Huygens, showed no small heat in maintaining his ground. And as for the church, the blame of the strife was no more to be laid to her charge than, in the Apocalyptic vision, the blame of the commotion that followed the birth of her child was to be laid to the charge of the woman at whose side stood the great red dragon ready to devour her child as soon as it should be born.-Prof. Blaikie, in the Quiver.

[For Manford's Magazine.] WHAT CAN MAN DO ABOUT DESTINY?

REV. JAMES BILLINGS.

When we reflect upon destiny we can do nothing in fixing its finality. Our destiny for this existence is governed by laws over which we had no control. So it will be in our final destiny. That final destiny must be in the divine purposes of the Infinite Ruler of all things. Reasoning from correct premises, we must conclude that the final destiny of man will end in good, to the honor and glory of Infinite Wisdom, Goodness, Mercy

and Love.

While we apprehend that man has a freedom which changes the conditions of life here in this world, and may somewhat affect conditions in the next life; yet that freedom cannot produce a condition that will defeat the destiny which will harmo nize with the nature and character of the Supreme who planned that destiny.

How the abuse of freedom will affect our condition, and to what degree, we are unable to determine. God only knows; but this we can safely conclude, that it will not subvert the purposes of God and prevent a holy and happy destiny of all intelligences.

Finite man cannot tell how long it

will take to cure a moral breach. That final destiny and condition which Universalism contemplates is peace, harmony and love; but whether it will be reached in a short time, or will take ages, we cannot tell. It is reasonable to suppose that the less we abuse that freedom, and the sooner we begin to live upright, and practice that which will make for peace, harmony and love, the better it will be for all, and the sooner we shall reach that condition of destiny. We believe that it is in our power to hasten the time of that final condition.

We have among us many making great professions, many calling themselves evangelical, who suppose that if all are to arrive at a holy and happy destiny-if all are to be surrounded with conditions of peace, harmony and love that it matters not what we do here in this world.

In looking at destiny from their standpoint, that it is secured upon the principle of fraud and insolvency, they are unable to see why we are in duty bound to live an upright life. We ask, by living in an inharmonious condition what do we see? We see our prisons full of culprits; our courts busy trying to make the moral crookedness of the world straight. By not listening to the lessons that a sure retribution teaches, we see all the moral evils of humanity. Refusing and neglecting to learn by experience, man retards his advance

ment.

Therefore, notwithstanding man is controlled and governed by a Supreme power and force, he can use to his advantage, and that of others, the freedom that God has given him, to enter the kingdom of peace, harmony and love here in this life. And when it is in our province to learn some of those beautiful lessons to-day, and reach some of the benefits, we esteem

it a great gain to live in the line of duty here in this world, even if all men arrive at the same destiny.

HOW LITTLE CHILDREN STUDY

NATURE.

This morning my little boy (five years old) was amusing himself by cutting open seeds to find their germ. He had been soaking the seeds between two pieces of flannel in a basin under the stove, and the shapes and sizes and colors of the various germs furnished him with a most fascinating amusement. He got the idea of his flannel-garden from Jacob Abbott's "Caleb in Town." This, I know, is a small beginning, but still it is a beginning, of the study of botany. The knowledge obtained is slight, but the development of the power of observation is great; and this is one of the most important faculties to develop in young children. Too many people, young and old, go through the world without a suspicion of the wonders they are treading under their feet.

I knew a little boy, of about four, who for a whole summer spent many hours every week examining the spider webs round the yard and garden. Each web and its occupant had an individual interest for him, and he noted with wonderful accuracy the peculiarities in the building of web and the mode of securing prey. The spiders had their loves and their hates, their plans and their surprises, and the little boy enjoyed their world as he might fairy-land. . . .

If children were not so often taught by their parents and nurses the ridiculous theory that toads make warts, and that they are "horrid, nasty things," I am sure they would find great entertainment in feeding the toad with flies and other dead insects they may pick up. We have had pet ones in the garden every summer,

Tadpoles from any pond or roadside ditch are always entertaining pets. Any basin of water with a little mud or stones at the bottom will give them a happy home, and their changes are rapid enough to interest a child. The little feet come out so prettily and the poor little tail dwindles and falls off, and we have our tiny frog or toad, a perfect image of his larger brothers. brothers. I am sure any child who has once watched these changes will never need to be reminded of them in his study in after-life.

