the learned Mosheim calls him, was a Universalist. At another time I may make quotations, to show how they reasoned on the subject and what were their chief scripture proofs.

Germany is said to be a century in advance of any other nation in Biblical knowledge; and scarcely a learned man in that country believes in the endless punishment of the wicked. This is proved by ministers of the Orthodox churches in our country who have traveled and spent much time in that country. Distinguished men in the English church have avowed their belief in universal salvation. Canon Kingsley, Prof. Maurice, and Archdeacon Farrar, are of the number; only the last slightly demurs, but teaches the doctrine plainly. From the ministers that preach to the queen, it is evident that she is a Universalist.

The doctrine has been preached in America almost since the settlement of Plymouth, as shown by a history of the doctrine recently published. All that I have said, and much more, concerning the doctrine in the first ages of the church, may be found in a valuable work by Doctor Edward Beecher, the best scholar of the Beecher family, unless Prof. Stowe be reckoned as one of the family, and perhaps even then. And, alluding to the common idea that Universalism has a bad tendency, he boldly asserts that the church was never so pure as when that was the general belief. And by the side of this statement I venture to place another, namely, that the church was never so corrupt as when endless torment was preached from every pulpit. "It was not this doctrine that made the church corrupt." I did not say it was, did I? Your affectionate

UNCLE WILLIAM.

A RED-HEADED FAMILY.

Of all our wild American birds, I have studied no other one which combines all of the elements of wildness so perfectly in its character as does the ivory-billed woodpecker, (Campephilus principalis.) It has no trace whatever in its nature of what may be called a tameable tendency. Savage liberty is a prerequisite of its existence and its home is the depths of the woods, remotest from the activi ties of civilized man. It is a rare bird, even in the most favorable regions, and it is almost impossible to get specimens of its eggs.

It is curious to note that-beginning with the ivory-bill and coming down the line of species in the scale of size -we find the red mark on the head rapidly falling away from a grand scarlet crest some inches in height to a mere touch of carmine, or dragon's blood, on crown, nape, cheek, or chin. The lofty and brilliant head-plume of the ivory-bill, his powerful beak, his semi-circular claws and his perfectly spiked tail, as well as his superiority of size and strength, indicate that he is what he is, the original type of the woodpecker, and the one pure species left to us in America. He is the only woodpecker which eats insects and larvæ (dug out of rotten wood) exclusively. Neither the sweetest fruits nor the oiliest grains can tempt him to depart one line from his hereditary habit. He accepts no gifts from man, and asks no favors. But the pileated woodpecker, just one remove lower in the scale of size, strength, and beauty, shows a little tendency towards a grain and fruit diet, and it also often descends to old logs and fallen boughs for its food-a thing never thought of by the ivory-bill. As for the rest of the red-headed family, they are degenerated species, though lively, clever, and exceeding

Our red-headed woodpecker (Melanerpes erythrocephalus) is a genuine American in every sense, a plausible, querulous, aggressive, enterprising, crafty fellow, who tries every mode of getting a livelihood, and always with success. He is a wood-pecker, a nut-eater, a cider-taster, a judge of good fruits, a connoisseur of corn, wheat, and melons, and an expert fly-catcher as well. As if to correspond with his versatility of habit, his plumage is divided into four regular masses of color. His head and neck are crimson, his back, down to secondaries, a brilliant black, tinged with green or blue in the gloss; then comes a broad girdle of pure white, followed by a mass of black at the tail and wing-tips. He readily adapts himself to the exigencies of civilized life. I prophecy that, within less than a hundred years to come, he will be making his nest on the ground, in hedges or in the crotches of orchard trees. Already he has begun to push his way out into onr smaller Western prairies, where there is no dead timber for him to make his nest-holes in. I found a compromise-nest between two fence-rails in Illinois, which was probably a fair index of the future habit of the red-head. It was formed by pecking away the inner sides of two vertical parallel rails, just above a horizontal one, upon which, in a cup of pulverized wood, the eggs were laid. This was in the prairie country between two vast fields of Indian

corn.

