just after his soul ascended to his Father. He lay in white raiment, on his couch, as on a triumphal car. And the volume would be bright with the names of Phillips, Potts and Krebs, Knox and De Witt, Maclay and Somers, McClintock and Durbin, Skinner and Alexander, Bethune, Parker, Asa D. Smith, McElroy, McLeod, McCartee, Janes, Hagenay, Rice, Vinton, Hoge, McLane, Mason, Muhlenberg, and others now on the right hand of God! SABBATH AMONG THE HILLS. Never do I feel the power and the beauty of God's word and works more than among the hills! Those familiar passages in the Psalms and in the Prophecies come with energy to the mind when the mountains stand around you as they do about the Holy City, and the hills encompass you like the towers and the promises of the Everlasting God. Once a year I make a pilgrimage to the valley where Williams College stands, in Berkshire County, Mass. Of so many in Switzerland, and England, and America have I said, "It is one of the loveliest in the world," that it seems idle to repeat it of another. But if I were to invent a place for a seat of learning, and a school of science and art, a site for a college, I would pile up wooded hills, around green fields, and through the openings among the mountains that shut out the world and support the sky I would have two rivers of living waters, emblems of knowledge and virtue, flowing gently in; uniting within the vale, they should mingle in the midst of a grove; and then, in one broader and deeper stream, they should flow on through another gateway, with verdant meadows and wild flowers on its banks, into the world to be made gladder and better for its healing and saving power. So is this happy valley. It was a beautiful Providence which guided a soldier, who fell in battle with the Indians before the war of our Revolution, to select this spot in the wilderness as the seat of a school, now a College called Williams, his own name, and it is quite likely that so long as grass grows and rivers run, and hills stand, and men live and learn, this place will rejoice in the wisdom that ordained his choice, and will call his memory blessed. Here, then, I come once more, on the return of the College Commencement season. A few hours ago I was sweltering in the heats of the great city. I am sitting in my overcoat now, on a piazza, and am very cool, if not comfortable. The mercury was 90 in the house in town; it is here about 65, and as it is raining hard, and a tremendous thunder-storm has clarified the atmosphere, the change is so refreshing as to be truly exhilarating. It is a sort of magical transformation that sets one down in such a high valley as this, in the midst of the mountains, so soon and suddenly from the heart of a great city! And its enjoyments have become so well and widely known, that hundreds who have tastes to appreciate the intellectual festivities, as well as the natural beauties and enjoyments of the region, flock hither at this season, and make a high holiday of it in the early summer. This season we miss some who were wont to be here, but the place is full of guests. EXTRACTS FROM MY DIARY. June 29.-Sabbath. Rain. There is no need of saying, “When it rains, let it rain," for when the clouds, with their bosoms full, get in among these hills, they stay, and it keeps on raining with wonderful perseverance. In the forenoon the annual sermon was delivered before the Mills Young Men's Christian Association of the College. The preacher was the Rev. Roswell D. Hitchcock, D.D., Professor in the Union Theological Seminary of New York. His text was from the parable of the talents, He that hath, unto him shall be given," etc. The vein of deep Christian philosophy running through the discourse imbedded in the mind of young men the great truth of the text that having 66 is using, or the result is losing: that the use of talents increases them, the misuse tends to their destruction, so that the analogies of nature confirm the laws of divine grace. A more practical and important lesson the wisdom of the Great Teacher never taught, for in the womb of it are the embryos of all success in this life and of salvation after. Especially in this muscular-development age, when young men's minds are full of the glory that comes from brawn rather than brain, and from brain rather than heart; when the physical is asserting itself over the intellectual, and both are preferred to the spiritual, it was a capital idea with which Dr. Hitchcock was inspired, to put before these young men in the early period of their education the inseparable connection between the improvement and the enjoyment of the talents God has granted. The peculiar sententiousness, the epigrammatic form of expression, the sharp, short and incisive phrase, in which a whole volume of wisdom is concentrated, these are characteristic features of Dr. Hitchcock's way