"What a very strange story it is altogether; but it seems | paused for an instant beside Miss Northcote, and asked if to me, though the circumstances of old Mr. Atherstone's he should find her father at home. She answered that he death were certainly very painful, that they contain no clue certainly would, as she had left him with Colonel Dysart, to the secret of the change which you say has taken place who was still, as she knew, at the Manor, whereupon, bowin his nephew since then." ing silently, the gentleman passed on and was very soon completely lost to sight among the trees of the park. 66 'No, you are quite right, they do not; and that is just one of the reasons why people think there must be something wrong." 'Something mysterious there clearly is," said Una; "and I confess all you have told me makes me feel the greatest possible curiosity to see Mr. Atherstone. At that mo ment a step sounded on the path which led along the riverbank, past the spot where Miss Northcote and Una were sitting, and as they looked up they saw a gentleman advancing rather slowly toward them. He was a tall man, broadshouldered and strongly built, but with an air of distinction and refinement, which prevented his somewhat massive proportions from giving him the least appearance of coarseness. He had a strikingly intellectual face, with an unmistakable look of power, and with strong indications of a passionate temperament in the dark, closelymeeting brows and the finely cut nostril; his haughty, deter mined expres Will Northcote waited till his footfall had entirely died away, and then, lying back on the bank, she went into fits of laughter, from which she could not recover herself for some minutes. Una sat watching her, much amused at her merriment, A CHRISTMAS SLEIGH-RIDE. sion would have been almost repelling but for the wonder- | ful softness of his large hazel eyes, and a certain sweetness in the curve of the lips-which, however, were scarcely to be seen under his thick black beard.. Lifting his hat to Miss Northcote as he came up to her, he showed a broad, well-developed forehead, bronzed with the sun, the effect of which was somewhat neutralized by the masses of dark hair that waved over it. Altogether, he was a remarkable looking man, and one who would not have escaped notice even in a crowd. Una observed with some interest the peculiar quietude of his manner and the vibrating tones of his deep voice, as he without having the least idea what was the cause of it, till at last Will composed herself sufficiently to speak.. "Never was a more opportune encounter," she said; "we need no longer have the slightest doubt to what class of beings the gentleman belongs, whose history I have been telling you." "Miss Northcote! you do not mean to say "Una stopped, she could scarcely have told why. "I mean to say that you have just seen Humphrey Atherstone." (To be continued.) chance delay for two days among the lakes and mountains of the Trosacha Glen. I happened to make the inquiry, what became of the villagers, so suddenly disappearing at nightfall from the streets? and a sandyhaired Scotchman replied, 'Most of them would be at prayers about this time!' And I looked up into the fair, blue sky, and thought how fine a thing it would be to have a restingplace high enough just to hear the murmurs of voices, as they read a verse aloud, and sang one of the old Psalms, before the impressive hush in which the father offered prayer. How grand would be the swell of sound, when a whole village was going on its knees before God!" THE HOME-PULPIT. [There are times when families cannot go to the regular church services. In every issue of this Magazine it is proposed to publish a Sermon which shall be equally applicable to large congregations and small, so that it may be read to the domestic circle of worshipers. Perhaps it may be of use in Rural Chapels, on Sundays, when no regular Minister is present, and some lay-reader would officiate if a sermon were placed in his hands.] NO ROOM FOR JESUS. [Delivered in the Chapel of the University of the City of New York, on the Sunday after Christmas, 1868.]* BY THE EDITOR. MY BRETHREN: There is a simple fact, most simply stated in the second chapter of the Gospel according to St. Luke, in the seventh verse, which seems very touching and instructive. It is this: "There was no room for them in the inn!" For them! Who were they? Mary and JESUS! And this statement in regard to the mother and the child is assigned as the reason why He was born in a stable and was laid by His mother in a manger-because there was no room for them in the tavern. With our culture and our knowledge of Mary and Jesus, this statement seems a record of brutality. That an honest, But you must recollect that the occurrence in the text took place before Jesus was born. To that very Mary and that very Jesus we owe our tender regard for womanhood and childhood. The very persons against whom the doors of the humble inn of a small village in a conquered province were closed, have opened millions of hearts to humanity by clothing suffering with the garments of sanctity. The Holy Child Jesus has imparted an air of holiness to all