Did ye descend, what were ye more than I?
Is 't not by this ye are divine,

That, native to the sky,

Ye cannot hie

Downward, and give low hearts the wine
That should reward the high?

Weak, yet, in weakness I no more complain
Of your abiding in your places;

Oh still, howe'er my pain

Wild prayers may rain,

Keep pure on high the perfect graces,
That stooping could but stain.

Not to content our lowness, but to lure
And lift us to your angelhood,

Do your surprises pure,

Dawn far and sure

Above the tumult of young blood,

And starlike there endure.

Wait there, wait and invite me while I climb,
For see, I come! - but slow, but slow!

Yet ever as your chime,

Soft and sublime,

Lifts at my feet, they move, they go
Up the great stair of time.

3

BY JAIRUS.

THE GOSPEL. The Gospel is the GOOD NEWS. It is the voice which crieth, "Peace on Earth." But it saith also: "Not as the world giveth.” The world says, "Peace at all hazards, on any terms." The Gospel saith, "Peace when 't is won. I will overturn, overturn, overturn! I will remove the diadem and take off the crown until the Idea and the Life come whose right it is to reign. I herald the good news of that peace on earth which shall come as fruit, as harvest, as victory. My reign shall be the prosperous reign of Truth and Freedom!"

The Gospel is uncompromising. It sticketh for the whole Truth, the exact Justice, the perfect Love. Casting out fear it trusteth these for all triumphs.

The Gospel requires the breaking of many old idols. Men hear it unwillingly, and say, "It is bad news."

But knowing whereof it affirms, seeing through the gloomiest night the morning's flush, cheerily it hails the angel :

"Onward speed thy conquering flight,

Angel onward fly!

Long has been the reign of night,

Bring the morning nigh!"

morrow.

TO-MORROW. - Victor Hugo writes, "There is only one way of refusing to-morrow; that is to die." Since the world cannot die it must accept toIt cannot have another to-day. It deludes itself continually by calling each new day by the same old name; but that is nothing. What's in a name? The morrow must come with new and better life; else, why not end with to-day? Some people distrust the future unless it will repeat the past. But will such people listen? - there comes a future that you may make the past, the present, better. Up then, and be doing. Accept to- you 've got to!

morrow

KINGSHIP. The dream of Thomas Carlyle's whole life has been to get the world infected with his idea concerning the "Good King." A certain kind of hero himself, he has ever been the most loyal of worshippers at the shrine of great men. And of late years he would seem to have gone wholly mad with enthusiasm for his great Frederick. 'Ballot boxes' have been the night-mare and bane of his philosophy. There can be no good ground out of them. If of every ten men dropping ballots, nine are fools, tell me what you shall get as result for this ballot-boxing?'

But this giant with his kingly conceit, finds at last in Republican America a boxer stout enough for his fist-a-cuffs, and quite able to break his skepti

cism on the wheels of her progress. There is a rumor that he relents, and that his "American Iliad," which he put into a nut shell,' shall one day by himself be recast in different mould, and be of such character and dimensions as can be contained in no shell whatsoever. But however this rumor shall turn out, we may with good grace follow the example of our President at Washington, in the case of the martyr-rebel, John Mitchell, and consent to remember nothing of his 'American Career,' while we think only of the 'loyalty' of his earlier services in the production of many inspiring appeals. No one can read his fine essays on "Heroes and Hero-worship," without detecting the presence of a really earnest and public-spirited man, dealing with the characters of men, who, in one way or another, do command reverence in eminent degree. And there is such proportion of truth running through all his philosophy that it fascinates and charms. We do want to know the value of great men and give them sway. We want to seek them out and place them in power with authority of voice and action. But precisely here comes the difficult question for Mr. Carlyle to answer : How to choose the Good King? For in denying the ballot box he leaves no open door to the throne but that already opened by the 'divine right' of old hereditary Kingship, or that of some successful usurpation. This denial of good sense and honor to the common people sufficient for the choice, must likewise be a denial of the good sense and honor necessary for submission, whenever, by whatever chance-fortune, the 'Good King' shall seize the government reins. Loyalty to the Highest and Best is a product of Intelligence. The wise Will of obedience comes at least of an understanding heart. So it happens the Good King' can sit on his throne in peace and safety, only as PEOPLE can understand who is this that cometh in the name of the Lord?' recognize his 'divine right,' and obey.

But is not this equal to a request that he abdicate in favor of the people themselves? Is it not Democracy made, not only Right, but Expedient and Possible? If the people are wise enough to know when they are well provided for and to submit accordingly, are they not wise enough also to choose, or to keep on choosing, if peradventure, they find themselves deceived? In this very act of choosing are they educated in Wisdom and Virtue.

The Good King acting loyally his part and doing all for the people-seeing to it that no injustice is wrought in their ranks, that there are none to want, but that order, plenty, peace and happiness abound for all — would indeed, right royally do God's supreme bidding — if, in fact, that were God's bidding.

