LITTLE BEGINNINGS. to betray his Master. Hazael shrunk with horror from the picture Elisha drew. He answered in confidence-in indignation, "What, is thy servant a dog that he should do this thing?" Yet the prophecy worked in him. It mastered every prompting of loyalty, friendship and principle; he killed his master, and entered relentlessly on the very career he had shrunk from, became even worse than the prophet had said. Atoms he Just so subtle and insidious is the power of temptation in us all, as every man finds in his own experience. At first it is something just a little wrong, something that excites no suspicion, something not wrong at all, only one of the things he had better not do. You could not give a moral reason, law down a law against it, only he had better not do it. He repeats it. You can't define the reason of your caution to him, or your apprehension for him, nor can you draw the line where the repetition makes the difference, and the thing becomes positively injurious, immoral, or fatal. make the solid reefs on which great ships go down; trifling things repeated break the strongest frames; and so little yieldings give, at last, a power to temptation, gigantic and tyrannous, and the man is overwhelmed by them before he realizes that in any way has lost self-mastery. Or you recognize the danger in the outset. There is something you know you ought not to yield to. It is persistent and imperious, and it has that fatal ally within yourself without which its appeals would be powerless-for it is the traitor within that, after all, makes the mischief. The sense of danger rather pleases, excites, adds zest. You know you shan't yield, so you toy with it as man with poisonous reptiles. You are wary for a while, but you become bold, careless, the fatal fang is planted in you while you are showing off your power. Then conscience rouses, has its say, inflicts its lash; or consequences show themselves, or the great fear of detection comes, and you must cover up the wrong. The terrible, oftentimes fatal, next step is necessitated-the step you never dreamed of taking, that you shrink from and shudder at as Hazael did. You did not mean to go so far, did not dream of this, but inexorable law-an interior impulsion, an exterior compulsion-goads you. You are no more your own master, have not the power of holding back. You are like the locomotive on the downward grade, the rails coated with ice, no grapple for the brakes, the wheels slipping, the head of steam full and not to be shut off, the deep, dark, broad, black gulf before, and the headlong, inevitable, deadly plunge from which no law of THE COPTS IN EGYPT. matter or of man or of God can save it! And that point is reached before the reckless desperate man is aware. The downgrade is under him before he detects the shift in the level. He passes the point of hope while he yet flatters himself upon the time and power of recovery. He may apply all known outward means to stay his career, but they don't take hold. He has lost the power to grapple, and becomes, at last, inevitably, utterly, hopelessly, the prey of that thing which once he laughed at as having no power to injure him. Not the most desperate man, the most determined scoundrel, but is surprised to find himself where he has not dreamed to be, with no power of recoil amid his terrors and agonies. We are not born scoundrels any more than we are born saints. We grow into either gradually. This gradual power and over-power of temptation is one of the worst things about it. If we but realized results, there would be scarcely the shadow of difficulty. Hazael, Judas, no one would have begun to yield had they known what a first yielding entailed. If results were at once before us, sheer and abrupt, we should at once draw back. A man with a precipice before him starts back and is safe, but a land-slide loosens itself, has fatally started before it is noticed, and not till we are helplessly under way do we see the danger. That is why heathen philosophy as well as Christ put the emphasis on to the entrance into temptation. It is at the gate which leads to destruction that the struggle is to be. Enter, once pass it, and you are beset by all sorts of things you cannot name or number. The record of the gallows uniformly is that the first step was the fatal one; that each succeeding step followed surely and rapidly as the links of the chain follow each other over the side of the vessel, when the anchor is dropped into the black abyss. THE COPTS IN EGYPT. A WRITER in the Princeton Review thus describes the religious characteristics of the Copts, a people who claim to be lineal descendants of the ancient Egyptians, and who are sometimes quoted as illustrating the prevalence of the Christian faith. He says: Bigoted to a degree, they cling with saddening steadfastness to the traditions of the church, believing the most childish and ridiculously absurd legends of their numerous saints, and scarcely even knowing, much less understanding, the distinctive doctrine of their faith. It is possible to talk with even the more intelligent THE COPTS IN EGYPT. on the subject of the person of Christ, and even to obtain from them a willing assent to the Protestant doctrine, yet on the unguarded use of any of the terms which have become technical in the controversy, they are up in arms at once, and will denounce as 'damnable heresy' the propositions to which they had but a little time ago professed their agreement. As a rule, they have little spirit, and though some have acted nobly in assertion and defence of their