infancy, and the Virgin-Mother has consecrated maternity for ever. When we forget all this and picture to ourselves the everblessed Virgin Mary stooping in agony before an inn-keeper and begging for any humblest room he could give her, that she might bring forth her first-born, it seems an intolerable idea to us that she and Joseph should have been turned from the house, and that she should have been led to a stable to fall down in the straw among the cattle. Who were they? is naturally repeated by our hearts decent woman, traveling on business which imperial decrees made absolutely necessary, should be turned out into a stable to give birth to her first-born, strikes us as really horrible. Why did not the men vacate their rooms? why did not several of them sit up all night, if need were, so that this simple-hearted and manifestly saintly young Jewess might have the slight amelioration of respectable surroundings to her first maternal agony? You and I would have given her our apartments and taken the stable, rather than subject her to such discomfort. There was not a gentleman in Christendom who, under the circumstances, would not have vacated his chamber, even in as cold weather as we had the night before last Christmas. * The date is given for a purpose. When the discourse was delivered, nine years ago, the author had never seen any use made of the text. The sermon was published in January, 1869. Since then it has been employed by many hands; by some not so well and by others better. It has suggested stories, poems, and divers articles. All this is very pleasant. We note the date simply to reclaim our own, and to show that the sermon was not suggested by any of the articles which bear its title Vol. III. No. 1.-4. when we learn that "there was no room for them." And then we remind ourselves that they were Mary and Jesus, the purest of women, the holiest of children, both having inspired all that is most splendid and successful in modern painting and poetry, and as Mother and Child, the representatives of all that is loveliest in humanity and of all that is most glorious in divinity, the horizon of human vision on whose edge heaven and earth meet-Love and Power and Purity! And for these there was no room in the inn at Bethlehem! Before you utterly damn this unnamed Jewish innkeeper and his seemingly unfeeling guests, pray be reasonable, and consider three things in abatement ! 1. That you bring to the judgment a culture in the humanities which you owe entirely to this Jesus, who had not yet been born; and 2. That the inn-keeper had reasons for his conduct quite as valid as those which are perpetually allowed among men; and 3. That toward this very same Jesus you and I have behaved much worse than did these people whom we are so | apartments to make way for themselves in an emergency. forward to denounce. I. As to the first: Men are generally guilty of holding their fellows to account for a measure of light and culture which those fellow-men do not possess, but which their judges do. We must in common justice recollect that the principles taught by that Child of Mary have been regenerating and reforming the world for eighteen centuries, and that they have made the difference between our civilization and that of the Bethlehem tavern-keeper. It is among the rules of judgment in the court of God to hold a man responsible not for what he has not, but for what he has. We are very frequently foolish enough to reverse this plain elementary formula of justice, not only as to this inn-keeper, but also as to other men who lived before Jesus, or who, having lived since, have passed their lives outside the benign influences of this holy teaching. II. But as to the second: Let us see what reasons probably influenced the inn-keeper, and whether the mass of mankind would not think those reasons quite valid. 1. He turned them off because they were not known. Go back to the spot. It is a busy time. Guests are coming. The imperial edict for the enrollment of the provinces is bringing multitudes from the country to town. At this juncture two people present themselves. One is a young woman. Her condition betrays itself. Who are they? The inn-keeper does not know them. If they have come from the neighboring rural districts, why did they not remain at home at such a crisis? He does not know how far away their home is, nor what imperious business has brought them to Bethlehem, nor how innocent and ignorant this poor young woman is. A strolling couple, one being in a suspicious condition, desire to enter the house at the time of a great crowd-and the man is in such circumstances that he cannot explain the condition of his female companion. Now, under the circumstances, would not such a reception as they received in Bethlehem be awarded them at a majority of houses in Christendom on any Christmas day? Joseph and Mary had most probably not come prepared to do more than meet the mere expenses of a usual and economic journey. They could not incur responsibilities. They had little money, and no credit. They had fallen so low that they stood, at the door of a tavern, two descendants of the most honored and triumphant of Hebrew