But I look for other statement than this to unfold the Divine Order and Purpose. I look for that statement which shall explain and vindicate the Kingly wisdom native to the common people, and show that there is a loyalty of the human heart to IDEAS, such as it has never revealed in all its devotion paid to Men.

CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT,

PASSED BY CONGRESS, January 31, 1865; RATIFICATION COMPleted, AS BY PROCLAMATION, Dec. 18, 1865.

"There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that

S

O long as heaven keeps earth in its knowledge it will have joy over a repenting sinner. For the divine purposes, which are invisible, must sympathize with every visible recognition of their fitness and beauty, with every return from human aberration to the path which they prescribe. The Earth is in the harness of supernatural powers; it may not be able to turn and see them as they drive — but its career is safe only upon condition of implicit obedience to the hidden Will.

Every departure from this Will produces difficulty and pain. A careless man cannot violate the regulations of his body without having every case checked off to him as he goes; for he is self-registering in body and in soul. By and by, when the accumulation threatens to paralyze all movement, it announces the fact in a way so unmistakable that the individual must instantly choose between life and death. The little abuses keep their own calculation, and go all the time equipped with their own revenge. But the exhilarating sense of returning health which the body has, or the soul's feeling of a restoration to harmony with its own supernatural laws, is a token of a pleasure shared by the "great mind that o'er us plans." For although nothing can disturb the divine equanimity, nothing can change it to indifference. If the Father cares for the men whom He makes, how much more must He sympathize with His own image when it reflects His purity and truth.

And it seems to me that the invisible worlds must include some provision for apprizing kindred souls of the great moments in which an individual or a country selects honor and regeneration: so that although they may be very far from the details of earth which either vex or thrill, and incapable of personal cognizance and information, some quality of satisfaction, of reassurance, travels to them by the sympathetic cords that keep up truth's intercommunication through the universe. It is not necessary that a mother shall learn the fortunes of her prodigal, but if the invisible air trembles to every vibration, as the visible does, it will be difficult to prevent her from being thrilled at his return to her own innocence which once fed his. Death separates individuals, suspends personal intercourse, and lets no knowledge through; but unless it cuts at the same time the unity of laws, and the sympathy of every part of the universe with its own health and order, it cannot intercept these notices, which come and go unnamed. Else whence this emotion at a great moral victory: and why are we mastered by it if it be not larger than ourselves? The bosom is heaped up by a spring-tide whose first wave rose in the depth of heaven's pleasure; it is the rebound of news which earth telegraphs into the invisible. The persons who once

bore the names of Washington, Adams, Franklin, Channing, Parker, may be far enough off in all their business and intelligence, incapable of transmitting a single hint to us, or of receiving a single item from senates, homes and battle-fields, unless the martyrs of the country passed from prison and victory into their society; but if when death breaks a heart its patriotism and its longing for righteousness is not all spilled out, nor its memory for the great questions, nor its vital hoping for the great causes, then prodigal America was welcomed by her children who lived and died for her. Winter cannot freeze deep enough to chill vital joy — too many hearts on both sides of death are alive the principles which are the same in all places that infinite space contains. - too many minds organized upon And all who die with just hearts are detailed upon this secret service — to carry earth's best moments into the company that is all ready with greeting and honor, and to impart the satisfaction, which heaven itself cannot give, that its noblest inmates did not labor on the earth in vain.

Regeneration must always begin with a joy that is proportioned to the shame and the damage which a vicious state produces. The wider the suffering the deeper the triumph. his excesses, and a powerful body and a large intelligence are scarred, this When a man is torn and blackened by power, in returning to the ways of health, fills him with his proper freshness, and when we think he is about to disappear in night, he is a morning star again that sings for joy. When he lets his conscience out of jail, where propensities have kept it, so that it freely walks the great roads of God again, its feeling of harmony is as deep as its previous sense of discord. Though he may never have acknowledged to himself that he had hired himself out to share the husks, and was too proud to accuse himself with entire sincerity, yet his joy at being found is the measure of the Father's joy at finding him. What a confirmation to the truth of such a parable this country gave when, the other morning, it said, "I will arise". and six and thirty

states, torn by shot and shell, blasted by the suffering which their licentiousness engendered, bleeding at a million self-inflicted wounds, brought to death's door in the full flush of intelligence and power, voted at last against death, and arose. I say six and thirty-for the members that have still soundness in them voted for all the members, and bade them all arise and go forth to meet liberation and manhood. Conscience turned the sin out forever. It went, by so many deaths; it passed out, furiously rending, by so many wounds: the great profligacy which had been for two generations wasting our energies, and subsidizing every nerve to promote its pleasure. America was the youngest son of the divine providence. His home was a continent which emerged from the sea sooner than all the other land of this planet, as if to mature while history was gaining experience in other lands. Give me the portion of goods that falleth to me, said at length this son, restless with hopes and unfulfilled desires. The Father set off a portion of his living to his latest offspring, who took it and journeyed into a far country, where wasting its substance in riotous complicity with slavish passions, it fell from fortune to fortune, passing to the condition of a servant,