The bees that frequent every garden are also capable of furnishing pleasure and profit to a child, if the notion of fearing them can be avoided. Teach the child not to molest them-let him fear the consequences of that but do not teach him to fear them when they are quietly doing their work in their own way. The great, buzzing bumble-bee coming out of the hollyhocks gives one a nice story to tell a child. He can plainly see the dusty pollen on the bee's legs and body, and we can tell of his little brushes and baskets and the "bee's bread," as well as his store of honey. My little boy has also been much interested in the bees mixing the pollen of flowers and causing the varieties of color. He has noticed it particularly in his special bed of petunias in his own garden, where he revels as he likes.

It is a very good plan to give a child some plant or plants for his own. I find that my garden never con

tains the wonders in my baby's eyes that his own does. His is mostly, as I have said, a great bed of petunias. They are emphatically children's flowers, growing quickly and blooming profusely, and with enough variety in color to make each flower a surprise. The little child in taking his flower to pieces-and that, of course, is always his first desire--soon finds that the pistil and the seedvessel are connected, and soon he wants to know what the seeds are and what they do. The story of this can be made charming to almost any child who has become interested in the seed-cups. The seeds themselves are a great source of pleasure to children as the season advances, and they learn much about their shape and arrangement when they are apparently merely playing with them. What baby who knows anything of a garden has not spent happy hours playing with hollyhock cheeses?

There can be no surer way of teaching little children color than by interesting them in the garden flowers. Girls generally learn colors some time in their lives, both from choice and necessity; but boys have but a poor chance unless we begin with them while young. I find that my little boy, who has spent the greater part of his summers in our garden among the flowers, not only knows all the primary colors, but has a wonderfully quick eye for the different shades, and often detects various tints in certain mixed shades.

I have found the true names as easy and pleasant for a child as any invented, babyish ones could be. In

deed, I was called to account by a little boy last summer when I inadvertently called petals leaves. It is of great value to the child, to increase his vocabulary, to give him more material for expressing the ideas that are coming upon him so fast.

The garden in the early morning is sometimes covered with mist or fog, and I have found it a great help, in easing Baby's disappointment while he cannot go out, to tell him to watch the fog and see it rise and rise, higher and higher, till at last it floats off over the tree-tops, and he can see it only as a white cloud sailing in the blue sky above him. The clouds, with their ever-varying forms, will thus become some of Baby's friends. He will be getting at home in Nature.

These are a few of the ways in which I have seen children study nature, but, of course, there are many more, as endless in number and variety as Nature herself.-From article by Margaret Andrews Allen in Babyhood.

"DOE THE NEXT THYNGE."

On great occasions Grandmother Hallett wore a chain about threequarters of an inch wide, netted of strong silk, and on every stitch was slipped a crystal bead for the foundation.

The knitter must have had both skill and patience, for knit in with black beads a very trifle larger than the white ones, so they stood out from the back ground clearly, was her name "Roxana Robinson Hallett, born at Weymouth, Mass., June 7, 1787." This was followed by the quaint old motto, "Doe the next thynge."..

One warm morning, out in the milk-room, when Grandmother had borne with greater patience than usual my many raids upon the delicious white curd, I ventured to ask what "next thing" meant, any way. "Mercy sakes, child, what air you talking about?" she queried.

Finally I made her understand about the chain and its motto, and she explained the matter thus:

"It's doing with your whole heart,

the duty that God wants done first. Now, the "next thing" for me, is to get this great cheese into the press just as quick as I can, for I want to go over to 'Siah Perkins's this afternoon and help his wife spin some wool. You see he has been sick so long she is about beat out taking care of him, and her spinning is all

behind hand."

"I should think you would go Dow," said I, "it is more of a 'next thing to help folks than to make this cheese."

"Sakes alive, child, you don't understand. Do you think God set 'Siah Perkins's wife nigher to me than your ma-my son's wife? Does He want me to go off looking after something to do for Him, and leave your Ma, poor sickly cretur, to handle this great cheese, besides taking care of the baby? Don't you believe no such thing. When He waifts me to go to 'Siah Perkins's, there won't be anything to hinder.”

Then she gave the snowy cloth loving little pats that smoothed it into place as the hoop was deftly placed in the press.

"Could any body as little as I am, do the next thing,' do you think?" "Why, of course," she answered, "Every one can do it, and if they only would, how different things would be."

