ST. DAVID'S DAY. SAINT DAVID'S DAY. TRANSLATION OF DYFED'S WELSH ODE. Wales, old and young, unite to-day Her patron Saint to sing. And hill and dale throughout the land CHORUS The night is gone, and on us dawns New songs we sing of "Cymru Fydd," The gallant heroes of Wales past Firm as the rocks we still remain; To Cambria's muse we give loose reins Our Cymric speech, though old in years, The spirits of our fathers gone They hail with joy the dawn of day,; With zeal for their old Cymric tongue, They bura with strong desire to aid THE REV. D. Adams, B. A., is the author of the following national song adapted for St. David's Day : DYDD GWYL DEWI. Alaw: Dydd Gwyl Dewi Sant. A ffoent rhag eu gwawr Iffwrdd a'r nos a'r t'w'llwch du, Ysgolion Dewi Sant mewn bri, A dysg a moes fo'n ben. Ar ddydd Gwyl Dewi, dyma ni I'n gwlad sy'n fendith fawr. Bwystfilod tlodi a gormes hir Ddychrynant rhag ei wên; Tywyna llwydd mwy ar ein tirBlodeua dysg a llên. 85 Daw Cymru fach yn Gymru fawr, O fryniau Meirion cloddir aur, Mwn haiarn yn Morganwg gair, Daw Cymru fach, &c. IN MEMORIAM. RICHARD HOWELLS, ESQ. CINCINNATI, OHIO. BY MISS SALLIE A. LEWIS. Over the river I'm gazing to-night, Then why do you weep, or why do you sigh Then deem it a favor and doubly blest, The home that was glad will see him no more, And the church now weeps for the loss in store; Our brother was a friend, and a friend indeed, A friend that was true, and a friend in need. Why did Richard Howells leave life and earth When such a life was a life of true worth? Oh! ask not why, death is a warrior bold, And always seeks for the best in the fold. The diamonds, one of the most beautiful products of nature, is at the same time one of its greatest mysteries. How can the black lead of your pencil be, so to speak, own brother to the most brilliant of gems? They are both crystalised carbon, but how unlike! The chemist who could find out the secret of turning common carbon into diamonds would be able to heap up a fortune by the side of which Monte Cristo's cave of treasures would look poor enough; and there are chemists who do not give up the hope of some day discovering the priceless secret. Of late years the scientific study of the diamond has led into a new field of investigation. Men have found out, not how nature makes diamonds, but where she makes them, and that is a great step in advance. There is strong evidence of a connection of some kind between diamonds and vol canoes. In the South African diamond fields the gems are found in what are called 'pipes," which are round or oval stems of a peculiar kind of rock, several acres in extent at the top, and running down to unknown depths into the earth. Near the surface this rock, which is rich in iron, is disintegrated by exposure to the weather, and assumes a yellowish color. It would not be exactly true to say that it holds diamonds as a pudding holds plums, but the imagination naturally forms such a simile. The precious pebbles are readily extracted from the friable rock. Deeper down the "pipe" changes character. The rock becomes a comparatively hard, blue mass, much more difficult to work Yet it is still sprinkled through with diamonds, lying embedded in the moulds where nature made them. This blue rock has to be exposed to the weather, or treated with water, before it will yield up its treasures. Now it is clear from the nature and appearance of the diamond-bearing rock that it is of volcanic origin, and the "pipes" are evidently the necks of ancient volcanoes, whose fires died out probably thousands of years ago. When we consider that the diamond burns and is consumed at a high temperature, we cannot think that the gems contained in those ancient pipes of rock were brought there from the interior of the earth while the rock was in a molten condition. It is far more probable that, under peculiar conditions of pressure and temperature, they were formed where they are now found while the rock was cooling off. It remains to be learned what the real conditions of their formation were. It is very interesting to know that this "mother rock" of the diamonds, as it is called, bears a considerable analogy to some of the meteoric stones that fall out of the heavens, If the ancients had known that fact ENLARGED VISION. they would have invented a romantic story of some celestial forge in which the gods made gems; but we more practical-minded moderns simply draw the conclusion that some of the meteorites that fall upon the earth may 87 possibly have been ejected from its volcanoes, or from the volcanoes of some other planet, and have gone circling through space