endured by the dying man. He arose from his chair; he reeled over the room like a drunken man; he imitated all the nauseating performances of a vomiting drunkard, and then fell into a river, and went through a drowning scene. When all was over, the spirit of a drowned man took possession of Mr. Edson, and he groaned like one in despair: the performances were ready to begin again.

"What is the matter with you?"

"O woe! woe! woe!" said the medium. "Are you in the bad world ?"

"Bad! bad!"

How does it appear?"

Exit drunken man; and, by the way, who that same man may have been I have never found out; I suppose the letter containing the account of his death miscarried. Once more Mr. Edson endured the death struggles. He sprung into the middle of the room, changing his face to a Roman look, turning down his nose till it was a true Roman, and in haughty tones exclaimed,

"I am Pontius Pilate !"

It became me to keep very circumspect in such an august presence. I asked many questions. Pilate kept up a perpetual

good medium ?"

"Yes; but you lack faith."

"Will I ever be a medium ?'
"Yes."

"How long first ?”
"In a year."

"Will spirit communication become so common, that all people will accept of it?"

"In five years the glorious light will so dawn, that it will spread everywhere, and become the religion of the country, and all will acknowledge the glorious light." Exit Paul.

Mr. Edson now sat down in his right mind, and the performances closed.

"As near as I can remember," said the gentlemanly medium, "the spirits did not use you very well. I hope you will not blame me; they were angry at your want of faith; they do not like to be quizzed.”

Never before, never since, have I been witness to scenes of such unmitigated horror. That men should deem them Divine, and be carried away with such delusions of a heated brain, would pass all belief, were it not that our own eyes have seen, and our own ears have heard them!

PENCILED PASSAGES.

FROM VARIOUS AUTHORS.

THE Quaker poet, WHITTIER, writes prose as well as verse, and in both excels. A correspondent directs our attention to one of his tales which may be new to many of our readers. It is entitled

THE BROKEN-HEARTED, and we make an extract from the beginning and one from the latter part of the story. They will speak, sadly, but hopefully, to the hearts of those whose loved ones have passed to that realm of which the German poet, Sallis, hath beautifully said:

For all the broken-hearted
The mildest herald by our fate allotted
With beacons, and inverted torch doth stand,
To lead us with a gentle hand
Into the silent land of the great departed,

Into the silent land.

I have seen the infant sinking down like a stricken flower to the grave, the strong man fiercely breathing out his soul upon an agonizing death-bed, the miserable convict standing upon the scaffold with a deep curse quivering upon his lip. I have viewed death in all its forms of darkness, vengeance, and terror, with a bold and fearless eye; but I never could look upon woman, lovely woman, fading away from earth in beautiful, uncomplaining melancholy, without feeling the very fountains of life turned into tears and dust. Death is always terrible; but when a form of angel beauty is passing off to the silent land of sleepers the heart feels there is something lovely ceasing from existence, and broods, with a sense of utter desolation, over the lonely thoughts that come up like specters from the grave, to haunt us in our midnight

dreams.

It cannot be that earth is man's only abiding place. It cannot be that our life is a bubble cast up on the ocean of eternity, to float a moment upon its wave, and then sink into darkness and nothingness. Else why is it that the aspirations which leap like angels from the temple of our hearts are forever wandering about unsatisfied? Why is it that the cloud and the rainbow come over us with a beauty that is not of earth, and then pass away, and leave us to muse upon their faded loveliness. Why is it that the stars that hold their nightly festivals around the midnight throne are placed above the reach of our limited faculties, forever mocking us with their unapproachable glory. And finally, why is that bright forms of human beauty are presented to our view, and then taken from us, leaving the thousand streams of our affections to flow back in Alpine torrents upon our hearts? We are born for a higher destiny than that of earth. There is a land where the rainbow never fades, where the stars will be spread out before us like islands that slumber on the ocean, and where the beautiful beings that here pass before us like visions will remain in our presence forever!

GOOD SERMONS.

