them, always new, fresh, and interesting; and, for the same reason, viz., it deals with the affections, which unlike the intellect, loves the familiar: delights in the old, and is coy of the new and strange. The variety of kisses is not small. There is the kiss paternal, the kiss fraternal, the kiss connubial, (and pre-connubial,) and the kiss promiscuous. The last two varieties are the only ones to which we object. We have often thought in reference to the kiss promiscuous one of the blessings of the man over the woman consisted in being relieved of this conventional duty. It seems to us, in very many instances, like casting pearls before swine, and in illustration of the old adage, "Familiarity breeds contempt." A man or a woman who makes himself common in this respect, must not wonder if they are not always appreciated.

scanning eagerly the closely written sheets, now and again laughing quietly. Finally he slipped the letter into his pocket, and, rising, saw me.

Good-morning, Miss Williams,” he said cordially; for he always had a pleasant word for us older people. "Good news?" I questioned, smil

ing.

My sister's letters always bring good news," he answered. "She writes such jolly letters."

And, unfolding this one, he read me scraps of it-bright nothings, with here and there a little sentence full of sisterly love and earnestness. There was a steady light in his eyes as, half apologizing for "boring" me, he looked up and said quietly, "Miss Williams, if I make any kind of a man, it will be sister Nell's doings."

And, as I looked at him, I felt strongly what a mighty power “Sister Nell" held in her hands-just a woman's hands, like yours, dear girls, and perhaps no stronger or better; but it made me wonder how many girls stop to consider how they are using their influence over these boys, growing so fast toward manhood, unworthy or noble, as the sisters choose.

There is but one way, dear girls; begin at once, while they are still the litle boys of the home circle, ready to come to "sister" with everything. Let them feel that you love them.

These great, honest boy hearts are both tender and loyal, and if you stand by these ladis now, while they are still neither boys nor men, while they are awkward and heedless, they will remember it when they become the courteous, polished gentlemen you desire to see them. Do not snub them; nothing hurts a loving boy soul more than a snub and nothing more effectually closes the boy heart than thoughtless ridicule.

Have patience girls-that gentle patience whose perfect work will

surely win the smile of the Master, who grants to all who do the Father's will that we should be his "sisters;" and for the sake of the great Elder Brother who dignified with his divine touch these earthly relationships, shall we not be more tender, more patient, more loving with these sensitive great-hearted lads who call us "sister," and remember the wise man who said, "Shall the woman who guards not a brother be lightly trusted with husband or sons?"

CHRIST'S COMING TO HIS KINGDOM.

BY REV. T. J. SAWYER.

Dr. Edwards, in his "Notes on the Bible,' on the words of Christ, Matt. 16: 28, "Verily I say unto you, there be some standing here, who shall not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his Kingdom," after saying that some of the disciples saw Christ coming in his glory in the Transfiguration, and also in the descent of the Holy Ghost, adds:

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Again some of them saw him coming in his kingdom at the destruction of Jerusalem, and an eye seems chiefly to be had to this event; for then was there a total end put to the Jewish church, and the Jewish dispensation, which is compared to (if not specifically called) the end of the world.' The world that then was, the old state of things in the world, with respect to religion, that bad subsisted so long a time, was then utterly and finally done away, and the kingdom of heaven succeeded, the gospel dispensation or the king dom was then fully established, the state of things thenceforward in the church was really evangelical. Christ died then in a very awful manner, and with a signal manifestation of his hand destroyed the enemies of his kingdom, and remarkably delivered his people; there was a remarkable

rewarding of men according to their works then. It is most apparent that Christ did call his appearing in that great event of the destruction of Jerusalem, and other events that attended it, his Coming. Matt. 23: 2, 3. There Christ tells his disciples, when showing him the building of the temple, that not one stone shall be left on another; whereupon the disciples ask him, when these things shall be, and what should be the sign of his coming, and of the end of the world? And in his answer, he has respect still to the destruction of Jerusalem as is evident by the 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th verses. It is expressly said to be the desolation of Jerusalem. Compare these

SO

texts in Matt. and Luke 21: 20. And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh, and ver. 23. There shall be great distress in the land and wrath upon the people; and in the 27th aud 28th verses, he particularly gives his disciples a sign, whereby they might know the time and place of his coming; for Christ is there expressly speaking his coming; he says shall the Coming of the Son of Man be, for wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together,' denoting it to be at Jerusalem and at the time of its destruction by the Romans. See my notes on these verses. There is no need of supposing that Christ here meant his coming in any other than a spiritual sense; for so Christ was wont to speak of things to come, when it is plain. that he intended a spiritual fulfillment."

