“For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might become rich.”
The goodness of God is seen in what he does for others. We are not caused to think of God’s goodness by learning of what he has done for himself, or for his Son, Jesus Christ, save as we conceive of Christ the friend of others.
The Lord might create a million worlds, and inscribe on the portal of each, “For God Only,” and it would excite neither our love nor our admiration. He could make a thousand cities like the New Jerusalem, and paint their glories in language more graphic than mortal pen could trace; and yet if those cities were not for other beings as well as for himself, it would not appeal to our gratitude nor elicit our thanksgiving. What man admires in God is not so much his greatness and wisdom as his goodness manifested in his dealings with others. We may hear his voice from Horeb’s heights and tremble with fear; we may see his power manifested in various ways, and we cry from the depths of our hearts, “Truly God is great!” But only when we learn that “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life,” do we truly love him.
When Moses was honored with an exhibition of the glory of God, it was not manifest in creative power nor in destroying agencies, but in the message borne by the “still small voice:” “The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.”
It was not the angel with the flaming sword guarding the way of the tree of life that won the sinner’s heart from rebellion against his Maker; but when the sinner, in the very midst of his rebellion, hears the glad news that the Son of God is to die for sin, that he, the sinner, may escape the punishment which is justly his, then it is that the heart is touched and the life mended. It is what God has done for others that makes us love him.
When we read of heaven and of the joys of the world to come; when we hear the glad news, “In thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore;” when we hear the seer of Patmos telling us of the beauties of the city of God, with its streets of gold, its walls of jasper, and its gates of pearl, assuring us it is for the redeemed of earth forever; when we hear that voice proclaiming, “The tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away,”—when we think of all this and a thousand things more that God has promised to those who love him, how is it possible for man—sinner though he be—not to love such a God?
But notice, in all this God enters not as one caring for himself. Everything he does is for others. Heaven itself is not for God alone, nor for Christ, but for the saints as well. It would seem that even eternity and the universe of God are for the redeemed of earth.
Another translation of our text reads, “For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he beggared himself to enrich you.”
The ministry of Christ’s life was all for others. In it all there seems no self. Wherever we meet him,—in the trying hour of temptation in the wilderness; or perchance in the synagogue, assailed by scribes and Pharisees; or at Jacob’s well on his way to Galilee; or at the last supper with his beloved disciples; or in Gethsemane’s garden of trial, or even on the cruel cross of Calvary,—always, everywhere, it was for others that he lived and died.
He “beggared himself” to enrich others. He did not hold what was his by right, but gave up all, that some soul might be saved from sin. And in eternity he shares his throne with the redeemed of earth.
All that God has revealed of himself to us is love, beneficence, and compassion for others. He spent the treasures of heaven to win man back to obedience and faith, and this work begun by heaven is left to be carried on by the saints of God on earth. As the ambassadors of God on earth, we are to exemplify his unselfishness. “Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us.”
In the great gathering day, those placed at the right hand of the Master will not be there for what they have done for themselves, for we read, “Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came to me.” And when the saints are astonished at such a statement, Jesus answers, “Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”
If the character of God, because of his unselfish love and care and beneficence to others, seems precious to us poor mortals, how much more beautiful must such graces appear to God when they are seen in the lives of his saints.
Only an artist-soul can fully appreciate art. It takes a musical soul to appreciate music, and no one but God can fully appreciate godliness—unselfish efforts for others.
Through eternity our joy will not come from the remembrance of beautiful homes we may have had on this earth, nor the honors we received here, have most completely exemplified the unselfish love of Christ.
The princes in heaven will not necessarily be those who were honored among men, or even in the church of God on earth, but they will be those whose lives most completely exemplify the unselfish love of Christ.
It is true that heaven is not bought with earthly treasures. It is equally true that a man can not win heaven without giving all that he has. Our gifts to God’s cause are not to enrich ourselves, but to save others.
By the blessing of God it is through the liberality and self-denial of the followers of Christ that the gospel of the kingdom is extended in the earth. Some one must sow the seed. Some one must preach the gospel.