THAT only is a good sermon, said a faithful old disciple, which does good. However

much others may have been pleased by the orator's skill, it is not a good sermon for me unless it does me good. The same thought is here amplified for the benefit alike of speakers and hearers:

We are too often ready to judge that to be the best sermon which has many strange thoughts in it, many fine hints, and some grand and polite sentiments. But a Christian, in his best temper of mind, will say: "That is a good sermon which brings my heart nearer to God, which makes the grace of Christ sweet to my soul, and the commands of Christ easy and delightful; that is an excellent discourse, indeed, which enables me to mortify some unruly sin, to vanquish a strong temptation, and weans me from all the enticements of this lower world; that which bears me up above all the disquietudes of life, which fits me for the hour of death, and makes me ready and desirous to appear before Jesus Christ my Lord."

DO YOUR BEST.

PROFESSOR PHELPS relates the following incident, and educes from it a practical lesson:

A young painter was once directed by his master to complete a picture on which the master had been obliged to suspend his labors on account of his growing infirmities. "I commission thee, my son, said the aged artist, "to do thy best upon this work. Do thy best." The young man had such reverence for his master's skill that he felt incompetent to touch canvas which bore the work of that renowned hand. But "Do thy best," was the old man's calm reply; and again, to repeated solicitations, he answered, "Do thy best." The youth tremblingly seized the brush, and kneeling before his appointed work, he prayed: "It is for the sake of my beloved master that I implore skill and power to do this deed." Then, with suppressed emotion, he commenced his work, and caught from it an inspiration. His hand grew steady as he painted. Slumbering genius awoke in his eye. Enthusiasm took the place of fear. Forgetfulness of himsolf supplanted his self-distrust, and with a calm joy he finished his labor. The "beloved master" was borno on his couch into the studio to pass judgment on the result. As his eye fell upon the triumph of art before him he burst into tears, and throwing his enfeebled arms around the young artist, he exclaimed: "My son, I paint no more!" That youth subsequently became the painter of "The Last Supper," the ruins of which, after the lapse of three hundred years, still attract annually to the refectory of an obscure convent in Milan hundreds of the worshipers of art. So shall it be with a youthful preacher, who stands in awe of the work to which his Master calls him. Let him give himself away to it as his life's work, without reserve; let him do his best. Let him kneel reverently before his commission, and pray, "for the beloved Master's sake, that power and skill may be given him to do this deed." And the spirit of that Master shall breathe in the very greatness of the work. It shall strengthen him. His hand shall grow firm, and his heart calm. His eye shall not quail in the presence of kings. He shall stand undismayed before those who in the kingdoin of God are greater than they. Years of trust and of tranquil expectation shall follow his early struggles; or if emergencies thicken as he advances, and one after another of those on whom his spirit has leaned for support fall from his side, he shall be as the young men who increase in strength. He shall learn to

welcome great trials of his character. With a holier joy than Nelson felt at Trafalgar, he shall look up and say of every such crisis in his ministry, "I thank thee, O my God, that thou hast given me this great opportunity of doing my duty."

INSUFFICIENCY OF NATURAL RELIGION. THERE are many who talk beautifully about the dignity of man's moral nature and the loveliness of natural religion. Sooner or later, if not here, certainly there, these delusions will be dispelled, terribly dispelled, it may be, as set forth in the following extract from a sermon by Dr. Huntington:

Man, with his free agency, beset before and behind by evil, is not like a lily growing under God's sun and dew, with no sin to deform its grace or stain its coloring; he is not like the innocent architecture of a cloud, shaped by the fantastic caprices of the summer wind; nor yet like the aimless statuary of the sea-shore, sculptured by the pliant chisel of the wave. Ho has to contend, struggle, resist. He is tried, enticed, bosieged. Satan creeps anew with every new-born child into the Eden of the heart, and flaming swords aro presently planted on its gates, proclaiming, no return that way to innocence. The natural religion of which modern mystics are so fond, and modern peripatetics prattle, is not enough for him. It might possibly answer in the woods, unless this feeble pantheism would substitute artistic ecstasy for worship, and moonlight for the sun that flashes down the glories of revelation; or in some solitary cell, though even there monk and hermit have often found the snare of impure imaginations spread too cunningly for it. But let the boy go to the shop, and the girl to school; let the young man travel to the city, and the young woman lend her ears to the flatteries of that silent-tongued sorceress, society; and all this natural piety is like a silken thread held over a blazing furnace. We may put ourselves at ease; fancy we shall fare well enough under so kind a Father; come but comfortably at last; there is such tender pity in the skies. But the dispelling of that delusion will be the sharp word out of the throne of judgment, Depart from me, I never knew you.

