to earn yet greater and more lasting fame. Our parochial schools may be come the rudimental nurseries, and our colleges, and especially our divinity halls, the finishing gymnasia of a race of men who shall aim at carving higher trophies than flags and standards rolled in blood-nobler badges than mimic stars and glittering dust."

come and go; I helped Shoofoo build the great pyramid; I knew Egypt when it hadn't an obelisk nor a temple; I watched the slow building of the pyramid at Sakkara. Did I not transport the fathers of your race across the desert? There are three of us-the date palm, the pyramid and myself. Everything else is modern. Go to!""

Very graphic, indeed, is this sketch; and yet it lacks fullness. Mr. Warner owed little to the camel. He saw it from the deck of a Nile boat, as for months he lazily and leisurely floated between the river banks. He took good care not to venture into regions out of which no living creature but the camel could have extricated him. I rarely see camels led through the streets by travelling showmen, but what I have a desire to walk by the side of the gawking, ungainly animal, pat him on his long neck, and bless him for the faithful services his race has rendered me. Once, and only once, it looked as if he felt a grim satisfaction in almost pitching me off his lofty back in front of Shepherd's hotel in Cairo. I thought such a lunge, just then and there, was uncalled-for. One dislikes to have his sense of diguity wounded by flinging his heels towards the stars, and setting donkey-boys, Bedou

I have lately read Charles Dudley Warner's "My Winter on the Nile," a very entertaining book, and instructive as well. Many things in old Egypt impress him oddly, and he has an original and unique way of describing them. His ascent of the Nile in a small sail-boat is like the slow unrolling of a panorama, placing before one's view all manner of scenes painful and picturesque. The following is his pen picture of the camel on the banks of the Nile: "The long, bended neck apes humility, but the supercilious nose in the air expresses perfect contempt for all modern life. The contrast of this haughty stuck-up-ativeness' (it is necessary to coin this word to express the camel's ancient conceit) with the royal ugliness of the brute, is both awe-inspiring and amusing. No human royal family dare be uglier than the camel. He is a mass of bones, faded tufts, humps, lumps, splay joints and callosi-ins and stately tourists laughing at your ties. His tail is a ridiculous wisp, and a failure as an ornament or a fly brush. His feet are simply big sponges For skin covering he has patches of old buffalo robes, faded and with the hair worn off. His voice is more disagreeable than his aplerance. With a reputation for patience, he is snappish and vindictive. His endurance is overrated-that is to sty, he dies like a sheep on an expedition of any length, if he is not well fed. His gait moves every muscle like an ague. And yet this ungainly creature carries his head in the air, and regards the world out of his great brown eyes with disdain. The Sphinx is not more placid. He reminds me, I don't know wny, of a pyramid. He has a resemblance to a palm tree. It is impossible to make an Egyptian picture without him. What a Hapsburg lip he has! Ancient, royal! The very poise of his head says plainly, 'I have come out of the dim past, before history was; the deluge did not touch me; I saw Menes

expense. But after bearing one hundreds of miles through a country, whither no other beast of burden could thus serve you, your gratitude leads you to forget all his faults. How patiently he jogs along through the tedious, winding ravines of the peninsula of Sinai. Carrying a two-weeks' supply of provision for you, stowing away water for his own use in the cask which Nature gave him, whilst that for his rider's use he bears in large casks on his back. His endurance may by some be overrated, yet a beast that can carry 600 to 800 pounds of luggage for weeks in succession, over roads that horses could not endure for a week, has ro mean powers of endurance. What if he should strike for higher wages in the heart of the wilderness, as do the boatmen on the Nile! Just where he has you in a tight place! Is there any other beast of burden that kneels down to enable its rider to mount and dismount, as does the camel? That carries its burdens over such a distance,

while it lives on meagre desert fare? For all his great services one may well endure his growling and grumbling, his lofty bearing and disdainful turning up of his nose at the new-fangled follies of modern times; his jolting and longswinging gait; his fits of peevish though harmless opposition to the piling of large bales on his back. True, in our own country we would not commend him as a first-class roadster; but in those parts to which he is specially adapted, he is worth more for real service than great multitudes of horses of as rare blood as those of Vanderbilt and Bonner.

