9 Happy place! so near, so precious! May it find me there each day; For his love has been so gracious, It has won my heart at last. While I from his fulness gather Grace and comfort ev'ry day. May I prove I've been with Jesus, Who is all my righteousness. REV. HENRY B. SMITH ON THE BIBLE. 147 REV. HENRY B. SMITH ON THE stars and the earth, and awaits their BIBLE. "The Bible as an inspired record is an infallible, and it is the final, authority for faith and life. Its inspiration involves its infallibility. Interpreted, as all words must be, by its real spirit, it gives us truth without error. Light and life come from the ministry of the Word. Its hallowed sayings are our stay, when all other support fails; our rock amid the billows; the songs of our pilgrimage; the pledge of our final rest. Such implicit faith may be stigmatized as Bibliolatry; but where else can we go to find the words of eternal life? Bibliolatry clings to the letter; spirituality in the letter finds the Spirit, and dares not disown the letter which guided to the Spirit. "For the enduring wants of the soul, for the problems of sin, salvation and eternity, we find here an unwavering authority, and rest in faith and joy upon the last assurance of the highest testimony, "Thus saith the Lord." And as it is an infallible, so it is a final authority. No man may add unto, or take away from the words of this Book. "Here is the judge that ends the strife." Like its Divine Author, it has full oft been called before human tribunals, been reviled, spit upon, yea buried, that it might rise again with new power, and bless even its persecutors. Of controversy, as history testifies, it has ever been the arbiter; of opposing systems, the invariable conqueror; every scheme of men has become wan and shriveled at its touch. Beyond its revelations and its prophecies thought cannot reach; it contains the oldest of records as the most living of prophecies. New assailants in the flush of self-consciousness, call it antiquated, and its antiquity is as that of God himself. It is older than the dissolution, that all its revelations may be fulfilled. But it is also ever new, as well as ever old; the most progressive, as it is the most conservative of influences; the counterpart of the wisdom of God. All literature has drawn deep and precious draughts from its fountain; its orient pearls are scattered through all lands; philosophy has there found the test of its errors and the lordliest of its truths. For four thousand years its words have been inspiration and life, comforting the downcast, and breaking the oppressor's rod; pledging peace to the penitent, and opening to all the very gates of endless life, subduing with imperial might all other words; speaking with such tones of authority as you read in no other books; and in the very name of the Lord proclaiming a kingdom which has ever been advancing, yet never subdued. And thus like a living power, it has been doing a living and abiding work among the children of men, in every clime, in every language, and now wider than ever before are its words rehearsed. 'Its lines have gone out through all the earth, and its words to the end of the world.'” STARS AND SPECTROSCOPE. It is well known that the ordinary expression, fixed star, is a misnomer, for almost every star which has been observed long enough is seen to be in motion. in motion. Indeed, it is not at all likely-nay, it is infinitely improbable that such an object as a really fixed star actually exists. When the place of a star has been accurately determined by measurements made with the meridian circle, and when, after the lapse of several years the place of the same star is again determined by observation, it not unfre quently happens that the two places disagree. The explanation is, of course, that the star has moved in the interval. Thus the constellations are becoming gradually transformed by the movements of the several stars which form them. It is true that the movements are so slow that even in thousands of years the changes do not amount to much when regarded as a disturbance of the configuration. Thus, to take an example, we know the movements of the stars forming the Great Bear sufficiently well to be able to sketch the position of the stars as they were ten thousand years ago, or as they will be in ten thousand years to come, and though, no doubt, some distortion is shown in each of these pictures from the present lineaments of the Great Bear, yet the identity of the group is in each case well preserved. It is, however, obvious that if a star should happer to be darting directly towards the observer or directly from him, the telescopic method of determining its movement becomes wholly inapplicable. No change in its position could be noticed. It is just here that the spectroscope comes in to fill the vacant place in the armoury of the astronomer. It tells exactly what the older methods were unable to tell and it does so with a certainty and a faculty that suggest vast possibilities for the spectroscopic process in the future. The principle of the method is a beautiful illustration of the extent to which the different branches of physical science are interwoven. But the principle has been a familiar one to astronomers for many years. It is the facility and success attending its recent application that has now aroused so much interest. The logic of the new method is simple enough. Our eyes are so constituted that when a certain number of ethereal vibra tions per second are received by the nerves of the retina the brain interprets the effect to mean that a ray of, let us say, red light has entered the eye. A certain large number of vibrations per second is similarly understood by the brain to imply the presence of blue light on the retina. Each particular hue of the spectrum, the red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet-is associated with a corresponding number of vibrations per second. It will thus be seen that the interpretation we put on any ray of light depends solely, as far as its hue is concerned, on the number of vibrations per