clared to be the encourager of "intemperance and licentiousness"-cuts by which the theater is charged with performing plays in which are contained "language intentionally shocking to modesty and destructive of reverence"-cuts which affirm that the "personal character of the dramatic profession is bad." After all this he insists that Christians ought to encourage the existing theater, and quotes the example of our Savior in mixing with publicans and sinners, to enforce his plea. Why, my friends, Jesus went among the wicked as a moral reformer; he went to plead with them to repent; he went not to share the delights of their sinful amusements, not to witness and enjoy their performances, but to be himself the performer-to get them to listen to him and submit to him. But this professed Christian minister invites us to the theater, not to preach, not heroically to leap on the stage and usurp the actor's place, and preach Christ crucified, but to reform the stage people by yielding ourselves up to their ministries of corrupt pleasure, perhaps upon the principle that if we help Satan he will help us.

If such, then, is the theater, by the admission of its very defenders; if such are the miserable, paltry shifts by which it has been attempted to be propped up; if it is rotten in the warp and woof of its literature; if its actors, as a class, are intemperate and indecent; if it is the natural and regular rendezvous of the worst classes; if we can not go there without danger of being tainted and damaged, let every Christian and every friend of morality and public decency keep away, and teach his children to keep away. In the minds and hearts of all about them, let them label the doors of the theater thus: "Wide is the gate and broad is the way." Or thus: Synagogue of the libertines-chief Rabbi, SaWhoso is simple let him turn in hither."

tan.

DOWN TO THE OLD HOUSE.

BY MRS. SARAH DURAND.

It

HOW glad we all were to leave our old house and move up to our elegant new mansion! The younger members of our family especially were so tired trying to receive and entertain company in our old, cramped little parlors. wounded our pride, nothing more, for we were comfortable and happy when alone. And when the new house was really completed, and each had a voice in furnishing and appropriating the rooms, heads were busier than hands in devising pleasure-parties, and festivities, and triumphs for years to come. But, alas! how futile our

plans! how vain our imaginings! One blast from the war bugle and our brothers were gone, and one arrow from Death's quiver and a dear sister was no more. And then how little we all cared for the new house!

We would unconsciously attribute some of our distress to our being in the new house, and yet reason told us otherwise. But I could not withstand the desire to spend a portion of each day alone at the old house. I loved to steal away and go down there to think and weep, to sit on the step-stone and read. I could follow the poet higher in his flights and see more light in his path there than elsewhere.

I loved to gaze up to the chamber where my brothers slept, and often I found myself listening for the glad laugh or merry whistle that so often came floating down from their open window in days gone by. I loved to train the rose-bush and honey-suckle around the window, just as my departed sister had done when they were in her keeping, and to search for flowers among the weeds and tangled grass, if, perchance, any root or seedling had escaped the transplanting spade. Flowers gathered here were dearer to me than the choicest exotics, they seemed so like gems in the crown of peace. I loved to drink from the gurgling spring, or bathe my weeping eyes in that never-failing fountain. It was a soothing antidote. I loved to wander among the vines and fruit-trees, and to gather the choicest fruit to take home for my stricken parents. When I could say,

"

These grew down at the old house," I thought they, too, relished them more. O, the dear old house! it had become my trysting-place, my closet. And when it was arranged that Mr. A., whom the casualties of the war had rendered penniless and homeless, was to Winter with his large family in our old house, it seemed too much for my poor, selfish heart to bear. I sympathized with the destitute and persecuted of our race, but I thought, "Must we sacrifice so much for them? Must we take them into our closets as it were?"

But they came, and I still visit the old house.

At first I went with jealous eyes to watch over my treasures. But a change came over my feelings as I mingled with that meek Christian family, and the lessons I now learn, I trust, are more salutary than those I learned in my lonely visits. In the children I see, not, as I supposed, little hands whose only work was mischief, but buds of immortality, destined, under their mother's gentle training, to bloom in God's own garden above, and they lead my mind out beyond this fading scene to one that is ever green and beautiful, and where peace

will dwell forever. The poetry I now love best is found in the Bible, the Psalms, and Isaiah, and when read aloud by her who feels their spiritual beauty, my soul seems to follow them in their heavenly flight, and the light of their pathway is that made by the "live coal from off the altar," with which the cherubim touched the lips of Isaiah.