That very day mother left me to rock the cradle while she attended to some matters up stairs, and as soon as the baby dropped asleep, off I rushed to dig some sweet flag roots to make candy for us children. I was running with the spade in my hand, and with hair streaming in the wind, when the thought came, this is not the "next thing," by any means. After considering a moment, I went back to the baby.

When the Presiding Elder preached that powerful sermon here, that re

sulted in so many conversions, he told for one thing that Carlyle said, "Do the duty first that lies nearest thee," and that his sainted mother used to express the same idea, by "Doe the next thynge," and found it a good working motto. The very nearest thing to us all, he said, was our duty to God and to our fellow men. Mrs. Seymour was so much impressed by it, that she had it engraved on the inside of her watchcase, and talked a great deal about forming a Club, and living up to it. I think she honestly tried to, but we didn't hear much about the Club after she went to see Robbie Lewis, a little colored boy over in the Hollow, who had broken his leg. found him on a poor, uncomfortable bed, trying to mend his sister's doll, while on the wall behind him, just within reach of his hand, was pasted in large letters, evidently cut from show bills, "Do the next thing."

She

"Where in the world did you get that, Robbie?" asked Mrs. Seymour.

"I don't know, ma'am, I mean I have been trying to do it more than a year, now. I pasted them letters there this morning, for if God wants me to lie here for the next thing,' I was afraid I might forget and think I wasn't doing anything, you know, and so get cross and trouble mother."

You remember Winnie Percy and her dainty ways, do you not? She is one of us, and her fine culture and training, her tact, her talent, and her energy, are being used down in Georgia among the Freedmen. That was "the next thynge" for her, and she says it was wonderful to see the enthusiasm in her school-room when she received a handsome motto sent out by Mrs. J's Sunday-school class last winter. It was on cream-colore satin, "Doe the next thynge," in the loveliest shades of brown, entwined

with blue forget-me-nots. All of the girls helped about it but Mollie Seymour. She said her fingers couldn't hold a needle to embroider with, or some such nonsense, and rushed off home when the work was planned. We all wondered at her queer behavior, for when Miss Percy used to teach that class, Mollie used to think more of her than any one.

But the matter was satisfactorily explained, when the very day the embroidery was finished, Mollie brought a handsome frame for it, which she had carved herself. You see she hates needlework, and has a passion for wood-carving. She learned something about it when she visited her sister in Cincinnati, last year, and is determined to learn more. She declares it is more respectable to earn her living as a wood-carver, than a second rate music-teacher. Just now she insists that whittling is "next" for her.

Miss Percy says the motto is hung over her desk and facing the school, and she is sure some of her scholars are beginning to comprehend that a duty done, makes way for the "next," and is a stepping stone to higher possibilities..

You were asking about that miserable “den" on the corner, and how we managed to close it. Well it closed itself after a while, but the true-hearted mothers in the village were the real compelling force. There were a few who felt in their souls, that the welfare of their boys was "nearer" to them than fancy work, or faultless housekeeping, or even the delights of an uninterrupted course of study.

When one mother, missing her boy, had the moral courage to go after him there, and to take him away from shaking dice and smoking cigarettes in an atmosphere thick with smoke and foul with oaths, it

was a little easier for the next oue to go upon the same errand. In a little while it was not a very pleasant thing for the keeper of the shop to meet these earnest, indignant women, who considered the welfare of their boys before their own convenience or preferences. The shop was no longer spoken of under one's breath as something that must bẹ tolerated, but was openly condemned until no boy from a respectable family would be seen going there. It was the old story of "The Spider and the Fly," but when the fly utterly refused to enter the web, of course the spider was powerless.

You understand now, why the preacher called this a good working motto. It is simple enough for the use of a child, and yet it reaches out to the highest things of life.

He has endeavored to impress upon us, that all the little details of church work, and temperance work, of missionary labor and of charitable endeavor, are the duties that lie nearest to some one, and that only by doing these "next things" will the way open to wider fields.-From article by Sarah A. Gibbs in Woman's Magazine.

HOW TO SUCCEED.

Some theological students, desirous of getting all possible information in relation to the work of convincing and persuading men, went to an auctioneer and asked him the secret of his success in his work. He said,

"Well, by talking right to 'em. I am up there to sell the goods anyhow; that is the first thing. Then I know what sort of talk such chaps like to hear; so I give 'em a little story now and then, or a bit of poetry, not too much, or they will take the story and the poetry instead of buying the goods. I am all the time thinking how to sell the goods,