The fastidious stylish tourist, whirled through eastern lands with comfortable modern speed, or lolling on his Nile boat in oriental ease, can frivolously spin out his spicy paragraphs on the repulsive and uncouth habits of the camel, with brilliant effect. He seems to judge from a wholly modern and Americau point of view, uamindful what a service this animal has rendered to the eastern world since the time Abraham came out of Mesopotamia. Laban and Jacob had and needed many. Job had 3,000, and the Reubenites took 50,000 in a single battle. (1 Chron. 5: 21.) The magnitude of oriental caravans is measured by their number of camels. The largest of these are those of the Mohammedans on their pilgrimage to Mecca, starting from Damascus in Syria, Cairo in Egypt, Bagdad in Persia, Morocco in Africa, and Yemen in India. The smallest of them usually number 4,000 camels and 10,000 pilgrims. A few years ago the one from Syria numbered 15,000 camels and 60,000 pilgrims. In 1254 a caravan of Mecca pilgrims numbered 120,000 camels and dromedaries, and nearly 250,000 persons. All over the eastern world, one can to this day witness scenes like that which the sons of Jacob saw, when the Ishmaelite merchants passed through Canaan "with their camels," bearing merchandize to Egypt. The camel is the freight-car of the east, the great oriental engine of transportation; and he does his work cheaply and well. He will carry 700 pounds of goods from Bagdad to Aleppo, a distance of six hundred miles, for twenty dollars. The heavy baggage or freight camel travels about eighteen miles a day. The lighter

and more fleet-footed passenger camel can amble nine miles an hour, if need be and if pressed can travel more than five times as rapidly. He is known to have travelled at his regular gait for sixty hours without stopping. He can keep up steam, without feed or fuel, for twelve consecutive hours. His spongy feet are only suited for dry, sandy soil; in wet, clayey soil he moves with difficulty.

Let the foregoing suffice as an appreciative, kindly word for this uncomely, unadmired animal, from one who owes much to his faithful service.

Some twenty-five years ago a young man crossed the Mississippi river with but a dollar and twenty-five cents in his pocket, on his way to the Rocky Mountains, afoot, studying law beside campfires. He practiced sober habits, not touching strong drink. And daily he kuelt before God in prayer. Governor of Kansas, a man highly esteemed for his correct principles and pure life. Speaking of his early years, he says:

He is now

"I could not waste myself. I had my way to make in the world. Young men, if you intend to win, you must work. There is no easier road. How I escaped the pitfalls set for the feet of such untaught boys as I was, can only be explained in one way. In it all the thought of my mother and her pravers had to my heart the force of a guardian angel's care."

We confess to a great respect for Governor St. John; not because he is Governor of Kansas, which he is said to govern well, but because, from a boyhood of poverty, he walked in the way his pious mother had taught and trained him with unfaltering steadfastness, turning neither to the right hand nor to the left. Guided by the light of her prayers, he acted as though she were still personally and visibly at his side; he strove to live in a manner worthy the son of such a mother. It is a great honor to become a good governor of a state, but a far greater honor to acquire habits of godly living, and build up a character of unblemished Christian integrity.

Many of our best German hymns were This hymn, printed on broad sheets, written during the period of the Thirty was soon circulated all over the coun- Years' War, from 1618 to 1648. Durtry, and became an inspiriting battle-ing this period contending armies swept sung among the Reformation host. back and forward over the fairest parts During the darkest period of German of Germany. Whole villages were dehistory many earnest men thought the populated. Cities, once large and flour

"All glories of this earth decay,
In smoke and ashes pass awa
Nor rock nor steel can last.
What here gives pleasure to our eyes,
What we as most enduring prize,

Is but an airy dream that fadeth fast."

ishing, were reduced to forty or fifty inhabitants. Remnants of ruined towns sought shelter in the fields and forests. Le psich was besieged five times, Magdeburg six times. The churches were robbed and ruined, and their bells cast into guns. Protestant and Romanist A very sad life fell to the lot of this princes were pretty equally matched, Silesian poet. Before he was twenty-five and kept on their mutual destruction his father died from poison, and his during a whole generation. It is said mother, brother and sister from sickthat at the close of the war, over a large ness. He suffered from want, often from extent of country, four-fifths of the hunger. Fire drove him from one unipopulation and more than four-fifths of versity, and the plague from another. the property had been destroyed. Few He endured persecution for conscience' people, save old men, women and chil- sake, and was brought to the very verge of dren, were left. It required two hun- the grave by a lingering illness. At the dred years for Germany fully to recover age of forty-seven, while taking part at from the effects of the Thirty Years' a meeting of the Estates of Glagau, he War. During this pressing, crushing died suddenly of apoplexy. Possibly in and desolating period, the pure oil of his long illness he wrote his hymn, "Es sacred poetry, full of divine unction, ist vollbracht! Gottlob es ist vollwas poured out of many believing bracht!"

hearts.

It has always been so. The first hymn recorded in the Bible was sung on the shore of the Red Sea, whence its melody floated over the submerged oppressors of Israel. "When the Church becomes visible her voice becomes audible." This first recorded song was the beginning of Church song. All the best hymns are in some way associated with battle and blood. The Psalms of David and Deborah were written not in soft "literary retirement," but amid the clash of arms and horrors of persecution. "The battle songs of the Church are written on the battle-fields." Her true poets are among the "heroes in the strife;" and they are "singers because they are believers."*

Amid this long night Martin Opitz wrote his hymn, "O Licht, geboren aus dem Lichte:"

"It is finished! Praise God, it is finished."