CARLYLE AND THE OPERA. THERE is pungency in the satirical touches of Carlyle. At times, indeed, he tortures the Queen's English, and occasionally, in poring over his pages, one feels the need of an interpreter to render his Carlylese into the vernacular. But this account of a visit to the opera is perfectly intelligible; and the im pressions made upon him, by what he heard there, and saw, are forcibly depicted and worthy of preservation:

Lusters, candelabras, painting, gilding, at discretion; a hall as of the Caliph Alraschid, or him that commandeth the slaves of the lamp-a hall as if fitted up by the genii, regardless of expense. Upholstery and the outlay of human capital could do no more. Artists, too, as they are called, have been got together from the ends of the world, regardless, likewise, of expense, to do dancing and singing; some of them even geniuses in their craft. All of them had aptitudes, perhaps, of a distinguished kind, and must, by their

own and other people's labor, have got a training equal or superior, in toilsomeness, earnest assiduity, and patient travail, to what breeds men to the most arduous trades. I speak not of kings, grandees, or the like show figures; but few soldiers, judges, men of letters, can have had such pains taken with them. The very ballet-girls, with their muslin saucers round them, were perhaps little short of miraculous, whirling and spinning there, in strange, mad vortexes, and then suddenly fixing themselves motionless, each upon her left or right great toe, with the other leg stretched out at an angle of ninety degrees, as if yon had suddenly pricked into the floor, by one of their points, a pair, or rather a multitudinous cohort of mad, restlessly jumping and clipping scissors, and so bidden them rest, with open blades, and stand still, in the devil's name! A truly notable motion-marvelous, almost miraculous -were not the people there so used to it-a motion peculiar to the opera; perhaps the ugliest, and surely one of the most difficult, ever taught a female in the world.... Alas! and of all these notable or noticeable human talents, and excellent perseverances and energies, backed by mountains of wealth, and led by the divine art of music and rhythm, vouchsafed by Heaven to them and us, what was to be the issue here this evening? An hour's amusement, not amusing either, but wearisome and dreary, to a high-dizened, select populace of male and female persons, who seemed to me not much worth amusing. Could any one have pealed into their hearts once, one true thought and glimpse of self-vision: high-dizened, most expensivo persons, aristocracy, so called, or best of the world, beware, beware what proofs you are giving here of betterness and bestness! John, the carriage-the carriage, swift! Let me go home in silence to reflection, perhaps to sackcloth and ashes! This, and not amusement, would have profited these persons. 0 heavens, when I think that music, too, is condemned to be mad, and to burn herself to this end on such a funeral-pile, your celestial opera-house grows dark and infernal to me! Behind its glitter stalks the shadow of eternal death, through it, too. I look not "up into the Divine eye," as Richter has it, "but down into the bottomless eye-socket;" not upward toward God, heaven, and the throne of truth; but, too truly, down toward falsity, vanity, and the dwelling-place of everlasting despair.

SCIENCE AND RELIGION.

....

THE notion that any of the facts of science can, by possibility, be arrayed against the revelations of Christianity is now almost entirely exploded. It is not only a generally

admitted truth that "an undevout astronomer is mad," but that a skeptical natural philosopher, an anti-Christian botanist, or an infidel geologist is, if not mad, blind; and, being blind, is unfit to be a leader or a guide. Dr. M'Cosн, in his Method of the Divine Government," says, with equal pertinence and beauty:

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Science has a foundation, and so has religion. Let them unite their foundations, and the basis will be broader, and they will be two compartments of one great fabric reared to the glory of God. Let the one be the outer and the other the inner court. In the one let all look, and admire, and adore; and in the other, let those who have faith kneel, and pray, and praise. Let the one be the sanctuary where human learning

may present its richest incense as an offering to God; and the other, the holiest of all, separated from it by a vail now rent in twain, and in which, on a bloodsprinkled mercy-seat, we pour out the love of a reconciled heart, and hear the oracles of the living God.

A CALL TO PREACH.

