man.

ness are everywhere opening, and the professions are making room for woIf we follow these pursuits, it must be with the modesty and dignity that belong to our sex. There is no call for us to be like men. If we are lawyers, lecturers, preachers, teachers or merchants we must still be women. Not boisterous, defiant, or rascally—not simpering silly, help less creatures. But true, refined, honest, earnest, faithful women.

I

would a thousand times rather woman would remain as she is, making no advancement, gaining no achievements for her sex in a public way, for the next hundred years, than that she should lose her influence as a moral power. Yet if we can go into public life and bring this influence to bear in business and political circles, as well as in private life, the world will be greatly blest. As an evidence that women do not understand their best power to-day, we hear everywhere an unwarrantable clamoring for the privilege of the ballot. Unwarrantable for many reasons. First, the right is as justly woman's as it is man's. It is exclusively, in his hands only by the presumption that "might makes right," or that "possession is nine points in law." Morally we are under no more obligation to ask of men the privilege of voting than are they to ask the same of us.

The present condition of things however is wrong, but there are many wrongs to be righted before we reach the true interpretation of the relation and responsibility of the sexes.

When we as women have realized and performed our duties in a moral and social way, and used wisely our holy influence as wives, mothers and sisters, these wrongs will give way as ice before the sun. When we have done our perfect work; and used as sacred, the especial power with which God has entrusted us, there will no

longer be any denial of the legal rights. Society will be purified, all will see the justice of our claim and yield to its dictates. In a very vital sense the destiny of our country is in the hands of woman. The sins of society are the most poisonous and deadly of all. Thence they extend into our homes and churches, into business and political circles.

In society the reform must begin, and woman must be the leader, for she is the controlling spirit there, either for good or ill.

God has delegated to her a power for righteousness, given to no other being, below the angels, and equal to the gift is the responsibility.

In our especial domain we may wield a scepter ten thousand times as mighty as the ballot. Our mission is not to shout in the political arena, not to parade with sparkling array of gaudy robe and nodding plume, but by firm unyielding devotion to the good and true, stamp our own image upon the world, giving no sanction in home or society to anything impure, shielding no sin, not even in those we love the deepest. O! I would that we might learn true independence. I do not mean, to live without the love and care and protection of our husbands, sons and brothers, we need ten-fold more of these all. But we should learn to be so firm in the

right, so true in our special domain. of morals as to yield our integrity to no power on earth. Right here is our strength. Here are the impliments of warfare that God has put into our hands, and with these we may make society almost what we will. And for these powers entrusted to our keeping and use we are strictly accountable to God.

ILL Success sometimes arises from the superabundance of qualities in themselves good.

OUR WORK.

Work is honorable. Not to work is dishonorable. All able bodied men and women ought to earn a livelihood in some way. This is the way God has intended us to live. There is ample room for åll to work at something honorable and legitimate. In making a living we have no right to engage in a business which will bring ruin upon others. Our business should be strictly honest and productive of good for ourselves and others.

There are many false views entertained in regard to our surroundings and the work we ought to accomplish. Too many want to step into the chief places, where money is made easily and honors come without much expense and seeking. Hence many of our professions are overrun, and many places are filled by unqualified, unworthy persons. Others are disposed to regard the whole of this life as a world of chance, at best, where one goes up and another goes down, as it may happen. Others are disposed to put sober realities from them under the old expression, "There is a time for all things." They fail, however, to realize the full meaning of the sentence by which they seek to justify their negligence. There is a time for all things, and if we let the time in which certain duties are to be performed, pass by, we can never recall it.

one

pre

So much has been lost never to be regained. Just as soon as moment of time is given us the ceding moment is taken away. So if we improve all our time we must do it as it comes to us. We do nothing either in the past or future. Whatever we do is done now, to-day, and not to-morrow, for to-morrow never comes in this grand sense to

work successfully, we must have a suitable preparation. The necessity of preparation is admitted by all who have had any experience along the rugged pathway of life. Failure comes nine times out of ten because of no preparation, or an inadequate preparation. No one is fully prepared for a useful life who has not accepted Christ and entered upon the way of life eternal. Christ came into the world to elevate humanity, to make the world better, and to open out a way by which the sorrowing ones of earth could find a home in heaven. Life is the school for heaven. Here we are fashioned into the likeness of Christ so that we may become saints in glory. Life with its manifold disappointments, its burdens and anxieties is a real friend to us. Through this experience-school we mount up higher and higher till the perfect day ushers us into the presence of God and the saintly hosts, who have graduated from this same school. If in this life there were no labors and burdens to be borne there could be little or no advancement for us. The things which, at the time, seem grievous, which we want to cast off, are for our good.

"Are

Have

But the questions come up: we doing the best we can? we done so? And are we willing to do all the good we can? Who can answer all these questions in the affirmative? The best of us must confess with shame that we have not always done the best we could. We sometimes err, sometimes procrastinate important things, and do not always do just what we want to do. Paul had the same trouble, and until our poor humanity is reconstructed this same trouble will continue to exist till the hour of our exit comes. The great aim of some people is to kill time. Such a thing as a life purpose and a life-work has never entered

Captain wherever he may lead us, and the final victory, the honors and the blessings will be ours.-The Christian.

[For Manford's Magazine.]