kings, and, because these people of royal blood could not buy out the place of some guest for the night, the greatest descendant of David, the Child who was to surpass infinitely the glory of His magnificent ancestor, was compelled to find His birthplace in a stable, His first bed in a manger, and His first companions among the lowly brutes that give patient service to man. And yet the inn-keeper did but take a plain commercial view of the case. Would it "pay" to take these people in? Most obviously, neither immediately nor prospectively would it "pay," so far as the inn-keeper could at all perceive. III. Now, in the third case, after you have considered the difference made in our culture by the blessed Jesus, and all the reasons which the inn-keeper had for driving Mary into the stable because he had no room for her and Jesus in the inn, before you pronounce sentence, make some little examination into the question whether we have not treated Jesus worse than He was treated in Bethlehem. The decision of that question will obviously much depend upon the space in our hearts and lives which Jesus is allowed by us to occupy. Are there not some of us who never permit Him to come upon our premises? He may be totally shut off from the life of a man, as far as man can exclude Him. So present is He everywhere among men by the power of His principles and His Spirit, that it is not possible to exclude Him utterly-and yet, so far as our responsibility is concerned, we do keep Him out to the whole extent of our failure to give Him a welcome to our thoughts, to our affections, and to our activities. Does He have ample welcome to all these departments of our existence? Does He have the chief place in our thoughts-the best place in our love the largest place in our work? Is He welcomed and 2. Their appearance and the condition of their luggage honored? What do you say, my dear friends? How were against them. To this day you know that men judge by appearances, and keepers of taverns, even if so stylish as our St. Nicholas and Fifth Avenue, never claimed to be more than men. You know what is meant by a "carpet-bag" on one hand, and on the other by a "Saratoga trunk," and what a bid for attention a man makes by his luggage. It has always been so. Little did Joseph and Mary have. They had not expected the event to be so soon. She had brought no elegant bed-linen and fine clothes for the little stranger, if He should arrive. She wrapped Him in swaddling clothes, rent clothes, rags, poor babe, when He was born. So mean and poor must the appearance of Joseph and Mary have been, that the honest inn-keeper, having regard for the feelings of self-respect which his guests cherished, would not introduce into the crowd a woman about so soon to be a mother. He had his regular customers. They were substantial citizens from the neighboring country. They were staid, respectable, conservative heads of families. They never would endure to see the plain countryman Joseph brought in with his suspicious female fellow-traveler. To bring in two strangers for a night might be to drive off a dozen good responsible customers for ever. Would not such a course of conduct be pronounced imprudent by the majority of business-men in America, if considered apart from all that now hallows the names of Mary and Jesus? 3. They were poor, and could not pay. It would have greatly increased the bill of a rich couple who should have demanded the turning of a guest from his stands the case with you and your Lord? It is the last Sunday in the year. Is He still standing at the door and knocking? Does He wish to be "formed within you, the hope of glory," and are you still declining to have the honor of having a Nativity of Jesus in your hearts? If so, you are pursuing the course of the inn-keeper of Bethlehem, for what, perhaps, you consider the same reasons, but which I hope you will see are not at all valid or excusatory in your case, whether they were in his or not. Let us review them: 1. Jesus is kept out of your heart because you do not know Him. But you ought to know him. Your ignorance is willful. Recollect that He does not come unborn to you, as He did to the inn-keeper in Bethlehem. He comes to you with all His history of growth and beauty, and truth and activity, and self-denial and suffering, and love and power. Since the night His mother was sent back into a stable, He has performed miracles, opened the eyes of the blind, unstopped the ears of the deaf, cleansed the skin of the leper, and made hearts still under the ribs of death begin again the dance of life to the music of His pulsating accents. He has walked the earth in the sight of men and in view of angels, and shown how sweet and strong and grand and good a thing a man may be. He has let light in on life, so that life may no longer be gloomy, and on immortality, so that endless existence may be no longer dreadful. He has spoken words that are known and pondered by more minds than any other utterances the world has ever heard. He has lifted the whole plane of humanity to a loftier level. He has borne the most sublime martyrdom to truth. He has survived death. He has lived growingly in the hearts of