And of all our loved ones who have slipped from our fond embrace here, I have learned to look for them with an eye of faith to that realm where the finally faithful shall all be gathered, not halt, or maimed, or scarred with many battles, but perfected in love, and singing redeeming grace on the other shore, where peace shall reign for evermore.

OUR SOLDIER-BOY.

RY DELL A. HIGGINS.

OVER fields and lonesome woodlands,
Waving shadows softly lie,

While like angels when we 're dreaming,
Slowly white-winged clouds go by;
And the quiet moon is shining
Half-way up the eastern sky,
Mocking all the desolation

That the storm of war hath made

With the tall palmetto, rising

O'er the quiet, mossy glade, And the flashing of the fire-fly

In the rank fern's gloomy shade. With a knapsack for his pillow,

And the green turf for his bed, And the solemn sky o'er arching

Where the brave Zouaves had bled,

A soldier to his comrade,

As his life was ebbing, said:

"You tell me, John, my wounds are slight; But I can read your eye;

It says that I, ere morning light,
A-cold in death must lie.

'T will be but passing home to heaven,
And I'm not afraid to die.

But you may still be spared, John,
To reach our home again;
Break it gently to my mother,
And tell my father then,
And do n't forget to go and see
My Katie, in the glen.

I know my father 'll miss me,
His hair is growing gray,
He is not strong to hold the plow
Or pile the fragrant hay;
And I had hoped of his old age
To be the staff and stay.
And mother-my poor mother-
How can she bear to know

That her son was slain in Dixie
By the cruel Southern foe?
I was the last of seven,

And she has loved me so.
But God will not forsake them,
I should be content to go,
I can be better spared, perhaps,
Than others that I know;
And it is for the best, or God
Would not have had it so.

But Katie-darling Katie-
I think I see her now,
The thoughtful grace of womanhood
Just shadowing her brow.

I wonder if her glossy curls
Are any darker now!

But, hark! I hear upon the air
The distant bugle-horn,

And the rustling of the Summer breeze

Amid the growing corn;

As I heard it when we parted last

That sunny, harvest morn.

The low and mournful music

Of my Katie's voice I know; She's saying through the long, long year That she will miss me so;

Yet still-and here a sob breaks through-
She can but bid me go.

The very words she said to me
Are sounding in my ears-
'Go answer to your country's call,
And do not mind my tears,

I shall be stronger when the thought
Of God destroys my fears.'

She's looking older, sadder,

But I know she 's true, she's true-
But go, dear Katie, do not stay
Out in this heavy dew;

'T is damp upon my forehead,
And it must not fall on you—
John, I'm afraid I wander,

But you'll tell them all some day The words of tender loving

I have not strength to say. Here-let me take your hand, For I've not long to stay."

The human heart must have a resting-place somewhere in the moral universe. The search for the supernatural and the divine is necessitated by the very conditions of its being. It must have a divinity in order to its repose, whether it find that divinity in the sublime revelations of the Christian religion or in the subtilties and sophistries of a false philosophy. This is seen in the fact that a nation without a relig ion has never been found. The heathen amid his superstitions is as true to his conceptions of the divine, and the obligations resulting therefrom, as the most devout Christian in the real sanctuary of the Most High.

The felt want of the human soul is rest-spiritual repose. Its very restlessness, its unappeasable yearnings after some unattained but supposed attainable good proves this. The great question of the human heart all through the ages has ever been, "Who will show us any good?" and outside of revelation this question in all its deep and vital interest has only been raised by earth's millions to recoil on the heart without an answer. This leads us to the inquiry:

I. WHAT IS THE TRUE PHILOSOPHY OF HAPPINESS? David's ultimatum in the text returns the only answer: "I shall be satisfied WHEN I awake with thy likeness." We remark that

