pure law of God. Regard this as the Judge of men by the worse, for the

My friends, reverence virtue, holiness, the upright will, which inflexibly cleaves to duty and the Reverence nothing in comparison with it. end, and all outward services as the means. this. Think no man the better, no man church he belongs to. Try him by his fruits. Expel from your breasts the demon of sectarianism, narrowness, bigotry, intolerance. This is not, as we are apt to think, a slight sin. It is a denial of the supremacy of goodness. It sets up something, whether a form or dogma, above the virtue of the heart and the life. Sectarianism immures itself in its particular church as in a dungeon, and is there cut off from the free air, the cheerful light, the goodly prospects, the celestial beauty of the church universal.

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We have grown up under different influences. We bear different names. But if we purpose solemnly to do God's will, and are following the precepts and example of Christ, we are one church, and let nothing divide us. Diversities of opinion may incline us to worship under different roofs; or diversities of tastes or habit to worship with different forms. But these varieties are not schisms; they do not break the unity of Christ's church. We may still honor, and love, and rejoice in one another's spiritual life and progress, as truly as if we were cast into one and the same unyielding form. God loves variety in nature and in the human soul, nor does he reject it in Christian worship. In many great truths, in those which are most quickening, purifying and consoling, we all, I hope, agree. There is, too, a common ground of practice, aloof from all controversy, on which we may all meet. We may all unite hearts and hands in doing good, in fulfilling God's purposes of love towards our race, in toiling and suffering for the cause of humanity, in spreading intelligence, freedom and virtue, in making God known for the reverence, love, and imitation of his creatures, in resisting the abuses and corruptions of past ages, in exploring and drying up the sources of poverty, in rescuing the fallen from intemperance, in succoring the orphan

and widow, in enlightening and elevating the depressed portions of the community, in breaking the yoke of the oppressed and enslaved, in exposing and withstanding the spirit and horrors of war, in sending God's word to the ends of the earth, in redeeming the world from sin and woe. The angels and pure spirits who visit our earth come not to join a sect, but to do good to all. May this universal charity descend on us, and possess our hearts; may our narrowness, exclusiveness, and bigotry melt away under this mild celestial fire. Thus we shall not only join ourselves to Christ's Universal Church on earth, but to the Invisible Church, to the innumerable company of the just made perfect, in the mansions of everlasting purity and peace.― William E. Channing.

MAN'S DEMANDS, GOD'S COMMANDS.

This

Man's natural demands are God's only commands. is a great and comprehensive proposition; and, in one sentence, answers all questions respecting arbitrary documentary Revelations, given to one or more chosen ones, to be communicated by them to the rest of mankind. The laws, or commands of God given to thee, or to me, or to any human being, are made known to us in the demands of our Nature. To know these demands is all we need to know, healthfully to supply them is all we need to do, in order that we may become all that we are designed to be and all that we are capable of being. He who most perfectly understands the demands of his Nature, body and soul, most perfectly understands the will of God; who most perfectly supplies those demands, most perfectly obeys God. He walks with God, and he is the only man who is after God's own heart. *

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Does human nature respond approvingly to the spirit and practice of self-sacrifice for the good of others? Does it ever and without fail feel a conscious sense of well-doing and selfrespect in the feeling and the act? Is it a demand of our social nature? Can human beings associate in pairs, or in

millions, harmoniously and happily, on any other basis? Can we live in society, and maintain order and harmony, except on the principle that we are never to injure others for our benefit? The universal human heart accords its deepest and most earnest approval to the spirit and practice of self-sacrifice; and recognizes the self-abnegationist who, in all circumstances and relations, is true to his great idea, as the true hero or heroine of the race; as Earth's true King or Queen.-Henry C. Wright.

VALUE OF SELF-RESPECT.

There is one person whose respect and reverence I seek and prize more than the respect and reverence of any or all others; that person is HENRY C. WRIGHT.-H. C. Wright.`

SACREDNESS OF PARENTAL SELF-ABNEGATION.