successive generations of men. He has changed and purified and elevated civilization. He has erected hospitals and asylums and refuges without number. He has been the world's very greatest comfort and very greatest glory. You know Him in all these particulars. He comes to you to-day bearing in His hands the credentials of eighteen centuries to His divine power to change and save, proofs beyond number of His holy gentleness and lovingness, and desire to save and elevate you. | urday night's work not simply to the edge of the Holy Day, but even over into the sacred hours. What did all this say? And what said the many times in which you have hurried from your homes too soon to have prayer with your family, or have come back too late to conduct the domestic worship which should close each day? They distinctly said, "No room in this inn for you, Jesus!" Room for Mammon, and room for Pleasure, but no room for the blessed Saviour! Oh, my brethren, if you would let Him in, He would turn every foul visitant out, and as one of the painters has represented the manger and the stable made glorious in You do not know Him? Then there is nothing else every part by light streaming from the figure of the Infant worth knowing! Yes, you do know Him; and knowing, you keep Him from your heart and thought and life. The inn-keeper of Bethlehem will rise up in the judgment with many men of my congregation and condemn you-because he turned away an unaccredited woman, and you reject the Lord of glory. I beseech you do not meet that tavern-keeper at the judgment-seat. He will cry in your ears, "I shall never forget that I turned away Mary the Mother of the Lord. But I did it ignorantly. You-you have rejected Him, and you knew it was He. Oh, that I could have known the character of my guest, as you knew that of yours; then would my life have been made radiant by the fact that Jesus was born in my house." Such reproaches will be your just due. You are this day knowingly turning Jesus away from your door. 2. And you have the inn-keeper's second reason: It will drive other guests away. It was not certain in his case, and it is only probable in yours. Perhaps it would turn other guests out of your heart, perhaps not. If any depart because Jesus came, you ought to be glad of their departure, for the presence of Jesus is incompatible with nothing whose company you should love. Now, is your heart so full that there is no room for Jesus? No room? Full of what? Let us look. Here is a whole room full of the members of the large family of the Pleasures. They are many, and they are exacting. They take large space, for they live widely. Many of them are most deceptive, having stolen the garb and imitated the manners of the more reputable and solid Enjoyments. These latter are the most pleasant and among the ❘ most respectable guests that the heart can entertain. They will stay with Jesus, while those wild and giddy and profitless things you call Pleasures would better have no place in your affections. You were not born to be amused, but to be disciplined. But you have accustomed yourself to think that everything must come to you in the shape of the pleasant and agreeable. Your medicine must be cordials, your food dainties, your bed down, your very worship an entertainment, so that you will follow only that preaching that amuses you, or worship only in the church which is a perplexing cross between a temple and an opera-house. That is the good your Pleasures have done for you-stuffed you so full of sweetmeats and liquorish relishes, that you have no good, wholesome taste for wholesome good things. Shame on you! Turn them out, and let the Man of the Cross bring His pierced hands and feet and forehead into your hearts, and make your lives grand in that they house the sublime Master of Humanity. And there is Business, taking up almost all your heart and head, and crowding you, and calling you, and bothering you, until you are so nervous that you can scarcely eat or sleep. No room for Jesus and His Cross, and His blessed Work. Reflect how often during the past year you have worked so hard through the whole week as to be wholly unable to rise on Sunday in time to attend Church-service. Recollect, if you can, how often you have carried the Sat | Saviour, so would Jesus irradiate and beautify your whole life. Room for darkness, and no room for light; room for foulness, and no room for purity; room for death, but no room for life! Every story from attic to basement crowded, and Jesus turned out into the stable ! Why, you are daily repeating in most aggravating forms the slight put upon Jesus by the condemned inn-keeper of Bethlehem! 