Ir is an axiomatic truth that the Great Head of the church never makes a mistake in calling men to the work of the ministry, and, as is well said by Dr. STOCKTON:

If the minister be truly called, and faithful to his calling, the Spirit will make the most of him. Whether as a natural orator he be a good or bad specimen, musical or harsh, graceful or awkward, brilliant or dim, deep or superficial, ideal or unideal, pathetic or not, he will be sure to be good and useful; and whether the world-church will hear him or not, the true church, the spiritually discerning church, will always regard it as a privilege and blessing to sit under his ministry,

and even the world shall be constrained to confess that there is something about him which art can neither imitate nor equal.

A SIMPLE ILLUSTRATION.

THE REV. T. TOLLER, whose memoirs have been recently published, thus simply and effectively illustrated that passage in the prophecy of Isaiah-Let him take hold of my strength that he may make peace with

me:

One of my children had committed a fault, for which I thought it my duty to chastise him. I called him to me, explained to him the evil of what he had done, and told him how grieved I was that I must punish him for it. He heard me in silence, and then rushed into my arms and burst into tears. I could sooner have cut off my arm than strike him for his fault. He had laid hold of my strength, and he had made his peace with me.

LUXURIOUS DWELLINGS.

IN the expensive adornments of private dwellings, frescoed walls, gold leaf, lace curtains, magnificent mirrors, sofas, lounges, and all other things of the kind, ornamental rather than useful, the dwellers in some of our American cities exceed all others. Ruskin's remarks upon the subject, written for the latitude of London, are equally applicable in this republican climate:

I am no advocate for meanness of private habitation. 1 would fain introduce into it all magnificence, care, and beauty, where they are possible; but I would not have that useless expense in unnoticed fineries or formalities; cornicings of ceilings, and graining of doors, and fringing of curtains, and thousands of such things which have become foolishly and apathetically habitual-things on whose common appliance hang whole trades, to which there never belonged the blessing of giving one ray of real pleasure, of becoming of the remotest or most contemptible use-things which cause half the expense of life, and destroy more than half its comfort, manliness, respectability, freshness, and facility. I speak from experience; I know what it is to live in a cottage with a deal floor and roof, and a hearth of mica slate; and I know it to be in many respects healthier and happier than living be

tween a Turkey carpet and gilded ceiling, beside a steel grate and polished fender. I do not say such things have not their place and propriety; but I say this emphatically, that a tenth part of the expense which is sacrificed in domestic vanities, if not absolutely and meaninglessly lost in domestic comforts and encumbrances, would, if collectively offered and wisely employed, build a marble church for every town in England; such a church as it should be a joy and a blessing even to pass near in our daily ways and walks,

and as it would bring the light into the eyes to see from afar, lifting its fair height above the purple crowd of humble roofs.

CHEAP HAPPINESS.

THERE is much complaining that in these days everything is dear, dearer than we found them in our younger days. One of the reasons may perhaps suggest itself by the simple statement which follows:

It is wonderful how cheap happiness used to be. It lay about, like the sunshine, within arm's length of everybody. It used to grow in the field; we have found it there, but not lately. Sometimes five speckled eggs in a grassy nest, constituted it; sometimes four beautiful ones in the lilacs.

It used to swim in the brooks, and turn up its silvery and mottled sides, like a polished little saber, sprinkled with the color of fame, which is generally understood to be crimson. We have found it, many a time, beside a mossy stone, when it looked very much like a first Spring flower; we have seen it come down in the snow, and heard it descending in the rain. What a world of it used to be crowded into a Saturday afternoon! An old newspaper with cedar ribs, a tail like three bashaws, and a penny's worth of twine, have constituted, many a time-that is, many an old time-the entire stock in trade of one perfectly happy.

THE OLD YEAR.

As a fitting close to our chapter for the present month, and for the year which will have passed away before we again greet our readers, we take two stanzas from the pen of Miss BAYARD:

'Tis the death-night of the solemn old year!
And it calleth from its shroud
With a hollow voice and loud,
But serene:

And it saith, What have I given
That hath brought thee nearer heaven?
Dost thou weep, as one forsaken,
For the treasures I have taken?
Standest thou beside my hearse
With a blessing or a curse?
Is it well with thee, or worse,
That I have been?

"Tis the death-night of the solemn old year!
We are parted from our place
In her motherly embrace,

And are lone!

For the infant and the stranger
It is sorrowful to change her;
She hath cheer'd the night of mourning
With a promise of the dawning;

She hath shared in our delight
With a gladness true and bright;
O! we need her joy to-night-
But she is gone!