concerned for their salvation, to enlighten those who are in error, to relieve the destitute, to pray with the sick, and to buttonhole and invite strangers and friends to the church. Our ingathering work is to bring them first to hear and then to Christ. Oh, we want to catch men! We want to be fishers of men! We want to make our churches veriest soul-traps into which we may entice souls that wander within our reach, and secure them for Christ and eternity ! correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto every good work, are the basis of our teaching, and the lessons sought to be drawn from God's Word are to supply the elements of food necessary to growth and culture in Christian life. The ordinances of the Church are of highest efficiency in this line of work. As in Christian baptism the facts of the Gospel are presented in a picture before us-the death of Christ symbolized in the death of the sinner to sin, His burial in the sinner's burial in baptism, and His resurrection in the sinner's rising to walk in new in the breaking of bread or the Lord's Supper. No greater power to keep men and women near to the Lord, to endue them with something of the sympathy and might of the Cross, and to give proof of their having been with Jesus, can be found, and God intended this to be a special means of sanctification and advancement in the beauty and faith of the Gospel. The Sunday-school is not without sovereign virtue in this department of our work. The Sunday-school is no longer a ragged school, nor a common school; it is the Bible school of the Church, and into it should be gathered not only all the children of the Church, but the younger members and the older members as well. If you cannot learn from others, you can come and train those not so far advanced as yourself. We want the children and youth of the Church, and especially the children of irreligious parents and such as are without Church associations. Here you may gather in your own material and train it in your own way for the kingdom of heaven. Finally, the work of training is a most essential and continuous labor pertaining to the Church of Christ. Teaching communicates ideas; training forms habits. Teachingness of life-so the Lord reveals Himself in a special manner imparts knowledge; training develops power. Teaching explains theory; training indicates practice-shows how to do. As in teaching the use of the voice or an instrument, the art of writing or painting or sculpture, practice and example are essential means of progress, so in moral and religious training. The provision of the Bible, of good books, of the ordinances, of preaching, of repeated and lucid explanations about faith, virtue, godliness, honesty, integrity, gratitude, patience, temperance, brotherly kindness and love, is not enough. The people must be shown how training in all these is needful. It is not enough to gather children into a school. The real and serious work then begins, in the slow and arduous process of education. There are copy-books to be blotted and slates to be written over and over again, and text-books to be pored over until worn and well-nigh illegible; and the path to the school and the road to the college must be trod over ten thousand times, it may be, before the boy can claim his master's degree, and even then there must be years of training before he stands among men a scholar and the world listens to his decisions. And the boy that stumbles, that spells badly, that blots his copy, that locates Patagonia in Europe and Capetown in the United States, that does not know a noun from a verb or a decimal from an integer, is not therefore to be thrown out of the school and condemned incompetent. He is the very boy that needs the school, the attention of the teacher, the encouragement and help of his fellow-pupils-that needs training, education, growth. So in Christian life. God means to train His people. They are disciples-learners in the school of Christ. They are babes at first, that must be nourished and fed and cared for as tenderly as a mother cares for her well-nigh helpless child. "Grow in grace" is the word. "Give diligence to make your calling and election sure." "Cleanse yourself from all filthiness of the flesh and of the spirit, and perfect holiness in the fear of God." "Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example that we should follow in His steps." "Giving all diligence, add to your faith, virtue; and to virtue, knowledge; and to knowledge, temperance; and to temperance, patience; and to patience, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love." "Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth and hath long patience for it until he receive the early and the latter rain. Be ye also patient; establish your heart, for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh." Then in this work of training, the prayer-meeting is not to be forgotten. This should be one of the most fruitful sources of blessing and help. No dearer hour in the week should there