strike for freedom, and would we not long for some helping hand to free us?" Then he read them the LAWS which he had been weighing; and as in the darkest night a lantern's light is turned full upon the chasm that yawns at a traveler's feet, so did he turn their brightness upon the great crime against Humanity which cries to Heaven against this Nation. Then this old man and his sons left their guardian women to pray for them; and taking their lives in their hands, they went forth, these modern Knights of the Round Table, to strike from human hands every fetter they could reach; and many a living and immortal heart did they rescue from the Dragon's coils! When the ear heard them, then it blessed them, and when the eye saw them, it gave witness to them; because they delivered the poor that cried, and the fatherless, and him that had none to help him.

At last the old man went down into the same neighborhood where Excalibur had gone. A divine madness seized upon him; as it is written, "Oppression maketh a wise man mad❞—but whether such madness be not the wisdom of God, which is foolishness with men, we are not all calm enough to judge now. Soon John Brown bore in his hand the never-failing sword Excalibur! In his hand it conquered a whole nation. Presently twenty-nine other nations came to help the one, an l this old man and his sons were taken prisoners, but not till then; such is the power of the sword which strikes for Justice and Liberty.

On the second day of December, 1859, they hung that old man by the neck until he was dead,-for loving his neighbor as himself, for stooping to heal the wounded Jew, for remembering those who are in bonds as bound with them. But as he died he was more victorious than he had ever dreamed of being; he melted a million hearts and poured them into the moulds of Freedom.

EXCALIBUR still waits the hand of its next true King, who will be he that can conquer without it. It has made its wound, piercing beneath the scales of the Dragon; and that wound can never be healed. His fierce writhings and threatenings only tell us how the blow touched the seat of life.

Let us trust that it need never strike again! Let us pray that about it may grow up a people who know the power of the Sword of the Spirit, the LOVE which never faileth; and who may wield the weapon which is not carnal so truly that the strongholds of Evil shall fall, and the kingdom of Purity and Peace be established.

AMOR RESPICIT CELUM.

MY GOD, why should I love thee for reward?
Why should I pray thee come in golden shower?
Doth not Love tower o'er Faith and Hope by this,
That her free-giving eyes look to no end?

Through Heaven I press, for that thou art beyond:
Only sustaining, can I be sustained';

In Heaven I missed the cross which, when I bore,
Bore me.
Another and another Fall

Before fresh mandates need I-uplifting

Falls; the faithful, friendly wounds which heal me;
The fatal edge which slays to make alive.

Oh, leave me not in any Paradise,

But lead me forth to bleak and blessed paths;
And set thine angel with his Sword of Flame-
A curse divine-to hinder when I turn!

THE CATHOLIC CHAPTER.

RELIGION.

Ir is pleasant to die, if there be gods; sad to live, if there be Marcus Antoninus.

none.

To which religion do I belong? To none that thou might'st name. And why to none? For religion's own sake. Schiller.

It is not lawful in Heaven to think three and say one; because every one in Heaven speaks from thought: in Heaven there is thinking speech or speaking thought.

In Heaven, the more angels the more room.

Because the angels believe this (that all Life is from the Lord), they refuse thanks on account of the good they do. The life of every one is such as his love is.

What any man loves is to him good.

In Heaven, by loving the Lord is not meant to love him as to person, but to love the good that is from him.

Swedenborg.

Nothing which is celestial passes over; but that which is earthly passes over by the celestial.

Bettine.

Immortality must be proved, if at all, by our activity and designs, which imply an interminable future for their play.

R. W. Emerson.

Thou, O God, hast made me for Thyself; I can not rest but in Thee! St. Augustine. Intellect is a god, through a light which is more ancient than intellectual light and intellect itself. Proclus.

All virtues, even justice itself, are merely different forms of benevolence.

Benevolence produces and constitutes the heaven or beatitude of God himself. He is no other than an infinite and eternal GoodWILL. Benevolence must, therefore, constitute the beatitude or heaven of all dependent beings. Henry Brooke.

Man must eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; otherwise he is no man, but a mere animal.

Hegel.

