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leave it thus free and unoccupied? Does the devil, like such parents, leave it to its own choice? He knows his interest better. Sin has increased all the while, and Satan has spared no pains to warp the affections, to turn the soul from God, and darken the mind. We need only to look round, to be convinced that children thus abandoned by their parents, are any thing but free: they are rather the veriest slaves to the wickedness of their own hearts.

Christ was born a child, in order that grace might start with sin. He was born, in order that birth might be sanctified, and the family pervaded with divine powers. He grew, in order that children might grow in Him. and through the training of their parents, might attain unto the true Christian character.

THE GERMS OF THE BEAUTIFUL.

Scatter the germs of the beautiful,

By the wayside let them fall,

That the rose may spring by the cottage gate,

And the vine on the garden wall.

Cover the rough and rude of earth

With a veil of leaves and flowers,

And mark with the opening bud and cup
The march of summer hours.

Scatter the germs of the beautiful

In the holy shrines of home:

Let the pure, and the fair, and the graceful there,
In their loveliest lustre come.

Leave not a trace of deformity

In the temple of the heart;

But gather about its hearth the gems
Of Nature and of Art.

Scatter the germs of the beautiful
In the temple of our God-
The God who starr'd the uplifted sky,
And flower'd the trampled sod.
When he built a temple for himself,
And a home for his priestly race,
He rear'd each arch in symmetry,
And eurved each line in grace.

Scatter the germs of the beautiful
In the depths of the human soul;

They shall bud, and blossom, and bear the fruit,
While the endless ages roll.

Plant with the flowers of charity

The portals of the tomb,

And the fair and the pure above thy path

In Paradise shall bloom.

-Drifted Snow Flakes.

PREACHERS AND PATENT MEDICINES.

Judging from the advertisements, the quack-medicine business must be the most extensive and profitable business now going. Every newspaper one takes up, is found filled with solid columns of puffery in English, of more or less detestable wretchedness, setting forth the merits of somebody's great all-curing "pill," "powder," "bitters," or "syrup." To take these advertisements at their word, a man must be a fool to be sick, and to die is only the last blunder of an idiot.

Το pay for these advertisements, somebody must buy the pills or syrups. Those who buy them, of course, must eat and drink them. Who are these people? The amount of trash gorged in the shape of patent medicines, must be enormous, we would say, enough, year by year, to sink a tolerable navy. The advertisements and agencies, the bottles, boxes, corks, labels, and the rest, could not be paid for otherwise; nor could the inventors and proprietors make the fortunes they do. Who are the unfortunates who sacrifice themselves for the good of others, by devouring stuff, compared with which the Prince of Pontus' "asp and basilisk and toad," were wholesome butcher's meat?

It is dreadful to contemplate. The amount of wretched apothecaries' refuse poured down the throats of our unfortunate fellow-citizens—m men made like ourselves, with the same hopes and fears, with the same style of stomach and nervous apparatus, with brothers and sisters, and fathers and mothers, and may be wives and babies, like other human beings-is a question to appall the stoutest heart. And then, to consider the infinite extent of simple credulity and child-like gullibility which must exist in a community, where reasoning creatures will swallow any thing, with a nicely printed label surmounted by a quack's head with "M. D." under it-this, too, is amazing. The "age of Faith" has certainly not passed away. Every apothecary's shop is witness to its existing and flourishing, at least among ourselves. We are a believing people, if we are only well humbugged.

The question of health is a too serious one to discuss here. But we suppose the health of the American people," about which we hear so much, must be naturally immense, if it shall remain in any appreciable quantity, after two more generations of drug-devouring, at the present rate of increase in that department of national enterprise."

We do not, however, write this to discuss the quack business. We suppose there must be men and women who eat the various "pills" we see advertised, and who get to like them; who drink the villanous " "syrups and "bitters," and think them "the milk of paradise;" who deliberately put it out of their power to die a natural death, like ordinary Christians, or to have any known human sickness, with a proper scientific name to it. Such strange tastes there must be; and the enterprising pill maker or syrup boiler goes into business to supply the taste. But certainly all will agree that such a peculiar taste ought not lightly to be encouraged. On the

whole, wholesome bread and butter, and beef and mutton, fresh air and the great "out of doors," are better living than the finest "sugar-coated” or aromatic" going. People should be encouraged to eat wholesome food. Children should be brought up to look to the butcher shop and bakery for their dinners. It is not well to lunch on "Brandredth's Pills," or make one's usual beverage "Ayer's Sarsaparilla." The drug-eating taste is an acquired taste, strong though it be, and is not, after all, though we contradict the advertisements, a wholesome taste.

The taste, however, appears to be on the steady increase; and there is one cause for this which we have never seen noticed, and which is certainly suggestive.

There is not a new nostrum, cooked for the stomachs of the drug-eating public, that has not the vouchers of a half dozen "Reverends," of as many of the Evangelical denominations." No "medical almanac" is complete without a list of wonderful cures, certified by "the Rev. Gullible Gubbins, Presiding Elder," etc., or by Elder W. Gudgeon, of the First Church.” etc. No wonderful column of Testimonials" to the "great, all-curing Life Syrup and Pain-Killing Elixir, warranted to cure, or the money refunded," is without the name of the Rev. Gander Gray, the eloquent pastor" of some simple flock of one of the "persuasions." Even the most clumsy hair-dye some villanous compound of nitrate of silver red-lead and alcohol-will parade its list of Sectarian "Reverends" and "Doctors of Divinity," whose red locks it has changed to purple, and whose gray whiskers it has converted to a lovely blue-black!