of putting things, and they stick like knives into the memory. The hope would spring up, as he spoke, that under these timely teachings these young men will get impressions that will tell on their entire lives, and bear fruit in ages far beyond the boundaries of time. So influence perpetuates and propagates itself. In lines direct and divergent, mind touches minds, and these others, in many devious courses, till "thoughts that breathe and words that burn" go out into all the earth, unto the ends of the world. In the afternoon President Chadbourne preached the sermon to the graduating class. He seized upon the programme or curriculum of a finished Christian education as marked out by the Holy Spirit in Peter, who bade those whom he taught to add to their faith virtue, in the old sense of the word, manly courage and excellence, then knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness, brotherly kindness, charity. Each and all of these were illustrated and enforced in such strong and earnest terms as to produce on the mirror of a lucid mind the image of a perfect character: a fully-developed, disciplined and furnished man, thoroughly equipped for the conflict and the service of a human life in an age of active mental and moral forces, when inaction is treason, and to doubt is to be destroyed. Toward evening it is the habit of this College, on the Sabbath preceding Commencement, to meet its friends in the Mission Park, where in 1806, by the shelter of a haystack, five students prayed American missions into being. There a white marble has been set up, with a globe on its summit, and the names of the young men on its face. Around this monument, under the shade of giant trees, and beneath the canopy of the sky, we sing the songs of missionary devotion, listen to rousing words, and pray for a fresh baptism of the spirit of the men who made this spot immortal in the memory of the Church. In this out-of-door, under the trees meeting, some years ago, I met the Hon. James A. Garfield for the first time, and heard his voice in the cause of Christian missions. To-day the ground was so wet with recent rain, that we met in the house of God, made with hands, instead of the groves, "his first temple." The venerable ex-President, Mark Hopkins, presided, and spoke with vigor that showed the fire of Christian love brightens as it nears its consummation in joys supernal: Dr. Hitchcock threw his soul into the communion, and talked with us of the Christ in conscious Christian aggression on a world to be saved: Dr. R. R. Booth, of New York city, a graduate of this College in the class of 1849, stirred all hearts with a fervid appeal that the birthplace of American missions might always be filled and be glorified by the spirit of them whose works had in 72 years made the Gospel to surround the globe. Later in the evening the Alumni spent an hour in the chapel praying together, Professor Perry presiding. And so closed the day: a great day: a day of high intellectual and spiritual power, when minds and hearts of educated, thinking men rose into the loftier ranges of Christian enjoyment, and on the mount of vision said one to another, “It is good to be here." A SERVICE OF SONG. It was in the village of Litchfield, Conn., where and when we met of a Sabbath evening for a service of song. Services of praise or song are frequent, consisting, for the most part, in singing miscellaneous hymns, one after another, with no special relation to each other, or to any specific point of doctrine or duty. An hour may thus be passed with delight, but without much profit beyond the enjoyment of the song. Our service contemplated something more. And, having frequently introduced the same thing into the parlor, at thronged watering-places on Sabbath evening, to the great satisfaction of the guests, who enter into it with zest, fervor and spirit, I am quite willing to think the plan has some merit of its own to commend it. The idea is to make the singing of successive hymns answer the higher purpose of praising God, while it illustrates, enforces and tenderly impresses religious truth on the hearts of those who sing and hear. To this end, a portion of Scripture is selected and as many hymns arranged as can be conveniently sung within the time allowed, and these hymns are to be specifically adapted to apply the portion of divine truth. If the congregation has a choir the hymns may be given to it for rehearsal, and in any case it is desirable that no time be lost in "getting ready to sing" after the hymn is announced and read. But the service will be more happily exhibited by giving the programme as we conducted it at Litchfield. The subject and the order may be varied to meet the taste and habits of the people. HYMN. "Come let us join our cheerful songs, With angels round the throne: Ten thousand thousand are their tongues, |