Let us not vail our bonnets to circumstance. If we act so because we are so; if we sin from strong bias of constitution and temper, at least we have in ourselves the measure and the curb of our aberration. But if they who are around us sway us; if we think ourselves incapable of resisting the cords by which fathers and mothers, and a host of unsuitable expectations, and duties falsely so called, seek to bind us-into what helpless discord shall we not fall! Do you remember, in the Arabian Nights, the princes who climbed the hill to bring away the singing treehow the black pebbles clamored, and the princes looked around and became black pebbles like themselves? Charles Emerson.

Firmian merely replied: "More than one Savior has already died for the earth and for man; and I am convinced that Christ will one day take many pious human beings by the hand, and say to them Ye, too, have suffered under Pilates."

Jean Paul Richter. Every Prophet whom I send, goeth forth to establish religion, not to root it up.

Thou wilt be asked: By what what descendeth on the heart. souls would be utterly helpless. knowledge, before which, if thou display it to mankind, they will tremble like a branch agitated by the strong wind.

dost thou know God? Say: By For, could that be proved false, There is in thy soul a certain

The first time I was called to the world above, the Heavens and Stars said unto me, O Sasan! we have bound up our loins in the service of Yezdan and never withdrawn from it, because he is worthy of praise; and we are filled with astonishment how mankind can wander so far from the commands of God.

Whatever is on earth is the resemblance or shadow of something that is in the sphere. While that resplendent thing remaineth in good condition, it is well also with its shadow. When that resplendent thing removeth far from its shadow, life removeth to a distance. Again, that Light is the shadow of something more resplendent than itself. And so on up to Me, who am the Light of Lights. Look, therefore, to Yezdan, who causeth the shadow to fall.

Purity is of two kinds, real and formal. The real consisteth in not bending the heart to evil; and the formal in cleansing away what appears evil to the view.

True self-knowledge is knowledge of God.

Life is affected by two evils, Lust and Anger. Restrain them within the proper mean: till man can attain this self-control he can not become a celestial.

The perfect seeth unity in multiplicity, and multiplicity in unity.

The roads tending to God are more in number than the breathings of created beings.

Sasan,

(a Persian prophet contemporary with the Emperor Heraclius.)

Truth is congenial to man. Moral Truth is then most consummate when, like Beauty, it commends itself without argument. Man is apt to gravitate when he does not aspire.

Whatever each man worships inwardly is his god, whether he know it or not.

He who has a Ruling Passion worships one God, good or evil. He who is carried at random by many impulses has many Gods; perhaps as shifting, as shapeless, as unworthy as any heathen divinities.

Fully to know the Right demands the culture of all our powers. The righteous not only does right, but loves to do right.

F. W. Newman.

The frequency with which we hear profane discourse, intemperance, or devotedness to frivolous amusements, characterized as "unbecoming a clergyman," in a sort of tone which implies

the speaker's feelings to be that they are unbecoming merely to a clergyman, is a proof of the general tendency to vicarious religion, which makes men, who take little care to keep their own lights burning, desirous to have one to whom they may apply in their extremity, "Give us of your oil, for our lamps are going Archbishop Whately.

out."

He who begins by loving Christianity better than Truth, will proceed by loving his own sect or church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all. Coleridge.

When every man is his own end, all things will come to a bad end. We want public souls: we want them.

Hacket.

THE TWO SERVANTS:

CALIBAN AND ARIEL.

SHAKSPERE, in "The Tempest," represents the lordly Prospero as served by two strangely diverse beings. The one is a monster with signs of the lower orders of creation about him; he thinks himself rightful sovereign of the island, and Prospero a powerful usurper. He obeys, but only because he must; obeys mutteringly, and is willing to conspire against his master; he serves as a slave. The other servant is an etherial spirit: where Caliban has a claw, Ariel has a wing. The witch Sycorax, who had brought forth the monster, had by her infernal power confined Ariel in the cloven pine, because he was

"A spirit too delicate

To act her earthy and abhorred commands."

Prospero had liberated Ariel, who then served him from gratitude, though longing for greater and greater freedom; and whenever the sprite would grow weary of his high tasks, Prospero had only to recall to his mind the liberation his power had wrought. His service is inspired by Love and Hope, and is performed with delightful activity and joyousness.

These two servants the IDEAL, which waves its wand over the human soul, also has served it is by both; but the one is a groaning and the other a joyful service. The Law and the Gospel do not divide epochs of history so much as classes of men.