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brothers; going out to service, teaching day-school, or music, or painting; lay ing her hand to anything, to everything which was becoming, that she might add to the family income; hovering over the home as a kind of guardian spirit; caring for the young children till they were educated and grown, and then passing into the same kind of ministry in the home of some humble minister or missionary-for such men, I think, have an eye for such attractions; or, going off singly and alone to some unknown and unnoticed toil, which only God could recognize, or even know; and such, I think, are the King's daughters. There is a beauty of inward character, a beauty of outward life which originates in that character, which even God desires. "So shall the King greatly desire thy beauty," which, in God's sight, is of great price. And I think that when the sacred writer in the text speaks of the daughters in our homes, he means this beauty. That our daughters may be as corner-stones, polished after the similitude of a palace." Other accomplishments, of course I would not depreciate; the more of them the better.

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The ambition to give Christian adorn ment to a home, to make it more attractive to a father, whose head has caught now and then a snowflake from the clouds of age, floating over from eternity's mountains, where dwells the "Ancient of Days;" to brothers whose strong drawings are to an outward life, and perhaps to indulgences which alienate them from the kingdom of God within them; the ambition to be graceful and attractive in the interest of keeping at-home and building-up home for one's husband's sake, and one's children's sake, instead of making home the stopping-place of a night; the value set upon home and home influences, which comes from regarding it next to God and the Church of God as that which man most needs to fit him for heaven's joys-this, I think, is the holiest of all woman's instincts. The function of youth in a family is to keep alive the

love of life there. We hold on to little hands that hold on to time, and thus are kept young. We are all compelled to draw the elasticity of life from the future. There is nothing more selfish than the man who makes all things minister to his present; who makes the present the aim and end of all living. I know the beauty of what is done to minister to the wants and infirmities of old age, to minister to the past. Ah, that young life, that maturer life which yields itself up to the care of those out of whose life youth and strength have forever gone; that sacrifices itself for those who have cared for it in infancy; have given it a chance to be and to do in its generation; that young life is very holy! The picture of Ruth, as she is true to Naomi, and who found that her fidelity brought her into the lineage through which all nations should be blessed; the inquiry of Joseph, “Is thy father, the old man of whom ye spake, is he yet alive?" these show us what the Bible means when it says, Thou shalt reverence the aged; thou shalt stand up before the face of the old

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But only youth and associations with youth can keep us young. This youth in our family life is vital to the family. The Persians say that "Heaven is at the feet of mothers," meaning to indicate the sacredness of the maternal relation to children. But there is another meaning to the proverb. The little child keeps the mother-heart open to the kingdom of God, so that heaven is at the feet of mothers in the person of the little ones who nestle around her; she clings to life for their sakes; she becomes to them father as well as mother; she who has never thought herself competent to take business cares, sits down with calculating business men to arrange matters left unsettled at her husband's death; project plans for her children; becomes to them masculine in the strength as she is feminine in the warmth of her love for them. And a corresponding change occurs in the fatherhood of a man for his motherless

children. The coarse voice and the rough hands become tender; the father shows that he has the qualities that usually belong to the mother; and it is the care of children which develops them.

I have seen people who lived only to themselves, and have therefore died. Instead of having children about them, pulsating with the life of the future, preparing for the work of the future, to build up homes, and to grace homes in the future, they have had no home at all. Every time the swallows return to the barns of New England they build up the waste places under the eaves; they rehabilitate their homes. But these people, with their summer flittings to Europe, and their winter flittings to the city, or to the Indies, take only their trunks and their pet dogs and parrots to round out and complete their domestic circle. They are nomadic in their very constitution; and you can no more locate them than you can locate the birds of the air. What can such unfortunate people know of the text "That our sons may be as plants grown up in their youth, and our daughters as cornerstones polished after the similitude of a palace"? Of course this is sometimes providential, and is to be accepted as a dispensation from God. It is not always given to God's creatures to know what actual fatherhood means, nor what actual motherhood means; to come into fellowship with God when He says, “Like as a father pitieth his children.” And there are in the hearts of some of these homeless ones great spaces, great territories which God has filled; there are kindled within them fires on the hearth, so that they are neither cold nor inhospitable; and many a weary and forsaken one knows what it is to sit there and be warm. There are crusty old bachelors-though I am not sure the name is properly applied to them, except as it applies to good pastry-whose benefactions go silently and unexpectedly to enrich the boys and girls of other households where they are working their way upward; and so by the

second remove the meaning of the text can be understood, even by those who have neither home nor child.

There are elements of material prosperity in this psalm which are very beautiful. Peace brings rest to material things-to the valleys which are clothed with verdure or grain; to the hills which are covered over with flocks; fills the garners to overflowing; makes traffic in towns and commerce on the seas; puts an end to all disturbances. But the most beautiful and touching element in it is this allusion to homelife, in which young men and maidens have an opportunity to develop in all the symmetry and beauty characteristic of each in its best estate. "That our sons may be as plants grown up in their youth; and that our daughters may be as corner-stones polished after the similitude of a palace;" as though the sons graced the exterior of a home, as the plant does, and the daughters the interior.