The promulgation of the third angel’s message is as much due to the liberality of God’s people at home who support the work, as to the messengers who have gone as pioneers to the frontier. Both are necessary in the forwarding of the work in the earth. Both will share the reward, when God gives to every man according to his work.
Takoma Park, D. C.
Aids for Bible Readers
By Charles Johnston
Historical quotations and extracts from various writers which may assist the thoughtful student of the Scriptures.
The Catholic Reformation and the Authority of the Vatican
(Concluded)
In defiance of the words of the Scripture and the practise of the apostolic age and the early Fathers, the claims of the bishops of Rome to political power and mental domination steadily increased. It is written: “Either make the tree good, and his fruit good; or else make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt; for the tree is known by his fruit.” Let us consider the fruit of the tree.
As early as the Theodosian Code, we find the alliance with the civil power used as an instrument of persecution, and Gregory invoked the civil power against the Donatists, in perfect anticipation of the “Holy Inquisition.” Hildebrand, who assumed the triple tiara as Gregory VII, went further; he asserted that all political authority was derived from the pope. He made good his claim against the emperor, and demanded that William the Conqueror should do allegiance for the throne of England. Here Hildebrand was met with flat refusal. Yet the pope’s claim to political suzerainty was made good. Innocent III succeeded where Gregory VII had failed. He brought the king of England to his knees, and forced him to become a vassal of Rome. To take other instances: in 1465 Pope Paul II deposed the king of Bohemia, and brought on a sanguinary war. Half a century later Pope Julius II deposed the king of Navarre. But the most signal instance of this political usurpation came in 1215, when Innocent III formally cursed the Great Charter of England, “in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit: Damnamus sub intimatione Anatematis prohibentes, ne dictus Rex eam observare praesumet, aut Barones cum complicibus suis ipsam exigant observari; tam Chartam quam obligationes. . . .” Thus did the Vatican set its face like a flint against the charter of modern liberty.
Infinitely worse was another event of the same year. Summoning the bishops to Rome, Innocent III read to them the decrees which, after they had listened to them in silence, were recorded as the decrees of the Fourth Lateran Council. Among these were two of ominous note: one approving the massacre of the Waldenses, and the other establishing the “Holy Inquisition.” It is not my intention to enlarge upon that massacre, or to discuss the question whether Torquemada burned three thousand or thirty thousand “heretics.” Let the dead past bury its dead.
But what must be insisted on is this: that the poison of despotism, once taken into the veins of an ecclesiastical organization, will always work deadly harm. There are evil powers in the heart which despotism kindles, and they bear horrible fruit of torture and massacre.
Yet, during this very period, there was an abundance of the purest spirituality within the church. To it belong the great names of Saint Francis, Saint Catherine of Siena, Saint Thomas a Kempis, for whom one can have nothing but reverent admiration. These peerless souls, and multitudes of others less renowned, were the salt of the earth, the leaven of the church, in a very real sense. For no one with reverent faith in the God of love can believe that the church of Christ was upheld by the butchery of the Albigenses, the fires of the Inquisition. Was it not rather the spiritual power of the true followers of the Master, who “heard his commandments and kept them,” which upheld the church as on a rock? May we not believe in an unbroken succession of such saints, rich in love and purity, forming the soul of the church within the temporal body, and breathing forth a spiritual power which kept the church sweet through centuries of despotism and cruelty?
We have seen that Origen, Irenæus, Tertullian, and Jerome opposed the Roman bishop’s claim to supremacy, and that Origen expressly declares that the church was not founded on Peter alone. In like manner, we find the Council of Nicæa expressly recognizing other sees—Antioch and Alexandria, for instance—as “apostolic sees,” a title appropriated by Rome. This question was the cause of the division between the Eastern and Western churches. It was the claim of Gregory VII and of Innocent III to exercise supreme authority over these independent apostolic sees of the East which tore Christendom in twain.
