into a superstition; very different from the Christ came up, and looking on it remarked how teaching of St. Paul, who tells us that he had beautiful his teeth were, like pearls in purity not baptized any save the household of Stepha- and whiteness." nus, leaving baptism to others, and giving himself to the greater work of preaching repentance towards God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.

3. "Seek those things that are great, and those things which are small shall be added to

you.

There is something of our Lord in this legend. The disposition to find out and dwell on whatever is good or beautiful in every thing and in every creature is God-like. When the rich young man made the great refusal to follow Christ, we are told "he went away sorrowful," and our Lord looked on him and loved him. Our Lord has ever a word for the fallen and rejected of men.

This is quoted by Clement Alexandrinus, a much later Father than the Clement of Paul. It seems more like a saying of Christ than any And is this all-all that we have been able to of the above; yet is little more than another find or learn of from the search of others? version of that in Matthew, "Seek first the This is all the much boasted oral tradition has kingdom of heaven and its righteousness, and added to our knowledge of the Christ of the all other things will be added thereto." Our evangelists. Not one act or miracle, not one Lord sometimes repeats himself, and this may parable, nothing save a few sayings almost idenbe one of the sayings in which he taught the tical in meaning, if not in phraseology, with transcendent importance of things unseen and those we had in the Gospels. The good work of eternal. the Fathers has not been to add to, but to confirm and establish our confidence in these four. Evangelists. By this absence of all additions, and by their testimony to the four Gospels, they assure us that in them we have all we shall ever know or need to know of Christ until he come

4. "Be ye skilful money-changers." Many of the Fathers cite this as a saying of Christ. It may not sound Christ-like in some ears; but such would have been offended with his saying, "Make friends of the mammon of unrighteousness." Our Lord loved a good the second time. figure, which embodied or pictured in a word an The traditions that have come down, few as important warning. Here is a money-changer, they are, are yet sufficient to show how little such as might at any time be seen in the Temple, those that transmitted them were themselves ready to give Jewish money for the money of able to appreciate the spiritual beauty and the foreign Jews who came up from all nations greatness of the Christ of the Gospels. It has to the festivals. As a money-changer must be been observed that the first Christian Fathers skilful in distinguishing true from false coin, not only numbering and weighing, but testing their purity; so should his disciples "prove all things, and hold fast that which is good" (1 Thess. v. 21). Nor is it enough that we carry the coin offered to the law and to the testimony, as the four Gospels. The later Fathers, again, unless we also keep to the analogy of Scripture and bring a sound understanding to the exchange. Otherwise—

"The fly-blown text conceives an alien brood,

-called, from their nearness to the time of Christ, the Apostolic Fathers-exhibit in their writings the smallest degree of native talent or genius, and were wholly incapable of inventing any works so great in their simplicity and beauty

are writers of more intellectual and literary talent, but without that simplicity, brevity, and spirituality that distinguishes the Evangelists. The philosophy and literature of the times had then entered more or less into the Churches of Christ. and marred the purity and truthfulness of the Christian writings and teachings.

And turns to maggots what was meant for food!" These are said to be all the sayings of the slightest value ascribed to our Lord by the Fathers, from Clement downwards. In the Here is the marvel! That on a subject of forged gospels of "The Infancy" and of "Mary," such universal interest to Christians as the acts we have incidents and sayings of Christ; but and sayings of our Lord, the Churches of Christ their utter frivolity betrays their origin in a should have only these four brief Memoirs; yet period when the Church of Christ had returned the last of the Evangelists tells us, once and to a second childhood of credulity and super-again, of the many more things untold, adding stition. The only legend that has any trait of himself one more; that after John we search in the character of Christ which we have met with, vain the other canonical writers of the New is a Persian one :

Testament, and in vain the three hundred volumes of the Greek and Latin Fathers. One memorable saying excepted, neither act, miracle, parable, nor saying of our Lord is added that has any claims to an original character and

"Our Lord, arriving at the gate of a city, sat down, and sent forward his disciples to prepare his way. Following them, he met a crowd surrounding a dead dog, with a rope about its neck. Every one had some ill to say of the dog until value.