be for us. No higher means of development. No family prayer or closet prayer should take its place. No choicer privilege than the joy of meeting with brethren and joining our prayers with the prayers of others for the mercies we in common need. My brethren, how have we treated these various agencies granted by our God to fit us for the glory of His presence ? Have we availed ourselves of them so that we can now look back and say, Yes, they are blessed? Or have they been wasted on us, and are our hearts as cold, our lives as barren, our faith as dull, our light as flickering and our spirits as far from God as before we subjected ourselves to this training? How disastrous this neglect! How melancholy this condition! Some one calls the things kept back in the annual reports of our churches "withheld statistics," and thinks the Church would be startled if they should be given. For example, if the preacher should read: Of the thirty who have joined our church the past year, I find that five of those who came in on profession of faith have unmistakably fallen into former evil ways, while of those received by letter three were certainly lacking in good characters in the churches they left, although by the record they were in "good standing and full fellowship." One of our leading members is popularly reported to have swindled a neighbor outrageously in a notorious business transaction, Now, for this work of training, God has provided abun- and we have lost one of our prominent brethren by his dant means. While there is but one book in the Bible-transfer to the jail on conviction of crime. A careful exthe Acts of the Apostles-which tells men how to come into the kingdom of God, there are twenty-one books written for our guidance and growth in knowledge and faith and fruitfulness. In the Church there is the preaching of the Word for the edification of saints as well as the conversion of sinners. The Scriptures given by inspiration of God and profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for amination of our record has convinced me that fully onethird of our membership can be counted on the deadhead list-they do absolutely nothing in the line of Christian activity. As to their example, they are not bad enough to be a warning to the outside world, nor good enough to be taken as a pattern by anybody in or out. Our benevolent contributions look pretty well for our members, but I learn that fully one-third of the entire amount has been given by half-a-dozen persons, and that of the other members of the church more than one-half give less to religious causes than they pay toward public amusements, while there are not a few families who give more for peanuts during the year than they put in the contribution-box. A fair estimate of the tobacco bills of the congregation is three times the amount given by the church to Home and Foreign If you've anything to love, as a blessing from above, Love it. Give it. If you've anything to give, that another's joy may live, If some hollow creed you doubt, tho' the whole world hoot and shout, Doubt it. If you know what torch to light, guiding others in the night, Light it. INTERIOR OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH, WASHINGTON, D. C. Missions combined. Some fifty of our members would not know the church was in existence but for the advertisement in the Saturday papers and the occasional calls of the pastor; and perhaps fifty more speak of it as "your church" and "those people," instead of "ours" and "us," Christ's and mine. Might not such a supplemental report be made in many a church to the annual showing, which speaks of the condition of things as "every way encouraging"? Are God's people as alive as they should be to their work of teaching, ingathering and training for Christ and heaven? Are we careful of ourselves, careful of others, careful of Christ's? Shall we enter upon a new service, a new life, a new advance Godward and eternityward? Now is the time to begin. Six months from to-day we may be dead. Everything depends upon immediate action. The loss of a day may be the loss of heaven and eternal joy. Begin your new consecration. O weary heart, trembling soul, perishing one, come to Christ: "If you've any task to do, let me whisper, friend, to you, Do it. If you've anything to say, true and needed, Yea or Nay, Say it. If you've any debt to pay, rest you neither night nor day, THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH AT WASHINGTON, D. C. IN connection with the sermon by the Rev. Frederick D. Power, we give his portrait, and exterior and interior views of the church (Campbellite) of which he is the pastor, and at which President Garfield is an attendant, being a communicant of that denomination. The church edifice is located on Vermont Avenue, between N and o Streets, north. west, and is a plain and unpretending frame structure. The church lot has a frontage of eighty feet, and the building, which is about forty by sixty feet, with a gallery at the east end, occupies the centre of