This, we need not say, is essentially the interpretations which the Universalists adopt. Dr. Edwards, however. blinded by his prejudices, saw the truth only partially. He still thought there was another Coming

of Christ" at the end of the world," i. e., when the earth should come to end by being burned up or otherwise. wholly destroyed. A careful study of the New Testament will show that only two comings or appearings of Christ are ever mentioned. The first was his coming in the flesh, the second in power and glory; and this took place according to his express declarations before the generation in which he lived passed away, and before all who heard him had tasted death. It was anticipated by the Apostles and disciples of their day with the utmost confidence and joy, as it was to be the overthrow of the Jewish state and religion, and the es tablishment of Christianty. Then Christ properly began to reign; then he commenced, by signal display of justice, the great judgment which he has been carrying on ever since, for the punishment of the wicked and the reward of them who do well, and which our orthodox neighbors believe is to be executed only at the end of of the world, in our English sense of the term, when it is obvious that it can do no good.-Ambassador.

LIVED TOO LONG.

It is not the very old, the decrepit alone who live too long. Many men, and not a few women, who have not exceeded middle age, who sometimes have not fairly passed their youth, have lived too long. They have survived their reputatation; they have come to great disappointment, sorrow or shame; they have neglected some brilliant opportunity to die; they have not made their exit at the proper time, on the proper scene. They do not see their error until they look back, and retrieval is too late. There is no use, then, of their slipping off the planet; nobody is watching their movement with mingled envy and admiration; nobody would note their

absence. They feel this deeply, bitterly; they can not help regretting that nature and fortune had not been kinder: that they had not got their cue from fate in the nick of time. They can now see all the advantages of going out in glory, instead of waiting for extinction in emptiness and obscurity. There are doubtless hundreds, perhaps thousands of men in every populous town, both at home and abroad, who can turn to the past and see with clearness the hour and place where they should [have died. Retrospection illuminates their whole. career so as to reveal with luster the exact point or points whence their departure would have been acompanied with mingled honor and sorrow.

This is the mere worldly way of regarding life and its discontinuance. But it is the way life is generally regarded by others. We may be sentimental and vapid respecting our ending, though we are reasonable and philosophic about the ending of those for whom we are not personally concerned. We think, in reviewing the antecedents of any public man, that we know when he should have gone. We do not permit

his small conceits and human weaknesses to distort our judgment. So others see, if they trouble themselves to take us into account, when we have walked too far upon the hard crowded, struggling highway leading to the grave.

We can not choose when we shall be born or unborn; yet the dullest of us can perceive the best season for the final exodus of our neighbors as they can perceive our season. Youth has its fascination, its rewards, its illusions; middle age its comforts and compensations. We sorrow for those who pass away before many years have fallen upon them. Nevertheless, it is far better that they should go early than linger late. More truth and wisdom than

we fancy lies in the utterance: "It is not all of live to live, nor all of death to die."

RASH EXPERIMENTS.

There are some things which it is well to take for granted. We do not now refer to the effects of bad habits and vicious practices. In regard to these, it would be desirable indeed for the youngsters to believe in the experience of their elders. It would save much unhappiness if they would take for granted that vice leads to sorrow, instead of trying for themselves. But just now, the reference is to some minor matters.

Now, for example, it would be just as well to take for granted that the gun or revolver is always loaded. Hundreds of lives have been lost by just seeing "Whether it is loaded or not." There are other sorts of knowledge which are too risky to be worth acquiring. So young Mr. Barry, of Philadelphia, discovered recently to his cost. He had a dispute with his sweetheart about a passage in Dickens's novel of "Olivir Twist." In this the burglar Sykes is represented as strangling on the rope which he had attached to his waist, in order to lower himself from the roof of a building. "I will show you some day," said young Barry "that it is perfectly feasible." According he took an inch rope to his room, tied one end to the door-knob, passed the rope over the top of the door, and made it fast around his own body, the noose resting under one arm and over the other shoulder. It is presumed that the rope hurt his arm and caused him to throw it up. Then the noose slipped, caught him under the chin, and his father found him hanging there quite dead, with his neck broken.