In like manner, the claim of the see of Rome to exercise intellectual despotism over Christendom was the real source of the later division which sprang from the fiery protest of Martin Luther. There was crying need for purification. But had there been more moderate counsels on both sides, had the claims of the Vatican been abated, while the Reformers checked their violence, we might have had a strong and vital evolution of the church without division, the vigorous spiritual forces of Northern Europe developing within its boundaries, in an atmosphere of light and liberty. We might have had the great movements of modern science, saved from materialism, growing up in an atmosphere of reverence and spiritual life. Had she not insisted on banishing intellectual liberty, the church might have been saved from the ignominy of that famous decree: “We say, pronounce, declare, that you, the said Galileo, by reason of the matters adduced in process, and by you confessed as above, have rendered yourself, in the judgment of this holy office, vehemently suspected of heresy; namely, of having believed and held the doctrine, which is false and contrary to the Sacred and Divine Scriptures, that the sun is the center of the system and does not move from east to west, and that the earth is not the center of the system. . . .”
We may say, therefore, that the tree is judged by its fruits. The Vatican’s successive claims of supremacy, of civil suzerainty and intellectual despotism, twice rent Christendom in twain, forcing the separation of the independent apostolic sees of the East, and driving into revolt the nations of Northern Europe, in the movement of the Reformation. And these same claims, and most of all that of intellectual despotism, lightened the pyres of the Inquisition, spread massacre through the Piedmont Valleys, gave hundreds up to torture and death, and wrought a myriad agonies through the Middle Ages.
What most imports us to recognize to-day is that Pius X is making exactly the same claims as the most extreme of his predecessors. He has openly declared that the separation of church and state is a “pernicious error,” and he evidently holds that the church is higher than the state. But even more certain and much more significant is his steady adherence to the principle of intellectual despotism, as illustrated by the syllabus, the encyclicals, the papal pronouncements. He firmly believes that he holds the right to say what Christians shall and shall not believe, whether as to the Scriptures, the early history of the church, or the facts and theories of science; and he is prepared to use every means in his power to compel obedience, “even to the shedding of blood.” . . .
If we are right, and we call on history to vindicate us, the evil which for centuries overshadowed Europe like a nightmare has a clearly defined source: the principle of “domination.” Jesus himself set up no authority, but taught the perfect law of love and obedience to the divine will. For Jesus, orthodoxy was not a belief, but a life: “He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me.” “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.” There is no question here of any one declaring what another shall or shall not believe; there is a question of denying one’s self, of hating one’s life that one may keep it unto life eternal. There is no authority, but that of more perfect obedience to the law of love, the law of sacrifice. And those should exercise authority who most perfectly exemplify the spirit of the Master, and, by perfect obedience, are united in spirit to the Master. Even then their authority must ever be that of a holy example; they must never “lord it over the inheritance,” and, if they win anything of the spirit of the Master, they can never so lord it, for does not the Master say, “I am meek and lowly in heart”? — Charles Johnston, in The North American Review for December, 1907.
Temperance in the Home
By Augusta C. Bainbridge
AUGUSTA C. BAINBRIDGE
“You’re late to-night, Joe,” said mama.
“Yes, and I wish I had been later, and then it would have been over, and I would not have seen it.”
“Why, what was it?” said Nellie, as she smoothed the table-cloth for Joe’s supper at the side-table. “You’re shaking now; what’s the matter?”
“Well, I never saw anybody die before, and it makes me feel queer. I can hardly talk about it.”
“Eat your supper, son,” said papa, “and we will talk about it afterward;” for mama had just brought in a bowl of steaming hot soup.
By the time the bowl was empty, Joe’s color returned to his cheeks, and his steady voice was complimenting the cook. And the cook? Well, she was as smiling as only mothers know how to smile on their big boys.
“This supper just fits,” he said, “and I was wishing for some tomatoes. I wonder how you happened to get them.”
“I remembered a certain young man last year who enjoyed them,” she replied.
“Now, I am ready, father, and I want to know some things, too,” said Joe, as the circle at the table sat waiting.