1. The whole philosophy of happiness lies in the right condition and right development of the moral affections. "Thy likeness" stands here for moral goodness-resemblance to God. If we were asked to sum up the whole nature and glorious perfections of the Deity in a word, that word would be "the Lord is GOOD." God is the sum of all good both in the passive sense of being good and in the active sense of doing good. He is happy in the infinite beatitudes of his own nature and in the ceaseless, boundless activities of his grace. And man must be happy on the same principle that God is in BEING and doing good. Well said Cicero that "men resemble the gods in nothing more than in doing good." Happiness is of necessity a question of the affections. A right condition of the heart draws after it right moral actions, as a pure fountain sends forth pure water or a good tree brings forth good fruit. The outside moral world is reached and raised upward by the good man from the inside world of the heart. All noble, godlike action is born in the soul. The sum of a good man's force in the world, and by consequence his wealth in happiness, is the measure of his moral power. He is happy only in the propor

the effect follows the cause, so he does, because he is

good.

"

(1.) The Scriptures declare in favor of the moral affections as the source of all happiness. 'As a man thinketh in his heart so is he." Thought is an element of character, and consequently of happiness. Could we be at a loss to determine the character or enjoyment of a man the language of whose heart ever is, "Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none on earth that I desire besides thee?" or could we by possibility err in determining the character and necessary unhappiness of the man whose only thought is, "What shall I eat, what shall I drink, and wherewithal shall I be clothed?" What a man is in his spiritual affections he is in action and enjoyment; hence it is declared, "a man shall be satisfied from himself" from the internal resources of his heart. The apostle gives this truth a forcible utterance when he says, Our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience." The within determines the without, and both determine the question of happiness. Truly "If solid happiness we prize, Within the breast that jewel lies,

And they are fools who roam."

(2.) Reason so declares. Man's nature is spiritual, therefore his happiness must flow from his affections as the stream from the fountain. The world is an element that can not possibly enter into the question of real enjoyment. Its material good may satisfy the wants of his inferior nature, but can not meet the demands of his nobler spirit. The idea of happiness, for instance, in connection with wrong moral affections, say a guilty conscience, is an absurdity. All experience is with the Bible in asking, "A wounded spirit who can bear?" And yet a man might possess all possible external good and still have a wounded spirit; hence we argue the impossibility of rational enjoyment on any other than a moral basis.

(3.) Experience also so declares. The royal Psalmist, with all the avenues open to happiness, so far as this world has the power to bestow it, was not satisfied. He felt that nothing but God could fill the human soul; hence he cries, "I shall be satisfied when I awake with thy likeness." Solomon's experience took the circuit of the world; he literally, as we learn from the book of Ecclesiastes, tried every thing under the sun as a source of human good, and yet he writes the epitaph of the world in the declaration, "ALL is vanity and vexation of spirit." So with earth's generations all along the course of the centuries; they have learned by bitter experience that away from God there

is no real good to the human soul. He alone who made it can satisfy it, because he alone can fill it.

II. Let us now, for the sake of reducing the proposition to an absurdity, suppose that happiness is not a question of the spiritual affections and of their appropriate development in action, but that it is contingent, as the world would seem to suppose, on external, material good. What then follows?

1. Only the few could be happy. If wealth were the condition of happiness then the great mass would be excluded from it, since only the few could enjoy it. So with every other conceivable earthly object. Happiness on such a basis would be a literal impossibility, and the great proportion of the race would be doomed to wretchedness independently of any possible action on their part. Such a mode of happiness we plainly see would be unworthy of the great, beneficent Father of all. Again:

2. Happiness would be without any virtuous or worthy basis. Millions would be denied it in virtue of no

fault of theirs, since its conditions would be simply impossible. It might exist in that event compatibly with the very worst moral character, the very idea of which is preposterous. All reason insists on the necessary connection between virtue and happiness. In fact, to be unhappy over what could not have been otherwise than it is is a contradiction in terms. Our intellectual and moral nature is insulted by the idea that wealth, or fame, or power, or any other outside object could confer happiness, or their absence create the opposite when we may not predicate any moral quality whatsoever of them. Lastly,

3. Happiness would be in the highest degree temporary and uncertain. All earthly objects are liable to change, and do change perpetually, because they are contingent on circumstances. If material things conferred happiness, then the happy of to-day would be the miserable of to-morrow. Happiness, then, would be indeed a precarious and uncertain good. Such considerations reduce to absurdity the proposition that happiness is possible in any combination of external things.