second produced on the retina. Iucrease that number of vibrations in any way, then the hue shifts towards one nearer the blue end of the spectrum; decrease the number of vibrations per second, and the hue shifts along the spectrum in the opposite direction. From these considerations it is apparent that the hue of a light as interpreted by the eye will undergo modification if the scource from which the light radiates is moving towards us or moving from THE BENEFIT OF INTERCHANGE OF THOUGHT. search for bread. He went into the land of idolaters, that worshipped not not the true God. After sojourning for a time, great calamities came upon this household. The husband and father was laid low by the cold hand of death, and his wife and two sons were left alone in a strange country. But soon after the sons took unto themselves wives from among the women of this strange country. For a few years all seemed to go well with this family. But again death visits the home. This time the two sons are called away into the other world. After many years the mother heard that plenty had again visited the land of her birth, and she resolved to return to her country. She made known her purpose to her daughtersin-law. and they decided to accompany her. They were tenderly attached, those three widows and mourners. They had bent over the same sickbed; they had moved in the same procession; they had wept over the same grave. They have now broken up their homes, bidden farewell to their friends, and have set out on the long journey of ever fifty miles. But they had not gone far when the mother halts and addresses her daughters. She advices them to return to their people. I am old and in trouble, she said, therefore go back and may the Lord deal kindly with you as you have dealt with me and the dead. Then she kissed them and they all lifted up their voices and wept. One of the daughters listens and takes the advice, and after a sad parting, returns to her people and dissappears from history. But the other grand and gloriouswoman,cleeved to her mother-in-law, and by so doing, turned her back upon her home friends, relatives, riches, honor and position. She threw her arms around her mother's neck, and poured out her soul in tenderness, pathos and 149 eloquence in the following words: "Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee, for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried." Noble and brave words! Footsore and weary the two widows reached safely the mothers' native land. They came in the begining of barley harvest. The young widow attracted general notice; the devotion to her mother touched all hearts. The mother had a kinsman who was rich, and the daughter went to gleam corn to his field. She finds favor with him, and he makes her his wife. She became an ancestress of the world's Redeemer; and is numbered forever among the holy women. What was her name, and her country? Who were the others connected with her in this history? Now let us in a cursory way glance at some few things wherein thought and speech are indissolubly connected. A ready command of language, a choice selection of words, fitness of application, a quick and correct musical ear,-intuitive rather than acquired and in which a knowledge of harmony in all its bearings enters, clear thoughts lucidly and beautifully expressed; suitably connected and interspersed with the highest ideals, form the basis of all that is good in literature. The poet never sings so well as when his brightest thoughts are set in a living form and his highest thought tuned in a major key. A well balanced mind-logical in the principles maintained-is unperturb able perplexing queries that so fre quently disturb others. Such a mind regards discernment between good and evil, between worth and worth less, as indispensable and priceless pre-equisites to every great thinker and writer in quest of truth; as much as spiritual insight is required to make clear spiritual truths, which depending on human intellect alone could never be fully understood. Ambiguity should not even find a place in every day colloquial phrase. It is the first degree in the measure of exaggeration. Every moment has its price. Utility should be always uppermost, the measure wherein to utilize every man's opportunity, and the greater the opportunity the larger should be its corresponding good. Wherefore every man should so shape his words, his thoughts, his deeds-his whole life that all things so equipoised would confer on humanity at large the greatest and most lasting blessing. It is the province of the literary critic to criticise just as much as it is that of the public censor to censure. He should dissect all defects whether faulty in construction or errors of grammar in a manly spirit, pointing out distinctly where these occur, and suggesting such emmendations as would best remedy them. He is but half a teacher who in stating but half a truth manages to mystify even the half of this in the subtilties of the schools. The pathway to knowlege should at the outset be divested of all obscurity, every avenue should be thrown open and the very highest thought shouldbe the crowning arch of every entrance. There should be beautiful and inspiring thoughts in every hand crystalized truths in living characters clearly labelled for the highest good to draw, to lead the young beginner onward and upward. The great, the whole souled teacher loses himself in the knowledge he imparts; no matter how great his learning, how many his talents, how numerous his accomplishments, or great his honor and dignity if he is endowed with a noble and generous soul, he gives with the same liberality that he has received, rejoicing in being able to dispense the blessings. which knowledge confers when duly appreciated, rightly understood and used. Only when so imparted, so appreciated; eagerly received, no secrets to guard, no fears to hinder, does such a noble mind in all its fulness shine. Wherever he goes, he is a perpetual sun lit by the spirit indwelling and ever unfolding with clearer light some distinct and new phases of truth. |