A great many accidents of this sort have happened from time to As we remarked in the outset,

tim e.

it is well to take some things for granted. Experiments of a rash kind cost too much.

"THE SWEET SERENITY OF

BOOKS.

What fellowship have we not all found in books! When other pleasures fail, when life disappoints, when ill health haunts us, we return to their long neglected companionship, and we meet with no reproof for our indifference, but with thorough geniality. When we are fatigued, they refresh us; when we are ill, they amuse us; when we are hurt by man's ingratitude, they draw us away from ourselves and our rights. They do not interrupt or contradict us, while they afford much of the pleasure of conversation; and though the opinions or thoughts advanced in a book may not chance to coincide with our own we are not offended by them. Moreover, we are not obliged to listen to them when we are not in the humor, in which respect they have an advantage over the most delightful talker in the world. We can shut the book up when we feel. inclined; the talker is not SO easily disposed of. We can even take the liberty of falling asleep over its pages; and what talker on earth would wink at such an indignity--would gather up the broken threads, when we pleased to awake, and pursue the subject with unruffled composure? A book is a disembodied thought, and we do not come into collision with the personality of the writer, as we are apt to do with that of the speaker; and thus if our own pet ideas are impugned, the attack does not savor of malice nor arouse resentment. Who does not recall the first volumes of his youth with something like a transport of remembrance? And what renown would not that book achieve

which should produce the same effect upon the mature mind? What inexhaustible riches did not the fairybooks of that period open to our young imaginations, wherein we saw the minarets of Bagdad shine, and heard the Tigris murmur, and the bulbul trill, and all the barbaric splendors of the East were unfolded! To those whom circumstances detain at the chimney-corner, what a boon. and enlightenment is the book of travels which carries them away from their prosaic experiences into enchanted regions, opening their minds to a thousand marvels, widening their sphere of thought, narrowing their prejudices, and acquainting them with a world beyond their boundaries! Who does not remember stolen half hours at some favorite tryst which have solaced us for days spent in uncongenial tasks? In the company of a book which delights us we forget that the seat is uncushioned, that the day is stormy, the purse lean, the cupboard empty; fact is dethroned by fiction or fancy for the nonce; and we are never alone, but surrounded by a cloud of witnesses. What an endless resource do books offer to those whose ways and means are too limited to admit of the expensive entertainments of society, the play-house, or the concert-room! What teachers of manners they are, and how stimulating to the faculties! And yet some people pretend to despise them, and speak of them with the contempt due to some exploded method of enlightenment, to some pretentious folly.

SAVE AND HAVE, OR, WASTE AND WANT. Either man must be content with poverty all his life, or else be willing to deny himself some luxuries, and save, to lay the base of independence in the future. But if a man

denies the future, and spends all he earns (whether his earnings be one dollar or ten dollars every day), let him look for lean and hungry want at some future time-for it will surely come, no matter what he thinks. To save is absolutely the only way to get a solid fortune; there is no other certain mode. Those who shut their eyes and ears to these plain facts will be forever poor, and for their obstinate rejection of truth, mayhap will die in rags and filth. Let them so die, and thank themselves. But no! They take a sort of recompense in cursing fortune. Great waste of breath. They might as well curse the mountains and the eternal hills. For I can tell them fortune does not give away real and substantial goods. She sells them to the highest bidder, to the hardest and wisest worker for the boon. Men never make so fatal a mistake as when they think themselves creatures of fate, 'tis the sheerest folly in the world. Every man may make or mar his life, whichever he may choose. Fortune is for those who by diligence, honesty, frugalty, place themselves in a position to to grasp hold fortune when it appears in view. The best evidence of frugality is the five hundred dollars or more standing in your name at the savings bank. The best evidence of honesty consists in diligence and frugality.

FAITH is required at thy hands, and a sincere life; not height of understanding, nor the depth of the mysteries of God.---Kempis.

ZEAL without humility is like a ship without a rudder, liable to be stranded at any moment.--Feltham.

THE learned man's ink, and the martyr's blood, are equally valuable in the sight of God.