until, meeting with the earth, gravitation brought them down again. For the Young People. ENLARGED VISION. The tourist derives much pleasure from ascending lofty eminences whereby he gains extended sweep of vision, the view ranging over regions of historic interest or scenes of remarkable grandeur or beauty. Our institutions for higher education are mountainsummits where enlarged intellectual vision may be obtained. But what are these in comparison with that enlarged spiritual vision which may be gained on the mount of personal communion with God and on the heights of attainable Christian experience? How grand it is to keep growing and rising in knowledge, constantly gaining clearer and broader conceptions of the magnificent universe in which we live! This enlarged and ever-enlarging vision may be ours 1. Through daily study of the sublime doctrines of the Gospel. No geologist poring over the story pages of his earth book, no chemist in his eager search for original elements, not even the astronomer walking among the stars, can derive such inspiration or enjoy such limitless range of vision as he whose soul perceives the wonderful revelations of Gospel truth. 2. By a continuous, faithful effort to realise, in practice, the grandeur of these teachings The highest recommendation of Scripture truth is that it can be profitably woven into daily life. It can become assimilated by the noblest character. It may be a part of our very being, to our elevation. THE GROWING KINGDOM. Nature does not create anything. She simply transmutes. The plant runs its discriminating tendrils down into the soil and selects a particle here and a particle there, a drop here and a drop there, individualises these different substances, and they subverve the life, the growth of that plant. The wood is created, but sap and fibre are molecules of old mother earth transformed. The colors of the flower are not the creation of the plant, but from the spectrum of the sunlight each plant draws its flower color, and one is green and one is red, and one is yellow and one unites many colors. Further, if you plant a seed apart from the sunlight and the rain, it will not be quickened into life; it will not of itself have power to draw nourishment from its surroundings; it will die. "The kingdom of heaven," says Christ, "is like unto a grain of mustard seed which a man planted in a field." With the life of Christ within it, with the power of God above it, by natural growth, selecting men from the world here and here, absorbing them into its life, transforming them, it shall at last from the smallest beginnings assume great and magnificent proportions, and all lands and nations shall be tributary to its ing that the great need of the time is growing perfectness. BELIEF AND THE LIFE. We may lay it down as a certainty that the human mind will, in the long run, act logically from the premises which it entertains. A man who holds that property is robbery logic. ally proceeds to become a spoiler himself. He who holds that pleasureseeking (personal gratification) is the chief end of life, will logically proceed to adopt the career of an Epicurean and a sport. If this be true on the "down grade," it is much more true upon the "up grade." If falsehood believed issues in falsity of life, it is also true that truth believed issues in truthfulness and fidelity of life. Doctrine and duty are linked together, as a pair of Siamese Twins, by a living ligament; to cut them apart is to kill both. Behind every duty is a doctrine, and before every doctrine is a duty. They are cor-relative; to believe is to obey and to obey is to believe. Obedience is visible belief, and belief is invisible obedience. just as glory is grace revealed and grace is glory concealed. If the doctrine perishes duty declines. They exist in a mysterious life united. Strike one and you strike the other, freeze one and you congeal the other. INDIVIDUAL WORK FOR CHRIST. The Christian Church must be both aggressive and attractive. We are in full sympathy with the opinion expressed by Dr. Stalker, the Yale lecturer of this year, that too much emphasis is laid on the aggressive idea in practical Christianity when it excludes the attractive idea; but we cannot go with him the length of say an attractive rather than an aggressive Christianity. Both are needed by our time, and the church must be alive to the double need. She must seek to make her members more aggressive by arousing in them the sense of personal responsibility. At present, religious activity is too much do the work we ought to do oura thing of proxy. We pay others to selves, and which