The power of sight exhibited by the red-headed woodpecker is quite amazing. I have seen the bird, in the early twilight of a summer evening, start from the highest spire of a very tall tree, and fly a hundred yards straight to an insect near the ground. He catches flies on the wing with as deft a turn as does the great-crested fly-catcher. It is not my purpose to

offer any ornithological theories in this paper; but I cannot help remarking that the farther a species of woodpecker departs from the feeding habit of the ivory-bill, the more broken up are its color-masses, and the more diffused or degenerated becomes the typical red tuft on the head. The golden-winged woodpecker (Colaptes auratus), for instance, feeds much on the ground, eating earth-worms, seeds, beetles, etc.; and we find him taking on the colors of the ground-birds with a large loss of the characteristic woodpecker arrangement of plumage and color-masses. He looks much more like a meadow-lark than like an ivory-bill! The red appears in a delicate crescent, barely noticeable on the back of the head, and its bill is slender, curved, and quite unfit for hard pecking. On the other hand, the downy woodpecker and the hairy woodpecker, having kept well in the line of the typical feeding habit, though seeking their food in places beneath the notice of their great progenitor, have preserved in a marked degree an outline of the ivory-bill's color-masses, degenerate though they are. The dwarfish, insignificant looking Picus pubescens pecking away at the stem of a dead iron-weed to get the minute larvæ that may be imbedded in the pith, when compared with Campephilus principalis drumming on the bole of a giant cypress-tree, is like a Digger Indian when catalogued in a column with men like Goethe and Gladstone, Napoleon and Lincoln.

I have been informed that the ivory-bill is occasionally found in the Ohio valley; but I have never been able to discover it north of the Cumberland range of mountains. It is a swamp bird, or rather it is the bird of the high timber that grows in low wet soil. Its principal food is a large flat-headed timber-worm, known in

"I had turned in late, and got to sleep on a tussock under a big pine, an' slep' tell sun-up. Wull, es ther' I laid flat er my back an' er snorin' away, kerwhack sumpen tuck me in the face an' eyes, jes' like spankin' er baby, an' I wuk up with er gret chunk er wood ercross my nose, an' er blame ole woodcock jest er whangin' erway up in thet pine. My nose hit bled an' bled, and I hed er good mint er shoot thet air bird, but I cudn't stan' the expense er the thing. Powder'n lead air mighty costive. Anyhow I don't s'pose 'at the ole woodcock knowed 'at hit 'd drapped thet air fraygment onto me. Ef hit 'd er 'peared like's ef hit wer' 'joyin' the joke any, I wud er shot hit all ter pieces ef I'd er hed ter lived on turpentine all winter!"

Of the American woodpecker there are more than thirty varieties, I believe, nearly every one of which bears some trace of the grand scarlet crown of the great ivory-billed king of them all. The question arises-and I shall not attempt to answer it—whether the ivory-bill is an example of the highest development, from the downy woodpecker, say, or whether all these inferior species and varieties are the result of degeneracy? Neither Darwin nor Wallace has given us the key that certainly unlocks this very interesting mystery.

...

In concluding this paper a general description of the male ivory-bill may prove acceptable to those who may never be able to see even a stuffed specimen of a bird which, taken in

every way, is, perhaps, the most interesting and beautiful in America. In size 21 inches long, and 33 in alar extent; bill, ivory white, beautifully fluted above, and two and a-half inches long; head-tuft, or crest, long and fine, of pure scarlet faced with black. Its body-color is glossy blue-black, but down its slender neck on each side, running from the crest to the back, a pure white stripe contrasts vividly with the scarlet and ebony. A mass of white runs across the back when the wings are closed, leaving the wing-tips and tail black. Its feet are ash-blue, its eyes amber-yellow. The female is like the male, save that she has a black crest instead of the scarlet. I can think of nothing in Nature more striking than the flash of color this bird gives to the dreary swamp-landscape, as it careers from tree to tree, or sits upon some high skeleton cypress-branch and plies its resounding blows. The species will probably be extinct within a few years. From paper by Maurice Thompson in the Library Magazine.

[For Manford's Magazine.]

TRUE WISDOM.

REV. JACOB. MERRIFIELD.

The wise man is a character not merely of a given sect or school or station, but of a certain power and action in judgment in the decision. of his life. Wisdom is not the exclusive property of the wealthy, nor of the scientific, nor of the literary, nor of those who are generally styled "the educated;" for men may possess great mental power, and may be trained to great efficiency of mind for the pursuit of science, for the classification of knowledge and for the accomplishment of literary work, while still lacking in that spiritual knowledge, and that divine judgment which in the highest degree declare

man's supremacy over all other creatures, and his likeness of nature to creation's source.

Every scholar may wonderfully excel-every scholar actually excels men who are not scholars, he excels them in his specialty; but at the same time he may know scarcely anything beyond the scope of that specialty, and may be utterly incapable of a just decision as to the truth, the right and the good of many things; his understanding of the principles and relations of being may be deficient; he may not discern the absolute of truth and the essence of good, nor see how they are applied;

he

may

lack wisdom.