We sometimes get impatient with our children; it is so hard to get them to conform to the regulation standard. A father said to me the other day that his son had come to a period when it was hard to get along with him. Let us guide and control them, but let us also cherish them as God's most precious gifts, His richest endowments; for after all, God intended home-life for them, and them for home-life. They are beautiful in it, because God has made them so. Let it be our aim to make home so much more to them than any external attraction, that when we sleep in silence it shall be among their sweetest recollections; it shall be among their highest aspirations for themselves to repeat it in their own lives.

Ah, could I in any way give utterance to what is in some of your hearts respecting sons and daughters who have passed from dwellings where their voices once made melody into the silences of the great future; the very places that are vacant, in which speak day after day, and year after year, and are never without a voice; the thought

of whom makes your heart tender, as when they died, it would only add cmphasis to this discourse. You often say, with the patriarch, "If I be bereaved of my children I am bereaved;" as though this bereavement can never be healed. May I remind you that the only refuge from God is in God; from sorrow is in the words of the Man of Sorrows, and acquainted with grief! And that God has made your homes so sweet that you may know what His home is, where they never lose an inmate; and where what you have done to make your sons and daughters Christians will be your great and everlasting joy.

SILENCE.

BY G. M. MEACHAM, D.D. [METHODIST], YOKOHAMA, JAPAN.

A time to keep silence.-Eccl. iii. 7.

MAX MÜLLER says of speech: "To whatever sphere it belongs, it would seem to stand unsurpassed-nay, unequalled in it-by anything else. If it be a production of nature, it is her last and crowning production, which she reserved for man alone. If it be a work

of human art, it would seem to lift the human artist to the level of a Divine Creator. If it is the gift of God, it is God's greatest gift; for through it God spake to man, and man speaks to God in worship, prayer, and meditation." Silence and speech are the rest and motion of a little but mighty member, which needs to be wisely controlled. The bit in the mouth of a fiery steed and a helm to guide the ship are no more needful than safe guidance for the tongue. Back of the tongue are certain dispositions which must be repressed, and others which should have their appropriate expression. An Eastern proverb runs, Speech is silver, silence is gold; speech is human, silence is Divine." In Elia we find an old poem:

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"Still-born Silence! thou that art Flooder of the deeper heart! Offspring of a heavenly kind!

Frost o' the mouth, and thaw o' the mind !"

And speaking of silence in “ A Quaker's Meeting," Elia says: "Here is something which throws Antiquity herself into the foreground-silence-eldest of things, language of old night, primitive discourser." "Silence," says Addison, in the Tattler, "is sometimes more significant and sublime than the most noble and expressive eloquence, and is on many occasions the indication of a great mind."

That silence is golden, who can deny ? Yet undoubtedly it is often of a baser metal; not silvern, but leaden or something worse. Who has not been tried by the silence of reticence when a few words would have cleared away the darkness and indicated the true path of duty? Who would call that silence golden which was ashamed or afraid to champion the weak or defend the ab

sent? Or that which buries one's sorrows deep down in one's own bosom, when relief could be had by confiding them to a loyal friend?

No; silence is not always golden. Certainly not when it falls like a deep shadow upon the home, taking all the brightness out of the lives of the children, who are happy only when father and mother are glad. Nor when one has found his religion to be full of consolation and support, and yet refuses to confess his Lord before men. Silence

ought then to be as impossible as for flowers to close themselves against the tender wooings of the warm sunshine and the gentle breath of spring.

There is a silence which is golden. We do not refer to the silence to which woman is condemned, of which Priscilla complained to John Alden-a great wrong, which, according to Edward Bellamy, will be righted in the next century-nor to that discreet concealment for awhile of some great truth, which sometimes is necessary till a moral preparation has paved the way for its publication. We do refer to the prudent silence of folly. The wise man has said that "even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise." For so long as he holds his tongue, who

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can know his folly ? Silence," said Confucius, "is a friend that will never betray." Certainly it was not because he was a fool that Pitt, when on his legs before Parliament, with no power of reserve, poured out all that was in him -State secrets and intrigues blurted out incontinently with all the rest. But with equal certainty, we may say that it was not because he was wise that he placed no embargo on his lips. If the fool would but hold his tongue, how could you distinguish him from the philosopher ?

Golden, too, is the silence of sympathy. Pleasant to be on such terms with one's friends that long silence may take place without any risk of misapprehension. Such were the hermits of whom Elia writes. "Who retired into Egyptian solitudes to enjoy one another's want of conversation." To the sorrowing, more precious still is silent sympathy. Those friends of Job who sat down, and for seven days and seven nights never spoke a word, showed profoundest sympathy, and only when they began to talk did they cease to comfort.

"Job felt it when he groaned beneath the rod And the barbed arrows of a frowning God; And such emollients as his friends could spare, Friends such as his for modern Jobs prepare.'

The value of true sympathy, who can describe? From the bare presence and the kindly look of our friend in time of grief we catch comfort and inspiration. Condolence cannot bring back our lost ones, but a gentle sigh and the pressure of a warm hand have brought more comfort to us than thousands of gold and silver.