convictions, yet large numbers of them, though convinced of the hollowness of their own church, and willing to receive instruction at the hands of missionaries, are restrained by the fulminations of an episcopal-and more of a patriarchal-bull being sufficient to set them all trembling like a herd of cows in a thunder-storm. In many things they are not to be distinguished from their Moslem fellow-countrymen. As has already been noted, the distinctions in dress have disappeared, and in the customs of the street and the family, of joy and of sorrow, the difference between the two people is very small indeed. The relation of the sexes is as pitifully degrading in the one as in the other. În regard to the religious life of the Copts, perhaps the most prominent point is their fasting. Out of the 365 days no fewer than 192 as a minimum, or 212 as a maximum, are consecrated to this religious ordinance; although there is this great difference between the Moslem and Coptic feasts, that while the former consists of a rigid abstinence during the entire day from all food, drink, and even tobacco, the latter is a mere change from a general to a restricted diet, in which fish and vegetables prevail. For the Coptic peasantry, indeed, fast or no fast makes little difference. "The ejaculation of pious expressions' is a universal characteristic, and one most striking to a western ear. Every other sentence is so spiced, and the smallest break in the conversation is filled by, The Lord keep us,' or 'The Lord preserve you,' from an inferior or visitor. If one of the company has been absent, You have made us desolate,' that is, by your absence, with its correlative answer, May the Lord not make us desolate from you,' with other similar expressions, are tossed back and forward every few minutes. A favour, no matter how small, is acknowledged by, 'The Lord bless you,' 'The Lord increase your good,' 'Our Lord lengthen your age.' 'Sickness elicits, May the Lord cure him'health draws forth no end of the universal al hamdu l'illa— The praise be to God.' But not in blessing only do this people excel 6 A NIGHT JOURNEY IN ITALY. they are no less proficient in cursing. From children of the most tender years, 'God curse your father,' 'The Lord ruin the house of your father,' may constantly be heard, and the practice thus early begun goes on increasing with years, till the man attains a fluency and variety of imprecations something appalling. And for much of this, as for many of their other vices, the clergy and religious books are in a large measure responsible. A NIGHT JOURNEY IN ITALY. Ir any one desires to know how strange and picturesque a night journey may be, even to making up for a considerable amount of discomfort, let him come by the night train from Naples to Ancona, and do the omnibus ride between San Spirito and Starsa, which breaks the journey, and he will have his desire gratified to the full. The company ought to advertise it as a "special attraction." You get to San Spirito at one, and then passengers and baggage are all put into or on to omnibuses, to cross some seven or eight miles of country, under which the great Apennine tunnel is being completed. If you are wise, you will shake off your sleep and go on the top of one of the buses. There are from ten to fifteen of them, dragged by teams varying from three to seven horses, with the queerest drivers and postilions. Most of the buses had a big lamp on the top, another at the side, and an irregular furniture of flaring torches all about. The drivers and postilions all cried and grunted, and cracked innumerable whips like incessant pistol-shots. Then there were outriders blowing horns that made night hideous with discord, and brandishing torches; and amateur men and boys, also with torches; and all rushed hither and thither, and great blazing bits kept coming off the torches, and falling in the road for the buses to drive over, which they did, in the regular course of things, without a moment's hesitation. We struggled in this fashion up hills and down gullies, and into bottoms, and rumbled over strange temporary timber bridges; and above us, on the hills, or underneath us, through the skeleton beams, were parties of people working by torches, or clustered round the mouths of the tunnel shafts, or winding up the hillsides in files with lanterns; or there were great fires by the roadside, that sent our gigantic shadows far out into the distance as we went by them. Now and then, at a steeper pitch than usual, the POETRY. breaks were put on, and then came a great cloud of dust, which, if disagreeable, at any rate lighted up splendidly. And the workmen's hut villages kept rising as it were out of the ground, and the telegraph poles suddenly started into being as our red light fell on them. The line of vehicles stretched for more than half a mile, and as the road doubled and wound about we often seemed to be running over and into one another; and what with the very dark night, and the lightning now and then revealing the line of hilltops around, and the confusion of distance in the gloom and the glare, and the curious transmigration of shapes and shadows, and the noises, and the strange hour,-altogether it was a most singular experience. And what is more, with all its oddness and picturesqueness, the service is well performed, and the inconvenience, though great, not so great as one might expect. -Pall Mall Gazette. Poetry. NO NIGHT THERE. NO WEARY heart, or throbbing head, or travel-stained feet; For the night of sin is ended. Ah! would that I were there. |