"No, my star," with a thin hand on her glossy head. "Your medicine makes me well."

"Are you lonely? Would Would you like Twinkle, twinkle?"

"Oh! no, no; quite unnecessary," with a nervous plugging of his ear with one finger, till he was sure she understood.

"Are you poor now?"

"No, child!" with a shudder at her childlike unintentional bluntness; "I am getting rich, like Uncle Tom and other folks. When one has nobody, one is poor indeed." She was looking up at him, puzzled. "I am rich, little star; rich!" stroking back the glossy locks, that fell forward again from under the tender touch of his hand.

It takes more than a day to dispel dark views of life, formed under the cloudy accumulated thoughts of many years. But before another winter, light was shining steadily on old John Parchworth's way. He was the friend of the Westerings, and no longer isolated from the healthy warmth of friendship and home. He had given up planning the treatise that was to bring in with due order the Four Curses of Mankind, and a Fifth if possible. He had discovered that the manifold sorrows of this world are the strong foundation which is everywhere and for ever tapestried over, as with gold and gems and many colors, by sympathy, and charity, and mutual help-by all that good which God has put somewhere, however hidden, in every human heart. Quiver.

SELF-DISTRUST is the cause of most of our failures. In the assurance of strength there is strength; and they are the weakest, however strong, who have no faith in themselves or their powers.-Boree.

[For Manford's Magazine.]

THE CHRISTIAN LAW OF FOR

GIVENESS.

REV. WM. TUCKER, D. D.

of

In the form of prayer given by Christ to his disciples, for the use of his Church, we are instructed to pray that God would forgive our debts, as we forgive our debtors. The divine promise of forgiveness for us is conditioned upon our forgiveness others. For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. Forgive and you shall be forgiven, is the promise and teaching of Christ. To forgive those who injure us, is a Christian duty, binding in Christian morals, and the conditon upon which our heavenly Father has promised to forgive us. To the merciful, God will show mercy. If we refuse to forgive, we shall not be forgiven. This law is adapted to the nature, wants, and circumstances of men, as social beings, and sustaining social and business relations. Society demands just such a divine law. universal practical application would promote the peace, unity, and concord of society as no other law has ever done before. Universal obedience to it would banish from the world selfishness, war, and domestic and social discord. It would establish the universal reign of love, benevolence, and good will.

Its

But what is implied in forgiveness? When we forgive those who have injured us we no longer cherish towards them feelings of anger, hate, and revenge; but feelings of love, peace, pity, and compassion. We would not injure, but do them good

we would not curse, but bless them. We are willing to help them, and to induce others to help them.

Are we required to forgive those

who have wronged us, unless they repent, and ask our forgiveness? This is an important question. It is just here that so many fail in the proper practical application of the Christian law of forgiveness. God demands repentance as a condition of pardon, and they infer that man should do the same.

Repentance is the condition upon which God passes an act of forgiveness; but he cherishes a spirit of forgiveness toward the sinner without repentance on his part. In this regard, we should act toward those who offend, as our heavenly Father acts toward us. We must always love our enemies, and feel for them a spirit of forgiveness; but we are not required to pass to them an act of forgiveness unless they repent. To pass to a man an act of forgiveness is to take him back into our confidence, and treat him as we did before he had ever offended. Before we can do this with safety to ourselves or society, we must have evidence of repentance, proof that the offender has reformed. When this is given, then we should not only feel like forgiving, but forgive. The offender should be restored to our favor, confidence and love, and be treated as a friend and brother. This is the law of Christ. To forgive does not require us to forget the offense. This is impossible under existing laws of mental action. To do it, we would have to destroy the mental faculty of memory. To remember is not an act of will. Memory is not a voluntary act of mind. This being so, man can not but remember offenses. This memory should not influence our conduct and control our action towards the offender. It should not cause us to treat him with doubt and distrust, and influence us to refuse him our confidence and respect.

Obedience to this law is necessary

Mr. Wm. H. Prescott, the historian, lost by death his oldest child—a bright little girl a few years old, to whom he was tenderly attached. It was a severe blow and well-nigh paralyzed him for all work for some time. He was in the midst of the preparation for writing his great history of Ferdinand and Isabella.