III. Let us for a moment look at God's plan or mode of making men happy.

1. All may be good, and therefore all may be happy. He furnishes the motive and supplies the means for universal happiness. No moral creature he has formed but may awake in his likeness and be happy.

"Knowledge or wealth to few are given,
But then how just the ways of Heaven;
True joy to all is free."

2. Happiness has a rational basis in moral goodness. Reason joins revelation in the declaration that the virtuous ought to be happy. That goodness should be the perfection of human character and the crown of human joy is a moral necessity of our being. All our ideas of the fitness of things demand that happiness should be conditioned on virtue and goodness.

3. Happiness founded on moral excellence is permanent. "Mary hath chosen that good part which shall not be taken away from her." No power can prevent our being and doing good, and therefore no power can prevent our being happy. The Christian may well sing,

"No changes of season or place

Could make any change in my mind."

This subject suggests the following inquiry: David said, "I shall be satisfied when I awake with thy likeness." Can we as candidates for the happiness of F. S. C. the better life be satisfied with less!

KNOWLEDGE BROUGHT FROM AFAR.-"I will fetch my knowledge from afar, and will ascribe righteousness to my Maker." Job xxxvi, 3.

There is something in our nature which places superior importance on any thing which comes from afar. When a man has to contend with a person who is very learned, should a friend express a doubt as to the result, or advise him to take great care, he will say, "Fear not, veggutooratila, from very far I will fetch my arguments." The arguments which are afar off shall now be brought near." 'Well, sir, since you press me, I will fetch my knowledge from afar."

"

THE UNGODLY LIKE CHAFF.-"The ungodly are not so, but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away." Psalm i, 4. "Whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor." Matt. iii, 12.

We must recollect here, says Rosenmüller, that in the East the thrashing-floors are places in the open air-Gen. i, 10-on which the corn is not thrashed, as with us, but beaten out by means of a sledge in such a manner that the straw is at the same time cut very small. "When the straw is cut small enough, they put fresh corn in the place, and afterward separate the corn from the cut straw by throwing it in the air with a wooden shovel, for the wind drives the straw a little further, so that only the pure corn falls to the ground."

CHRISTIANS LIKE WILLOWS BY THE WATERCOURSES.-"And they shall spring up as among the grass, as willows by the water-courses." Isaiah xliv, 4.

In many parts of South Africa, says Mr. Campbell, no trees are to be found but near rivers. The trees are of various kinds; the most plentiful was the lovely mimosa; but willows, when there were any, always stood in front of the others on the very margin of the water, which was truly a river of life to them. Like those in Isaiah's days, they required much water, could not prosper without it, therefore near it they were alone found a loud call, by a silent example, to Christians to live near the throne of grace, word of grace, and ordinances of grace if they wish to grow in wisdom, knowledge, faith, and holiness.

THE LIVING WATERS AND THE BROKEN CISTERN."For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewn them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water." Jeremiah ii, 13.

In Eastern language "living water" signifies springing water, that which bubbles up. The people had forsaken Jehovah, the never-failing spring, for the small quantity which could be contained in a cistern; nay, in broken cisterns, which would let out the water as fast as they received it. When people forsake a good situation for that which is bad, it is said, "Yes, the stork which lived on the borders of the lake, where there was a never-failing supply of water and constant food, has gone to dwell on the brink of a well," that is, where there is no fish, and where the water can not be had.

ANSWER TO METAPHYSICAL QUERY.-"Can man reason without language?" Several considerations lead us to answer, Yes

1. The old definition, "Words are signs of ideas," which all bookmakers have adopted, is not mere fancy, but a real definition. Now, thoughts must have been antecedent to words, else the thing represented comes into existence after the representation is actually made. It is absurd to say that words had an existence before the ideas which they represent. If, then, ideas came before the words which express them, then man can have ideas without words with which to express them. These ideas, antecedent to words, must have been "definite" ideas, else there would have been no words expressing definite ideas. All would be vague and indefinite.

