BRAINS RULE the world, and always will, and the higher the moral standard the greater the security and happiness of the people. Christianized Anglo-Saxon brain and muscle, enterprize and industry, need not shrink from a healthy competition with any branch of the human family.

Let the early American sentiment in favor of God and the Bible in our public schools be heralded everywhere. Let it float on every breeze; let it permeate all the air. Let us place in charge of our school interests men and women the influence of whose principles and character shall not poison the moral life of the children of this nation.

Let us rigidly maintain the non-sectarian character of our schools; allow the introduction of no catechism, or creed, or system of doctrines, or rituals, or sacraments, but maintain the daily reading of the Bible without note or comment and the daily recognition of that great Being of whom, in their distress, the American people did solemly affirm, "IN GOD WE TRUST." San Francisco, Cal.

OTIS GIBSON.

THE service of God is freedom.

The servants of God, though they can bear with the wrong-doer, cannot tolerate what is wrong. Their combat against error mixed with truth is sometimes harder and more difficult than that against error alone.

The servants of God are like light; the more quietly it burns the further can it be seen. Growing in charity, they wear self away. They are like the taper which only shines when it is being consumed. In spite of this the servants of God are immortal until their work here is done. FRITZ FLIEDNER.

Pastor in Madrid, Spain.

AN ounce of love is worth a ton of admiration. CHARLES F. DEEMS.

TWO ALL-EMBRACING PRINCIPLES.

It is the wise and the good alone who sow the seeds of thought and announce the fundamental principles that make the permanent peace and prosperity of mankind. Among these principles there are two which seem to me to embrace all others, and have been to me a great source of strength and comfort through a long and laborious practical life. The first is written by the apostle John, "God is love." The second, by the apostle Paul, The invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made."

In the first principle, that "God is love," we have implied all that can sustain the soul under adversity or in the contemplation of the sins and miseries of the world. It implies that the Omniscient Father of all is "working through all" and in all by a reign of universal, beneficent laws, so wise and good that they will never require to be altered, amended, or revoked. They are laws

"That have connected in this (our) world,

Our greatest virtue with our greatest bliss,” and have made

"Our own bright prospect to be blest—

Our strongest motive to assist the rest."

In the statement of Paul I find the basis of all scientific investigation. From things visible we are taught that we can go to things "invisible;" that His eternal power and Godhead are "clearly seen and understood" by the "things that are made;" that from the world

of effects we can go to the world of causes; and thence we can reach our God who is the infinite of all that is good. All the problems of human life can be solved by the love of God and by a patient interrogation of that Nature in which he has written, on the unfolding leaves of creation, his own eternal laws for the use and elevation of mankind.

New York.

PETER COOPER.

THE FIRST requisite to success is to begin right. It is easier to lay the foundation at the first, than, after the building is up, to put in underpinning.

He is best educated who is best able to use his own powers. The mind is not to be an armory where weapons are stored, but an arsenal in which they are manufactured, and culture should tend to fit it to produce rather than to retain what others have produced.

It matters little whether others are true to you or not so that you are true to yourself. He that is true to himself cannot go astray.

As all rivers are composed of the same element so all sins are fundamentally the same; and this fundamental or all-embracing sin is selfishness. Particular sins are but tributaries; selfishness is the great Mississippi in which their turbid waters all blend and flow in a common channel.

Many of the pagan mythologies and cosmogonies exhibit points of striking coincidence with portions of the Christian revelation. Even the scheme of Buddha sounds, here and there, although much older, like a faroff legend of the Gospel story. Whoever will trace these coincidences to their real sources will do a wonderful work for the Christian religion.

Red Oak, Iowa.

GEO. C. HICKS.

AT THE FIRESIDE. *

At nightfall by the firelight's cheer
My little Margaret sits me near,
And begs me tell of things that were
When I was little just like her.

Ah! little lips, you touch the spring
Of sweetest sad remembering,

And hearth and heart flash all aglow
With ruddy tints of long ago.

I at my father's fireside sit,
Youngest of all who circle it,

And beg him tell me what did he
When he was little just like me.

JOHN D. LONG, in the Nursery.

HEAVEN OUR HOME.

We are living now in a stormy world, subject to many changes, hard trials, bitter discipline. Everything about us goes to prove that our stay here is but temporary, that we are constantly moving forward to a destiny that will remain unchanged and eternal. Hence good men have always regarded themselves as strangers and pilgrims on the earth. They are not building their hopes of happiness on the present, but are looking forward to a good awaiting them in "a better country, that is a heavenly." They expect only sorrow and tribulation in the world. In the future, to which they are hastening, there awaits them freedom and blessedness. It is natural for the mind to look forward to some desired good, for such good as the soul craves

* By Permission of Nursery Publishing Co., Boston.

is never found in the present.

The man of business looks forward to the time when, a competency having been secured, he can retire to the scenes of private life and spend the evening of his years in quiet and contentment. The great reason why so many enter convents is the thought that some good which the heart craves will be found there. "The Republic of Plato and the finest works of the imagination are but the outgrowth of this ideal of souls." And so also the Christian, though already in possession of Christ as a hope, and indeed as an enjoyment and as a salvation, regards this present life as a state of confinement and thralldom. He is like a bird in a cage which, deprived of the highest liberty and sweetest enjoyment of its own native home, pines and longs for a day of light and largeness, of liberty and glory. And no wonder. The soul is not at home here. It goes through life with a sense of uncompleted being. It feels strange and this makes man uneasy and dissatisfied. Even in the holiest minds there is something which intimates that the life and the experience here are but half finished. With such an experience there is an ideal in the mind which points to the future as a place of completed being.

We can understand this better if we but consider the value of our earthly home to our present comfort and development. Who is there that does not owe something of good to his home? What word so full of tenderest and most sacred associations as the word home? Home is the place in all this world where hearts are sure of each other; it is the place of confidence; it is the place where we tear off that mask of guarded and suspicious coldness which the world. forces us to wear in self-defense, and where we pour out the unreserved communications of full and confiding hearts; it is the spot where expressions of tenderness gush out without any sensation of awkwardness