CHARLES G. LORING.

N Boston has just died a man not disobedient to the heavenly vision; who wedded the idea to the fact, never forgot the divine eams he must in his cradle have had, but made them arms in the ttle of life; a certain romance and sentiment of truth and purity rified whose old age, and who waxed valiant for the right to the d of his days, as he defended with a legal, that was moral power, ecause of the lowly and the enslaved; who had a certain chivalry come to close terms with the devil and give him no quarter, and ove him a non-entity; whose great virtues, without the lesser vices, one in all his looks, and manners, and deeds, so that what was incent could not breathe in his presence, by which all men were uped and made better; and to whom his country and the common manity owe a debt.

When Dr. Arnold said he was not sure of a boy for loving good less he also abhorred evil, I am afraid he had not made sure of at loving the good before which evil disappears. Mr. Loring said Webster, who naturally gravitated to the truth and had to tear mself away from it, that he could not argue a bad case comparaely well. Mr. Loring had no wish or relish for arguing a bad ise at all. Goodness to him was the reality, and evil the void, so t, when one spoke to him of the woes of Christ, the man of sorvs, bearing all the sin and punishment of the world, he answered, was his pleasure to believe Jesus the happiest person that ever ed. When he was asked to sit for his likeness, he said he did not nt it to go further than his own shoulders had to carry it: but from se who saw it, his face will not fade. For he recognized what no e has so well written as Forceythe Willson, on the battle of our sels at Fort Henry :

"But there was a hand at the wheel,
That nobody saw,

A something in every crank and wheel,
That made 'em answer their turn;

And everywhere,

On earth and water, in fire and air,
As it were to see it all well done,
The wraith of the murdered Law,
Old John Brown at every gun."

C. A. BARTOL.

NOTES.

DR. BELLOWS is writing interesting "European Letters" to the Liberal Christian. In one of recent date, he says:

"The sheep-like way in which the crowds of tourists follow their leaders through Switzerland, doing up the things to be done, admiring what is set down to be admired, and seldom asking themselves one serious question as to what impression is really made upon their own minds and senses, is something incredible till one has seen it, and half makes one doubt the possibility of freeing the masses of human beings from the moulds of a few shaping minds."

In the order of nature, the "sheep-like way" seems, for a time, to be the only way. Jesus understood this when he said, "Ye are the sheep." 'Tis the plan of creation. Sheep ante-dates man. Man is first sheep. He likes to be well fleeced, and to follow. After that, he comes to himself. In our world to-day we are all mostly sheep. But, happy omen, stray sheep are here and there on the hills, and in the valleys. Some of these will perchance come to the stature of man. It has evidently become a question with them if they cannot. Is it not something to entertain such a question at all? Let us take courage for ourselves and each other. Let us say, the theory of development shall have new confirmations. Creation shall proceed! Our seventh day for rest we will enjoy ages hence. This be our song:

out of the sheepfold!

THOSE who have had aught to do in starting or conducting a church, well know how even a generous enthusiasm for an idea can fade out before the great anxiety that arises for the prosperity of our society." The institution has no mercy. It presses a thousand petty claims, and threatens to die outright if they are not honored, None dare say, "Well, then, die!" and so the rallying point comes to be to keep that ship from going under. It can't be saved with all its freight. The half must go overboard, and no one pauses to consider which half. "Save all the trappings, and over with your wits!" is the standing order. So many an old hulk of a church rests today on safe ground, the Prophet driven out of its pulpit: in his place a Performer, wheezing away — not for dry bones, but flesh and blood -of the "better world," and "things of the spirit."

It is said that CAMCENS was shipwrecked on the coast of Malabar, but swam ashore, holding up his poem, which he had mostly written at sea, in one hand. On hearing this anecdote, one standing by sneered, and said, "What a fool, to risk his life, and waste so much strength to save a bit of paper! Which was the fool?

Is there any hell?

Why ask? Who that has had any experience can doubt?

But is there one in the next world?

One? Why not a great many?

I should think one would be enough.
That depends-

Upon what?

Whether it does the business.

What do you mean?

Whether it drives you into heaven.

I don't think I should need to be driven.

Then why not go at once?

How absurd!

Well?

THAT God hides himself so completely, is so invisible, should not make us believe in him any the less, but all the more, if we may by contrast with many of those called great among men, judge of him. In these great men, so omnipresent and finely arrayed, one can believe very little; they seem the flimsiest of illusions.

If God has used great men in times past to keep the little ones. afloat, and from starvation of every kind, spiritual, moral, intellectual, physical, it is plain that he is now endeavoring to dispense with such an agency. He has initiated a Democracy, and comes more directly in contact with every body himself. To the professional mediators of this time he seems to say, "What is that to thee? I can do my own errands." So it happens that the common people can have: the honor of an immediate audience. It is their ordeal. The old saying, "No man can see God and live," is true, if we may finish the sentence by adding, " as he lived before."

We talk a great deal about God, and in a marvelously unnatural manner. Few people seem to know just how to speak the word. Is it not because to most people the word really has no meaning? It is often the commonest word in their vocabulary. If they are piously inclined-in the fashionable way - when they utter the

We are too fussy about our moral sensible people feel ashamed. No wo seek relief from the subject of religion day in the week. Even their "irrelig ligion ought to be the simplest and telligent life: not an attitude before good, a whimpering and maneuvering an intimate friend, I put off formal hundred things which in the presenc enough to keep doing and saying. W should be annoyed by any act that se did not. A great deal is understood sort of thing for granted. Now the a one's friend is God. We do not wish his mightiness. Nothing jars on the mighty Father." It puts God away with a command. The soul respects relation. It does not owe allegianc

friendship. It is a co-worker and to desire more. No one says to 1 "Almighty" &c., nor anything corres address the Supreme in so stiff a wa God as a big foreigner, and man as a

macy. Why does it surprise us that God should love man? Why should he not? How natural. Why cannot man naturally return this natural affection? Why, indeed, does he toll a bell, and perform his part? Reader, if your friend should treat you thus, you would show him the door!

MR. BROUGHAM says of his new play, in every speech he makes before the curtain, "It is not too sensational for the intellectual, nor too intellectual for the sensational. I have endeavored to hit the happy medium, hoping thereby to draw from both classes." Such tact would qualify Mr. Brougham for a successful preacher. He fills the theatre, he could fill a church. Of TACT a poet has written: "Church, market, and tavern, Bed and board it will sway!"

But this warning completes the verse:

"It has no to-morrow,

It ends with to-day."

WHAT will you do? We will follow truth, we will do homage to virtue, we will reverence the nature of man: but not with specious judgments, disfranchising the whole race for the glory of one! Whatever was beautiful, all that was true in the character of any, let it stand as it will and must with eternal significance. But why bawl their glory through the town? Why drive the holy one through the streets, a beast of burden bearing our sins? Let us quit this profitless shirking; let us bear our own infirmities, and with greater privacy: if we do not pet them so much they will part company with us all the sooner.

IN the Peace Congress at Geneva, Garabaldi made the startling request that a Congress, to be composed of all the nations of the earth, should adopt the following Article :

"The Congress consecrates to the Priesthood the men most eminent for science and intelligence; it consecrates to nothingness every priest of ignorance."

The assembling of such a Congress would create a universal panic - among the priests. A strange way to make peace. What folly, too, when "ignorance is bliss.”

AN aged lady residing in one of the Western States, has, on two or three occasions, sent us poems she had composed on her birth days. We have been very glad to read them, as we have the num