“It was Hans Schneider, the big man who drives the team of gray horses for the brewery. I missed my note-book, and waited after school to look for it, so I was a little late. They said he watered his horses there every afternoon, but I never saw him before. The bridle and check-rein were tangled, and he stepped on the edge of the trough to fix them, and then jumped to the side-walk. The sidewalk was wet and slippery, and he fell. I was coming down Baker Street, and he did not get up; so I went to help him. Some men came running to him. They tried to get him up, but he could not stand. His eyes were shut. He was trembling all over, and groaning. Then the men carried him into the store. It took four men. They laid him on the floor. In a few minutes a doctor came, but the man was dead. The doctor said it was heart failure. I was so frightened I wanted to run away; and yet I stood there. I am sure I can not see what that strong, healthy-looking man did that made his heart fail in a minute, and he lie dead so quickly,” said Joe, telling his story as connectedly as the exciting subject would allow.
“Hand me that brown book with gilt lettering; it is on the top shelf,” said papa.
“Now find chapter VII, ‘The Heart.’ Read that coarse print and answer my questions. How many times does the heart beat in one day?”
“‘It beats about one hundred thousand times.’”
“What happens if it is made to beat faster?”
“‘It is overworked, and wears out sooner than it should.’”
“That is good; now, turn over two leaves—there, in the center of the page. How does alcohol affect the heart?”
“‘It causes an increased activity, which is followed by depression.’”
“How great an increase has been noted?”
“‘Two ounces of alcohol will increase the heart-beats six thousand in a day.’ O, that must be a drunkard’s portion, indeed!” remarked Joe, after reading.
“No, a daily moderate drinker takes as much each day. How does alcohol quicken the heart’s action?”
“‘The increased heart action is an indirect, and not a direct result. The appearance of stimulation is caused by the depressant action of alcohol on the inhibitory nerve-centers.’ What does that mean, father?”
“Alcohol does not really move the heart itself; but being a narcotic, it affects the inhibitory nerves. These nerves are to the heart what the governor is to the steam-engine. You remember the two little red balls that swing and swing.”
“Indeed I do, and you told me that engines and motors have governors for regulating their speed, and when they are running too fast, these little balls fly apart and so reduce the speed. Whew! what it might mean to some of those big engines to have their governors go wrong!”
“Well, and what would it mean to your heart?”
“It would beat itself to death, I suppose, so it could not drive the blood through the arteries and veins. No wonder a drinking man has heart failure, and I don’t suppose any man could know just when his heart would fail. It would quit when it couldn’t go any more.”
“That is about it, my son. Now look over a few pages further, and read what it says about the continued use of alcohol.”
“‘The continued use of alcohol causes grave changes in the structure of the heart, such as a weakening of the valves, and the fatty degeneration of the muscles.’”
“Yes; now, Joe, you may explain your idea of that to me.”
“Weak valves could not open and close, to let the blood pass or to shut it out; so there would be one danger. And fat is not muscle, so a fat heart would lose its power.”
“That is clear to us all, is it not?” said mama.
“I hope I’ll never see such a sight again as I saw to-day, and I hope none of you ever will,” said Joe, earnestly, as he closed the book. “It makes me feel shivery every time I think of it.”
“Poor fellow! he was on the wrong road,” said mama.
San Francisco, Cal.
From the Shadow
By Mabel Earle
Thou on whose heart the night has
drawn its gloom,
Wouldst thou make dark the light of
summer skies?
Thou in the desert, grudgest thou the
bloom
Of the green pastures where thy
brother lies?
Thou in the silence, wouldst thou bar
the room
Of life's high temple filled with harmonies
From those whose feet are entering?
Poor and low
The grief which thrusts out hands of
pleading so,
Asking that all hearts ache with its
one woe!
When that supremest hour of love and
loss
Swept up the skies and blotted out
the sun,
When earth's Creator hung upon the
cross,
What time his stripes our balm of
healing won,—
Though the far heavens were black, and
hills and sea
Shook in the horror of his agony,—14Somewhere on earth that self-same hour
he saw
Life's sweetness, in pure hearts of love
flung wide;
Life's crown, where brave hearts clung
to love's high law
Unfaltering — and he blessed them as
he died.