As soon as the first shock of the great bereavement was over, he set about reviewing the claims of Christianity to supernaturalism. In 1819, ten years before, he had settled his mind in favor of Christianity and its claims by such study as he was then able to give it. But now he resolved to be more thorough and review all evidences pro and con. Passing by all irreverent and coarse opposers of Christianity, he went at once to the great skeptics to study their reasons for denying it. Then he went to the great defenders of Christianity to study their reasons for believing it. Then he read the four Gospels, comparing them on all the matters of supernaturalism set forth in them.

His friend and biographer, Mr. George Ticknor, gives the following account of this investigation: "What he did on this subject, as on all others,

he did thoroughly and carefully. His secretary read to him the principal books which it was then considered important to go through when making a fair examination of the supernatural claims of Christianity. Among them on the one side (the opposing side) were Hume's Essays,' and especially the one on Miracles; Gibbon's fifteenth chapter and parts of the sixteenth; Middleton's Free Enquiry,' which, whatever were the author's real opinions, leans towards unbelief; and Soame Jenyns's somewhat easy discussion of the evidences, which is yet not wanting in hidden skill and acuteness. On the other hand, (the side of faith) he took Watson's Apology;' Brown's Lectures, so far as they are an amplification of his admirably condensed Essay on Cause and Effect, several of Waterland's treatises; Butler's 'Analogy,' and Paley's 'Evidences,' with the portions of Lardner needful to explain and illustrate them. The last three works he valued more than all the others. But I think he relied mainly upon the Four Gospels and an especial enquiry into each one of the Savior's miracles, as related by each of the Evangelists. This investigation he made with his father's assistance; and when it was over, he said that he considered such an examination, made with an old and learned lawyer, was a sufficient pledge for the severity of his scrutiny. He might have added, that it was the safer, because the person who helped him in making it was not only a man of uncommon fairness of mind, perspicuity and wisdom, but one who was very cautious, and on all matters of evidence had a tendency to skepticism rather than credulity.

"The conclusions at which he arrived were, that the narratives of the Gospels were authentic; that after so

careful an examination of them, he ought not to permit his mind to be disturbed on the same question again, unless he should be able to make an equally faithful revision of the whole subject, and that, even if Christianity were not a divine revelation, no system of morals was so likely to fit him for happiness here and hereafter. But he did not find in the Gospels, or in any part of the New Testament, the doctrines commonly accounted orthodox, and he deliberately recorded his rejection of them. On one minor point too, he was very explicit. He declared his purpose to avoid all habits of levity on religious topics."

Here is an important lesson to all who have doubts about Christianity, that they should carefully, thoroughly and in a judicial and reverent frame of mind, investigate the whole matter with the best helps which are to be had. It is due to themselves, the subject, and the world. Otherwise their doubts are the froth of easily fermented minds, not worthy of intelligent attention. They are of no weight till they are buttressed by a thorough knowledge of the subject to which they relate.

Mr. Prescott, the great historian, who never wrote a word for the public till he knew all about what he proposed to write, spent many weeks with the best helps then to be had, in reviewing the Christian claims, for the comfort of his wounded heart. Others will do well to follow his example.

Then, here is a lesson for all who believe the doctrines of Orthodoxy. In 1824 when these doctrines were in absolute dominance, Mr. Prescott examined the New Testament, as he was examining secular documents, to sift out their truth, and did not find orthodoxy in it. He found a supernatural religion divinely attested, but

not the doctrines peculiar to Orthodoxy. Similar examinations now will doubtless bring similar results.

LIVING INK-BOTTLES. "There is a demand for ink that

will not corrode a pen, will run smoothly, make a perfectly distinct line, and still be indelible," said a chemist, pointing to an array of small bottles and an equal number of very curious animals," and I have been experimenting for several years to see what can be done, but it's up-hill work. The animals that I find most valuable as ink-bearers, and consequently makers, are confined mainly to the tropics. The ink we use to-day, or much of the best of it, is an animal production, or, to be more correct, the result of the work of an animal. Insects as the cynipida, hymenoptera, and others puncture certain plants for the purpose of depositing eggs; and in some way they cause an abnormal growth of the wood, so that the larvæ are in time surrounded by a round ball of wood, out of which the perfect insect finally makes its way. These galls, or those of certain insects, constitute the principal ingredient of certain inks. In our common black ink, Chinese galls and tincture of iron form the principal parts. Sometimes logwood is used; but each dealer has his own secret, and, of course, claims to make the best ink.