There is also the golden silence of selfeffacement. Who cannot recall the memory of a friend who, rich in good deeds, did them in secret, like some summer rill refreshing the withered grass and drooping flowers, itself unheard, unseen. It is the hypocrite who sounds the trumpet before him. To trumpet one's own virtues is not wise. Better to be of them who

"Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame."

Well says our Shakespeare, "We wound our modesty and make foul our deservings when of ourselves we publish them." To speak evil of others is not far removed from self-praise. When in the company of those who are indulging in malicious or vulgar gossip, we can at least show our disapproval by saying nothing. A friend once accompanied Mrs. Fry on her round as she was visiting the worst female prisoners in Newgate. On leaving she asked Mrs. Fry of what crimes they had been guilty. How suggestive her reply, “I never asked them; we have all come short." The fumes of praise are frankincense in the nostrils of many.

If there are those who love the incense of flattery, there are always some who, for dishonorable ends, keep the perfumed censer burning brightly. Alas! how many can be flattered to their own undoing. When you have counted up the flatterers and those who love flattery, how many are left? Timon of Athens cries :

"Who dares, who dares
In purity of manhood stand upright,
And say,
"This man's a flatterer' ?"

Once in a while we are refreshed by one who dares, as when Hannah More praised Dr. Johnson so inordinately that he turned upon her sternly with, "Madam, before you flatter a man grossly to his face, you should consider whether or not your flattery is worth having." No wonder he was angry if he believed, with Coleridge, that at heart we despise the man whom we flatter. Swiftly hastens the day when the Scripture will be fulfilled. Lord shall cut off all flattering lips, and the tongue that speaketh proud things: who have said, 'With our tongues will we prevail; our lips are our own; who is Lord over us'?"

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Once more, when we know we are not in a heavenly temper, and are in danger of saying unkind things, or are the victims of detraction and obloquy, much is gained by keeping close the door of our lips. General Grant lay under a cloud cast over him at Pitts

burg Landing and elsewhere. The people and the press, impatient for results, were not sparing of cruel censure. But with amazing self-control he held his peace. He would not hazard the cause of the Union by revealing his plans. And to-day his memory is green in the hearts of a grateful people. "Seest thou a man hasty in his words? There is more hope of a fool than of him." Plutarch has weightily observed,

Plato says that for a word, which is the lightest of all things, both gods and men inflict the heaviest penalties. But silence, which can never be called to account, doth not only, as Hippocrates hath observed, extinguish thirst, but it bears up against all manners of slanders with the constancy of Socrates and the courage of Hercules, who were no more concerned than a fly at what others said or did."

Golden, too, is the silence of meditation. Frederick W. Robertson said of a great preacher, "He has lost his power, which was once the greatest I ever knew. I heard four sermons from him with scarcely four thoughts and much absolutely false logic. But how can a man preach for ten years without exhausting himself? Talk, talk, talk forever, and no retreat to fructifying silence!" But silence will not be fructifying if occupied with trivialities; it will be as selfinjurious as constant babbling. We learn more by listening than by talking, yet it is not good to be eternally pumped into as if we were cisterns. The mind is rather a mill to grind up the grain that is poured into the hopper, a stomach to digest the food that it receives. By meditation are slowly fashioned strength of purpose and lofty character. Carlyle remarks, in Sartor Resartus," "Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together, so that at length they may emerge, full formed and majestic, into the daylight of life, which they are thenceforth to rule."

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"How grand is silence! In her tranquil deeps What mighty things are born !”

It is in the silence of meditation that the

mighty structure of character grows like Solomon's temple, wherein no sound of hammer or of saw was heard.

Silence is comparative. A day in the early spring, when the sap rises in trees and plants out in the woods, is silent; albeit, as Humboldt conjectured, there it makes a continuous melody in the ears of our tiniest fellow-creatures. The silence of the night in Yokohama is often broken by the yells of coolies; but silence comes again "like a poultice to heal the blows of sound." Visitors to the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky tell us that the darkness and silence surpass all former experience. Besides, there are the Three Silences of Speech, Desire, and Thought, which make up the Perfect Silence, wherein mysterious sounds from higher worlds are heard. "The Lord is in His holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before Him."' Ye dissonant voices of a rude contending mob of vain thoughts and foolish desires, hush! He speaks, "Be still, and know that I am God."

"I lose

Myself in Him, in light ineffable!
Come, then, expressive Silence, muse
His praise."

What better preparation than this silence of self-effacement, of meditation, and of worship can there be for the approaching silence of death! Pain, ache, weakness, dimness of vision, gray hairs-what are they but

"The little rift within the lute

That by and by will make the music mute,
And ever-widening slowly silence all."

HAMAN.

BY O. T. LANPHEAR, D.D. [CONGREGATIONAL], BEVERLY, MASS.

So they hanged Haman on the gallows he had prepared for Mordecai.-Esther vii. 10.

THIS event occurred under the reign of Ahasuerus, one of the most powerful of the Persian kings, whose reign was one of peculiar splendor, and among whose ministers none, perhaps, were

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