Far out beyond the hills that shuddered
dim,
Somewhere he saw a little laughing
child
Clasped in its mother's arms, and blessed
of him,
Even through his anguish, as it clung
and smiled.
Somewhere he saw a soul that spurned
life's dross,
A love that gave itself in willing loss;
And on the circle of the darkening lands,
While hell and heaven watched by
Calvary,
The lifting up of his high-priestly hands
Blessed them, and all who laugh or
mourn, and thee.
Thou in the anguish of thy lesser strife,
Hast thou no love to clasp earth's
farthest ken?
Thou on thy Calvary of loss and life,
Hast thou no blessing for thy brother-
men?
— Mabel Earle.
A Choice Illustration
A LADY once called Henry Drummond in to speak to her coachman, who had given way to drink, and he said he did not like to be called in like this to be asked to argue with people of a sudden and try to cure their souls, but he felt it was a case demanding Christian intervention, so he plucked up his courage and went out to talk to the man. And he put the problem to him, “Suppose you were on the box and your horses ran away down-hill, and you lost all control over them, what would you do?” “O,” said the man, “I could do nothing!” “Yes,” said Drummond, “but suppose there were some one sitting by your side stronger than you, who could control them, what would you do?” “O,” he said, “I would hand him the reins, sir!” “Ah,” said Drummond, “your life has run away with you, your appetites and passions and lusts are carrying you down-hill, and you in your own strength can not control your life. But,” he said, “believe me, there is One at your side stronger than you, who offers to take control of your life and make it what it should be. What will you do?” And the man, seeing the point, said, “Sir, I will give him the reins.”—Selected.
In the Mountains of Java
By G. E. Teasdale
G. E. TEASDALE
The last issue of the REVIEW contained an account of the unsanitary conditions of the cities of Java, and the prevalence of fever during the five or six months of the year when there is no rain. We had hoped, by careful living and faithful observance of the laws of hygiene, to escape the disease and maintain the good health we had hitherto enjoyed. However, in this we were destined to be sadly disappointed; in one day three of our family were prostrated with fever, and one, our older boy, now lies in the Sourabaya cemetery awaiting the resurrection call. He was the healthiest and brightest of our family, the flower of our garden; the thought of death had never come to him. We expected he would live until the Lord came, and of us all, he enjoyed living the most. We laid him away, knowing that for him the time of waiting was over. Our comfort is in Him who has power over death and the grave; for he says, “And this is the Father’s will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day.” There is a void in our hearts and a vacancy in our home which render the pleasures of life insipid, but which make us look with a greater longing for that grand day when the Lord will come; the dead will be raised, and with the living righteous receive the gift of immortality.
Native Modes of Travel
Following the death of our child the remaining members of our family contracted the fever, and narrowly escaped the grave; but by the grace of God our lives were spared, and a kind friend, hearing of our distress, offered to us the use of his mountain home, where we could go for a few weeks to regain our health and energies. Monday morning early saw us on the express-train bound for Probolinggo, a town some fifty miles distant, and reached in two and one-half hours’ time. The service is better than one would expect in a country where the great mass of the inhabitants are non-travelers and but small producers. The politeness of the officials and the general kindness manifest on every hand tend to moderate considerably the hardships of travel. The train steamed into a neat railway station a few minutes before ten, and we transferred ourselves and baggage for the next stage of the journey toward the mountains, into two small vehicles called dokars, each drawn by two diminutive ponies. The first few miles’ drive took us through a level and exceedingly fertile country, then the road began gradually to rise, and we traveled upward until it became so steep
that the ponies could take us no farther. On one part of this journey we experienced an illusion which is difficult to explain. For about half a mile it seemed as if the incline of the road had changed, and we were going down instead of up. The ponies moved easily along, and at what seemed to be the bottom of the road there was a bridge, on the other side of which the road began to rise. But to our great surprise, on one side of the road there was a stream running swiftly in the opposite direction, which demonstrated to us, in opposition to our senses, that we were indeed all the time going up a steep hill instead of down. Some of our company, and others who have remarked about the illusion, still maintain that the stream flows up. Our six senses are not always to be relied upon to interpret rightly the phenomena of nature.