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The thing cannot be too gross or too worthless, the humbug cannot be too vile, to find "Reverends" certifying to its excellence. The extent to which the clergy of "the various denominations" have gone into this business of puffing quackery, is astonishing to any one who has not kept track of it.-N. West Church.

GET A HOME, AND KEEP IT.

A leading object with every young man should be to secure for himself a permanent home. And for its greater stability, it should consist partly in land, and, up to a certain limit, the more of it the better, if paid for. The house should be as comfortable and attractive as one has the means of making it. It should be one that the heart can grow to, and will cling around more and more firmly with every passing year. Its owner should desire and purpose to keep possession of it as long as he lives, and his children should grow up feeling that there is one place fixed and stable for them, amid all changes.

Americans are altogether too roving in their habits. We build houses cheaply, and pull them down without regret. Or we sell out and move away a half-dozen times in a lifetime, in the vain hope of bettering our condition. How much better to choose a homestead early in life, and then lay plans with reference to abiding there. Even though our gains be less than are promised elsewhere, a certainty should seldom be given up for an uncertainty. "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush."

Only those who have experienced it, know how firmly a family become attached to their long-loved homestead. No children love home so well as those who have known only one. As the young become of marriageable age, they should go out, one by one, from the old homestead, feeling it to be a model after which their own should be established, and knowing that this will remain unchanged as long as the parents live, a place to which they can return, and where they will be ever welcome. A pleasing writer confirms our doctrines thus: "There is a great gain in being settled down. It is two-fold. Each year accumulates about the farmer the material by which labor is lessened. The rough channels of labor become worn and smooth. A change involves a great loss, and rarely is there a corresponding gain. Time is lost, labor expended, money paid out, and wear and tear of removal is no small item; and above all, the breaking-up of old associations is often disastrous in the extreme. Parents and children become unsettled in their habits, if not in their morals. Let the man who has a homestead, keep it; let him that has none, get one, and labor to render it a treasured remembrance to the absent and a constant joy to those who abide in it." To all which, every intelligent, thoughtful person must give a hearty approval.-American Agriculturist.

"THY KINGDOM COME."

BY BLANCA.

"Thy kingdom come," from one frail generation
Unto another, doth the prayer still rise;
From year to year, from distant land and nation,
Tongue after tongue uplifts it to the skies.

"Thy kingdom come," fresh baby lips have uttered,
Midst the first words its mother bids it speak;
"Thy kingdom come," tired-out Old Age hath muttered,
Whilst yearning tears stray down his furrowed cheek.

When chill Disease hath made our spirits mournful,
When Death appears, and rudely strikes us dumb,
When the rough world turns from us harsh and scornful,
With sickened souls, we pray, "Thy kingdom come."

Thy kingdom, where at morn no sudden waking
Shall plunge us in a whirl of mortal cares,
Thy kingdom, where thy peaceful sceptre taking,
Thou, visible, shalt hear thy servant's prayers.

Long, long the night hath been, and cold, and dreary,
Yet hopeful still, to watch, to toil we rise;

Our Lord delays His coming, we are weary;
When will He come to bless our waiting eyes?

THE EARLIEST CHRISTIAN HYMN.

The poetry of the early days of the Christian Church possesses peculiar interest for the disciples of Christ, in that it was written when there was a freshness of joy in the Church, which too rarely now shows itself. In the second century of the Christian era, this hymn was written by Clement of Alexandria. The translation, herewith presented, was made by the Rev. E. W. Plumptree, M. A., Professor of Theology, King's College, London. The hymn is styled, in Daniels' Thesaurus Hymnologicus, III., 3. Hymnos ton Soteros Christon. Prof. Plumptree introduces it to his readers with the following:

"The hymn stands in close relation to a treatise bearing the title Padagogus, the Guide of Children, the Instructor: i. e., according to the full meaning of the word, whose function it was less to impart knowledge than to train character, to guard from the contamination of evil, to guide the daily life. The central thought of the treatise is, that the true Guide is none other than the Divine Word, the Son of God, the man Christ Jesus. Entering with a simplicity and minuteness which might almost cause a smile, if it did not also awaken our love and reverence, into all the commonest details of daily life, the good old man passes in review the temptations of luxury, self-indulgence, vanity, licentiousness, to which the young Christians of Alexandria were exposed. As throwing light on the habits and modes of thinking of the time, the contrast between the new Christian society and the old dying heathenism of the empire, these details, however trivial, are often full of interest. *** At the end of the discourse, however, Clement passes from rules and precepts to a higher strain, and pours out, still in the same prose as before, a prayer to this Divine Instructor, that He would be gracious to his children; grant them, by following His precepts, to fill up the image of His likeness, to think of God with all their strength, as being not an austere, but a perfectly gracious Judge, . . . as citizens living in His peace, translated into His city, passing stormlessly over the sea of sin, sharing the calm serene of the Holy Spirit, and His ineffable wisdom, by night and by day, even unto the perfect day, to praise and give thanks always to the Father and the Son, to the Son and the Father, the Son who guides and teaches, with the Holy Spirit; all to the ONE, in Whom are all things, for Whom all things are One, for Whom is the Everlasting Now, Him the Beauteous, all for Him the Wise, all for Him the Just. Such a prayer, full even to the bursting of the very soul of adoration, could not but pass into a hymn of like character. Every thought, image, parable, similitude, which, in the course of the book, had suggested itself as setting forth the work of the Divine Teacher, pours, as in a rushing mighty wind,' through all his soul, and he speaks as those may have spoken, who told of the great deeds of God, the Spirit giving them utterance. In the trains of thought and feeling, and short incisive rhythm, and passionate exclamations, rather than continuous trains of

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