WHAT IS THE RESURRECTION?

THE DEATH OF THE BODY.

Most persons at this day who are of the church believe that every one is to rise again at the last day, and then with the material body; which opinion is so universal, that scarcely any one, from doctrine, believes otherwise; but this

It was not for nought that Christ was so soon Had it been otherwise ordered, we should have removed, after his resurrection, from the admir- had to search for our Christianity not only in ing eyes of his first followers; nay, "it was ex- the canonical books of the New Testament, but pedient that he should go away." Neither was in all those traditions, written and unwritten, it for nought that the many fragments of the contained in all the Fathers and Councils of the great feast provided in the life and teaching of Churches; ever varying with the age, and difChrist should be withdrawn into silence. In fering father from father, and council from doing good to men, half is found, at times, to be council. While grateful for the four precious more than the whole; and the deposit of the baskets of the fragments of that life, let us not four Gospels is a more valuable gift than would forget to thank God also for all that he has reforty Gospels have been in which truth and moved into the eternal silence. To these four error, facts and fiction, were blended and undis- little books let us resort as to a fountain of life, tinguishable. When our Lord was present in coming again many times, as do all the wild person amongst his disciples, though his hand beasts to the fountains of the Sahara; not, like was full of truth, he opened only his little finger, them, to muddle the waters, but to drink and giving not according to his fulness, but accord-be satisfied, and preserve them unmingled and ing to their wants, and as they could bear it. unmuddled for all that shall come after.— The manna that fell around the camp of Israel Family Treasury. was only to be gathered in measure-an omer for each man-and if more was gathered, out of the abundance that remained, "it bred worms and stank;" yea," the angels' food" became, like our own, liable to corruption. The highest THE RESURRECTION OCCURS IMMEDIATELY ON spiritual food of the Church of Christ was subject to the same law. Four baskets full were allowed to be gathered, and though many more remained, yea, enough, says St. John, to have filled the world with books, the multiplying of books on so sacred a theme would have led to many evils, mingled irrecoverably truth and opinion has prevailed on this account, because error, things human and divine, sowed more discords and divisions in the Christian Church, and opened a wider door to the flood of error and delusion. The same divine wisdom that presided over the formation of the four Gospels The real truth, however, is this; man rises set bounds to the work of gathering up the again immediately after death, and then appears fragments of the Great Life. If Christians, in to himself in a body altogether as in the world, the first age, ceased not to hear and tell of all with such a face, with such members, arms, they had seen and heard, they were yet marvel- hands, feet, belly, loins. When he sees himself ously withheld from writing it down, until, like and touches himself, he says that he is a man as all other mere oral traditions, it passed into in the world. Nevertheless it is not his external oblivion. We know nothing more remarkable body, which he carried about in the world, that than the bounds and limits thus set to the first he sees and touches, but it is the internal, which written records of the greatest lite the world constitutes that very human being which lives, ever saw. Not more certainly did the Creator and which had an external covering about itself, set bounds to the sea, that it come not over the whereby it could exist in the world, and act dry land, than the God of revelation has set suitably there and perform its functions. The bounds to his written Word. The four Evan- earthly corporeal part is no longer of any use to gelists have been set apart from all other biogra- it, it being now in another world where are phies, with no rivals near their throne, crowned other functions, and other powers and abilities, by universal consent as the Great Biographies. to which its body, such as it has there, is adapHad another and inferior class of Gospels come ted. This body it sees with its eyes, not those down, of dubious origin and uncertain claims to which it had in the world, but those which our confidence, what a field of controversy it has there, which are the eyes of its inwould the many other things they told of Christ ternal man, and out of which through the have been to all ages! But "Thus far!" was eyes of the body it had before seen worldly and the divine decree. Silence was more precious terrestrial things: it also feels it with the touch, than gold. In the judgment of human foresight not with the hands or sense of touch which it more had been gold; but experience has shown there enjoys, which is that from which its sense us that more might only have been confusion. of touch in the world existed. Every sense

the natural man supposes that it is the body alone which lives, wherefore unless he believed that the body was again to receive life, he would deny a resurrection altogether.

also is there more exquisite and more perfect, of all things which he had done, had spoken, because it is the sense of the internal of man and had thought, all the natural affections and set loose from the external, for the internal is in a more perfect state, inasmuch as it gives to the external the power of sensation; but when it acts into the external, as in the world, then the sensation is rendered dull and obscure; moreover, it is the internal which is sensible of internal things, and the external which is sensible of external things; thus men after death see each other, and associate according to their interiors. That I might be certain as to these things, it has also been given me to touch spirits themselves, and to speak frequently with them on this subject.

NO MAN RISES IN A MATERIAL BODY.

Men after death, who are then called spirits, and if they have lived in good, angels, are greatly surprised that the man of the church should believe, that he is not to see eternal life until the last day when the world shall perish, and that then he is to be again clothed with the dust which had been rejected, when yet the man of the church knows that he rises again after death. For who does not say, when a man dies, that his soul or spirit afterward is in heaven or in hell? Who does not say of his own infants who are dead, that they are in heaven? Who does not comfort a sick person, or one condemned to death, by the assurance that he shall shortly come into another life? And he who is in the agony of death and is prepared believes no otherwise; yea, also, from that belief many. claim to themselves the power of delivering others from places of damnation, and of introducing them into heaven, and of making masses for them. Who does not know what the Lord said to the thief," To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise," Luke xxiii. 43; and what He said concerning the rich man and Lazarus, that "the former was carried into hell, but the latter by angels into heaven," Luke xvi. 22, 23; and who is not acquainted with what the Lord taught concerning the resurrection, "that He is not the God of the dead, but of the living," Luke xx. 38? Man is acquainted with these things, and thinks and speaks accordingly, when he thinks and speaks from the spirit, but when from doctrinals, he says quite otherwise; namely, that he is not to rise again "till the last day;' when yet it is the last day to every one when he dies, and likewise then is his judgment. These things are said to the intent it may be known, that no man rises again in the body wtth which he was clothed in the world.

WE LOSE NOTHING IN DYING.

A man, when he dies, loses nothing except bones and flesh: he has with him the memory

lusts, thus all the interiors of his natural being; the exteriors thereof he has now no need of, for he does not see what is in the world, nor does he hear what is in the world, nor does he smell, taste, and touch what is in the world, but rather such things as are in the other life; which things indeed for the most part appear like those which are in the world, but still they are not like, for they have in them what is living, which is not the case with those that are properly of the natural world. For all things in the other life exist and subsist from their sun, which is the Lord, whence they have in them what is living; whereas all things, which are in the natural world, exist and subsist from the natural sun, which is elementary fire, consequently they have not in them what is living; the living principle which appears in these latter, is from no other source than from the spiritual world, that is, through the spiritual world, from the Lord. Emanuel Swedenborg.

"It is not much of a story," said I, "only Aunt Prue is in one of her tantrums, and will not let Kitty stir out of her sight. Mrs. Williams promised to spend the day with her; but "Never mind, Fannie, perhaps it is better I she would not listen to it for a moment, so Kitty should not see him again. Tell Maude how was obliged to remain at home. It was such a sorry I am, and now do not wait, dear, or you disappointment, I believe I should have gone. will have that long walk to take alone." Kitty any way."

"I know I should;" pouted Dora, "there is blushing and trembling, she joined them in the no use in giving up to her whims, the more you parlor. Frank soon proposed a walk, and hinted yield, the more you may. If she had been sick, to Aunt Prue, as Kitty left the room for her or obliged to remain alone, there might have" sea-side," that he should not fail to speak to been some excuse, now it is simply abominable." her in regard to the picnic. Whereupon the The picnic passed off delightfully; though delighted old lady triumphantly informed Kitty Kitty, with her lightsome tones and winning that Mr. Irwin had something to say to her, that ways was sadly missed by all. Frank Irwin, she hoped would make her more respectful in most unaccountably to some, disappeared imme- future. diately after dinner. Fannie was her own merry self again when she discovered his absence, for she shrewdly suspected he was with her sister, a suspicion she secretly imparted to me, with the hope that he would "hurry and take Kitty away from that horrid Aunt Prue."

"You are incorrigible, Fannie, will you never learn that it is naughty to call names."

"I suppose it is, if you say so, Maude; but if you are going to lecture me on my pet aversion, I'm off," and Fannie danced lightly away.

Overwhelmed with mortification, Kitty led the way to a rustic seat beneath the willows, where Frank's easy, confidential manner, as he told her of his lady mother, and accomplished sisters, soon set her heart at rest, in regard to the anticipated reproof, while it filled her with dismay at the presumptuous dreams his evident preference for her society had awakened.

He knew she was unhappy, and often longed to drive the shadow from her brow by withdrawing her from her aunt's influence forever. Kitty and Fannie Williams were as different But again and again, he had asked himself, dare in form, feature, and disposition, as it was pos- he venture to introduce that unsophisticated sible for sisters to be. Fannie was a warm little country girl into his mother's aristocratic hearted, impulsive, little fairy; much given to mansion, and the answer had invariably been speaking her mind, as she termed it, and often no! Now, love, as it ever will, triumphed, and finding to her sorrow that "the tongue is an un- in noble, manly words he told how tenderly he ruly member." While Kitty with her uncom- loved her. plaining, self-sacrificing spirit was a marvel to all.

Kitty listened entranced, as the eloquent tones fell upon her ear, and her heart pined wearily A maiden aunt of Kitty's mother, Miss Pru- for the sweet repose he offered. Yet she knew dence Percy, who lived in a tiny cottage with it could never be hers. While her aunt lived, her cats and parrot, growing feeble as she duty bade her remain at the cottage, and it advanced in years, insisted that Kitty should might be years before she was released from the remain at Clover Nook; so she left her pretty self-imposed burden. She would not bid him home, and the loved ones there, to minister to wait, for her proud spirit rebelled at the thought her aged relative. A weary time she had. of the supercilious reception his mother and Aunt Prue seemed never pleased, and often sisters would undoubtedly give her. Yet she worn out by constant complaints, the poor child could not for a moment, dash the cup of hapwept herself to sleep. Within the last few piness from her lips, and taking her silence for months, a ray of sunshine had found its way to consent, he drew her unresisting form closely to the cottage, in the shape of Frank Irwin, a talented young artist, whom the picturesque beauty of our scenery first attracted to the place, and after completing his sketches he still lingered, irresistibly drawn to Kitty's side. Having won Aunt Prue's heart by a spirited picture of her pets, he had the entree of Clover Nook, and often by his presence dispelled much of the ennui attending Kitty's voluntary exile.

The slight remonstrance Kitty ventured to make, after Fannie left her, was met with such a storm of invectives, that she hastily retreated to her room, and indulged in a hearty cry. The afternoon was slowly wearing away, when she heard Frank's well-known step on the threshhold, and in a few moments her aunt's voice giving a somewhat exaggerated account of the difficulty. She would have made her escape from the house, but a peremptory summons from Miss Prudence rendered it impossible; so,

his heart. She was passive but an instant, then gently disengaging herself from his detaining clasp, told him her decision. In vain he sought to alter it, until, both 'grieved and annoyed at her persistent refusal, he almost angrily bade her farewell.

Fannie's indignation was unbounded, when she learned the sacrifice Kitty had made, and her sister, was decidedly more impulsive than the "piece of her mind" with which she favored elegant.

Frank Irwin came no more to Clover Nook, and after a time, Aunt Prue ceased to wonder what had become of her favorite.

Sad, indeed, seemed the future to Kitty, and bitterly did she sometimes regret her immolation. But hers was the path of duty, and an approving conscience, together with the influence for good she was silently exerting over her aunt, at