threshing floor like a great harvest wagon full of sheaves, which at every jolt casts down ears for the gleaners, and stray seeds for the birds, and now and then a chance handful, which, blown by winds into nooks and corners, comes up to grow, and to bless another generation.

HE who is false to present duty breaks a thread in the loom, and will find the flaw when he may have forgotten its cause.

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WHEN I was in the galleries of Oxford, I saw many of the designs of Raphael and Michael Angelo. I looked upon them with reverence, and took such of them as I was permitted to touch as one would take up a love token. It seemed to me these sketches brought me nearer the great masters than their finished pictures could have done, because therein I saw the minds' processes as they were first born. They were the first salient points of the inspiration. Could I have brought them home with me, how rich I should have been! how envied for their possession! Now, there are open and free to us, every day of our lives, the designs of a greater than Raphael or Michael Angelo. God, of whom the noblest master is but a feeble

imitator, is sketching and painting every hour the most wondrous pictures—not hoarded in any gallery, but spread in light and shadow round the whole earth, and glowing for us in the overhanging skies.

WHAT if the parent bird should sit, nervous and fluttering, upon the bough, when the young ones were hatching, and mourn because its beautiful egg shells were being broken?

Yet this is what we do. We have joys and truths deep as eternity, committed to us in the egg form, and the shell must needs be chipped before they can be born, and fly, full-fledged, singing, towards the gate of heaven. Yet we grieve and fear, and cling still to the undeveloped egg.

IF a man is odious in society, he might as well be in prison. The worst prisons are not of stone; they are of throbbing hearts, outraged by an infamous life.

THERE are many people in this world who are like perfumed vases from which the perfume has fled, all the surrounding objects attracting it; and so their life is not in themselves, but in their things.

It is often said it is no matter what a man believes if he is only sincere. This is true of all minor truths, and false of all truths whose nature it is to fashion a man's life. It will make no difference in a man's harvest whether he think turnips have more saccharine matter than potatoes whether corn is better than wheat. But let the man sincerely believe that seed planted without ploughing is as good as with, that January is as favorable for seed sowing as April, and that cockle seed will produce as good a harvest as wheat, and will it make no difference? A child might as well think he could reverse that ponderous marine engine which, night and day, in calm and storm, ploughs its way across the deep, by sincerely taking hold of the paddle-wheel, as a man might think he could reverse the action of the elements of God's moral government through a misguided sincerity. They will roll over such an one, and whelm him in endless ruin.

THEY are not reformers who simply abhor evil. Such men become in the end abhorrent themselves.

SOMETIMES men who have been frankly wicked attempt to reform, and become locked-up hypocrites.

ONE man's heart beating against yours may be little to you; but when it is the echo of a thousand hearts, you cannot resist it. A single snow-flake, who cares for it? But a whole day of snow-flakes, obliterating the landmarks, drifting over the doors, gathering upon the mountains to crash in avalanches, who does not care for that? Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent.

SOME men are like pyramids, which are very broad where they touch the ground, but grow narrower as they reach the sky.

PEOPLE say, "How fortunate it is that things have turned out just as they have — that I was prepared for this!" As if God did not arrange the whole! One might as well say, "How fortunate it is that I have a neck beneath my head, and shoulders under my neck!"

No man need fear that he will exhaust his substance of thought, if he will only draw his inspiration from actual human life. There the inexhaustible God pours depths and endless variety of truth; and

the true thinker is but a short-hand writer endeavoring to report the discourse of God. Shall a child on the banks of the Amazon fear lest he should drink up the stream?

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THERE are apartments in the soul which have a glorious out-look; from whose windows you can see across the river of death, and into the shining city beyond; but how often are these neglected for the lower ones, which have earthward-looking windows. There is the apartment of Veneration. ceilings are frescoed with angels, and all exquisite carvings adorn its walls; but spiders have covered the angel ceiling, and dust has settled on the delicate mouldings. The man does not abide there. The door of Conscience is rusted so it cannot be opened. Hope has but one downward-looking window, and Faith and Worship are cold and cheerless. All these are shut up in most soul-houses. In lower apartments you shall hear, in some riot and wassail, -for the passions never keep Lent, but are always holding Carnival,— and in others sighs and lamentations of wounded hopes, and in others the groanings of disappointed ambition, and in others bickerings and strifes, while in others there are sleep and stupidity.

Ah! most men live in these wretched apartments,