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Show GEMS OF THOUGHT. A bird sings, a child prattles, but it is the same hymn: hymn indistinct, inarticulate, but full of profound meaning. mean-ing. Victor Huga. 3 Tribulation is G-od's own crucible. The zeal that is born of honesty is the white fire that melts the soul; and patience pa-tience is the mould in which it gets its perfect shape. Henry Norman. I don't know, after all my oIserva-tion oIserva-tion and experience, that one lot in life is much worse or better than another, so far as happiness goes, but there are somethings that seem very neees-sary neees-sary to us, and that little corner in God'ea creation we call home, is one of them. Donn Piatt. Knowledge alone will not suffice, and and a merely philosophic morality has no significance or efficacy for the multitude. multi-tude. The moral dynamics of a people peo-ple lie in its religion. Society rests on conscience, not on science. Bp. Spalding. Spald-ing. $ We are here as apprentices, to learn the art of service. No grief, no lesw, no ptern discipline, no dreary failure, no misery of death, but shall one day find its compensation In that great fitness fit-ness for service which it shall have wrought out in us, Mark Guy Pearse. How strangely mysterious is the law that presides over the departure of souls from this world! Young or old. tarnished by vice or resplendent with virtue, they disappear into silence; they go forth without telling who sum-i sum-i mons them, without saying why or how. Their face suddenly sets towards eternity and looks back on us no more, so irresistible is the beauty that enraptures, en-raptures, or the power that seizes them. A voice has called them in the eternal distance. A sound has vibrated, like a funeral reveille, which they alone can hear. And, while ignorant of what thus absorbs them, we still seek to retain them, to speak to them, noinelessly they escape without bidding bid-ding us farewell, gliding as invisible phantoms from our loving hand. Abbe Bolo. -?- The fact of the universality of religion re-ligion challenges attention and provides pro-vides of itself an argument, which cannot can-not be evaded. To speak with Herbert ! Spencer, religion is 'everywhere present pres-ent as a weft running through the I warp of human history.' Long ago Plutarch wrote: 'You can see cities without walls, without law. without money, without writings; but a people without a God, without prayer, without with-out religious acts, no one has yet e vet-seen.' vet-seen.' And Cicero made this statement: "A nation barbarous and ferocious may not know which God to honor, but it knows it ought to have some- God.' Since the days of Plutarch, anil oC Cicero, all tribes of mankind, even ia most remote corners, have been questioned: ques-tioned: a tribe having n religion has not been discovered. For a while it ha 1 been ."aid: Inhabitants of Zululand and of Australia are without religion of anv kind. A closer examination, ho.vever. gave the contrary conclusion; the religious element, if never so dimmed dim-med and degraded, was not absent front those peoples. Archbishop Ireland. It was not law. but love, that brought Thee down. From out he heights of love's infinity. And that each day is rolling like h sea Its splendor over all the hate and frown That drove Thy childhood from its native town Of Methlehem to wander, bound, yet f free. In love's own silken cords of rlestiny f Until God's own love formed Thy jewtlled f crown. I It was not dogma, hate or law. but lovw That lifts the broken h?art of time to f Thee j In Thv rjear realms of love, in heaven -A above. ! Where Thou shalt reaign unto eternity. J Hence do we crown Thee, Xing-like, in I a rrav. V Atid nour our tribute on this blessed day. I; W. 11. Thorne: Songs of the Soul.. f O. trobled heart, why thus oppressed! j This broken, suffering life may rest On Him whose everlasting arm ! Protects His feeblest child from hi'.rm, ' He knoweth that His will we seek. Though spirit tail and flesh be weak; The pitying love to which we trust Kemembereth that we are but dust, To bear in patience, day by day; To count the blessings on my way; To lift to clod a grateful heart: To wait His time be this my part! These davs of weariness and pain May brinj their meed of truest gain. And lengthening nights of sad unrest. And lonely hours, may all be blest. J. E. Lyman. |