A writer in the Homiletic Review, treating the subject of obscure passages of the Bible, says very sensibly: "Why not let the perplexing questions wait for the hour of higher elevation and clearer light? We are like the little child in its first day of school. Eagerly turning over the pages of the book that has just been placed in its hand, it comes quickly to that which is a vast mystery to its present undeveloped mind. Now hear its impatient cry: 'Teacher, teacher, here is something that I can get no understanding of. Tell me quickly what it is. Give me the explanation now or I will close the book and leave the school.' To such an ambitious neophyte might not the voice of the teacher in all sweet reasonableness come in this fashion? 'Is it in to-day's lesson, my child, that which troubles you so greatly? If not, can you not wait until your advancing lessons bring you unto it?' "

"Now, men, my hearers, are only children of a larger size often as petulant."

Why have so many Christian men so little joy in their lives? Because they look for it in all sorts of wrong places, and seek to wring it out of all sorts of sapless and dry things. "Do men gather grapes of thorns?" If you put the berries of the thorn into the wine press, will you get sweet sap out of them? That is what you are doing when you take gratified earthly affections, worldly competence, fulfilled ambitions, and put them into the press and think that out of these you can squeeze the wine of gladness.

Alexander MacLaren.

The (Unitarian) Christian Register says: "When one takes a dose of medicine, he helps or harms only himself. But he who takes into his mind that which makes for the healing of his own soul, by the same potion, ministers to all those who are about him. A merry heart gives light to a whole roomful of melancholly saints. Courage diffuses courage; hope creates hope; confidence generates confidence; and fidelity to a good cause, bravely maintained by one human being, sets the pitch of fidelity for many others."

A writer in the Universalist Leader says: "As we read of the ministry or our Lord in Palestine, we are impressed not only by the number and variety of his miracles, but by the simplicity and quietness with which he manifested his God-given power. Any one's need was his opportunity. By a word, a look, a touch, he gave sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, strength and health to the weak and infirm, life to the dead."

The (Swedenborgian) New church Messenger says: "The repose man should seek in life should never be a resting in the achievements of the past; it should be the peace which belongs to the recognition of eternal principles which bear in their bosom the prophecy and the promise of future attainments through future efforts. We may rest in that kind of life only which keeps us forever pressing forward."

George MacDonald says: "It is the law that the man who does evil shall suffer; it is the only hope for him. . . . When he forsakes his evil one by one the aogs of suffering will halt and arop away from his track; and he will find at last they have but hounded him into the land of his nativity, into the home of his Father in heaven."

Persons of genius are more individual than any other people, and less eapable, consequently, of fitting themselves, without hurtful compression into any of the small numbers of molds which society provides in order to save its members the trouble of forming their own characters.

John Stuart Mill.

President George E. Merrill, D.D., in a sermon published in the (Baptist) Watchman, says: "Whatever the cause may be for which we stand. if it is in the cause of God, if it represents what Christ stood for, then we know that God is on our side, 'and if God be for us, who shall be against us?' Only let us be sure that the life is one of divine principle and not self-seeking."

A writer in the (Episcopalian) Church Standard says: "Pray, and you will have Divine aid in securing every advantage of your watchfulness. You will not be abashed, though the enemy tower head and shoulders above you. You will not be deceived, though he come with lion-like tread; nor overcome by lion-like strength."

The (Baptist) Standard says: "A good mother, when her son was leaving the home of his childhood and going out into the great world, knowing that he was ambitious, gave him this parting injunction: 'My son, remember that, though it is a good thing to be a great man, it is a great thing to be a good man.'"

The New York (Baptist) Examiner says: "The British Foreign Bible Society has printed four hundred thousand French New Testaments for free distribution at the Paris Expostion. The books, which bear the inscription, 'Souvenir de I'Exposition, 1900,' are given away outside the gates."

The (Baptist) Watchman says: "We are really becoming old when we outgrow our enthusiasms. The man who can sustain his interest in what is going on, and his hopefulness as to the general outcome of things, has the main characteristics of youth."

It is your duty not only to be good, but to shine; and of all the light which you kindle on the face, joy will reach furthest out to sea where troubled maruers are seeking the shore. H. W Beecher.

"Advancement results from the loyalty of every person to so much of the truth as is revealed to him," says Amory H. Bradford in the (Unitarian) Christian Register.