One of the chief dangers of life is trusting occasions. We think that conspicuous events, striking experiences, exalted moments have most to do with our character and capacity. We are wrong. Common days, monotonous hours, wearisome paths, plain old tools, and every-day clothes tell the real story. Good habits are not made on birthdays, nor Christian character at the new year. The vision may dawn, the dream may waken, the heart may leap with a new inspiration on some mountain-top, but the test, the triumph, is at the foot of the mountain, on the level plain.

The workshop of character is every-day life. The uneventful and commonplace hour is where the battle is won or lost. Thank God for a new truth, a beautiful idea. a glowing experience; but remember that unless we bring it down to the ground and teach it to walk with feet, work with hands, and stand the strain of the daily life, we have worse than lost it, we have been hurt by it. A new light in our heart makes an for building a tabernacle and feeling thankful and looking back to a blessed memory, but for shedding the new light on the old path, and doing old duties with new inspiration. The uncommon life is the child of the common day, lived in an uncommon way.

REV. DR. MALTIE DAVENPORT BABCOCK.

Dr. F. O. Hall says in The Universalist Leader; "More souls have been stunted by the horrible fears of hideous and purely imaginary penalties for sin than have ever been aroused by such fears to a larger life. It is true, as Beecher declared, that 'a low and normal action of fear leads to forecast; its morbid action is a positive hindrance to effort. Water is necessary for the floating of a timber; but if a log is saturated with water, it sinks in the very element which should bear it up. Many men are waterlogged with anxiety, and instead of quickening them it only paralyzes effort.' Now a waterlogged tree is not a living tree, and a soul waterlogged with fear is not a soul spiritually alive. Much of the effort made in the name of religion to terrify men and women into spiritual life has resulted in making the little life they did possess as hideous as a nightmare."

Wait not for extraordinary occasions. The present moment, and the mite you can contribute as it passes, are your all. For, rightly viewed, what is the present moment but the index on the dial-plate, forever moving till it makes up your whole life? And what is the mite you now contribute but that exertion of your whole strength to meet the present demand, without which, in the longest life, nothing is accomplished? The whole of religion, then, is comprised in one simple direction: Do all you can from a pure motive now. Thus, small as your actions may appear to men, like the widow's mites they will be great in the eye of Heaven; and, though they attract not the admiration of the world, they will secure your eternal peace.

C. A. BARTOL.

When a Church finds it is not winning the community about it, instead of pluming itself on its superior orthodoxy on the ground that men resist hate the truth, it should seriously question whether it is not holding what truth it does have in such a distorted and unlovely fashion that the truth itself does not have a fair opportunity to exert its power over human hearts. You may hold the truth as a savage holds a club, or as a mother holds a babe. You may speak a message as a hall boy at a hotel who cares nothing about it, or as a friend who rushes to you breathless with glad tidings with which his own heart is full.

The Watchman.

It is not so much less of storm, less of struggle, less of cross, less of burdens, that we need as we walk and work here below, as it is of more light—either the light of knowledge, or the light of faith and hope. If we clearly saw that the storm meant a new revelation of Christ's mastery over the seas, if we saw that burdens mean blessings and increased strength. If we saw that crosses meant only the death of the bad within us and the larger life of the good, we should be able to rejoice in tribulation and to glory in distress because it would be manifest that the power of Christ and of the new life wrought within us.

The Examiner.

Rev. H. A. Bridgman says in The Christian Advocate:—

"Nothing short of a universal Christ, a Christ suited to the varying conditions and moods of all mankind will satisfy us. Jesus boldly asserts that he is that kind of a Saviour, that he is after both the world's wreckage and the world's discontent and apathy. It would be difficult to decide which he enjoyed most when on earth. the restoration to new hope and courage of some profligate, the admittance to the kingdom of heaven at the eleventh hour of the thief on the cross, or the opening of the eyes of a respectable man like Nicodemus to the joys and inspirations of the kingdom."

In a world of mere law could there be anything like what we know as religion? There might be awe before the stupendous forces of nature, and a deeper awe before the law by which each of these is kept within its appointed bounds. There might be submission to the inevitable. There might be peace in the thought that these laws are working out, on the whole, more good than evil; and one might be willing that his little bark should be wrecked by a wind that, in the end, brings good to man. But could all this be what we call religion? Does not religion imply the communion of spirit with spirit?—PROF. C. C. EVERETT.

To starve the spirit in order to pamper the mind or the flesh; to let covetousness rob our neighbor of his right to consideration: to let demands of culture exclude the rights of social brotherhood; to be so engrossed with denials that we never affirm; to refuse to follow the best we know because so much is doubtful or unknown—in the light of present opportunity and the judgment of our Lord these are refuges of lies in which men seek to hide themselves from light of the face of God.

The Congregationalist and Christian World.

Rev. Silas Farrington says in The Christian Register: "The master key of the kingdom of heaven is now—just as it always has been—Love. Without love no man ever yet found the door to it, nor ever will. I look about me; and I see continually that all the virtues men have or practise spring out of their love, are limited by its limits. ... In one sense, heaven is, indeed, an open place. But in another sense it is a locked place.—locked forever against all selfish desire, all unjust aims, all that is hard and harsh and malignant or even indifferent or unregarding."

Rev. John Snyder writes in The Christian Register: "In the world of 'mere law' I may feel awe and wonder and astonishment at the vastness of things; I may feel gratitude and joy at their goodness; I may feel the spirit of submission at the contemplation of the fixedness of law. But none of these things make the essence of prayer. True prayer means the communion of a free soul with the Divine Spirit. The prayer of pantheism is but a divine soliloquy."

J. H. W. Stuckenberg, D.D., LL. D., writes in The Homiletic Review: "By all means let our churches have beauty, sweetness, and light. But the temple of God needs something besides the adornment of architecture, music, and oratory. Great principalities are to be overthrown and a new kingdom to be established on their ruins. In order to accomplish this the severity of truth, the invincible might of righteousness, and the omnipotence of faith are required."

Life, all life, is of God, and where it finds its highest expression in the nature of men it has an aim and a law. To find this law and to reach this aim and temper our thoughts and actions in accordance with it is the task of men endowed with the capacity to think and to do.—REV. H. M. G. HUFF.

One of the best things in the Gospel of Jesus is the stress it lays on small things, It ascribes more value to quality than to quantity; it teaches that God does not ask how much we do, but how we do it.

JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE.

The cross is to be met with in little things as well as great. It is not merely in stupendous conflicts with the powers of evil within us that we are to discover its presence, but in the little details of daily life.

W. H. HAY AITKIN.

Too much is said in these days about the aesthetics of religion and its sensibilities. Religion's home is in the conscience. Its watchword is the word "ought." Its highest joy is in doing God's will.—T. L. CUYLER.

Passion for truth is quite different from passion at the truth.

PRES. N. M. BUTLER, Columbia Univ.

A holy life has a voice; it speaks when the tongue is silent, and is either a constant attraction or a perpetual reproof.—HINTON.

"Thou shalt not get found out" is not one of God's commandments, and no man can be saved by trying to keep it.

LEONARD BACON.