your own salvation, in fear and trembling," says Paul to the Philippians. By this and many other passages of Scripture, we are exhorted to unite faith with works, thus proving the existence of one by faithfully performing the other, and even then trembling with due anxiety, lest in our pride and weakness we depend too much upon ourselves, and rely not upon the strength and grace of God who giveth the final victory. To work out the soul's salvation is not "the drowsy pastime of a summer's day." It is a wide-awake life-long task, beginning with the first feeble breath of the newborn infant, and only ending when that breath returns to the bosom of the God who gave it. And why should we say that it ends even then? The grave is not the goal of human life. There are worlds beyond, eternal futures of faith and good works, in the midst of which sanctified man may still exercise his agency, still develop his latent capabilities, and ascend by gradual degrees from height to height of never ending intelligence and dominion.

Everything in nature illustrates the principle of gradual progression. The sun slowly rises to the zenith and as gently sinks into the west, and in obedience to his rule, the day waxes brighter and warmer, and as steadily diminishes in heat and wanes in lustre. Look how the seasons come and go in like manner. The balmy breath of spring preparing us for the burning rays of summer, and the cooling influence of autumn enabling us to withstand the gelid blasts of winter. Each season, in turn, breaking the monotony of the annual round, and administering, in its own peculiar way, to the welfare and promotion of animal and vegetable life. A sudden transition from January to July, or from August to December, would prove disastrous. It is doubtful if the living earth itself could sustain such a shock without serious injury. God's wisdom and mercy are therefore made manifest in the regular return of the seasons, with all the successive changes, gradations and climaxes that figure in the annual routine.

The Gospel of life and salvation, as

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operating in the redemption of the human race, is one of the noblest examples of steady and continuous gradation. It was never destined to do its work in a day. Its principles are serial and progressive in their nature, and their application must be made accordingly. They constitute a medium of purification and enlightenment, a series of refining processes, through which the soul of the sinner, like a rough diamond in the hands of the jeweler, is purified and polished until its hidden brilliance blazes forth in full and perfected effulgence. It is by yielding obedience to the first principle, or in other words, submitting to the primal process, that the soul is qualified to undergo the next. For each one merges and leads into its successor, and gradually prepares the mind for its reception. Through the exercise of faith, the sinner is enabled to repent, and having repented of his sins, he is next desirous of having them remitted, and on being cleansed by baptism, having had all sinful disabilities removed, he is fitted and made worthy to receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. He is thus inducted into the Church of Jesus Christ, the precursor of the kingdom of God, and becomes a candidate for celestial exaltation. But his soul is not yet saved. He has only obeyed the initiatory principles of salvation. He has but begun the battle of righteousness, and to imagine that his soul is out of danger at this early period, would be to take off his armor and throw aside his weapons in the very midst of the fight. The primal principles of the Gospel are absolutely indispensable to a full and complete salvation, but to suppose that they alone are requisite, would be almost as unreasonable as the prevalent notion that belief alone is the all-essential passport to the presence of God. He who obeys the first principles, places himself on the safe side of a boundary line which will eventually separate those who accept from those who reject them, but he can still fall nevertheless, as did Lucifer from heaven, and has the free privilege of doing so if he desires. Not only are the first principles indispensable, but

every law, ordinance, precept or ceremony ever revealed from God to man, is necessary and imperative, if we would reap the full fruition of the blessings they respectively represent. Not the least commandment of the Almighty can be ignored with impunity. He who would ascend the stairway leading upward to eternal life, must tread it step by step from the base stone to the summit of the flight. Not a single stair can be missed, not one duty neglected, if the climber would avoid danger and delay, and arrive with all safety and expedition at the topmost landing of celestial exaltation. There are such things as intermediate stages in that long and arduous ascent, and the pilgrim to eternity has the privilege of halting and remaining upon either of them, but no spirit that truly loves its Maker or properly appreciates its own intrinsic worth, will take advantage of that privilege and sacrifice for a lesser consideration a far more glorious and ineffable reward. Even as an earthly parent is blessed in the possession of a wise and virtuous posterity, so God the Eternal Father is glorified by the workmanship of His hands. The higher His children ascend, he greater is His own exaltation in consequence, and it is a sacred duty devolving upon all to contribute to His glory as much and as far as they are capable.

To acquire a correct and thorough knowledge of any branch of human learning, it is necessary to commence at the beginning. No sensible student thinks of mastering a language until he has first learned its alphabet. No pupil, who is barely able to put two and two together, should consider himself qualified to calculate the weight of the stars or ascertain the altitude of the sun. No more need the newly-made convert to the Gospel of Jesus Christ hope to circumscribe, all at once, the insurmountable heights, the unfathomable depths, the bewildering and illimitable extents of that vast system of science, which comprehends all other systems and sciences, and has as its aim and object the eternal education and exaltation of the human family. It is something to be gradually

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acquired. It is a lesson that must be learned little by little. By accepting and practising its rudimental principles, we are placed in a position to comprehend and intelligently comply with all subsequent requirements, and these, like their predecessors, will ever be consecutive and progressive in their character. all have evil passions to subdue, strong temptations to resist, arduous trials to undergo, numberless duties to perform. Every heart knoweth best what it has to do and endure, and it likewise knows full well that its labor is a life task, which can only be performed by degrees. But it is a work which, when once done, will never need to be undone, for the soul of man is immortal and its education everlasting.