3. But the inn-keeper sent Mary to the stable because it would not pay to entertain her in his house. He would have been compelled to turn out some well-known and liberally paying guests. But you have not his ignorance to plead. You know who it is that asks for a place in your heart. You know Him to be a Prince, for whose sake every reasonable man would think it quite the proper thing to dismiss any other guest. You know that He never took lodgings as a gratuity, that He never touched anything that was not blessed; that He never received a look of kindness, a word of love, nay, even a cup of cold water, without leaving behind Him a reward worth a hundred-fold more than what He received, and growing in value with the lapsing hours of life. Does not "pay" to entertain Jesus! Did you ever know a man who took Jesus into his intellect, and worked up his studies under that Great Master, and not grow in profoundness of thought and width of range of intellectual vision? Did you ever know artist give Jesus a lodging, and not thereby have all his æsthetic nature quickened and purified and brightened? Did you ever know any man to conduct any business for Jesus, permeating his life with the spirit of Jesus, basing his plans on the principles taught by Jesus, and laying every profitable income of his trade as a tribute at the feet of Jesus, who did not thrive and increase and have happiness along the whole line of his business career? Oh, my beloved, it is the Christmas-tide, it is the last Sunday of the year. Jesus begs entrance. He does not come in the person of His bowed and pain-stricken mother. He comes from the Cross and from the Sepulchre, from supreme pain and lowest humiliation. From that tomb which He burst He ascended to heaven, leading captivity captive. He gave gifts to men. And thence He comes marching down the centuries. He has fed the hungry, He has healed the sick, He has released the prisoners, He has enlightened the blind, He has cheered the disconsolate, He has fathered the orphans, He has supported the martyrs, He has strengthened the confessors, He has lifted up the lowly, He has forgiven the sinners, He has raised the dead, He has brightened the grave, He has killed Death, and He has conquered Hell. He comes! His footsteps make the stairs of the ages down which He treads to glow goldenly. All the graces of heaven and earth attend Him. In His right hand is the chalice of immortality, and in His left the crown of everlasting glory. His looks shoot light into the intellect and love into the heart. See! He comes to your heart, with all these blessings which He wishes to give to you. He says, "Let Me enter." Will you refuse Him, your best friend, and give lodging to your foes? The dew of the night, nay, the frost of the Winter, is now on His locks, for He stood at your heart last Friday, the anniver- | plead, until these people shall be touched by the tender sary of His birth in the manger, the day of His death on the cross, and He cried, "Let Me in; oh, let Me in !" And, you would not. You barred your doors and sat down with gayer guests, and kept your Saviour out. Yesterday and last night He knocked-and cried-and you said, "No room! no room!" Is He going away? It is the last Sunday of the year. Has He grown weary of your insulting dismissal? Stop! Lord Jesus Christ! Oh, Son of Mary, stop! Do not leave such of my people as have said to Thee, "No room!" It must not be. I seem to hear these busy men in the future knocking passionately and desperately at the gate of mercy, and out of the solemn profoundness of eternity there comes the crushing echo, "No room!" And conscience shrieks to them, "No room! No room among the crowns and songs and glories of heaven for the hearts that had no room for Jesus!" Stay, Lord Jesus; stay, and knock and call and accents of Thy voice, and fly to the entrance of their hearts and pull every bolt away, and fling every door up, and fall at Thy feet and cry, "Go never more from me, O Jesus; but stay, stay with me forever, for all the room in my heart is thine own,-to have and to hold for ever." RIVAL SUITORS. FROM time immemorial down to the present hour, jealousies and heart-burnings have obtained among rival suitors for the hand of some fair belle, who had inspired them with the tender passion. Yet, we have on record evidences of great generosity on the part of cavaliers, who had come into conflict in this relation, and who were guided by the highest consideration for the object of their affection, but who were willing to defer to her choice of either without carrying the bitterness of personal ran cor into their suit. Our illustration represents two such suitors, and certainly the picture is a most agreeable one; for where there is that proud conception of what is just and noble and true in the premises, and a determination to recognize it and to abide by it, a victory is won by both parties which, outside the real question at issue, ennobles them individually. In such cases there is but one umpire, and her decision ought to be received without a murmur. RELIGIOUS TRAMPS. OUR evangelical neighbors are beginning to discover what has been patent to everybody else for a long time, that the wandering religious vagabond is an intolerable nuisance. Says the New York Methodist: "The papers have had lately to deal with the religious, temperance, and reformer tramp. The number of people who 'run' some machine of a pious and moral sort for a living, whose capital is self-conceit and whose income is derived from mixing their brass with the credulity of the public, has greatly increased since 1873." The Northwestern Christian Advocate recently said of the religious section of these vagabonds: |