significant truth, that "the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath." From the close air of crowded cities, from thronged temples and synagogues, where priest and Levite kept up a show of worship, drumming upon hollow ceremonials the more loudly for their emptiness of life, as the husk rustles the more when the grain is gone, He led His disciples out into the country stillness, under clear Eastern heavens, on the breezy tops of mountains, in the shade of fruittrees, by the side of fountains, and through yellow harvest-fields, enforcing the lessons of His divine morality by comparisons and parables suggested by the objects around Him or the cheerful incidents of social humanity, the vineyard, the fieldlily, the sparrow in the air, the sower in the seedfield, the feast and the marriage. Thus gently, thus sweetly kind and cheerful, fell from His lips the gospel of humanity; love the fulfilling of every law; our love for one another measuring and manifesting our love of Him. The baptism wherewith He was baptized was that of divine fulness in the wants of our humanity; the deep waters of our sorrows went over Him; ineffable purity sounding for our sakes the dark abysm of sin; yet how like a river of light runs that serene and beautiful life through the narratives of the evangelists! He broke bread with the poor despised publican; He sat down with the fishermen by the Sea of Galilee ; He spoke compassionate words to sin-sick Magdalen; He sanctified by His presence the social enjoyments of home and friendship in the family of Bethany; He laid His hand of blessing on the

sunny brows of children; He had regard even to the merely animal wants of the multitude in the wilderness; He frowned upon none of life's simple and natural pleasures. The burden of His Gospel was love; and in life and word He taught evermore the divided and scattered children of one great family that only as they drew near each other could they approach Him who was their common centre; and that while no ostentation of prayer nor rigid observance of ceremonies could elevate man to heaven, the simple exercise of love, in thought and action, could bring heaven down to man. To weary and restless spirits He taught the great truth, that happiness consists in making others happy. No cloister for idle genuflections and bead counting, no hair-cloth for the loins nor scourge for the limbs, but works of love and usefulness under the cheerful sunshine, making the waste places of humanity glad and causing the heart's desert to blossom. Why, then, should we go searching after the cast-off sackcloth of the Pharisee? Are we Jews, or Christians? Must even our gratitude for "glad tidings of great joy" be desponding? Must the hymn of our thanksgiving for countless mercies and the unspeakable gift of His life have evermore an undertone of funeral wailing? What! shall we go murmuring and lamenting, looking coldly on one another, seeing no beauty, nor light, nor gladness in this good world, wherein we have the glorious privilege of laboring in God's harvest-field, with angels for our task companions, blessing and being blessed?

To him who, neglecting the revelations of imme

diate duty, looks regretfully behind and fearfully before him, life may well seem a solemn mystery, for, whichever way he turns, a wall of darkness rises before him; but down upon the present, as through a skylight between the shadows, falls a clear, still radiance, like beams from an eye of blessing; and, within the circle of that divine illumination, beauty and goodness, truth and love, purity and cheerfulness blend like primal colors into the clear harmony of light. The author of Proverbial Philosophy has a passage not unworthy of note in this connection, when he speaks of the train which attends the just in heaven :

"Also in the lengthening troop see I some clad in robes of triumph,

Whose fair and sunny faces I have known and loved on earth.
Welcome, ye glorified Loves, Graces, Sciences, and Muses,
That, like Sisters of Charity, tended in this world's hospital;
Welcome, for verily I knew ye could not but be children of the

light;

Welcome, chiefly welcome, for I find I have friends in heaven, And some I have scarcely looked for; as thou, light-hearted Mirth; Thou, also, star-robed Urania; and thou with the curious glass, That rejoicest in tracking beauty where the eye was too dull to note it.

And art thou, too, among the blessed, mild, much-injured Poetry?

That quickenest with light and beauty the leaden face of matter, That not unheard, though silent, fillest earth's gardens with music, And not unseen, though a spirit, dost look down upon us from the stars."

THE LIGHTING UP.

"He spak to the spynnsters to spynnen it oute."
PIERS PLOUGHMAN.

THIS evening, the 20th of the ninth month, is the time fixed upon for lighting the mills for nightlabor; and I have just returned from witnessing for the first time the effect of the new illumination.

Passing over the bridge, nearly to the Dracut shore, I had a fine view of the long line of mills, the city beyond, and the broad sweep of the river from the falls. The light of a tranquil and gorgeous sunset was slowly fading from river and sky, and the shadows of the trees on the Dracut slopes were blending in dusky indistinctness with the great shadow of night. Suddenly gleams of light broke from the black masses of masonry on the Lowell bank, at first feeble and scattered, flitting from window to window, appearing and disappearing, like will-o'-wisps in a forest or fireflies in a summer's night. Anon tier after tier of windows became radiant, until the whole vast wall, stretching far up the river, from basement to roof, became checkered with light reflected with the starbeams from the still water beneath. With a little effort of fancy, one could readily transform the huge mills, thus illuminated, into palaces lighted up for festival occasions, and the figures of the workers, passing to and fro before the windows, into forms of beauty and fashion, moving in graceful dances.

Alas! this music of the shuttle and the daylong dance to it are not altogether of the kind which Milton speaks of when he invokes the "soft Lydian airs" of voluptuous leisure. From this time henceforward for half a weary year, from the bellcall of morning twilight to half-past seven in the evening, with brief intermissions for two hasty meals, the operatives will be confined to their tasks. The proverbial facility of the Yankees in despatching their dinners in the least possible time seems to have been taken advantage of and reduced to a system on the Lowell corporations. Strange as it may seem to the uninitiated, the working-men and women here contrive to repair to their lodgings, make the necessary preliminary ablutions, devour their beef and pudding, and hurry back to their looms and jacks in the brief space of half an hour. In this way the working-day in Lowell is eked out to an average throughout the year of twelve and a half hours. This is a serious evil, demanding the earnest consideration of the humane and philanthropic. Both classes-the employer and the employed - would in the end be greatly benefited by the general adoption of the "ten-hour system," although the one might suffer a slight diminution in daily wages and the other in yearly profits. Yet it is difficult to see how this most desirable change is to be effected. The stronger and healthier portion of the operatives might themselves object to it as strenuously as the distant stockholder who looks only to his semi-annual dividends. Health is too often a matter of secondary consideration. Gain is the great, all-absorbing object. Very few, compara