the lot. The church will seat about four hundred persons. The congregation has it in contem plation to erect a more commodious edifice, and hopes to raise $50,000 for that purpose among members of the Campbellite denomination in the West and elsewhere. The Rev. F. D. Power is about thirty years of age, a thoroughly educated clergyman, and was a professor in Bethany College, Bethany, West Virginia, when called to the pastorate. He is able, eloquent and brilliant-one of the first pulpit orators at the capital. He is greatly beloved by his people. He has occupied his present posi which offered of making himself acquainted with the feelings of the nobles. Those who had not been raised to posts of honor and emolument in the State were dissatisfied and ripe for a change of government, but were kept in awe by the large majority of the well-affected. The sovereign, fancying himself secure in the affection of his subjects, took no care to subdue the murmurings of such LALLCHEEN'S TREACHERY." THE GUILTY MAN WAS THUNDERSTRUCK." tion since 1875, and under his ministrations the membership of the church has steadily increased, until now it numbers about three hundred and fifty. It has a Sundayschool numbering three hundred scholars and teachers. LALLCHEEN'S TREACHERY. LALLOHEEN, a prince of the Deccan, aspired to the throne of Gheias-ood-Deen. He took every opportunity as he considered unworthy of the royal patronage; he had, therefore, a greater number of enemies than he was aware of. Lallcheen's plot rapidly advanced toward maturity, and he at length invited the King to an entertainment. Gheias-oodDeen accepted the invitation. Agha not being privy to her brother's treachery, he had taken care on that day to remove her from the house on some plausible pretense, in order that she might not interfere with the execution of his scheme. It had been already arranged that she and the King should be married at the beginning of the ensuing year tainment, freely expressed their surprise that a bondman should possess so much wealth. "Wealth," said Lallcheen, "will not purchase freedom, if it does not please the monarch to grant it." "What can compensate for the sacrifice of honest services?" said Gheias-ood-Deen, with a condescending smile; "I value them more, Lallcheen, than your gold." "But not more than my sister, King," said the slave, significantly. "No, no; all things have their price. I set your ransom high; you will, therefore, value your freedom according to the price paid for it." The guests placed themselves at the banquet. Every luxury which the country produced was there in generous profusion. The rarest wine sparkled in golden chalices, and freemen waited upon the guests of the slave. The wine went round, and the King, anticipating the joy of soon being presented to the beautiful Agha, drank liberally of the enlivening beverage. He began to be exhilarated. Nautch girls were introduced to heighten the pleasures of the entertainment; they swam through the mazes of the dance with a light floating motion, tinkling the silver bells which hung from their delicately small wrists and ankles, waving their arms with a graceful undulation that gave exquisite elegance to the curving motions of their bodies; every now and then throwing their long vails over their faces, and peeping through them with eyes that might have kindled a ray of admiration even under the tub of Diogenes. The guests began to express their delight by loud acclamations, and it had already become evident that the sovereign was considerably elated by the wine he had taken. Lallcheen had been cautious in keeping himself perfectly calm. He drank but sparingly, and was, therefore, in a condition to take the best advantage of the state of his guests. When he considered the favorable moment had arrived for the consummation of his vengeance, he commanded the Nautch girls to retire. Most of the guests, excited by wine, and unsuspicious of evil consequences, wandered away. When the guests had retired, the traitor led his sovereign respectfully to an ottoman, seated him, and began to arrest his attention by extravagant encomiums upon the beauty of his sister. Gheias-ood-Deen listened with evident delight, and at length expressed himself impatient to be introduced to the idol of his love. Lallcheen then filled a goblet of drugged wine and approached the monarch; but he was suddenly confronted by the fakeer Shumsood, whom all revered. Dashing the goblet from his hand, the holy man warned him of the wrath of heaven, and exposed his treachery to the king. The guilty man was thunderstruck. The alarm spread, the guests came hurrying in. The traitor sought safety at the feet of the benefactor whose life he had sought. But Agha, hearing her brother's danger, rushed in to save him, and the King's affection for her proved stronger than his sense of justice. He banished the traitor, and with him banished wine, saying, "The King who makes himself a slave is unfit to reign." HARD PLACES IN THE BIBLE. BY THE REV. CHARLES F. DEEMS, LL.D. [ANY questions on texts may be sent to the Editor of the SUNDAY MAGAZINE. Honest criticism is invited, and contributions of views of others, in regard to texts already discussed or other portions of the Holy Scriptures. They will be forwarded to Dr. Deems for use in this department.