"Galls are generally known by common names, and their nature is little suspected by their finders. Many are known as oak apples and currant berries, and in some countries so beautiful are they that they are strung on wire and used in ornamental work of various kinds. so-called Dead Sea apple is nothing more than a gall produced by Cynips insano, and here are some that in

The

California were called flea-seeds. The person who sent them to me insisted that there was something supernatural about them. He brought them in a wooden box padded with cotton, to prevent them, he said, from being dashed to pieces, as they leaped about in a most astonishing manner. Some of them were what are called 'devil beans.' They are minute seeds, triangular in shape, and when placed upon the table they commenced to roll about and leap into the air in the most remarkable way. I cut one open, however, and soon showed the skeptic the motive power, which was a fat, light-colored lepidopterous larva. It was the struggles of this grub that made the seed jump.

"The most curious seeds were those of the tree known as Brincador. They are about as large as those of the mustard, and when they fall from the tree they keep up a continual hopping upon the ground, so that you would assuredly think that innumerable sand-hoppers were jumping about. But the secret is that each little seed contains the larva of a small dark-hued Cynips saltatorius. I have observed this myself, and the noise of the leaping seeds sounds like the pattering of rain upon the leaves, and they can hop a distance of several inches.

"These bottles," said the investigator, holding up several vials containing inks of different colors, "all contain the natural ink of various animals. This one that is so pure a black contains the contents of the ink-bags of cuttle-fishes, and is really the sepia of commerce that was formerly used much more than at present. This is not all taken from living squids. In certain localities fossil squids are found millions of years old, and in the centre of the hardened mass will be seen a small black seem

ing stone, which is the sepia ink. When this is softened, ink can be made from it and is often used.

"Yes, the ink is used to eject when they are followed; it surrounds them like a cloud, and while the pursuer is confused by it the wily squid escapes. Each of these bottles holds ink from a different species, representing the octopus, various squids, and the argonaut. All these inks are very good for certain work, as fine drawing, but the difficulty is to get enough of them. As to its being indelible, here is a handkerchief that I wiped my face with in Florida in 1859. I was fishing for squids, when one of them struck me fairly in the face. I wiped it off with this, and you see that after twenty-odd years it is as black as ever and will probably outlast the cloth.

"Here is a beautiful blue ink," continued the speaker, taking up a small vial in which was a liquid of royal purple that appeared to gain intensity and richness in the sunlight that flashed through the window. "I happened to show this to a gentleman in the dry-goods trade the other day, and he offered me a thousand dollars if I would place the color in his hands in available quantities.. No, I can't do it, and if I could it would be worth more than that, as it is indelible. It is the pure and unadulterated secretion of the little pelagic snail Janthina. I have seen them by the cart-load on the Florida Keys after a storm. The entire water edge would be lined with them. The moment you take them up and press the foot, out comes this magnificent color. I suppose eight or ten drops could be obtained from each one. The shells are about the size of a fivecent piece, extremely fragile, and float upon the surface, kept up by a mass of bubbles of their own making that serves as a raft to buoy them.

The

shell is of the same peculiar hue as the ink, and with the white, silvery bubble attached, as they rush along over the blue water, they present a beautiful appearance.

"Here," continued the experimenter, as he took up another bottle, "is almost the most beautiful blue we can get. It comes from another Southern animal-the physalia, or Portuguese man-of-war. They are extremely poisonous and hard to manage, as this dye or ink comes from the poison tentacles. In catching it, I got it on my arm and it sunk in like indelible ink, so that for some time I was tattooed. The ink may be of use in some way, but it is difficult to get, and so would be too expensive. Here is a purple ink of a dark rich velvet tint that I found accidentally. I was wading along the reef at low tide, when suddenly I stepped upon something that seemed to penetrate my feet like a thousand needles. I partly fell over, but finally got into the boat that I was dragging along, where I found that I had stepped upon an echinus with spines at least eight inches long. It was a most remarkable creature, a veritable porcupine, and I was laid up by it for some time. However, I noticed that each needle-like spine left a purple stain, and by collecting a number of the animals afterwards I obtained this ink, that, if sufficient quantities could be gotten, would be quite valuable. There are hundreds of varieties of these, and nearly all give an ink of different color. Here

one with club spines; they are used as slate-pencils in the South.Philadelphia Times.

HAPPINESS DOTES on her work and is prodigal to her favorites. As one drop of water hath an attraction for another, so do felicities run into felicities. Landor.