which to excite their laggard and weary charities. Whenever she needed to purchase anything, she sent to me or to Millie, or to her friends at The Mansion, her commission,-always without the money. She either did not know how much the desired articles would cost, or there was such danger of losing money when sent by post, or she had not the exact change on hand; but she assured us that Mr. Mullens would call and pay us when visiting Bradford. The burden thus rolled upon Mr. Mullens was never taken up by him; and so, year after year, we consented to be bled by this amiable woman, while the Mullens family went on increasing in numbers and multiplying in wants. It became a matter of wonder that any religious society should be content with the spiritual ministrations of such a man as Mullens; but this society was simple and poor, and their pastor had an ingenious way of warming over his old broth and the old broth of others which secured for him a certain measure of respect. His tongue was glib, his presence imposing, and his self-assurance quite overwhelming. But at last there came a change. New residents in the parish saw through his shallow disguises, and raised such a storm of discontent about his ears that he was compelled to resign his pulpit and to cast about for other means of living. No other pulpit opened its doors to him. The man's reputation outside of his parish was not a desirable one. Everybody had ceased to regard him as a man capable of teaching; and he had so begged his way and lived upon his acquaintances, and had so meanly incurred and meanly refused to recognize a thousand little debts among his early friends, that it was impossible for him to obtain even a temporary engagement as a preacher. There was nothing left for him to do, but to become a peddler of some sort, for which office he had rare natural gifts. Leaving his family where they were, he took an agency for the sale of the Cottage Bible. He drove a thrifty business with this publication, going from house to house, wearing always his white cravat, living upon the ministers and deacons, and advertising himself by speeches at evening meetings and Sunday-schools. Sometimes he got an opportunity to preach on Sunday, and having thus made his face familiar to the people, drove a brisk business among them on Monday. His white cravat he used as a sort of pass on railroads and steamboats, or as an instrument by which it was to be secured. Every pecuniary consideration which could be won from a contemptuous business world, by the advertisement of the sacred office which he once held, he took the boldest or the most abject way to win. It must not be supposed that "old Mullens," as people learned to call him, was really distressed by poverty. Never paying out a cent of money that came into his hands if he could avoid it, he accumulated a handsome property, which he skilfully hid away in investments, main taining his show of poverty, through all his active life. Henry shook him off at last and helped me to do the same. We heard of him not long ago lecturing to Sunday-schools and buying wool, and it is not ten years since he appeared in Bradford as an agent of a life-insurance company, with specially favorable terms to clergymen who were kind enough to board him during his visit. I shrink from writing here the stories I heard about him, concerning the way in which he advertised his business by mixing it with his public religious teachings, because it associates such base ideas with an office which I revere as the highest and holiest a man can hold; but when I say that in his public addresses he represented the Christian religion as a system of life-insurance of the spiritual kind, I sufficiently illustrate his methods and his motives. He passed a useless life. He became a nuisance to his professional brethren, a burden to all who were good-natured enough to open their houses to him, and a disgrace to the Christian ministry. Wearing the badge of a clergyman, exacting as a right that which was rendered to others as a courtesy or a testimonial of love and friendship, surrendering his manhood for the privileges of ministerial mendicancy, and indulging his greed for money at the expense of a church to which he fancied he had given his life, he did, unwittingly perhaps, what he could to bring popular contempt upon his profession, and to associate with the Christian religion the meanest type of personal character it is possible to conceive. Amid the temptations of this poor, earthly life, and the weaknesses of human nature, even the most sacred profession will be disgraced, now and then, by men who repent in dust and ashes over their fall from rectitude, and the dishonor they bring upon a cause which in their hearts they love; but Mullens carried his self-complacency to the end, and demonstrated by his character and influence how important it is that dunces shall not be encouraged to enter upon a high walk of life by benefactions which rarely fail to induce and develop in them the spirit of beggars. I am sure there is no field of Christian benevolence more crowded with untoward results than that in which weak men have found the means for reaching the Christian ministry. The beggarly helplessness of some of these men is pitiful; and a spirit of dependence is fostered in them which emasculates them, and makes them contemptible among those whom they seek to influence. Though the Rev. Peter Mullens is still living, I have no fear that I shall be called to an account for my plain treatment of him, as he will never buy this book, or find a friend who will be willing to give or lend it to him. Even if he had such a friend, and he should recognize his portrait, his amour propre would not be wounded, and he would complacently regard himself as persecuted for righteousness sake. A CHRISTMAS CAROL. THERE'S a song in the air! There's a mother's deep prayer And a baby's low cry! And the star rains its fire while the Beautiful sing, There's a tumult of joy Is the Lord of the earth; Ay! the star rains its fire and the Beautiful sing, For the manger of Bethlehem cradles a king! In the light of that star Has swept over the world. Every hearth is aflame, and the Beautiful sing In the homes of the nations that Jesus is King. We rejoice in the light, And we echo the song That comes down through the night Ay! we shout to the lovely evangel they bring, And we greet in his cradle our Saviour and King Julia Ward Howe. BORN in New York, N. Y., 1819. OUR ORDERS. [Later Lyrics. 1866.] WEAVE no more silks, ye Lyons looms, To deck our girls for gay delights! Weave but the flag whose bars to-day Keep back your tunes, ye viols sweet, The trumpet leads our warrior bands. And ye that wage the war of words Or teach the lesson of the hour! Ye Sibyl Arts, in one stern knot Stand close, while Courage draws the lot, And if that destiny could fail, The sun should darken in the sky, The eternal bloom of Nature pale, And God, and Truth, and Freedom die! BATTLE-HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC. INE eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord: MINE He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword: His truth is marching on. I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps; I have read a fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows of steel: He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat; In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, |