand, we get some reasonable and humane conception of God and the Gospel, then it is the Gospel above all things that the world needs, and needs in a pervading and practical way.

The age is remarkable for restless activity in all directions, and amid the vigorous and varied play of forces, mental and physical, there is required especially the one higher and better force, which is embodied in Christ and His Gospel. It is here that we find God's method for bringing the world into loving obedience to Himself. The good work has gone on apace through the ages, but amid many sad perversions and retrogressions. The eddies run hither and thither, but onward still rolls the great river; in a circuitous course, but with ever-increasing volume.

Just now the masses are lifting their heads in a most ominous way. There is a blind instinct of want. There is an equal instinct of dormant energy. Democracy is becoming dominant, or, at least, conscious of its power of domination. Only one thing can save the world from violence and chaos, and that is the enthronement in all hearts of the law of Christ, speculations, dogmas, forms, discoveries, inventions, works of art, strains of

music and song, all these will have their sphere; but what we most need is a deep and solemn sense of our relations to God and the great hereafter, together with a hopeful view of the marvellous redemptive influences of Him who turned the water into wine and raised Lazarus from the grave.

It is, I fear, becoming more a question with men, even in Christian lands, whether there be any God or any hereafter; and while philosophic and scholarly minds are dealing in their own way with such negations, it remains for Christian people to exemplify, and with augmented earnestness, the practical graces of the Gospel, causing them to see that there is no power to heal and bless like the religion of the cross. The unhappy misconceptions which have prevailed as to the nature of Christianity will gradually, we trust, disappear. Already there are many signs of a closer approximation to the true idea and spirit. of the Gospel, and with this approximation will come an increase of power over all forms of evil.

That the world will accept certain sectarian types of ecclesiastical teaching is not probable, and it is not desirable; but the elementary principles of the Gospel-the faith, the hope, the charity of the Gospel-these must finally prevail; or, if not, then, indeed, the world is no cosmos or rational order, but only chaos and a kind of sham world-in fact a devil's world and not at all God's world.

But to such a faith, or no-faith, it is not possible for men generally to come. Always in the great heart of man lives and burns a moral and rational ideal of things, and this, along with the inward sadness and unrest of humanity heaving and moaning like the sea, will ever draw the world onward, with an indestructible faith and hope, toward the infinite God and some indescribable glory yet to be revealed. Always we shall see visions of some grand celestial city, with its pearly gates, its jasper walls, its golden streets, its crystal river, its tree bearing all manner of fruits, with its leaves for the healing of the nations. The ear of faith will never cease to hear the echoes of the eternal song and the harpers harping with their harps. There is that within us. by reason of which the Gospel will, from time to time, recall humanity from dreary atheism and pessimism, and preclude their final prevalence. And the more extreme the pessimism, the more vigorous will be the rebound into the arms of Him whose voice sounds evermore in our ears, saying, "Believe in God; believe also in me." "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are: heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

This glorious city of the Apocalypse, this coming "republic

of God," may seem to our sceptical friends only a dream. I will not say, let me cherish it still although but a dream, but will rather say, that, while even as a dream it has been more beneficent than the realities of scepticism, there is something incredible in the thought that such visions forever hover before us only to betray us at the last. All the lower instincts are presentiments of corresponding good; it is not hard to believe that these higher ones may have a similar validity and prophetic power. The need of the world is to so heed these aspirations and hopes as to turn the prophecy both of Scripture and the human heart into historic verity. And what has been done thus far is ample encouragement to mind the same things and walk by the same rule. Let those who boast of the triumphs of experimental science learn to read aright this experiment of the Gospel in moral and social progress, and they will find ample proof that Christianity is by far the best thing that has yet come into the world, from whatever source we may suppose it to have come. Even when we censure the Church we censure her from principles which she has preserved. In bearing witness against herself she bears witness for the Gospel.

BEYOND.

BY ROSE TERRY COOKE.

THE stranger wandering in the Switzer's land,
Before its awful mountain tops afraid,—
Who yet with patient toil hath gained his stand
On the bare summit where all life is stayed,

Sees far, far down, beneath his blood-dimmed eyes,
Another country, golden to the shore,
Where a new passion and new hopes arise,
Where southern blooms unfold forevermore.

And I, lone sitting by the twilight blaze,
Think of another wanderer in the snows,
And on more perilous mountain tops I gaze
Than ever frowned above the vine and rose.

Yet courage, soul! nor hold thy strength in vain.
In hope o'ercome the steeps God set for thee,
For past the Alpine summits of great pain
Lieth thine Italy.

A LAY PREACHER.

BY ROSE TERRY COOKE.

"I DON'T know," said Mrs. Simmons, shaking her head. "I don't know what on airth Mr. Styles' folks will do. She's dreadful delicate, and he's got dear knows what's a ailin' of him-minister's complaints, dyspepsia, 'nd suthin' er nuther in his throat; and there's them two peepin' miser'ble children. They hain't been here but goin' on three months, 'nd their help's goin' to leavedon't like the country. Land alive, how notional them helps be! Anybody would think, to hear 'em talk, they'd lived in first-class houses to home, and had the best of society and all the privileges." "That's so," heartily returned Uncle Israel Jinks, who was leaning on Mrs. Simmons' gate, having, as he phrased it, "a dish o' talk."

"That's so, marm; them sort of folk is like the wind-allers ablowin'. I've observed considerable, bein' in years an' allers keepin' my eyes open; and I've allers noticed that the things folks makes the most fuss over is the things they hain't got. That's human natur', Miss Simmons. We all hear the sermon for the folks in the next pew. Human natur' is queer, very queer, onaccountable."

"Well!" snapped Mrs. Simmons, who seemed to feel a thorn in Uncle Israel's illustrations somewhere, "that ain't the p'int we was aimin' at. We've all got human natur' to be born with, so we've got to lump it. The p'int is, can any body in this town be got to help Miss Styles for a spell-anybody that'll stay till they can better themselves?"

Uncle Israel lifted his straw hat with one hand a little way, and began to scratch his head. "What should you say to Desire Flint, now?"

There was a hesitating sound in the cracked voice and a glimmer of suspense in the faded blue eyes as he spoke.

"Desire Flint! ! !" No hesitation in Mrs. Simmons' prompt reply. "Why, Uncle Israel, she ain't no better than a fool! anyways, not much."

"She ain't a fool; she ain't nobody's fool," was the meditative answer. "Desire's simple, but sometimes I think a good many folks would be better for a grain of her simpleness, 'nd she's real handy if you'll tell her just exactly what to do and how to do it. Dr. Porter said she nussed old Miss Green splendid, jest as faithful as could be, nothin' forgot or slighted. There's suthin' in that, now, I tell ye."

"She does say the queerest things. You know yourself how she up and told Deacon Mather he was a wolf."

"I know, I know; she speaks in meetin', that's a fact, and she's got the Bible to her tongue's end, and she b'lieves in 't, lock an' stock. Now we all know 't won't do to swaller the Bible

whole that way. Where should we be if we did? Goody