Certain abiding elements in human nature and experience make it necessary that this should be so. "Man is a religious animal." He can never emancipate himself from his own spiritual hunger and need. No science or culture or material luxury can ever satisfy the deeper wants of his soul. The moment the President was stricken down, and the moment his dying testimony witnessed to the great realities of religion, the people en masse, irrespective of spiritual condition or creed, responded to the emotions and sentiments of the hour with an instant and surprising sympathy. The hearts of the people beat as one. The irreligious became for the time being reverent, prayerful, devout. The multitudes that had perhaps never been quickened by a genuinely religious aspiration began to sing with some intelligence and enkindled emotion "Nearer, My God, to Thee."

For once in its history, at least, the American nation has been sobered and made still. The people, in every stratum of society-yea, in the very slums have been touched, have been made tearful and tender, have shown a susceptibility to serious and sacred things that has sent a thrill of hope into the heart of every prophet and every lover of humanity.

The masses are still susceptible to religion, are still conscious of need, are still hungering for sympathy and salvation. The right touch will be as potent as ever. Pentecosts are as possible as in any former age. Humanity can be swayed to-day as truly as in the days of Whitefield or Moody. Let the truth be impressive, the personality mighty, the message suited to the intelligence and need of the hour, and the multitude will respond with an alertness and unanimity that will put to shame the cowardice and scepticism and impotence of an unspiritual Church.

If ever an age was waiting for a majestic Gospel proclaimed by majestic and masterly men, it is this. If the Church would be all-conquering, says Principal Fairbairn, "it is necessary that it be transmuted by the fire of a great enthusiasm into the regenerator and moral guide of life." The three. characteristics of the preachers of England that the late Dr. R. W. Dale lamented were, (1) want of urgency, (2) avoidance of great themes, and (3), failure to assert the lordship of Christ over things secular as well as over things divine.

The pulpit has not risen to the greatness of its privilege. It has not believed enough in humanity because it has not believed enough in God, and in the certainties of His redemptive work in Christ.

The people are indeed gross, materialistic, pleasure-loving, apathetic, unresponsive; but beneath the surface of this paganism beats the heart of a humanity conscious of its need, and waiting for the touch of a master hand or the love of a believing and hopeful and purified Church, that it may show its ineradicable faith by obedience to the call of God, worthily voiced and tenderly proclaimed.

THOUGHTS FOR THE OCCASION: NEW YEAR'S DAY.

MAKING THE MOST OF TIME.

BY W. GARDEN BLAIKIE, D.D., LL.D.

THE closing days of the year is a good season for making up a valuation of time. It is difficult, indeed, to form a definite conception of the real value of time. There are so many modes of estimating it, according to the different abilities of men, and their power of turning it to account, that it is impossible to frame a standard for universal use. But let us fix our thoughts on a definite portion of time-we shall say one day-and try to reach a true. conception of its value. One way of helping us to this is by considering what has been done, and what may be done in one day. Very often the turning point of a life, the turning point of an eternal life has happened on one particular day. The conception of grand-philanthropic enterprises and the determination to work for them, have often been formed in even a smaller portion of time. Inventions and applications of principles, in ways that have revolutionized the world, have sometimes made particular days quite memorable, as, for instance, the day when Sir Isaac Newton asked himself in the garden what made the apple fall.

Along with the improvement of time it is natural to couple the habit of making the most of all our opportunities of instruction, and mental improvement. The thirst for knowledge, and for that inward elevation, of which all rightly used knowledge is the handmaid, is well worthy of every effort that can be made to gratify it. We see its value by its results in particular cases of difficulty and hardship. Some years ago an effort was made to collect all the chimney-sweepers in Dublin for education. Among others came a little fellow who was asked if he knew his letters. "Oh, yes," was the reply. "Do you spell?" "Oh yes," was again the answer. "And do you read ?" "Oh yes." "And what book did you learn from?" "Oh I never had a book in all my life, sir." "And who was your schoolmaster?" "Oh I never was at school." A singular case-a boy could read and spell without book or master. It turned out that another little sweep, a little older than himself, had taught him to read by showing him the letters over the shop doors which they passed in going through the town. In how many other cases similar results have followed from a wise purpose to make the most of one's opportunities it is utterly impossible to say. But such cases accomplish the very highest purposes, when they encourage those who are poorly provided for never to despair; to be patient, hopeful, persevering; to rely on it that, with God's blessing, something will come of their endeavor, though they begin their march at the furthest possible distance from the temple of knowledge, and with no sort of conveyance to expedite their approach to it.

