"MERCY AND JUSTICE."

"Be not deceived; evil communications corrupt good manners."

No longer ago than this morning I heard profanity in round terms from a boy's lips on one of the public streets. On Nuuanu street a Japanese turned on his heel not two feet off and with a bold impudent face rang an oath into my very ears. A Chinaman had accosted him in passing.

These heathen, and those living here who are no better than the heathen, must be taught that outwardly at least they shall respect and honor the God of the Christian by their silence if not by their speech. The nail must be driven and clinched for this is a growing and a deadly evil gaining ground rapidly in our midst. In so large and cosmopolitan a city as San Francisco no man dares to utter oaths on the public thoroughfares where ladies and gentlemen are known to be passing to and fro. There is an unwritten law and he is conscious of that law! And I could name a city of 400,000 where if one presumed to speak in unparliamentary terms even on certain promenades, a policeman's hand would be felt on the shoulder.

At the Capital, Washington profanity on the streets is an unheard-of thing. Let not this fair and beautiful town of Honolulu descend to the level of Asiatics and costermongers but keep civilization and Christianity ever on the top.-"God spake these words and said:"

"ON LAN'S" BABY.

"Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies."

"On Lan's baby is sick" shouts out to me Ah Wee as he ducks under the bars of the fence instead of opening the gate while I am walking the length of the school veranda early in the morning: "On Lan's baby very sick," and now he says it softly with a grave, earnest face and black eyes that look straight into mine waiting for some response to that sad budget. "Yes, I know Ah Wee, its all very bad; what can we do?" And the little man's news is echoed and re-echoed by the school band of boys and girls as one after another they enter the place.

On Lan's baby! Let me tell you that baby of four months is as important and vital a feature of Kohala district as is the Lord Mayor of London to his town, as you are my honorable member of the Legislature from Hawaii, or as the richest planter of the entire Sandwich Islands. He is a lovely boy-baby, a Christian Chinese, for he is already baptized and wears the sign of the Cross in his forehead "in token that he shall not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified."

"On Lan's baby is sick." That "little one" who comes every Sunday to church bringing his belongings tied up in a big, red silk handkerchief, dressed in his best blue sam and pink fu, with his cap worked in silks of all shades and colors-butterflies, and flowers, and tiny bells on the ends of his long streamers,-that little live image of barbaric splendor who in two years more will sing "Amen" as perfectly as any of the other "light infantry”— that member of "St. Paul's" is sick-and all suffer with him be it known. His parents were members of St. Paul's school and his

grandfather is a church-warden and has a farm in the gulch and when there is not a drouth in the land you can buy of him the very finest garden sauce for your salad.—

"On Lan's baby is all right now." That's good news, Ah Shun -wish we were all all right; and I laugh aloud, and walk away. He doesn't quite see my drift-but he thinks I'm very "pleasant," all the same! Yes, m'm.

Teaching is one of the exact sciences and one needs to serve a trifle of an apprenticeship you know in order to win success. One must have book-knowledge in plenty it is true, but precious little avail it will be to you if you do not fathom-if you cannot sound and "sabe" all the tricks and turns, all the notions of the youthful mind-if you cannot outwit and double-fold mentally and morally every boy and girl in your school you are a mistake in the school-room! Get out of it if you have to chop wood. And now while we are on the Chinese question let me say to you very frankly that you know very little of the race if you have not lived among them, if you have not come in to their life, their home life, their church life, you know very little of them. There is much worth knowing-much that is valuable. They are truthful, they are honest they are reliable, patient, long-suffering, capable and clever. I am not writing of rogues. There are rogues European, rogues American-rogues and rogues. But our road, nor our Mongolian, is not of that complexion. As for true thrift I have never known their equal.

It reminds one of the Mother Superior over a convent in France who told the King, when about to cut the string of a paquet not to do it, "for sweet charity's sake." And patiently she untied the knot. It involves a principle-that's all! "Careful in little, careful in great."

Makapala-by-the-Sea. 1897.

A SHORT SATURDAY.

Sermon.

"For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God," I. Cor. i:21.

"For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one."

"But holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost."

"All Scripture is given by inspiration of God.”

"Or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?"

"Why don't you infidel people show us something better than Christianity?

We are not fools, we do not usually throw away good things when we see them.

It is not uncommon now to hear boys just out of knickerbockers declare themselves Agnostics."

CLINTON LOCKE.

"There is a new doctrine which seems to have taken hold upon some of the young men of this university (and perhaps they admire it more because it comes from a Greek word) Agnostic; but I am quite sure that they will not take as much pride in its Latin synonym, ignoramus."

BISHOP DERRY.

"We have met to investigate the laws of nature. May I ask you all to spend a few moments, in silent prayer, that God, whose hand is behind all laws of nature, may illumine our understanding in studying His works."

AGASSIZ.

Mr. Gladstone says:-"Amid all the sad and miserable divisions among Christians, it is still immensely reassuring, a great confirmation of the Faith, and a broad basis for our hopes of the future to find that ninety-nine out of a hundred of those who profess to be Christians, still hold the orthodox belief in such fundamental features as the doctrine of the Trinity and the Incarnation."

"To follow on," but not "to know the Lord"-to deny Him! Yes, "to follow on" with the fine intellects (the gift of God) taking up as in the hollow of their hands all sciences, art, the classics, modern tongues; "to follow on" to explore by sea and land, to investigate, to compare, to dissect, to analyze, to review to revise; "to follow on" with savans of Germany, of France, of any and every country; to read up, to write up on every subject under the sun: History with Carlyle, Essay with Emerson, Novels with George Eliot, Harriet Martineau (in her later life!) Philosophy, and Religion with Huxley, Tyndall, Darwin, Strauss, Renan and all those other "great lights" (?)—“to follow on" from country to country, from Alps and Appenine, and Pyrenees, to Himalaya; from Seville and Saragossa, to Athens and Salonica; from South to North, from Orient to Occident, from the Levant to the St. Lawrence; from the tiger's "ears" to the buffalo's horns; "to follow on" but not to know the Lord! "To follow on," and compare one art-gallery with another, one old master, one chef d'oeuvre with another; one marble, one bronze, one piece of statuary, one sculptor, with another; "to follow on" to compare one master-workman with another, one cathedral, one monument with another; "to follow on" to salons of wit and learning; to hear finest music in richest setting of Mass and Oratorio and Opera-to compass sea and land to make one proselyte for God the Saviour? Oh! no. "To follow on," but not to know the Lord.