NO ROOM FOR HIM AT THE INN. ARTHUR E. COTTON.

Of the many dogmatic opionions respecting the place of Christ in history, that which simply ascribes to Him divinity suits me best. Most heroes suffer from too close study. Not so Christ. The more one contemplates Him, the greater becomes the admiration; those sinless years under the Syrian sky.

The Tübingen school may invent fine terms with which to reject Him; Renan may quietly dismiss Him with a negative nod of the head, yet all these go no great way with one who has ever felt the inward magic of this name. No amount of sophistry or smooth rhetoric will count much with them. That He is human I believe. His humanity is clearly apparent at every step of his terrene tour. We see it at Gethsemane. We see it at the grave of Lazarus. We see it at Jacob's well. We see it on the Mt. of Olives and again on Calvary.

That He is divine, I also believe. Were any proofs of this wanted, it is elaborated very distinctly by the impetuous Peter; whose unmated companionship with our Lord gives his testimony additional weight. Others of the inspired penmen are not less emphatic. And Christ's direct self-assertiveness to Phillip in the supper-room should be cited. But throwing aside all external evidence of the fact, something within him assures man of the Divine Supremacy of the masterful mechanic whose wondrous love saves man from the grave, Christ crucified and risen! Oh, where in all romance can you

find so sweet, sweet a story. Give Him thine heart! It is all he asks in return He who adores and admires, worships. God cares not for the bodily attitude so that the heart confesses. No people in the world were ever so intensely religious as the Scottish cottagers. A chapter out of the old Bible, a hymn, a cleansing prayer in rough every day speechthis was their homely ritual.

The crucial test of the vitality of a doctrine is time the mighty destroyer. It is the same in the intellectual as in the material world. That built of wood soon decays, that built of stone will withstand the wear of ages. While that not built by man, endureth forever.

Past religions have been local and racial, and have died with the race and locality that established them. In India ruin marks the spot of the sacred Hindoo temples whose standing columns are wound with ivy. double-headed Brahma, and Vishnu, the terror of the wicked, are parts of old mythologies.

The

Mohammedism still exists. But compare the bloody battle-fields, the tens of thousands of slain and wounded, the cities sacked and committed to the flames, the desolation and misery of the inhabitants under him, or enter into his retirement where he lived with his wives and concubines. I say compare these as the works of Mohammed with the meek and lowly Jesus, whose last words on the cross were, "Father forgive them for they know not what they do." Then compare the morals and intelligence of the people over which Mohammedism sways, with those with which Christianity has to do. Is my friend satis

fied?

Nineteen centuries, lacking one decade, have passed since Christ's historical manifestation. Yet to-day the eyes of His adoring subjects

converge upon His sacred person with an intensity hitherto unknown. He is as real and personal to them now as he was to His disciples who broke bread with Him, and knew the wonderful pressure of His hand.

Tens of thousands have died for Him, have bled for Him, have suffered for Him, and would now. Genius has turned her testimonies into His footsteps, and wealth flowed into His channels. This could not be were He merely man. He is the second Adam that was to bruise the serpent's head. The bridge that spans the divide between earth and heaven-the one Meadiator between man and his God.

Elevating women out of an ignominious vassalage; establishing universal education, universal communication, universal union and, in international disputes, preventing the crimson effusion of blood-letting by setting up arbitration; solacing the sick and afflicted with the light of a prophetic repose; eliminating the principle of fear from the factor of death; bringing within the love light of faith the way word brother or erring father; an emancipator of races, a benefactor to the poor the religion of Christ stands first and pre-eminent among the leavening influences of the world.

That series of accidents, incidents, and tendencies which in the abstract is termed life must have had an author. The flowers of the field and the stars of heaven could not come without hands. Everybody at times feels the insufficiency of his surroundings, and lives in hope of being sometime better than what he already is, of meeting in the beyond the loved and the lost; such is immortality. There is a principle in the world. which consists in during for others, and we call it love; but no love transcends, no love can ever transcend,

that which Jesus bore His kind. The God of life, the God of nature, the God of immortality, the God of love. is coeval with the God of Abraham, the God of Jacob, and the God of Lazarus.

[For Manford's Magazine.] PALMYRA AND ZENOBIA.

REV. E. CASE.

There are few things in the world that are more interesting and ennobling to the generous mind, than to go back into the old mysterious ages of the past, and by a touch of the magic wand of the imagination, call up again the glorious cities of old, in all their beauty and magnificence, and people them again with those whose names have come down to us in history as famous for some great genius, or some transcendant virtue, or excellency. Ever since we were a boy this has been our delight, possessing a charm quite as enchanting as the witchery of some wierd Arabian tale. The fall of empires. with which the death of great characters is so immediately associated, possesses a prescriptive title to all our sympathies; forming at once, a magnificent, yet melancholy spectacle, and awakeing in the mind all the grandeur of solitude.

Who would not be delighted to make a pilgrimage to the East to see the columns of Persepolis and the still more magnificent ruins of Palmyra, where awe springs personified from the fragments, and proclaims instructive lessons from the vicissitudes of the past. Let us indulge ourselves for a little, and see what we can see while we lift the veil and go back and gaze on one of the most wonderful cities, and one of the most wonderful women of which history gives any account.

Between Damascus and the Euphrates river, on which stood ages