great allurement to Mahometan men is, that there each will find seventy-two Houris more beautiful than angels, with gardens, groves, marble palaces, and music awaiting him. URIJAH R. THOMAS. Bristol. The Pulpit and its Handmaids. THE SOUL.-No one can see God's beauty in the external world who has not moral beauty within; no one can catch the sweet harmonies without, who has not the moral harmonies within. The soul is the measure and mirror of man's universe. GOD'S THOUGHTS.-The soul is as truly made to receive into it, as its breath and life, thoughts from God, as the eye is made to receive the light, as the earth is made to receive the sunshine and the showers. An intelligent spirit apart from communication with God, is a globe without a sun- -dark, cold, chaotic, dead; like a star that has lost its centre, it wanders from its orbit, and goes every moment into deeper darkness, and hastens to ultimate destruction. INFLUENCE.-None of us can live unto ourselves. In every act, we produce a ripple upon the great sea of existence that shall go on in ever widening circles. Every moment we touch chords that shall vibrate along the arches of a boundless future. WORDS.-The function of words is faithfully to represent the soul; they should be to man's inner being what the beam is to the sun, the frag rance to the flower, the stream to the fountain, the fruit to the tree faithful exponents of itself. THE GOOD DEED.-The good deed does not pass away from the doer, it leaves its spirit behind. THE WORLD A VESSEL.-This globe is a ship crowded with passengers; all are battling with the fierce storms of time, as the ship bears them through seas of ether on their way to a destiny eternal. INDEPENDENCY.-Each individual has the power of striking out an orbit for himself-an orbit in some respects different from that in which any one had ever moved before or will ever move again. The Divine idea of humanity seems to be this, that all souls should have a common centre, and that in all their revolutions, their social radiations, borrowed from a common source, should genially and harmoniously blend, intermingle, and combine. TRIALS.-The trials of life reveal the dispositions of the heart; they take off the mask, they strip off all shams, and show us to ourselves and the universe. Trials test our principles as fire tries the minerals. The bitterest ingredients in the The Pulpit and its Handmaids. cup of life may prove to have the greatest curative virtue. When the whole history of our race is complete, it may appear that all the evils of our world, as compared with the good, are but as one jarring note in an endless anthem of joy, one cloudy hour in the sunshine of ages. SPIRIT THE ALL.-This material universe is but spirit in costume, "a vesture;" its myriads of objects are but eternal thoughts run into palpable forms. Imagination with her keen eyes looks through the garb, sees the divine ideas, moulds them into shapes of her own, and clothes them in an airy fabric of her own weaving. Man has no universe worth mentioning but that which comes reflected from the mirror of his own soul. VIRTUE.-Virtue only can be sincere; virtue is not ashamed to show itself- it has no closed doors, no deeds of darkness; it courts the light, it expands and blooms in sunshine. RIGHT POINT OF VISION.-If you would see the glorious stars in the daytime, you must descend into some dark pit and look up, and you will behold the firmament brilliant with innumerable orbs; and if you would behold the wonderfulness of God's love, you must descend into the dark chamber of the world's corrupt heart, and, looking up, you will see it with overwhelming glory. VIRTUE.-The virtue of some, is but vice sleeping. LOVE.-The being we love supremely we keep close to our hearts. Friends separated by continents, oceans, and even death, love brings near. It is 1 not logic, but love, that makes us feel the Infinite near. Where God is loved, there is no room for other deities. When the sun is on the eye the stars are not. HOLY PRINCIPLES.-Get holy principles, and thou shalt get the pinions of an angel, which shall bear thee above all the clouds and storms of earth, into the sunshine and the calm of eternity. MEMORY.-We impart something of ourselves to every object with which we are brought into conscious contact, something that will speak to our memories for ever-a kind of archangel's trump to wake the buried thoughts. to TRIALS. The good have ever felt afflictions to be blessings. They have been storms purify the atmosphere of their hearts, gales to bear their barques away from scenes on which their souls were set; curative elements in the cup of life, to eradicate disease and to brace with strength. TRUTH.-Truth, like life, will make its own form;-error only lives as it is wrapped in fine clothes. SOLITUDE.-The temple must be founded in darkness that its dome may greet the sunlight: and the flower must push its fibrous roots into the soil, that its blossom may beautify the garden; but the house will fall and the tree decay if the foundation of the one be not stoutly built and the roots of the other do not grow. Religion is like a temple in its need of a massive foundation, builded in the "secret parts," and like a flower in its need of vigorous and ever-growing roots. THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD. -Sin's thunder-storms will not always beat on the world; a celestial calmness will one day settle on its smiling brow. It will not always be tossed about like a vessel in a storm; it will one day cast its anchor within the veil, and repose on the calm blue sea of Infinite love. It will not always be a chaos. The centre of light is already planted in its moral heavens-the darkness is passing away, and the morning is advancing. INFLUENCE. No solitary act terminates with its performance. Each act is a seed that shall multiply its own kind for ever; a drop which colours and swells the stream of an everlasting existence; an impulse that will never expend its force, but shall tell on the ages of an interminable future. THOUGHTS.-True thoughts thrown upon the ages are like corn-seed cast upon the flowing Nile. They may seem lost for awhile beneath the current, but they will find a soil more lasting than the stream itself, and they will appear in lovely life and fruitfulness when "time no longer is." Thought is a transmutive force. It can get good out of evil and evil out of good. HAPPINESS.