Sang of hopes forever flown

Sang of eyes that could not see"Leave, oh! leave me not alone,

Still support and comfort me!"

"All my trust on Thee is stayed,
All my help from Thee I bring,
Cover my defenseless head

With the shadow of Thy wing."
Faint and weary in the race,
In death's winter evening gray,
With a sweet, angelic face,
Dreamed a woman-far away;
As the feeble twilight fled

Angels seemed with her to sing: "Cover my defenseless head

With the shadow of Thy wing!"

"Jesus, lover of my soul,

Let me to Thy bosom fly,
While the billows near me roll,
While the tempest still is nigh!"
Ah, how soon our hopes decay-
We must suffer and endure,
Strive and struggle as we may,
Life is short, and death is sure.
e may hear the anthems roll
Through the starry realms on high.
"Jesus, lover of my soul,

We

Let me to Thy bosom fly!"

EUGENE J. HALL.

"No

GOD'S LOVE TO MAN.

O man can come unto me except the Father draw him." That is so; but it is not because the Father does not want to draw him that he does not come to Christ. It is precisely as if I should stand to-day and look on the prairies and say: "O ye myriad, myriad roots of unborn flowers! not one of you can come up except the sun draw you." But there is the sun all the time searching for its lost children, and drawing them up. It is said that no man can come to Christ except the Father draw him; but the Father is eternally drawing. He is evermore pouring out divine influence, heavenly enthu siasm, spiritual impulse, subtle, invisible, unknown and unknowable, so that the air is full, the house is full, the way is full, and the soul is full. No sunlight ever filled the bowl above our heads so full of solar wine, or with wine so stimulating, as God is filling the universe with. It is unknown, as Christ said they were that were born of the Spirit, which comes we know not whence, and we know not how. God pours Himself out. He is perpetually shedding upon us His influence, which tends to wake the dormancy of every faculty; which tends to stimulate every part of us to its full growth; which tends. to bring regulation and continual supply. This we are taught; and it is a truth that fills the whole heaven with consolation.

We are every one of us wandering in darkness or twilight; and the great bosom of God heaves with love over us all; and He has made Himself manifest in the person of His Son, to show men what a grand and glorious fatherhood they have. He knows that we are weak; He knows that we are fertile in evil; He knows

what the biases of our constitution are; He knows what society is doing around about us; He knows the difficulties of the way; and therefore there is no night there, for ceaselessly the divine influence pours down upon the human soul; and we are not wandering unguided, though we may not see the hand that leads us. We are fed, though we may not see the hand that feeds us. We are children, though we may not see the place where we were born. There is a God, and there is this supernal influence. All the time coming up from the other way, there is a ceaseless working of immorality and evil upon us; but more are they that are for us than are those that are against us; and mightier is he that controls than is he that rebels and seeks to control.

So then, when you look through it with that method of interpretation, you do not find in this phrase a wall reared against us. It is not that a man cannot go any farther till God calls him. For men who have a clear

conception of what a full unfolding of their nature is, and find how how hard it is to unfold it, here is, at last, the voice of God, saying: "It is impossible to you; no man can do it alone; no man can come to me except I draw him;" but then, the very last word that comes echoing in the sacred Scriptures says: "Come, come, [the universal God that is to bring all things unto Him. is drawing], the Spirit and the Bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come! And, whosoever will. let him take of the water of life freely."

HENRY WARD BEECHER.

A

AUX ITALIENS

T Paris it was, at the opera there;

And she looked like a queen in a book that night

With the wreath of pearl in her raven hair,

And the brooch on her breast so bright.

Of all the operas that Verdi wrote,

The best, to my taste, is the Trovatore; And Mario can soothe, with a tenor note, The souls in purgatory.

The moon on the tower slept soft as snow;

And who was not thrilled in the strangest way,
As we heard him sing, while the gas burned low,
Non ti scordar di me?

The Emperor there, in his box of state,
Looked grave; as if he had just then seen
The red flag wave from the city gate,

Where his eagles in bronze had been.

The Empress, too, had a tear in her eye:

You'd have said that her fancy had gone back again For one moment, under the old blue sky,

To the old glad life in Spain.

Well, there in our front-row box we sat
Together, my bride betrothed and I;
My gaze was fixed on my opera hat,
And hers on the stage hard by.

And both were silent, and both were sad;

Like a queen she leaned on her full white arm, With that regal, indolent air she had;

So confident of her charm!

I have not a doubt she was thinking then
Of her former lord, good soul that he was,
Who died the richest and roundest of men,
The Marquis of Carabas.

I hope that, to get to the kingdom of heaven,
Through a needle's eye he had not to pass;
I wish him well for the jointure given
To my lady of Carabas.

Meanwhile, I was thinking of my first love.

As I had not been thinking of aught for years,
Till over my eyes there began to move
Something that felt like tears.

I thought of the dress that she wore last time, When we stood 'neath the cypress-trees together, In that lost land, in that soft clime,

In the crimson evening weather;

Of that muslin dress (for the eve was hot);
And her warm white neck in its golden chain;
And her full soft hair, just tied in a knot,
And falling loose again;

And the jasmine flower in her fair young breast; (Oh, the faint sweet smell of that jasmine flower!) And the one bird singing alone in his nest;

And the one star over the tower.

I thought of our little quarrels and strife,
And the letter that brought me back my ring;
And it all seemed then, in the waste of life,
Such a very little thing!