Till heaps on heaps of orbs and planets filled
The utmost confines of eternity.

"Go," said the Lord, who sowed the deep with worlds,
"Go, stars, and shine throughout the spreading skies,
People the azure fields with your fair beams,
And sing to all your rhythmic harmonies."

*

And as each orb rolled onward and appeared
A joybell ringing forth its holy glee,
The Almighty gazed upon his work and heard
With favor all creation's jubilee.

So when the Lord had flung out all the stars
And with soft beams the heavens were over-run,
He looked inside the wallet, where he found
Between two seams a broken piece of Sun.
He took the fragments in his wondrous palm,
And without question of its rightful place,
Breathed on it with the whirlwind of his mouth
And sent it reeling through the realms of space.

Then the poet tells how the great Creator heard "the vast hosannas of the spheres," and how, suddenly, amid the "glorious hymn," "a murmur came".

It rose from out that bit of broken sphere,—
Yea, those vile creatures whom it bore away
Wept for the Mother Star they scarce could see
In their dull clime and in their sky so gray.

Then came to their complaints this gracious message:

"Stray particle of Sun whose name is Earth,

And ye that crawl," said God, " worms that ye are,
Sing, for I give you Death, yea, a new birth,
That ye may all regain yon brilliant Star."

Who shall say that this poet was not right? His conception seems a perfect one. All the knowledge of the astronomers tends to prove that the universe is true and perfect to infinity. We are the only flaw. This little earth is alone at fault. We poor, miserable, egotistical beings we only of all God's creatures-need a Christ, a Saviour.

Some Religious Helps to a Literary Style

NY one in chase of a writer's rainbow, who

ANY

seeks to find the pot of gold at its end, and would fain secure for himself that uncertain and

indefinite prize known as a literary style, may perhaps discover herein some guide-posts to point him toward his way. If there is no royal road to learning, neither is there any short-cut; but it may be that the garb of thought and form and fashion of expression which characterize certain religious books may prove the longest way round and yet the shortest way home to the acquiring for our present uses of a purer, simpler, and more dignified language.

A child cannot run until it has learned to walk; no more can a man write until he has read. What then is the "reading, which maketh a full man," so that out of his very fullness of reading he shall express his ideas in a clear and limpid stream of thought? Surely this is not to be had from the current literature of the day. This question has been asked concerning the

present flood of books: "Is it not better that a hundred unnecessary volumes should be published, rather than that one that is good and useful should be lost?" Scriptural authority, if nothing else, would compel us to answer this in the affirmative, unless we stop to consider that the ninety-and-nine of the worthless books not only choke the single worthy one, but also tend to crowd out of life and usefulness the best books of the past.

The visible result of our over-production of books is that, because we are hopelessly unable to read everything, we read nothing. And we read nothing, absolutely, literally, so far as mental discipline is concerned, because the best of our average reading is in the better class of the magazines, and the worst of it-alas! for our habits-is in the newspapers. And this custom of our reading is not because of any lack of books among us, nor good books, moreover; for, as has been truly said, "Books are rarely destroyed. They go to the attic or the second-hand dealer, but for the most part they are preserved and accumulate rapidly." It has been estimated by good authority, that there are now in the United States 700,000,000 vol