Paul Rinkert, the son of a cooper, wrote but one hymn which has continued in use, so far as we know. But this one has few equals of its kind. It is the German Te Deum-"Nun danket alle Gott:"

"Now thank we all our God

With hearts and hands and voices,
Who wondrous things hath done,
In whom His world rejoices;
Who from our mother's arms

Hath blessed us on our way,
With countless gifts of love,

And still is ours to-day."

He wrote towards the end of the war,

when he saw the light dawning in the

distance. Yet he too was made to feel

the sorrows of the times-of war, pesti

lence and famine. He was archdeacon in his native town of Eilenburg, Saxony. His pastorate began before the war and lasted till after its close-thirty-one years. All this while he suffered in various forms. Soldiers were quartered in his house; he was repeatedly plundered of his grain and furniture. The town was over-crowded with fugitives, when the plague broke out, of which eight thousand died in one year. At the beds of the sick and dying he

Andreas Gryphias wrote "Die Herr- did the work of three men. He himself ichkeit der Erden :"

*The Voice of Christian Life in Song.

buried more than four thousand people. Then came the famine. Thirty and forty starving people might be seen

never introduce any of them into the worship of his own flock. Many of those in use are advent, penitential and funeral hymns, evidently suggested by the seriousness of his times.

Johann Heerman was a Silesian by birth, as many other hymn-writers were. A gentle, mild soul from his childhood, he made many friends who favored him in various ways. He spent six peaceful years as a pastor at Köben. This period he calls "the Sabbath of his life," happy "in his work, his marriage, and his friendships." At thirty-two, his wife died, his health failed, and the cruel war began. Silesia was made the football of contending armies. Now the Protestant

fighting on the street for a dead cat or
crow. Rinkert gave all but the meager-
est rations needed for his family to the
starving wretches who crowded around
his door by day and by night. Then
came the Swedish army, and demanded
thirty thousand thalers from the im-
poverished town. In vain the faithful
pastor interceded with the commanding
general. At last he turned to the citizens
and said: "Come, my children, we can
find no hearing, no mercy with men,-
let us take refuge with God." In the
presence of the Swedish general, Rinkert
and his famishing Eilenburgers fell on
their knees. His earnest, moving prayer
touched the heart of the general, or,
rather, God did it in answer to his pray-pastors
er. The sum demanded was reduced to
two thousand florins. Rinkert not only
gave all he had to the suffering, so that
he had great difficulty to find bread and
clothing for his children, but he mort-
gaged his future income several years in
advance. And yet this sorrow-stricken
man, during his long night of woe, could
write his great hymn of praise. How
his grateful, hopeful spirit shames the
despondent croakings of people who,
even amid the blessings of peace and
plenty, are not contented.

Johann Ri-t, the son of a pastor, was dedicated to the sacred office before his birth. His ministerial fidelity was worthy of his high calling. He studied at a number of Lutheran and Reformed universities. Although a minister in the Lutheran Church, he was a Christian before he was a Lutheran. His charity towards the Reformed provoked the censure of some of his less liberal brethren. He was greatly blamed for not preaching enough against heresy, as some Lutherans called the doctrines of the Reformed Church. To this he replied, that "he believed there were not above a couple of strangers in his congregation who held false doctrines, but plenty of people who led sinful lives; and to accuse men of heresy never produced a loving, fruitful faith in them, only pride and impulses of batred." He spent his ministerial life as pastor of a church on the Elbe, just outside the city of Hamburg. He is said to have written six hundred and fifty-eight hymus. Whilst they were highly prized and used by many congregations, he would

were banished from their churches, to make room for Jesuit priests; then the latter were again displaced by the former. At the close of the war, the Evangelical or Protestant religion was almost entirely swept from Silesia. Only in three towns a small wooden building was permitted to be erected for Protestant worship, and these had to be outside of the walls. Persecuting Poles and Cossacks were employed to re-introduce the Catholic religion. They would quarter rude, plundering soldiers on Protestant families, with license to gratify their appetites at will, until the head of the family, to escape the horrors of their cruelties towards his wife and children, would present a certificate from the priest that be had been to confession. This alone would arrest their violence. Their general boasted that whilst St. Peter converted thousands with a sermon, he converted thousands without a sermon. Köben was plundered four times; every time Heerman lost all his goods. Often his life was in danger; several times he fled; once he was concealed for seventeen weeks. During these stormy periods he wrote the most of his many hymus. Amid the desolations of these times, when the Church often seemed well nigh extinguished, he wrote the larger number of productions. Into the following he and the Church of his day poured out their sad cry to God: “Z:on Klagt mit Augst und Schmerzen:"

"Zion mourns in fear and anguish,
Zion, city of our God;
Ah, she saith, how sore I languish,
Bowed beneath how hard a bad: