married; but, losing her only son when she was twenty-six, she was overwhelmed with grief, and thereupon resolved to dedicate the rest of her life to the service of God. So, relinquishing all her property to her husband, she left him, and entered on her religious novitiate. She has a brother a priest, and her mother before her had taken the veil. So she had evidently come of a religious stock.

The Burmese lady's reflections on the lax state of religion in Ceylon were not wholly without analogy to those of the austere Salvationist on the easy life of the more luxurious of the Protestant missionaries. They were careless, these Ceylon Buddhists, and slovenly, lacking in due reverence for sacred things. Illustrating her meaning, she would by an expressive gesture of her hand show the ill-mannered way in which the Ceylonese would make an offering of rice to the priest, and said they would think nothing of lighting the altar candles with anything that came to hand, such as a rag torn off the edge of their own cotton garments. Compared with Burmah, religion had fallen into a low and disordered state in Ceylon. What is noteworthy, too, is that this Burmese lady travels without purse or scrip, trusting to the benevolence of the faithful to pass her on from one point to another. But she had to remain five months in a nunnery in Ceylon while collecting the forty rupees required for her steamer fare to Rangoon. She reads and studies much. When asked whether her faith did not sustain a shock when she saw the veritable objects which are described with such wealth of hyperbole in the Burmese sacred books, she deftly explained away the discrepancy in the familiar tone of the apologist, saying that no doubt in ancient times the buildings, trees, etc., were really as described in the Scriptures, but that in these modern days it was natural to expect that the trees should have degenerated; and buildings, of course, have become dilapidated. Thus easily did the pious soul bridge the chasm between the mystic and the real which racks the consciences of so many seekers after truth in the midst of our more worldly civilization.

Her sole complaint of the accommodation of the steamer was the absence of convenience for serious meditation and for prayer,

of which she stood much in need. The novice, too, was rather a thorn in her side, being, though clever, of a refractory temper. She resolved, however, to be patient with the girl, even as God had been with herself. And maybe the small trials she had to endure would be helpful in fitting her for the blessed consummation of all her hopes, -Nirvana.

Here there were in close neigborhood two most antithetical saints,-one representing the elaborate and revered ceremonial of an ancient religion that has made of its agnostic founder a deity; the other representing the crude formative stage of what may in its turn also become a religion, but whose ritual has scarcely as yet got beyond the blue uniform and the big drum,-two women walking the world of sense with their heads erect in the serener atmosphere of another; the salt of the earth, both of them; travelling-who can doubt it?— toward the same goal; each indeed carrying about with her an envelopment of heaven; both given up wholly to the service of God; and both entirely at one as to the central necessity of a "clean heart." Yet such is the partiality of their intellectual grasp, their defective appreciation even of their own selves, that, were they to be shut up in a room together, they would probably set to work earnestly to destroy each other's belief and to condemn each other's practices. Though, to an impartial observer, they may be hastening to the same end, whatever and wherever that common destiny of theirs may be, they would cheerfully consign each other, being impenitent, to the bottomless pit. Of the Christian woman at least so much may be safely said, because, as the less educated, she would be the less tolerant of the two.

TRAINING A JESUIT.

A remarkable article in the Nineteenth Century under the above heading is commented upon by the Spectator, from which we quote:

"In training a Jesuit, nothing is omitted during nearly twenty years of hard mental labor which could contribute to equipping the Jesuit for his campaigns in the world. But, in spite of that, it is a bad training.

Athletes who are overtrained get what is termed 'stale.' They practise till all the 'go' leaves them, and they become incapable of getting the highest amount of force out of their bodies. The mind and soul may also get 'stale' from overtraining, and we expect that staleness is a mental malady from which the Jesuits often suffer. It is this staleness from overtraining which has made them liable to the charge of being mechanical, formal, stony, and hard in the matters of the spirit. Here is an account of the obedience practised by the Jesuits :

"At the end of two years the young Jesuit takes his first vows, and ceases to be

a novice. The special object of his life in the noviceship has been to train him up in that spirit of implicit and unquestioning obedience which is the aim of the Society of Jesus to cultivate more than any other

virtue in her sons, simply because it is the virtue that underlies all the rest, and without which no other virtue can attain its full perfection in the soul of man. The routine of monotonous and often apparently useless employments has for its object to foster the habit of what is rightly called blind obedience. The novice is taught to obey his superior without ever questioning the wisdom of the order given. The perfection of Jesuit obedience includes not only the obedience of the will, so that he does what is commanded promptly, bravely, and thoroughly, but also an obedience of the judgment, so that he regards what is commanded as the best thing possible for him. Here it is that Jesuit obedience differs from the obedience practised generally by a good subordinate in the world. In the army or in a house of business blind obedience is necessary to efficient action. No well ordered system could be carried on successfully without it. If the subordinate obeyed only where he approved of the wisdom of the command given, the results would be fatal to any well-organized community. It is the habit, the difficult habit of abstaining from any mental criticism of the order given, that is the distinctive feature of the obedience of the Society of Jesus. When still a secular, I once encountered an officer in the army who had been for some time in the noviceship, and had left because he found the obedience required too much for him. I took occasion to ask him how it was that he who had been accustomed to the strict discipline and rigorous obedience demanded of a soldier could not endure the gentler rule to which he was subject as a religious. In the army,' was his answer, 'you must do what you are told, but you can relieve your feelings by swearing mentally at your colo

nel;

but you cannot do that in the Society of Jesus.' At the same time the obedience of the society is a perfectly reasonable obedience. I need scarcely say that in the impossible or almost impossible case of a command being given, which could not be obeyed without sin, the Jesuit would be clearly bound to disobey. In the case of the order given being manifestly a foolish one, obedience does not require that it should be regarded in itself as wise or prudent. If the matter is one of any importance, it is his duty to represent to the superior the undesirable consequences that seem to him likely to ensue from the carrying out of the order. Every superior has certain advisers, to whose opinion he is bound to give special weight; and the representation can be made either directly to the superior by the person receiving the order or through dinate has also the right of appeal to some one or other of these advisers. Every suborhigher superior, and such appeals always re

ceive full and careful consideration.

"But surely there is a contradiction here. If the Jesuit must abstain from mental criticism on an order, how can he possibly tell whether it is sinful or no? Is it sinful to lie? We presume all Jesuits would say it was. Suppose an order is given by a superior which involves the telling of a lie. In that case the subordinate Jesuit ought to disobey. But he cannot tell that the order involves falsehood unless he uses the faculty of mental criticism. But this he must not do. It is a vicious circle. You cannot avoid obeying sinful orders unless you allow the critical faculty to work. Here is the danger of the obedience which is symbolised by the motto 'Perinde ac cadaver.' No man has a right to render that sort of obedience save to his own conscience."

THE REVEALING DARK.

From heaven did the Lord behold the earth; to hear the groaning of the prisoner; to loose those that are appointed to death.-Ps. cii. 19, 20.

A pulse of Thy life in an acorn cell

In the earth's dark prison thou hidest away For only thus can thy thought of an oak Come forth with the wildest storms to play A beautiful thought thou dost make to dwell

In the loathely worm that creeps and dies For only thus canst thou wake on earth

Thy lovely dream of the butterflies.

A lullaby of thy tenderest love

an everlasting heart of love flowing through

To comfort our hearts as thy thrushes sing.
Thy beautiful thought of a child, I know,
In me and my evils is hiding deep;
And thy tenderness yet in some endless day
Will awake it from all this dreadful sleep.
Forever thou hidest thy beautiful things

In prisons and deaths and sad defeats;
For only thus in its countless ways

Thy being its glory of love completes.

Thou who art the creative life of the universe, art good; and kindness is the motions of thy life living to bless. Only goodness keeps the stars alight, and the earth in the happy paths of its changing seasons. Only love can create. Hate is a destroyer, and anger blights. The beauty and order of the creation, the life of it, convinces the heart that love is the "centre and soul of every sphere," the life of everything, the truthful genius that perfects the grain of sand, and alike the star. Thou art life, for only life can beget life and keep the countless hearts at their busy tasks of beating tender and true to all they are. Death has not power to do a deed of life: itself is but the shadow of the diligent, tender life. Thou art joy; for the motions of life is gladness always, whether in the wing of a gnat or the beating heart of a man. Thou art holiness, for only the perfection of truth can hold together these creative acts in the integrity of their natures. Everywhere there is some goodness, vocal in inspirations to convince the heart that thy chiefest joy is to bestow life, thy glory of being to serve thy creation in every kindly helpfulness.

And yet the presence of evil baffles the loving heart that holds thee good and kind. Into the sunny faith that thou art an everlasting love the fact of evil comes as a shadow, and sometimes the shadow for us deepens into night. The mists of death that are everywhere get into our eyes, so that we cannot see that life reigns in an eternal gentleness. The clamorous selfishness among all lives that live, the human, and those that share the world with us, makes us deaf, so that we cannot hear through the din the still small voice of the creative unselfishness. The cruelties of men dumfound us, and we have no speech to say that thou art always kind and good,

elevated thoughts" on whose heights "lie repose."

And yet through these experiences there is a persistence of thy love that compels the old sunny faith again, even as through the clouds of storm the sun insists upon blessing the earth until the peace of renewal fills all the fields, and through the nights comes with its dawns wherein all silent birds awake and sing. In spite of all the seemings, in spite of ourselves sometimes, we believe that thou art good, and that thy tender mercies are over all thy works, that from thy holiest heavens thou dost behold the earth, to hear the groaning of the prisoner, and to loose those that are appointed to death.

Where we cannot trace thee, we trust thee, assured that thy finished creation will honor the tenderest heart and glorify the most perfect wisdom. Thou hearest the groanings of the prisoners of sin, and will yet bless them in a great freedom, even the freedom of rejoicing holiness. Upon these appointed unto death thou thinkest tenderly, and hast made for their feet some ways of eternal life. No lily fades without thee, the beauty in which it may experience a dearer fulness. No sparrow falls in death without thee, the Life in whom it may experience a diviner life. No human soul goes into the shadows without thee, the Light in whom is resurrection and life.

Thou dost imprison a beautiful thought in the worm that creeps, in the chrysalis that lies motionless, but only so that thou mayest actualize that thought in the resurrection of butterflies that take the flowers with sinless wings. In these human evils and sad limitations thou dost imprison a great human beauty thy tenderest heart feels, but only that thou mayest realize it in noble men and women who take thy perfect heavens in the joys of holiness. Thou settest a great thought in an acorn that must die in the dark and damp of earth, but only because thou must so bring forth thy reality of an oak to glorify the valleys and the hills. In these human darknesses and deaths thou hast put a great glory of human-heartedness, for so alone can thy heavens fill with the human goodness that will add to its great glory. All shadows evidence the light. Every prison is the pathway into liberty.

Every death is the deepening shadows of resurrection. Every evil is but the creative destructions of the hand of goodness. In earth heaven roots for its blossoms and its fruits.

This is the faith that abides in us, the changelessness in the midst of the change, the comfort that can sing out the sorrows, the good that can overcome the evil, the life that is the master of death, the kindness that makes the wasting cruelties bring forth the gentle fruits of love!

For this faith we thank thee, Master in love and in life. In the remembrance of all thy goodness it brightens. In the hopes that fill our sky it sings. In all noble and unselfish life it becomes experience, its dream awake, its unseen become the seen. In no far heavens art thou lost; but ever thou dost behold thy earth, ever dost thou abide in it to hear the groanings of the prisoners unto their liberty, and to bring those appointed unto death into the life of which death is but its birth.

Thou canst knit the broken wing
And end the troubled flight;
My sorrow-silenced voice may sing
When such is thy delight.
And thy summer love-winds blow
Across my snow-clad heart,

Till come my birds, my blossoms blow,
And all my grasses start.

Thou canst so come forth in me
A creation clean and new
That all I say and do and be
Is just thyself come true,

My life thy holy tune,

And thy heart satisfied,
As when a bird at song in June
Delights his nesting bride.

Thou canst win through me a place
For thy love's conquering,
Thyself become a human face,
A human voice to sing
Thy song through all my earth,

In life's divine increase,
Achieving holy worth

That's saying, Mercy, peace!
I yield me to thy love

That thy truth within me shine,
That thy human heart above

Make my human heart divine;
For of love there is no lack,

And its human grace in me
Is saying grace and mercy back
And peace adoringly.

When thy truth my loving fills,

Then the holiest life I dream May flow from out my hills,

A clear and laughing stream. When thy love's within my own, All its graces in my ways Turn the voices that make moan Into voices that sing praise. Oh, live within my soul,

As within the rose the sun, That my being's perfect whole

Be thy beauty-willing done, That thy heart, mine own heart's grace, Make the earth divinely fair, Thou lost in no far heavens of space, But living everywhere.

PASTOR QUIET.

THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN HISTORY.

BY J. S. Lee, d.d.

There is a charm in history. It is felt by all minds who delight to trace the career of man in all his devious passages along the track of ages. They are instinctively drawn to him by the ties of kinship. It has been felt by men of all ages and all climes since the record of the past has been unrolled to their enraptured vision. To most persons, perhaps, it is a secret charm, enjoyed, but not expressed, hidden away amid the workings of the mind in its eager search for something new and startling on the stage of the world. It is a charm akin to that experienced by the reader of novels or poetry, as he glides along the purling streams and treads the dark and dreary ravines of human life or traces the labyrinthian thread of human destiny on through all its windings. They do not reason or speculate like the logician or the philosopher: they simply see and enjoy what is presented to their eyes. They passively and dreamily receive what passes before them, and linger over the scenes with ecstatic joy.

Others, under the spell of the same charm, trace history with the keen, observing powers of the experienced traveller, who uses his judgment and faculties of reflection as well as his eyes, or with the introspecting view of the poet, who "gazes from earth to heaven, and from heaven to earth again," unlocks the secrets of nature, or with the dramatist searches into the depths of the

human heart, and brings out to view its cabals, its hidden plots, its varied motives, and unfathomed depths of sorrow and joy. Both feel the charm, but in unequal degree. Now, why is history such an "enchanted land," in which we see beauties strewn all over its attractive surface? It is because it presents man as the chief object of our attention, man a living being, our brother, and fellow-heir of immortality. It paints his career in his toils, his privations, his strivings, his joys and sorrows, his defeats, and his triumphs. It depicts him contending for the faith, manfully battling with error, and overturning the hosts who have set themselves up to oppose the progress of truth, and finally settling down to enjoy his victories. It has its dramatic features, also; and, so long as Shakspere is read with absorbing interest, so long shall we feel attracted by those greater dramas that have been enacted on the arena of the world's history. It has its greater and lesser trage dies and its comedies, which stir the soul to its profoundest depths and call forth its smiles and its tears. It treats of men's inhumanity to men, which "makes countless thousands mourn," the intolerance, cruelty, and persecution which man exercises over his fellow-man, which cause us to shudder at the sight. Still, it is our brother, to whom we are bound by kindred ties, who suffers, and we weep with him; and it is our brother who inflicts the suffering, and we cannot cease to feel an interest, even in those cruel wrongs which he heaps upon his offending victim. We may rebuke, we may retaliate, we may inflict the severest punishment upon the culprit, still it is our brother whom we punish and rebuke.

This thought is predominant, and we cannot rid ourselves of it. All these relate, not to inert matter, not to brute animals, but to rational and intelligent man in his relations to us and our heavenly Father; and he cannot but enlist our sympathies and engage our attention as we follow him on his journey of heroic struggles or deepest shame.

The chief reason why we feel a deeper interest in man than in outward nature, with all its beauties and glories, is his ineffable dignity and transcendent glory. The Psalmist touches upon this theme when he bursts forth in that sublime utterance: "When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fin

gers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained, what is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and thou hast crowned him with glory and honor. Thou hast made him to have dominion over the works of thy hands: thou hast put all things under his feet.”

God has exalted man above all material objects. He has placed all the forces of outward nature under his dominion. However sublime we may regard the heavens, man is still more sublime. However beautiful the towering hills and the teeming landscape, man is still more beautiful than them

all. As a being who lives, moves, and has his existence in God, he is a more important object than any other in the world.

Gilfillan, in his review of Chalmers's "Astronomical Discourses," has elucidated this contrast between man and nature most clearly. With his magniloquent rhetoric, he exclaims: "The creation, large as it is, is not equal in grandeur and value to one immortal spirit. . . . The sun cannot understand the geometry of its own motion or read the laws of its own radiating light. I can do both, and am therefore greater than the sun. The sun cannot, with all its rays, write on flower or grass or the broad page of the ocean the name of its Maker. A child of seven can, and is therein greater than the sun. The sun cannot, from all his vast surface, utter an articulate sound: he is dumb in his magnificence. But out of the mouth of babes and sucklings God perfects praise.' ... The sun is but a spark of fire, a transient meteor in the sky; but I, immortal as his sire, shall never die. And, if greater than the sun, I am greater than this whole material universe. . . . It is only the nursery to my infant soul; and whether is greater, the nursery or the child?... The universe is not a spirit: it is but a great and glorious clod. But I am a spirit, though a spirit disguised; an immortality, though an immortality veiled; a beam from the Father of lights, though gone astray. Therefore do I dare to predicate that it is of more dignity and grandeur and value than the whole material creation."

It is this being, intelligent, capable of indefinite growth in knowledge, virtue, and holiness, formed in the image of his infinite