THEY tell us in a good old Book, filled with rarest gems of truth and wisdom, that there is a time for joy and a time for sorrow. Did you ever think, reader, that those times given to the most opposite of feelings are sometimes so connected and so interwoven, that we can hardly tell where the one ends and the other begins? Did it ever occur to you that there is only the briefest possible interval between the intensest joy and the acutest sorrow?

Have you not sometimes as you sat around the hearth-stone of the old homestead, surrounded by loved and familiar faces, have you not, I say, even then, when the cup of joy seemed filled to the very brim, and nothing seemed to be wanting to complete your happiness, felt the warm tears gushing out from their fountains, as you thought that, when another sun had risen and performed his daily course, the spell of that magic circle would be broken, and you would be far away from faces loved and dear? And have you not at such a moment tried to keep back the hours that were so steadily and proudly marching onward, bearing your happiness away with them? Have you not looked up with a beseeching glance to the old clock, which stood there in the corner quietly beating away, after a half-century's service, the fleeting moments as precious to you as golden gems? But you looked in vain for compassion there; for the staid old time-piece, that has mark

ed upon its dial face many an hour of joy and many an hour of woe, moved remorselessly on, measuring one by one the sands, as the deathangel poured them from out the hour-glass of life. And then, as you have turned away and looked into the face of some friend dearer than the rest, perhaps a mother or a sister, and as you have watched the shadows come and go upon the faces that you look on now for perhaps the last time, shadows that tell you that they too are thinking of the morrow, that in this hour of their heart's purest joy, they feel also that heart's deepest sorrow-have you not dropped a tear of repentance over the memory of some unkind word or act, and have you not felt noble thoughts, forming themselves into true and firm resolves of living a better and kinder life? As the thought came over you, I sit here, to night, with friends who would gladly shield me from every ill, but to-morrow I shall stand alone, where they will be powerless to aid me, save by their sympathy and their prayers, you have felt your heart struggling fiercely within you, to break away from its thraldom of sin and selfishness, and you have felt kindlier feelings toward the great brotherhood of humanity.

Then it was, too, that you remembered the "Golden Rule," and wondered that nineteen long centuries after its utterance from sinless lips, so few should practically remember it in their daily lives, and you resolved that you would gird on the armor of faith and truth, and would boldly try to reach a higher plane of life, and seek to draw all men up thither, rather than crush a single brother down. Ah, yes; you and I, and all of us, have had such heart-feelings, and have known by stern experience that there is only a thin, floating cloud between the bright sunshine of happiness, and the dull cloudiness of sorrow. Above all, have we seen and felt what a brief step there was between happiness and sorrow, when we have known the familiar forms and figures of the present lose themselves in the dim outline of the future. Each year, as it rolls carelessly around, heeding not the load of sin and care it bears upon its bosom, brings such a period to the successive bands of men who have come to the great outlook of life, and are obliged to lose the well known pleasures of the past and present in the anxieties of an untried future. College life, both as regards the character and sequence of its occurrences and events, is not unlike an ocean voyage to a distant, unknown land.

With light and hopeful hearts do we weigh anchor here, and commence that voyage which is to change the whole current of our thoughts and feelings, and is to perform an important part in working out the great problems of life and destiny. We turn back to the life

we have left, and hear the voices of friends bid us God-speed on our way, and see the outlines of the world behind grow fainter and fainter to our mental vision, as we become engrossed in study and thought until the shore from whence we started fades away from our knowledge, and we find ourselves pushing forward to that farther shore, that they tell us lies beyond the deep. The farther we advance upon our way, the more we become isolated from the world outside of our cloister retreats, and the more we become occupied with the identity and community of interests which result as a consequence of that isolation. This isolation has its advantages and its disadvantages; for, while we are thus enabled to be, if we choose, more devoted worshippers at the shrine of learning, and are enabled to draw upon the wealth of friendship and good feeling which is found within the walls of these time-worn buildings, we are apt to lose sight of the practical in life, and to become almost strangers to the very world we were made to live in. The influences of our discipline and associations tend to cultivate our tastes and feelings, and to foster the ideal and imaginative elements of our natures, it may be, at the expense of those real and practical qualities which we shall need when we step out upon the farther shore. We need to remember, then, that there are scenes and duties before us, that will demand stern material in those who are to meet the conflicts of the future, and that when the world shall receive back, as men, those who but just now left it in their boyhood, she will expect them to be qualified to perform priestly service in her great temples of civilization, reform and Christianity.

Neither artist nor sculptor can bring out symmetrical pictures or statues, unless there is unity in their plans and models. Each stroke of the pencil, and each movement of the chisel, must tend to the embodiment of the original design, or the work will fail to answer its end. And so ought each day's study, and each day's associations, to be enabling us to stand with firmer front and truer heart in whatever part of the battle line of the future the Great Master may place us. There are some of us who, even to-day, are standing almost face to face with what has long been to us a distant future. Time and again have we strained our vision, as we peered out into the darkness around us, in quest of some form or figure of our future, but now there comes a faint gleam, growing brighter and brighter every moment, as if from the thousand lights of a distant city, and we feel that all too soon we shall be in the midst of so many dreams and hopes. Swiftly speed these last days of our boyhood, and doubly precious grow the privi leges that we have so often slighted, but we cannot lengthen out the