we could do better and Bible-women are useful enough ourselves. Ministers, missionaries, in their own spheres, but their usefulness is crippled by the apathy of members who throw on their shoulders the duties they could discharge wall of Jerusalem was rebuilt by more effectively themselves. The every man building before his own before the window of the room in door, and he that had no door built which he lived. The kingdom of God will come when all professing Christians are stirred up to work as well as pray for its coming. WHY IT IS COLD ON MOUNTAINS. Go into a greenhouse on a sunshiny day, and we find the temperature much hotter there than outside. The enter, but it refuses to allow them out glass will allow the hot sunbeams to again with equal freedom, and consequently the temperature rises. Our whole earth is in this way to be likened to a greenhouse, only, instead of the panes of glass, we are enveloped by an enormous coating of atmosphere. When we are on the earth's surface, we are, as it were, inside the greenhouse, and we benefit by the interposition of the atmosphere; but when we begin to climb very high mountains, we gradually get through the atmosphere, and then we suffer from the cold. If we could imagine the earth to be stripped of its coat of THE MINSTREL OF THE MINES. air, then eternal frost would reign over the whole earth as well as on the tops of mountains.-From "The Story of the Heavens." THE MINSTREL OF THE MINES. Copied from The Scranton Truth for Saturday, January 30, 1892, The efforts of his friends and admirers to perpetuate the memory of Gwilym Gwent, with a monument, deserve the cordial sympathy and hearty support of every genuine lover of genius. Gwent was a veritable minstrel of the mines. He sang out of the depths, and his clear, thrilling notes, the sweet pathos of his song, expressed in Yr Haf-The Summer-and other numbers, commanded world-wide attention. as The grim and stern realities of life in the black workshop of the deepsunk mines could not quench the music that went singing through this man's soul, and in his leisure moments he translated his thoughts into harmonies that frequently thrilled the hearts of great audiences at the Eisteddfodau of his race. It should be a matter of local pride-in view of the present drift of things-that the mines have given us a musical genius and a successful composer like Gwilym Gwent. We have had Judges, Congressmen, State Senators who graduated out of the mine and the coal breaker, but Gwilym Gwent is the first miner in these fields whose musical compositions have attracted world-wide attention, and whose best productions will live as long as the Welsh tongue. As every man's work is his monument so is that of Gwilym Gwent, yet the movement to perpetuate his memory in tangible, visible form deserves to succeed. It will show that he was appreciated by those who knew him best, and it will tell the world that genius of a high order is 89 not incompatible with the work of the miner, neither is the ability to appreciate genius. One man like Gwilym Gwent, black at his toil, still breathing the spirit of song and poetry amid the coal-dust, is worth a thousand bosses, political or otherwise. He glorifies labor and leaves to humanity a legacy with which the lavish gifts of the Carnegies fade into dumb insignificance. By all means let this monument rise, not only to show that his admirers wish to keep his memory forever green, but also to stand as an inspiration for those who are now coming hither, from darkest Europe, that it may impress them with the fact that in this free country there are nobler, higher ideals, even in the mines, than to undersell the labor of one's fellow-man. This is one of the royal lessons taught by Gwilym Gwent, the singer, whose simple life, like that of Longfellow's "Village Blacksmith," deserves immortal regard. LIVING FAITH. A mustard seed having the principle of life can be matched against the inert mass of a mountain. Science tells us that the weakest life is too much for the largest mass of mere matter. The smallest stream will draw down the mountain. Faith in Christ is a living force. It is perfectly true to say it can move mountains. When our work fails, like the disciples we should seek the reason, That is the first condition of doing better; and the Master tells us we will find the reason either in a lack of faith that takes hold on God, or a lack of self-renunciation. The child's definition of faith covered these two points when she said in a child's simplicity and a a saint's knowledge, "Faith is letting go of everything else and taking hold of God." |