So, too, one may excel in a knowledge of the ways of the world, and may have acquired a high art of management with regard to those ways, so as to be sharp in conceiving plans and skillful in executing them -keen sighted and practiced in ingenuity and force for getting ahead; knowing just how to put himself forward so as to prosper in gain, in personal distinction, in popular favor, and in all wordly honor, while still lacking in true wisdom-while still not entitled in the true sense to be called wise; for men may be eminent in conventional life-may attain to high distinction in worldly-wiseness and profit and honor, while ignorant of the essence of truth-strangers to to the highest incentive to action and the purest uses of being, and utterly incapable of any just and final judgment as to life and truth and good in their real substance and in their pure manifestation.

In the religious world also men may be deeply learned in theological teachingwell versed and well trained in a given system of divinity -may rank high as teachers and leaders in all matters of doctrine and of discipline-may even rise to the

highest eminence by the brilliancy of their attainments and by the power of their eloquence, and yet be destitute of true wisdom. They may be wise in all this in a worldly and calculating way-for the attainment of personal ends and the advancement of their individual interests; but they still lack the wisdom which is from above. Their wisdom is the wisdom of policy and not of principle.

The

A certain scripture says, "They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars forever and ever." This originally is a Hebrew sentence in which, in accordance with Hebrew usage, the latter clause is a reiteration of the former in a different array of words and in a kind of explanation of the sense. They who are wise, then, and they who turn many to righteousness are the same characters. wise are they who turn, not only themselves, but others also to righteousness- -to rightness of life-to the right state of their being. seems to be the sense of the passage. Therefore this scripture is the expression of a divine word; for whatever we recognize as divine within ourselves confesses to the sentiment that he who unselfishly and efficiently devotes his being to the betterment thus of his fellow beings, is the one who is truly wise, whatever may be thought or said of him by the calcu lating and policy-minded souls around him.

This

Moreover as we pursue our thought, we shall see cause to conclude that those who turn the greatest numbers to righteousness are not always the individuals who by their great eloquence and their strong personal force draw admiring crowds after them, as if they were some great ones, not always those who through fluent and sensational discourses on

popular topics, and by the arts of personal persuasion with which they may be gifted, win the multitude to their side, not always those who number their converts by the thousand and get to themselves a great name and great gain. These are not always the ones who turn the most to righteousness, for in all this doing there may be no higher motives concerned on the part of both those who move and those who are moved, than motives of policy and personal interest. Therefore there may be no real turning to righteousness in the case. -hence no true wisdom.

The true wisdom is that of Christ -the wisdom which is but the legitimate expression of love. This is the wisdom that declares itself through the enterprise of helping men attain to rightness of life, or as the scripture expresses it, turning them to righteousness. To this enterprise the being of Jesus was devoted; the mighty love of humanity that ruled his being moved him to consecrate his life to the work, before all personal and selfish interests. This was the true wisdom-the wisdom which is divine and eternal, though to the eye of worldly policy it appears as folly.

Those among men now are also truly wise who like Christ devote their power to the betterment of man's life, to the enlargement of the field of knowledge and to the promotion of right-mindedness and true-heartedness, or in other words, divine knowledge and heavenly af fection.

These turn men silently, without ostentation, parade of profession or machinery of proselytism. Their

work is but little noted by the sensuous eye. They are unknown to fame and strangers to the honor and riches and delight of this world. They may never add names to the world's

church-roll, nor number their proselytes by the score; but they are daily adding souls to Christ, and bringing men into the spiritual and true assembly whose head is Christ—thus turning many to righteousness.

Many such loving spirits--unpretending and unassuming souls-are now dwelling in the obscurity and poverty of the world, unnoticed and unappreciated by "the great," the rich and the famed, but working, as they pray, and weep, and hope, and wait for the coming of their soul's hope the turning of the world's heart from selfishness to righteousness, the dawning and the rising glory of a day of better things than man on earth has yet seen.

These are they, too, who shine in the realm of truth-in the reign of Christ and of God-shine as the stars forever-i. e. continually, with a brightness which is but the spontaneous expression of their inner purity. They shine not with the affectation, pretension or profession of working for God and doing good, but from the pure and simple outflow according to the nature of their heart's affection for good; just as the stars spontaneously and naturally glow with light and beam forth into the depths of space from the energy of the pure fire of their own being.

"SPIRITS IN PRISON."-An Extract. "Christ went and preached unto the spirits in prison." 1 Pet. 3: 19.

"The statement is explicit that there was a prison in which spirits were prisoners; if that place was not in the spirit world, where and what was it? Our answer is, the prison is the human, material body. In that, during this life, the immortal spirit is confined. St. Paul calls it a tabernacle. The poets speak of it as a tenement, a close, immured wall.' In dying the body gives up the