2. Deaf persons, who have not had the advantages of education, and, consequently, have never heard words spoken nor understood written language, give evidence that they reason, and have "complete," "definite," and fully "developed" ideas.

3. If we had no knowledge of language we would certainly have the thoughts which such words as the following represent-sweet, sour, good, bad, high, long, heavy, light, etc.; and having an idea of these properties we would have thoughts without words, and from the active character of the mind we conclude that we would reason on these properties, which would be reasoning without language.

4. When the author of metaphysical query penned the language of his query, he must have had the thoughts in his mind antecedent to the words with which he expressed them, or the words were antecedent to the ideas, or the words and ideas both came to the mind at the same instant. One of these statements must be

true.

Now, if the words and thoughts came to the mind at the same instant it must have been accidentally SO. This statement we will not take space to illustrate, but suppose all will admit that it is metaphysically correct; and how could accident produce such harmony as we may suppose exists between the words of that query and the thoughts which were in the author's mind when the query was penned? But suppose the words were first in the mind, then how did the author call to mind the words which express his ideas before they had an existence in the mind? Place the thought first and all is natural. The thought is formed and the mind calls up words to express it, and is sometimes put to the strait of choosing between two or more words expressing the same idea.

If our position is substantiated-and we think it is the advocates of "verbal inspiration" lose one of their strongest arguments. B. E. K.

METAPHYSICAL QUERY.-Second Answer.-This query, in November number, uses a very groundless argument to establish a very useless doctrine. 1. "Can a definite idea be formed unless it be accompanied by the language to express it?" Of course it can; for which

is first, the idea or its sign-the mental picture or the name of that picture? New ideas are, in the course of science, continually meeting men. When these ideas, facts, or principles are fully grasped by the discoverer, he sets himself to hunting in the old languages some combination of words as names of these new ideas. He might have on hand, at one time, a half dozen new thoughts, or principles, or ideas clearly seen by his mind's eye, but for which there are as yet no words in any language.

2. That a man can not express his idea does not prove its incompleteness. Words are attempts at bounding or painting ideas. But what is more shadowy, spiritual, or evanescent than an idea? What orator can perfectly describe its outlines; what poet paint its rich hues? Language is a very lame thing; so lame that no mortal was ever able absolutely to convey to his fellow his own precise idea. A man might travel for hours on a railroad intently considering the countless objects he passed, without the name of a single one of them coming into his mind. He would think of the things themselves, not the names. God inspired into men thoughts, principles, and left them to express them in language, each according to his own genius.

J. P. L.

ANSWER TO DECEMBER THEOLOGICAL QUERY.—1. Scripture does teach that Christ was God. "I and my Father are one;""All things were made by him."

2. It is not possible for God to suffer. Scripture does not so teach: it gives to Christ a twofold natureGod and man-absolute God and integral man. 'God was in Christ." Without this distinction the Bible is self-contradictory. The words which passed the fleshly lips of Jesus came from two separate sources-sometimes from his own human soul, as when on the cross he exclaimed, "My God, why hast thou forsaken me!" or when he said, "My Father is greater than I"-at other times from God who "was in Christ," as when these words were uttered, "Thy sins be forgiven thee." In this way only can we fully escape the dilemma of the querist. It was the human being born of Mary who hungered, and wept, and suffered on the cross. God's suffering is an idea equally monstrous and unscriptural.

3. An infinite sacrifice" was not offered, neither is there any propriety in the phrase "infinite law." A sacrifice is something delivered to destruction to save something else. Nothing but God is infinite; ergo, the sole possible infinite sacrifice would be God sacrificing himself. An infinite sacrifice was not needed, for there was no infinite guilt. All the possible guilt of every being in the universe is only a finite guilt, and so needs only a finite sacrifice. Punishable sin is measured by the knowledge of the sinner; but as all cre ated beings are finite in knowledge, so all guilt must be finite. To say that God's law is infinite, and hence every sin infinite, is mere nonsense. The Calvary sacrifice was not infinite, but "sufficient." The body of