The New Testament prophecy of the new heaven and earth wherein dwelleth righteousness is the assurance of the ultimate triumph of the Redeemer's kingdom. In the contrast of the two seenes, the earth lying in darkness behind Peter and in radiance before him, we mark with him that it is righteousness that will constitute the main point of distinction. It will be the descent of the Christ of moral character, of sweet and holy life, on this clouded and stormy planet that will insure the new day and the new time. In that "new heaven and new earth" which Christ is to build in the midst of the old, to supplant the old, Faith will descend and fill the soul with cheer. Hope will move amid the scene, glowing with happy expectancy. There will Love be found with her benignant face and her gentle hands of helpfulness. Abroad will Wisdom walk in her garments of light. In the sacred group will be found a new holiness as the inheritance of the soul in Christ, turned to survey a better future, a new earth, even a heavenly kingdom, wherein right shall be the first love of man and honor his chief glory! On this clouded and stormy planet Peter saw the new light dawning, the light of moral character, which hitherto had been but as a dim taper in the great darkness and the barren waste, but which would flame abroad and make all the scene noble and fair, in a Christ-like righteousness. This was the source of the great contrast which in prophecy he pictured for the believer's comfort.—The Universalist Leader.

The fancy of the poet and painter has revelled in the imaginary glory of the Nativity. They have sung of the bright angels who hovered there, and of the stars lingering beyond their time to shed their sweet influences upon that smiling infant. They have painted the radiance of light from his manger-cradle, illuminating all the place till the bystanders are forced to shade their eyes from that heavenly splendor. But all this is wide of the reality. Such glories as the simple shepherds saw were seen only by the eye of faith. All which met their gaze was a peasant of Galilee, already beyond the prime of life, and a young mother with an infant Child, whom, since there was none to help her, her own hands had wrapped in swaddling clothes. The light that shined in the darkness was not physical but a spiritual beam; the Dayspring from on high which now visited mankind dawned only in a few faithful and humble hearts.
Farrar.

Rev. L. M. Powers says in The Universalist Leader:—

"Theology, long held to be the crown of the sciences is to-day the deadest thing that makes any pretence to life. The world's need is real knowledge of a living God. The theology of the schools and churches is a systematized knowledge of what dead men have thought of a dead God. All the attempts of the Churches to reinstall this knowledge of dead men concerning past things, are of little worth. A Church with a systematic theology to defend, must always lie behind the real thought of the age. Only a creedless Church can keep abreast of the times....

"In my library of some thirty-five hundred books there are about five hundred books dealing with religion. Among these five hundred are perhaps twenty that have to do with theology strictly defined, and most of the twenty I have never read. For all books of value tell of God, and I have found a surer evidence and clearer knowledge of God in the books of mathematics, history, and poetry, than in those labelled theology."

Reviewing the fifty years since his ordination to the diaconate, Bishop Doane of the diocese of Albany in his convention address recently said: "Somehow the tone and atmosphere of religious life seem to me greatly to have changed. The contentions and controversies of fifty years ago have only faint and feeble echoes here and there, and the subjects have passed, many of them, into a sort of natural acceptance. What were accounted strange and unusual teachings and practices are really the usual teachings and practices of the Church. It seems to me that Church life and religious life to-day are calmer, quieter, stronger, steadler than was their wont when I was young. We are leaning, most of us, more respect for other people's convictions as well as our own, and less of what I think Mr. Gladstone called 'cocksureness' about our own opinions. And the time seems ripe for certain recognitions of larger things, and the air seems rife with the movement of more unitedness along the lines of the real work for which the Church is in the world."

Rev. W. W. White, Ph.D., in an address on "The Purpose and Power of Prayer," as reported in The Examiner, says: "The purpose of prayer is not to give information to God. He knoweth our need before we ask it. Man must not use vain repetitions. The four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal learned the uselessness of this when they cried, 'O. Baal, hear us.' Its purpose is not to win God to our side—not to tease Him, not to 'overcome God's reluctance,' as some one has said, 'but to take hold of His willingness.' It is not the purpose of prayer that the laws of God should be violated; prayer is in harmony with those laws. Prayer is not illogical. We receive from man because we ask. Ask of God and ye shall receive. We should work, in the language of another, as though all depends upon us, and pray as though all depends upon God."

In the Reformed Church of the Ascension, Allegheny, recently, Rev. A. C. Dieffenbach, preaching on the "Need of a True Christian Science," is reported by the Pittsburg Times as saying: "That day is past when in a Christian community the word science calls forth the cry of heresy. As men have advanced in their education for the kingdom of God they have advanced in their demands for a rational religion. They do not believe that the teaching of Jesus is inconsistent with truth. They therefore do not believe that it is out of keeping with the orderly presentation of truth. And this is science. Christian Science. Christian science is the true science because the Gospel takes the lofty plane of spiritualizing men."

Do we need to go back to the simplicity of the Gospel in our conception of the meaning of conversion? Christ's teaching as to the new birth, or the birth from above, shows that the change required is a radical one. Sin has wrought, in medical phrase, a functional derangement of the heart, which neither the will of man, nor any outward sacramental application, can remedy. Only the Holy Spirit, reinforcing the weak, and of itself impotent, will of man, can effect a cure. We are not saved by character, but, being saved, character develops in us until, by the grace of God, we attain to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.

The Examiner.

The great scholar, traveler, and archæologist, Dr. Hilprecht, lecturing in Philadelphia, says: "Let any one who has lost his faith in the Bible go to Babylon, where he will surely recover it in the desert solitudes." Most Biblical descriptions of places are so accurate that the permanent features of the situation seem so natural to one familiar with the Scriptures, as almost to make him ask himself whether he has not seen them before. The University of Pennsylvania has just endowed a chair of Assyriology and named Professor Hilprecht as its incumbeat, at a probable salary of about five thousand dollars per annum.—The Christian Advocate.

True faith in God consists not merely in believing His Word, but in the doing of His will. To say, "I believe in God the Father Almighty, and in Jesus Christ His Son," is indeed the first and essential step in the spiritual life: the life that ends where it begins, with a "credo," lacks the essential proof of the genuineness of the confession. "Faith without works is dead." The two are so inseparably Joine together both in the divine Word and in Christian experience, that it is a wonder any one should imagine for a moment that they are separable, or that the one could live and flourish without the other.—The Examiner.

The people are eager to hear a man tell what he knows. They care very little for what he is not quite sure of and still less for what he confesses he does not know. The most destructive preaching in the world is the argument in defence of or the apology for the eternal verities. No man is fit for the ministry who does not know something he is sure of and is willing to announce with confidence. The people are not going to believe the minister's doubts, and are not going to rush to the support of his uncertainties. Know something and preach it, and you will have a following.—The Universalist Leader.

We cannot, then, excuse the gloomy and sad-faced Christian. If he be one of Christ's followers, the spirit of Jesus, of love and trust towards God, will make all life cheerful, and move his heart to perpetual songs of praise and thanksgiving.—Thomas Hill.

If good people would but make their goodness agreeable, and smile instead of frowning in their virtue, how many would they win to their good cause.
Archbishop Usher.