Thus it is that we are gradually freed from sin, slowly burnished by the friction of experience, and surely and eternally saved in the celestial kingdom of our Father. It is only by gradually approaching that kingdom that we are able to withstand its otherwise intolerable glory. Sin cannot inherit the kingdom of God. It would consume like chaff in a devouring flame. Heaven would be a literal hell to the wicked, and even the most righteous, without a lifetime of preparation, would be utterly unable to endure the presence of the Lord. What folly then to imagine that the bloodstained criminal, strangled out of this life, because unfit to associate with fallen humanity on earth, can be made ready at a moment's notice to mingle with the Gods and the holy angels, dwelling in the midst of celestial burnings. He might better be cast into a fiery furnace, seven times heated, and expected to survive the ordeal. Even Moses, that mighty man of God, had he not been previously filled with the Holy Ghost, insomuch that his face shone like an angel's, would have been unworthy and incapable of standing in His presence. The opening words of that beautiful and stirring hymn, "The Spirit of God like a fire is burning," are no idle simile or vain hyperbole. They speak a literal, living fact. And fortunate indeed are we, who have received the imposition of hands for

swell that was most embarrassing to progress. To escape these difficulties some lashed their rudders and hove to; others tried to run before the wind, while the rest tacked for the pig-sty. But there was no living in such weather, and one by one, the craft lurched over and went down all standing. Meanwhile the dame, the unconscious cause of this disaster, was attracted by the noise in the fowlyard, and looking out, saw all her ten geese, behaving as if they were mad. The gander himself, usually so solemn and decorous, was balancing himself on his beak, and spinning round the while in a prodigious flurry of feathers and dust, while the old gray goose, remarkable even among her kind for the circumspection of her conduct, was lying stomach upwards in the gutter, feebly gesticulating with her legs. Others of the party were no less conspicuous for the extravagance of their attitudes and gestures, while the remainder were to be seen lying in a helpless confusion of feathers in the lee scupper--that is to say, the gutter by the pig-sty.

Perplexed by the spectacle, the dame called in her neighbors, and, after careful investigation, it was decided in council that the birds had died of poison. Under these circumstances their carcasses were worth nothing for food, but, as the neighbors said, the feathers were not poisoned, so they set to work then and there and plucked the ten geese bare.

Next morning the good woman got up as usual, and remembering the feathers down stairs, dressed betimes, for it was market day and she hoped to get them off her hands at once. And then she bethought her of ten plucked bodies lying in the porch and resolved that they should be buried before she went out. But as she approached the door on these decent rites intent, and was turning the key, there fell on her ears the sound of another, familiar voice-and then another and another, until at last the astonished dame heard in full chorus the well known accents of all her plucked and poisoned geese. The throat of the old gander was no doubt a trifle husky, and the gray goose spoke in muffled tones suggestive of

a chastening headache; but there was no mistaking those tongues, and the dame fumbling at the door, wondered what it all might mean. Has a goose a ghost? Did anyone ever read or hear of the spectre of a gander? The key turned at last, the door opened, and there, quacking in subdued tones, suppliant and shivering, stood all her flock. There they stood, the ten miserable birds, with splitting headaches and parched tongues, contrite and dejected, asking to have their feathers back again.

The situation was painful to both parties. The forlorn geese saw in each other's persons the humiliating reflection of their own condition, while the dame, guiltily conscious of that bagful of feathers and down, remembered how the one lapse of Noah, in that "aged surprisal of six hundred years and unexpected inebriation from the unknown effects of wine," has been excused by religion and the unanimous voice of his posterity. She and her neighbors with her, however, had hastily misjudged the geese, and, finding them dead drunk, had stripped them, without remembering for a moment, that if feathers are easy to get off they are very hard to put on. So she called in her neighbors again, but they proved only sorry comforters, for they reminded her that, after all, the fault was her own; that it was she, and no one else, who had thrown the brandied cherries to the geese. As it was with Job, these "oblique expostulations" of her friends were harder for the widow to bear "than the downright blows of the devil," and so, turning from her neighbors, she gathered her bald poultry about her round the kitchen fire, and sat down to make them flannel jackets.

We shall be sifted till the strength
Of self-conceit be changed at length
To meekness.-Longfellow,

Lady visitor to Scripture class: "With what weapon did Samson slay his enemies?" After a period of unbroken silence, fair questioner (touching her blooming cheek): "What's this?" Chorus: "The jor bone of a has, mum!”