known that God is omniscient and omnipresent (all loving) as well as omnipotent? And therefore even though we should exhaust (so far as man is capable of computing) the science of numbers in relation to the stellar universe, it would prove nothing of God's spiritual nature; and although the question, "What is man that thou art mindful of him?" does stagger the imagination, it might be well for us to remember that human estimates of value-such as small and great-may be based on a wrong standard, a stone of the earth and polished as a diamond which may be held in the hollow of the hand may bring the price of a territory-then it is incredible that the spirit which God gives to man and which is invisible to us, but to Him sparkles with the light of eternity, is of less value than the material universe? Does not Jesus say, "For what is a man profited if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" Parallel with the advancement of astronomy an account quoted by the El Paso Morning Times from Edgar Lucian Larkin of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, at a meeting held in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in September, 1909, says every scientific man in the world was astonished a few years ago when it was announced in all languages that what we call matter may be dispensed with, electricity substituted for it, and we could still have the great fundamental property of all matter inertia. "Force is as completely unknown as the nature of electricity. They may be identical, however. Energy cannot be defined. But electrons are pure electricity. They move. All matter known can be

resolved into electrons, but in doing so vanishes as matter known to our senses, and much more equally as difficult to understand, because God's universe is infinite, and as Mr. Larkin says, "only superficial minds try to think of eternity.'

The progress science has made on the lines of "observable fact" are really marvelous, but the secret of life, vegetable and animal life, as well as the spiritual, are still wrapped in impenetrable mystery, i. e., in God. Of the latter Jesus said to the master in Isreal, Nicodemus: "The wind bloweth where it listeth, thou hearest the sound thereof, but can'st not tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth, so is every one that is born of the Spirit."

By its fruits or effects only can life be discerned. A beautiful illustration was given in a recent issue of the Christian Herald, that I wish the whole world might read, of the transforming power of the Holy Spirit in the life of Mr. Joseph Rafter, now president of the Broad and Market Street National Bank of Newark, N. J., a city I think of thirty thousand inhabitants. About five years ago he was "ragged, unwashed and unkempt" and so low had he fallen that the proprietor of the saloon which had helped to accomplish his ruin, ordered him to get out "as he was a disgrace to the place,' neither would the police allow him to rest in the parks, and thus outcast as he was, and thinking only of escape through suicide, he wandered into that spiritual lighthouse and haven of rest for the outcast, "The Bowery Mission" of New York. There he was led to kneel for prayer

and in “a twinkling" he was "born from above." Friends found for him a position, as he had been before his degradation an expert printer; his family was restored to him and his promotion was onward until he is now one of the most successful and honored of Newark's citizens; and with a bang of his fist on his desk he told the interviewer, Mr. Halliman, that if his testimony to the saving grace of Jesus Christ would cause him to lose his position, that it should go, for he feared no living man, but gave all the glory to God alone.

Light is positive-darkness negative only, that is the absence of light. We can turn on the light, but not darkness. "Right is radical." A straight line swerves neither to the right nor left. Life, Truth and Love, the attributes of God, are right, but being infinite there is neither right nor left. Man's life being only a ray from the Infinite must move out on the forward march. And while one sometimes shrinks from being called narrow, we should remember that Jesus has forever glorified the word in that he says, "Strive to enter in at the strait gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth unto destruction and many there be that go in thereat. Because strait is the gate and narrow the way that leadeth unto life and few there be that find it."

XIX.

A WOMAN'S OPINIONS.

Editor El Paso Herald:

As a staunch and true friend and admirer of The Herald, I shall avail myself of the privilege usually accorded to such persons, of speaking in a friendly way of several matters, on some of which I heartily agree with the editor, while in others a difference of opinion is no less marked.

It should be, and I am sure, to a large extent, is, one of El Paso's proudest boasts that we have a secular paper (The Herald) that stands as a beacon light, in a vast territory, for all that makes for peace, liberty and civic righteous

ness.

It was largely owing to its efforts that El Paso ceased to be a "wide open town" in so far as gambling is concerned, and it is now systematically against race track gambling; and while disposed to be cautious in its opposition to the saloon, it gives no uncertain sound as to its ultimate aim.

Its pages are never sullied with advertisements of the horrible bull fight, that vies in its demoralizing influence with the barbarous and cruel sports of ancient Rome; but from time to time there are protests against all such awful and bloodthirsty games.

Surely it must be a terribly depraved and vicious taste that so many of our American citizens have and who are almost entirely respon

sible for their continuance. One should certainly be willing to draw the line at such terrible cruelty, the barbarities of which make the very recital of it revolting in the extreme. What kind of a heart must one possess who can find pleasure in the agony and torture of poor and helpless dumb beasts? If men who are free wish to engage in cruel sport and enter the prize ring themselves, it is bad enough, but not to be mentioned in comparison with the "American" bull fight.

If all the pastors of the city, the Woman's Charity association, the Humane society, as well as others whose responsibilities are as great and whose sensibilities are outraged would join The Herald in its efforts to do away with the terrible stain on our civilization, it would simply have to go, as so many other evils have done, even if it is not nominally an American institution.

Apropos, however, of the subject of sport that involves pain (to others), the petition of the women and schools of Fort Worth asking Mr. Roosevelt not to make the aim of his trip to Africa merely one of hunting and killing in their wilderness homes, for sport, the wild animals found there, our editor seems to have been so anxious to excuse our good president that in my opinion he gave a rather sarcastic and sophistical turn to the sentiment of this petition. There is a sufficient amount of innate cruelty in all of us, and it is to be deplored that one whose example from his exalted position has been in so many instances worthy of the emulation of the youth of our land, it is, I say, deplorable that he