May we be permitted further to urge the duty of making the most of our opportunities of usefulness? There are misers and gluttons in the intellectual world as well as in the material-persons that gorge themselves with intellectual stores, and lay out little or none of them for the benefit of their fellows. These persons are one step higher, in point of nobility, than the literal glutton and the literal miser; but essentially they belong to the same class. It is a mode of life that ought to be shunned. If we only begin soon, we shall be sure to find that much, though men differ in their capacities and their opportunities of being useful to others, there is no man, truly in earnest, who may not accomplish very great results in this direction. Take as an instance the case of a Welsh schoolmaster, but little known to general fame. For fifteen years James Davies pursued the occupation of a weaver, and for another fifteen that of a pedlar and merchant. Moved by the love of Christ, and the desire of doing good, he then entered on the occupation of a schoolmaster. After a few years in a comfortable situation he removed to a wild and neglected place to which his attention had often been drawn in his walks as a pedlar, the Devauden, where he enjoyed an irregularly paid income of from £15 to £20, and besides performing most successfully the duties of teacher, made himself of great use in the district in a variety of ways. He visited the poor, and supplied them, when destitute, with blankets and linen; gave to every farm servant a copy of the Bible; spent £15 on one occasion on an edition of Pike's "Persuasives to Early Piety," and distributed two hundred copies of his "Parental Care;" shared his bed and home with a poor laborer who had no other shelter; repaired a dilapidated church in one place and fitted up a school-room for worship in another, and at the age of eighty, when the place he had done so much for had become civilized and comfortable, went out to a fresh wild field of labor, where death cut him down after two years of exertion.

If you ask how it was possible for him to accomplish so much good, the answer is, that he was thoroughly devoted to his work, and that to supply himself with the requisite means, besides his profession as a teacher he reclaimed some waste land, cultivated a garden with great industry, reared pigs and poultry at his cottage, and carried on a small trade as a dealer in flour. His life is certainly one of the most remarkable instances I have ever met with of what good may be done by making the most of everything.

Lastly, the highest mode of applying our principle is by making the most of our moral and spiritual capacities. As these are the very highest of the gifts of God to us, so the enjoyment and benefit from their improvement is the greatest, and the loss and misery from their neglect the saddest that can be known. No words and no figures can ever express the loss incurred in a lost life, and by consequence a lost eternity. To miss the opportunity given us here of having the bond restored that at first linked man's soul to the Great Being Who made it, of having all its disorder rectified, and all its

powers recruited and sustained, all its thirst and hunger supplied, and a capacity bestowed of rising to the empyrean heights, and in nature, as well as name, enjoying the rank, the privileges, and the fellowship of a child of God; and in place of all this, to drift further and further from the great Guiding Power, to be sucked more and more into the eddies and whirlpools of sin, to be dashed ever and anon against sunken reefs and iron-bound shores, and at last to go down in darkness and despair to regions from which there is no resurrection-what power of man can ever estimate or express the magnitude of the calamity which such a career involves? Yet there is nothing more common. And, strange to say, common in spite of all the pains taken by the Godhead to make and to buoy the channel to glory, honor, and immortality. Be ours the upward, onward path. Let us make sure of our moorings to the Great Power that can alone carry us up to the sublime heights which our eager spirits eye from afar. And when He has carried us past all the entanglements of sin, and through all the opposing forces that drag us downward, He will bear us to a world of blessed service and bright enjoyment, where we shall have access to the infinite storehouse, and be taught to make the most of its boundless supplies.-Christian Commonwealth, London.

CLEAR SKIES.

A FALLEN leaf on a flowing stream, and on the water a moment's gleam
Of sunshine and the chilling gray o'erspreads more coldly the autumn day.
And once this had brought a pang to me, a sense of pain in my heart, to see
The leafless trees and the stubble sere, and the darkening face of the dying
year.

It is not so now. My heart is glad, though every sight and sound is sad,
For I have come to realize that joy depends not on the skies.

The path of my duty holds along, through winter's storm and springtime's song,

And cloudy the day or stormy the night, the sky of my heart is always bright. -Maltbie D. Babcock, D.D., in S. S. Times.

SCIENCE FOR CHRIST.-The honest service of Jesus Christ pays the soul a rich dividend of solid satisfaction. There is no wretchedness in a true Christian's trials; his bruised flowers emit sweet fragrance. The fruits of the Holy Spirit are love, joy and peace; the promise of the Lord Jesus is that His joy shall be full. The sweetest honey is gathered out of the hive of a busy, unselfish, useful and holy life.-Theodore L. Cuyler.