for those who have gone, comes this hope of immortality. Believe him who said, "Death is as sweet as flowers are; death is as beautiful as a bower in June.'

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The grave is like the gate in the old cathedral-iron on one side and beaten gold on the other. Perhaps our gravestone is a gate for those whom we have. loved and lost. We say, A man is dead;" God says, A man lives." Dying is transformation. Dying is home-going, happiness, and the Father's house.Newell Dwight Hillis.

THE TRUE GLORY OF HEAVEN

Now we cannot understand life, and do not. But in the ages to come we shall. Then we shall see, and then the mystery of the world, and the mystery of the temptation, and the mystery of the battle will be interpreted. The great wheat field, like a congregation, bows its head in prayer before Almighty God and cries for divine. glory. And God says, "Yes; you shall have it!" And he sends the sickle to cut down the stalk; and he sends the flail to beat out the straw; and he sends the millstone to grind up the grain; and he sends the sieve to shake and sift the flour; and he sends the baker to knead the dough; and he sends the oven to heat and bake it. And then what? Then the wheat is ready to begin service, and to go as bread for nourishment to the camp for the soldier, to the woodman's house, to the sewing woman in the garret, to you and to me.

BROWS OF LIGHT

Fit me for thy service, O God, though it take the sickle and the flail and the millstone and the kneading, and the fire! When life has

done its work, and given me by its discipline thy love, then I shall be glad to

share thy glory

What is the glory of heaven but the glory of a better

and more unselfish service?-Lyman Abbott.

THE SERAPHIM

And I-Ah! what am I

To counterfeit, with faculty earth-darkened,

Seraphic brows of light

And seraph language never used nor harkened?
Ah me! what word that seraphs say, could come
From mouth so used to sighs, so soon to lie
Sighless, because then breathless, in the tomb?

For his remembered sake, the Slain on road,
Who rolled his earthly garment red in blood
(Treading the wine-press) that the weak, like me,
Before his heavenly Throne should walk in white.

-Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

HEAVEN'S REUNIONS

When we ask for scriptural evidence of the reunion of friends in a future state, are we not answered by every passage from Scripture which speaks of that state as a social one? And the fact is that it is spoken of there in no other way. Whether the mention is incidental or direct, it constantly presents heaven to our thoughts as a place or state in which the righteous shall meet together, not exist separately.

If we listen to Jesus we shall hear him declare that, where he is, his disciples, shall be also. If we turn to the Epistles, Paul tells us that "when Christ, which is our life, shall appear, we also shall appear with him in glory"; and the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews points to the "General Assembly and Church of the First-born, which are written in heaven."

If we pass over to that grand vision which concludes the books of the New Testament, we hear in heaven "As it were the voice of a great multitude. and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thundering, and the voice of harpers harping with their harps."

The blessed in heaven are always represented as being in society, as being with their brethren, with angels, with their Saviour and with their God. Now, hardly anything can seem to be plainer than that, as heaven is a social and not a solitary state. They who live together there must know each other there. And it is one of the most reasonable of all propositions that, if we carry any affections with us into the future state, they will fly first of all to salute those who in this state were their cherished objects. When a mother joins the heavenly company of the redeemed, will she not, if she retains. anything of her former self and nature, if she has not lost her identity and. the consciousness of it, will she not ask for "the babe she lost in infancy"? If she is herself she will ask for it. If God is good she will find it, know it, embrace it. How she will find it, by what marks know it, and with what exercises renew her love, must be left for immortality to reveal. But the rest, the simple fact of recognition is plain. So plain that we are disposed

to think that the reason why so little is said in the Scriptures of future recognition is that, it was considered as naturally implied.

"ALONE"

Alone? The God we know is on that shore,
The God of whose attractions we know more
Than of those who may appear

Nearest and dearest here;

Oh, is He not the life-long friend we know
More privately than any friend below?

Alone? The God we trust is on that shore,
The Faithful One whom we have trusted more
In trials and in woes

Than we have trusted those

On whom we leaned most in our earthly strife;
Oh, we shall trust Him more in that new life!
Alone? The God we love is on that shore-
Love not enough, yet whom we love far more,
And whom we loved all through

And with a love more true

Than other loves-yet now shall love Him more;
True love of Him begins upon that shore!

So not alone we land upon that shore;

'Twill be as though we had been there before;

We shall meet more we know

Than we can meet below,

And find our rest like some returning dove,

And be at home at once with our Eternal love.-Faber.

PARADISE

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The river of pure water, the tree of life, the gold and precious stones of the first Paradise all reappear in the second. The "blessed" ones who have kept God's commandments are described as having regained the right to eat of that fruit of immortality which man lost by breaking God's first command. They enter in through the gates which, no longer barred by the sword of the cherubim, stand always open. The sorrow and crying," the "pain and death," that had their beginning in the hour when God drove out the first sinner from his presence, are described as passing away in the hour when God welcomes back to his presence the nations of the saved. The record of our race ends where it began-in a paradise of GodBishop Magee.

Heaven does not make holiness, but holiness makes Heaven.-Phillips

Brooks.

ANGELIC MEASURE

I dreamed that I was on my way to school, when suddenly I noticed a great crowd upon the green. People were hurrying to and fro, and when I asked what all this commotion was about, a girl said:

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'Why, don't you know? It's Measuring Day, and the Lord's angel has come to see how much our souls have grown since last Measuring Day."

"Measuring Day!" said I, "measuring souls! I never heard of such a thing," and I began to ask questions; but the girl hurried on, and after a little I let myself be pressed along with the crowd to the green.

There in the centre, on a kind of a throne under the great elm, was the most glorious and beautiful being I ever saw. He had white wings; his clothes were a queer, shining kind of white, and he had the kindest, yet most serious face I had ever beheld. By his side was a tall, golden rod fastened upright in the ground, with curious marks at regular intervals from the top to the bottom. Over it, on a golden scroll, were the words: "The measure of the stature of a perfect man." The angel held in his hand a large book, in which he wrote the measurements as the people came up on the calling of their names in regular turns. The instant each one touched the golden measure a most wonderful thing happened. No one could escape the terrible accuracy of that strange rod. Each one shrank or increased to his true dimensions-his spiritual dimensions as I soon learned, for it was an index of the soul-growth which was shown in this mysterious way, so that even we could see with our eyes what otherwise the angel alone could have perceived.

The first few who were measured after I came I did not know; but soon the name of Elizabeth Darrow was called. She is the President of the Aid for the Destitute Society, you know, and she manages ever so many other societies, too; and I thought, "Surely, Mrs. Darrow's measure will be very high indeed." But as she stood by the rod, the instant she touched it, she seemed to grow shorter and shorter, and the angel's face grew very serious, as he said: "This would be a soul of high stature if only the lowly, secret graces of humility and trust and patience under little daily trials had not been checked. These, too, are needed for perfect soul-growth."

I pitied Mrs. Darrow, as she moved away with such a sad and surprised face, to make room for the next. It was poor, thin, little Betsey Lines, the seamstress. I never was more astonished in my life than when she took her stand by the rod, and immediately she increased till her mark was higher than any I had seen before, and her face shone so, I thought it must have caught its light from the angel's, which smiled so gloriously that I envied poor little Betsey, whom before I had rather looked down upon. And as the angel wrote in the book, he said: "Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

The next was Lillian Edgar, who dresses so beautifully that I have often wished I had such clothes and so much money. The angel looked sadly at her measure, for it was very low-so low that Lillian turned pale as death, and her