- ED. SUNDAY MAGAZINE.] MALACHI iii. 2, 3. "He is like a refiner's fire and like fuller's soap; and He shall sit as a refiner and purifler of silver." In the second verse the Messiah is likened to the refiner's fire; in the third verse He is likened to the refiner himself. The word translated "soap" does not signify the article which is now called by that name; soap was not known in the days of Malachi. It means rather what we call "lye." It was water impregnated with the alkali drawn from the ashes of the vegetable known as salt-wort. "He shall sit" is not merely pictorial, "to make the figure more striking." It is the position which the refiner must occupy, because the process of purification is often protracted and must almost be watched with unbroken attention. Recently a few ladies in Dublin, who are accustomed to meet and read the Scriptures and converse upon the topics suggested, were reading this third chapter of Malachi, when one of them observed, "There is something remarkable in the expression in the third verse: 'He shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver.' nace; but He is seated by the side of it; His eye is steadily intent on the work of purifying; and His wisdom and love are both engaged in the best manner for them. Their trials do not come at random; the very hairs of their head are all numbered. As the lady was leaving the shop, the silversmith called her back and said he had still further to mention, that he only knew when the process of purifying was complete by seeing his own image reflected in the silver. Beautiful figure! When Christ sees His own image in His people, His work of purifying is accomplished. Then He instantly removes the crucible from the fire. EPHESIANS iv. 26. "Be ye angry and sin not." This passage has suggested difficulties which have caused resort to divers explanations. Some have made it a question, equivalent to, "How can ye be angry without sinning?" But this does great violence to the construction. The whole expression is a quotation of Psalm iv. 4, the Hebrew of which is rendered into Greek in the Septuagint, from which Paul made the quotation. What he understood the Septuagint to mean, he must have meant in this quotation. Moreover, he must have believed that the Greek of the Septuagint was a fair rendering of the Hebrew of the original Scriptures. Luther renders the passage in the Psalms "Be angry so that ye sin not," and the passage in Ephesians "Be angry and sin not." They agreed that possibly it might be so, and one of the ladies promised to call on a silversmith, and report to them what he said on the subject. She went accordingly, and without telling the object of her errand, begged to know from him the process of refining silver, which he described to her. "But, sir," she said, "do you sit while the work of refining is going on?" "Oh, yes, madam," replied the silversmith; "I must sit with my eye steadily fixed on the furnace, for if the time necessary for refining be exceeded in the slightest degree, the silver is sure to be as a command enjoining a duty. The whole context has injured." At once she saw the beauty, and the comfort, too, of the expression, "He shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver." Christ sees it needful to put His children into the fur It does not seem necessary to regard the first imperative a prohibitory tone. It is sin and only sin that is prohibited. But all anger is not sin. There is an anger which is perfectly consistent with not only the holiness obtainable by man, but even with the holiness inherent in God. The very Hebrew word which occurs in Psalm iv. 4 occurs also in Isa. xxviii. 21, describing the anger of Jehovah. A man may have the spirit of Christ and yet be angry. In Mark iii. 5 Jesus "looked round about on them with anger," and here is used the noun which is the counterpart of the verb used in Ephesians iv. 26, and is precisely the word translated "anger" in Ephesians iv. 31. The meaning of the Apostle seems to be a warning against allowing our anger to degenerate into something sinful, as he might warn us to keep our eating from degenerating into gluttony, and our drinking into intemperance. In Ephesians iv. 31 is the injunction: "Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice-and be ye kind one to another." Here plainly all malicious anger is forbidden-all anger inconsistent with kindness. There is, as we all know, an anger consistent with love, indeed an anger which is intensified by love. A most fondly beloved child may do that which angers us more than anything an enemy could do; but that anger is not malicious, and does not destroy, nay, does not lessen the love. When nature brings us into anger, grace preserves us from sin. The anger which is cherished until it sours into maliciousness, becomes a sin; and the most noble anger may be so corrupted. All anger that proceeds from malice is sinful. JOHN 1. 