That Father! See that man, toiling without ceasing! Up early, and down late! Abroad to his daily labor, promptly and energetically! Work, work, work, and that with a will! Clouds and sunshine, calm and storm, heat and cold, light and darkness are alike to him. Plan and execute! Every power of body and mind are on the alert, regardless of his own comfort, health and life. He thinks not of self; he feels not for self; or if he does, it is as the stay of those who depend upon him. What is the secret of this daring, tireless energy? Enter his home, his nursery; there sleeps, creeps, or romps in joyous glee the inspiration and interpretation of his life. His child, his loving, gentle daughter, with arms encircling his neck, and in accents sweeter than tones of cherubs saying, "My father!" He lives for his child. Self-abnegation, a tender anxiety for the existence, the physical, intellectual, social and spiritual health and happiness of his child, controls him in all his actions and relations to her, from her conception to her present growth. In the relation in which she originated; in watching and guarding her development before

and after her birth; in every effort made to guard her tender life against discordant and diseased influences, and subject it to those that are healthy and happy, self-renunciation, not mere self-gratification-his child's life and happiness, and not self-indulgence, have controlled his actions. He feels a proud consciousness of this fact, and the out-gushing affections, and confidence, and the harmonious, joyous nature of his child, are his great reward. She is the gem in his crown of paternal glory, which his life of self-abnegation, in his relations to her, has placed there. As that daughter grows up to womanhood, and becomes assured that in all his relations to her, her existence, health and happiness, and not mere self-indulgence, controlled her father-will not her heart twine its tenderest affections around him, in grateful and joyous martyrdom? Between a father and daughter thus begotten, developed, born and matured under the influence of self-abnegation, rather than selfgratification, the relation can bring naught but heaven to both. That Mother!-Think of the forebodings of her heart, her ever-present anxiety and care, during the pre-natal life of her child! Her plans, her sympathies, her actions, all relate to its welfare. She is aware, and ever acts on the conviction, that every action of her brain, and every pulsation of her heart, is making its impress on the body and soul of the new life that is developed within her organism. The air she breathes, the food she eats, the liquid she drinks, the home she lives in, the company she keeps, the pleasures indulged in, her conditions of body and soul, and all her surroundings—in a word, all the experiences of her interior and exterior life are momentarily stamping themselves on the organic conditions of her child, and embodying themselves in its character and destiny, in the eternity that lies before it, and must receive it. This she knows and regards as the one fact that should guide her life. In all these actions of her physical, intellectual and social life, the new immortal life being developed beneath her heart is her one thought, the controlling power of her life. Whether she eats or drinks, works or rests, sleeps or wakes, whatever she

does, she does to the glory of her child. Her one absorbing anxiety is, how to confer on her child a beautiful, healthy body and soul; and to organize into it a pure and noble character and destiny. She would give existence to one whose life, in all its great Future, shall shine brighter and brighter unto the perfect day; whose track across the horizon of Eternity, shall be like the course of the sun across the heavens, shedding only light, warmth and beauty over the world. What hopes, what visions of heroism and nobleness, fill that maternal heart, touching the destiny of her child! She spares no effort to make her child all her own heart would have it, a child of God. What though in giving it birth an agony that can never be told is hers? She, with dauntless resolution, with lofty bearing, and sublime resignation, sees the hour of her august martyrdom approach; and that hour past, she folds her babe to her bosom, and sings over it with a joy unspeakable and full of glory, a "Gloria in Excelsis." See that mother bending over that infant son, with weary, wasting watchfulness; with a toil that knows no rest, an anxiety that knows no sleep, a courage that never falters, and a vigilance that never slumbers, and with an energy and daring that no dangers can appal. What is her heart's inspiration? What the power that sustains her? What turned that timid, shrinking woman into a fearless, patient heroine? Where is the secret of her power? It is the infant son that nestles in her bosom, and draws its life from hers. She sees, hears, sleeps, wakes, eats, drinks and lives, that she may bless her boy. Her very life is hid with her son in God. The mystery of that mother's life finds its only solution in her child. She is hungry that her son may eat, she is thirsty that he may drink; she awakes that he may sleep; she is cold, that he may be warm; she is sick, that he may be well; she suffers that he may rejoice; she dies that he may live.

Can that son forget that mother? Never! His existence is an ever-present memorial of her; and till conscious existence ceases, that mother will live in his tenderest and most ennobling recollections. With her patient renunciation of self