-Human happiness is a plant that springs from one germ, a stream that issues from one fount-harmony of soul. A happy mind must be a mind in harmony with itself, the universe, and God. VIRTUE. The principles of virtue, like the elements of nature, are ever identical in essence but changeful in form. New generations of life are but old elements in new forms; and new righteous theories and institutions are but old principles of virtue entering into new combinations. PURE HEART.-Sure as the crystal stream mirrors the shining orbs of the sky, the pure heart will reflect to the eye of intellect the truths of God. MAN IN RUINS.-Humanity is in a sad condition. It was a vessel built at first to navigate the sea of life, with truth for its guiding star and heaven for its destination; but it is now lying in ruins amidst rocks and sands. It was once a temple reared for the residence and worship of the Everlasting; but its walls are broken down, its magnificent columns are in ruins. THE ATONEMENT.-It is not like a banquet, accommodated to the tastes and wants of so many and no more. Like a masterpiece of music, its virtues are independent of numbers. The notes necessary to entrance one soul can thrill the ages with unabated force. Ecstasies for the race sleep in those modulations from which each lover of "sweet sounds" must take his music or be without it. ECONOMY.-Nature is ava riciously frugal; in matter, it allows no atom to elude its grasp; in mind, no thought or feeling to perish. It gathers up the fragments, that nothing be lost. THOUGHT.-AS the morning breeze sweeps the mountains of their mist, a true thought will sweep the soul of its vanities. SOLITUDE.-Great souls are lonely in the crowd; they live in the abysses of their own musings, as islands amidst the swelling seas. The Preacher's Confidential CouncilRoom. [There arise in the pulpit and pastoral experience of almost every minister certain questions of casuistry and doctrine which he would not care to have opened in a general journal, but upon which he would like the judgment of his brethren. This department will be available to such. Ministers of all denominations are invited to it.] HYMNOLOGY. "DEAR EDITOR,—It is unnecessary that I should be remarkably wise in order to cope with 'Clericus.' He is not such a giant, after all his assumption, that a stripling, fortunately or unfortunately named 'Solomon,' need be afraid of him. Of course I admire his beautiful resignation in modestly refusing to answer my 'charges.' It is an easy thing to be resigned when there is no other refuge. "My great objection to his hymnal criticism is, that the principle on which he proceeds is audacious statement, in support of which he adduces no proof. Stennett, Watts, Dickson, Bernard, Raffles, Montgomery-all go to the wall when, with one dash of his pen, he writes: 'mawkish sentimentalism run into rhyme!' 'He is good enough to tell me what the essence of a hymn is. May I inform him, that while the primary signification of the word, as used by the Greeks, was 'a song,' it is universally employed now as the synonym of a sacred song, a religious song,-not necessarily a song that in definite and express terms presents praise to God, but any rhythmical composition calculated to bring the soul into sympathetic contemplation of spiritual and divine and heavenly things; and the hymns which he characterizes as 'mawkish sentimentalism' are calculated to do this. "However, I am not fighting about a word. positions in question, sacred songs,' 'religious songs,' 'odes,' 'rhymes,' or what you like. I am contending for hymns that are sacred to the hearts of thousands, and that are sung with spiritual profit and shall I say it ?-'With melody in the heart to God,' by hundreds of men of 'culture and conscience and reflection' in the Churches. When there is joy in the heart, begotten by the con Call the com templation of what God has done for 'the glorious spirits that shine,' in the land of pure delight'-when we, standing 'on Jordan's stormy banks,' look forward to that heavenly land, hopefully, joyously, yes, and sing of all this-'there is melody in the heart to God. "Our friend says, 'If he were to put his knife into hymns that are objectionable, he would be cutting away all his life and sink your valuable periodical with excrescences.' He underrates his surgical and iconoclastic powers. Why, he could cut to the core and demolish and swamp all the hymns in Christendom in a single sentence-'mawkish sentimentalism run into rhyme:' or in a remarkably shorter sentence-rhapsodic rubbish!' "If 'Webster' or 'Clericus,' on any principle whatever, can sweep away 800 of the hymns from the Congregational HymnBook,' then, on as warrantable and lawful a principle, the remaining 200 might be removed; and this assertion cannot implicate me in saying that the compositions in that Hymnal are of equal value, poetically or theologically considered. "Let a man, whether the not, have his conscientious Editor of the Greek Testament' or scruples, and refuse to sing the hymns he objects to; but it is presumptuous and unpardonable rashness for him to say that other men have no conscience, no culture, no reflection, who do sing, and are blessed in singing, the hymns that he condemns. "If words could do it, it were the easiest thing in the world to demolish; but the hymns that 'Clericus' characterizes as 'mawkish sentimentalism,' will live in the Psalmody of the Church when he and his criticism are forgotten. "What of the two hymns which he comments upon in your last? He will be glad to know that 'his philosophic majesty' is graciously pleased to say that 'Clericus' has now put his knife in the right place; and for his encouragement I issue this mandate: 'Cut away, and show no mercy!" Meanwhile, however, I will stand by and watch his operations, and give him any necessary check. "In conclusion: Will you kindly implore Clericus' not to disclose his name? lest I be frightened from the field, exclaiming, not in jest but in real earnest, 'Who am I that I should contend with such a learned Divine-such a consummate critic ?' "Yours truly, "E. D. SOLOMON." |