9. "That was the true Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world." John was contrasting himself with Jesus. They were both "lights," but John was the illuminated, while Jesus was the illuminating, Light. The word which is translated "true" is not to be understood as at all intimating that John was a "false" light, but it means that something can be affirmed of Jesus as a light which cannot be affirmed of any other light in the whole intellectual and spiritual universe, namely, that He was the original archetypal Light, which kindled all lights, so that "every man's" light is derived from Jesus. Wherever there is any spiritual illumination, whether the man know anything of the existence of Jesus or not, that light comes from Him. The phrase translated "that cometh into the world," is not to be connected with "man," but with "Light." That Enlightener of Mankind was then making His appearance. "Now, in the act of coming into the world is that Original Source of all the illumination which the race of men enjoys, He who illuminates every man. That seems to be the meaning of the Greek in this passage. ROMANS ix. 21. "Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor." The We cannot express our own views on this passage better than has been done by the Rev. Dr. Howard Crosby in the Homiletic Magazine, some months ago. He says: "This text is quoted by many as showing that God arbitrarily makes some men for heaven and others for hell. whole of God's Gospel is thus set aside. He wishes all men to be saved (I. Tim. ii. 4). He does not wish any to perish (IL Pet. iii. 9). God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life (John iii. 16). He sent His servants to preach the Gospel to every creature (Mark xvi. 15). Jesus says to all, "Come unto me" (Matt xi. 28). And yet some would have this one text in Romans ix. 21, overthrow the whole tenor of the Gospel, as above illustrated. Is it not wiser to imagine a false exegesis here? "Let us see what this text means. The simile of the potter is taken from Jer. xviii. 1-10; and we must go there, if we would see the Apostle's meaning. In that passage the Lord says that He, as a potter, will cast away the vessel which was marred under His hands and make a new one-that is, He will set aside the Jews and establish a Gentile Church. The whole argument of the Apostle concerns the rejection of the Jews from being the Church of God, and has no reference to individual salvation. He shows that God narrowed the church seed in Isaac and in Jacob, and He can now change it again from Israel to the Gentile world; that there was no obligation to keep the line of ordinances in Abraham's seed, and that the conduct of Israel, in rejecting Christ, had made it necessary for God, after much patient endurance (v. 22), to cast off Israel and form a new Church. In the course of the argument He answers the objection that God was unrighteous, by showing (vs. 14-18) that to Moses, who was obedient, He showed mercy, and Pharaoh, who was rebellious, He hardened (by letting him harden himself). He distributes His mercy and His wrath as He will; but His will is interpreted as distinguishing between the obedient and disobedient. The potter is referred to, not as from the first ordaining a man to dishonor, but as devoting a bad man to dishonor. The figure cannot be pressed. The vessels, in the making, have a power to resist the potter. The Jews resisted God's grace when He would have made them to honor, and therefore He made them to dishonor. That is all this text teaches. To read it without regarding the Apostle's argument in the ninth and tenth chapters, and without regarding Jeremiah's meaning, from whom the allusion is drawn, is to wrest Scripture and make a most horrible and unscriptural doctrine-a doctrine which, logically and imperatively, makes God the author of sin. PEACE AFTER STORM. Over a troubled sea! Calm there was scarcely a murmur, When the night of storm was o'er, Breathed by the lips of Ocean Along the wreck-strewn shore. Winds! they had sunk to a whisper, Peace was proclaimed on high, And the sky smiled to the ocean, And the ocean to the sky. Clouds up in the fields of azure, Like flocks with their snowy fleece, Feeding in pleasant pastures, Gathered and strayed in peace. Wrecks! by the storm all scattered Up by the waves were tost. Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch Governor of New York. IRVING, in his "Knickerbocker's History of New York," made the last Dutch Governor of the colony of New Netherland an object of ridicule, and it is difficult to dispel the idea created by his brilliant humor. Yet Stuyvesant was no ordinary man. Compared to the race of English governors, who for a century swayed the destinies of the colony, he may be called really great. He was born in Holland in 1602, at a time when the fleets |