A twelve-mile ride in the dokars brought us to the end of the second stage of the journey. Awaiting us here was another carriage, to which were attached two bulls and two cows. In this we journeyed six miles more up very steep hills until we arrived at Sockapoera, which is to be our home for the next six weeks. The house is a typical old East Indian home. The main room is T-shaped, the top stroke being the whole front of the house, measuring about sixty feet by ten, and the stem flanked by three bedrooms on each side, is twenty feet by thirty-six. The front of the house is all glass windows, which open out to a beautiful tropical flower garden that loses itself in the distance among the trees. At the foot of the mountain are miles of flat country which stretch away to the sea just discernible in the distant haze. The whole panorama looks like an immense park partially gone back to a state of nature. The roads are well made and shaded by magnificent tropical trees, and on either side are hedges studded liberally with large red flowers. The fragrance of the trees and blossoms recalls one’s youthful dreams of enchanted lands, and makes one think of a still better country which shall blossom as the rose. Among the trees are the native homes and plantations. The houses are neatly made of split bamboo, and some of them are quite comfortably furnished.
A Densely Populated Country
Native life in the mountains is a decided improvement to that on the plains and in the cities. The natives are everywhere; the country abounds with them; on the most lonely mountain path, and in the hidden recesses of the valleys one meets them every few minutes. How they manage to obtain a livelihood is a wonder to one unacquainted with their ways. They are most respectful to a15
white man, crouching on the roadside or dismounting from the ponies while he passes by. If they are called upon to approach him in his home or office, they do it in a stooping position, and kneel at his feet, often with hands together as in the position of prayer, especially if the white man be an official. One often wonders what is passing in their minds as their lordly master—fled to the mountain for his health—laboriously toils up a hill in the cool of the early morning with the vain hope of reducing the cumbersome proportions which afflict him, proportions which have come as the result of indulgence in the victuals won from the soil by the sweat of his brother’s brow. They may remember the benefits which Western civilization and good government have brought to them; but most probably they have forgotten them long ago, and dark, indistinct thoughts come as to why one
man, whose skin is white, can take to himself a portion which is equal to that upon which three hundred of the owners of the soil have to exist. After gazing abstractly for a moment or two at the liberal girth of the slowly retreating form, he fastens his sarong a little tighter around his own meager waist, applies his shoulder to the creaking bamboo, so upon the end of which hangs the weekly product of his garden, and trots along with it, maybe many miles, to the nearest market, where it is disposed of at a price which would scarcely keep the cigar case of the white man supplied for a single day. To many Europeans no doubt this obsequious deference is quite satisfying; but to me it is humiliating, and begets within me a feeling of smallness. I suppose I am not one of those “in whose breast beats the heart of a king.”
The Occupation of the People
Many of the natives living on these mountains possess fine, rosy complexions, and all are stalwart and well proportioned. Vegetable growing is one of the chief means of obtaining a living, and there are also some coffee plantations owned by the different villages. Beautiful roses bloom here, and also at certain seasons of the year strawberries and other temperate-zone fruits are obtainable. Water for the gardens and for household use is obtained from some spring on the mountainside, and conveyed to the villages and gardens in bamboo chutes. What the cocoanut palm is to the South Sea islander, the bamboo is to the East Indian. Its uses are legion, and it enters into almost every department of life. If the husbandman requires a new yoke for his oxen, water-pipe for irrigation purposes, fence for his garden, his eye looks for a suitable bamboo; or if the housewife wants a new water pail, chair, utensil in which to cook the rice, and many other household necessities, she also has recourse to the bamboo.
COFFEE DRYING IN JAVA
The mountain on which we are living is about eight thousand feet high, and Sockapoera is nearly half-way up. During the day the sun is quite warm, but the nights are delightfully cool, making one or two blankets on the bed a necessity. The mountain is addicted to the almost universal habit of smoking, but so long as it is content with that, we do not mind. Even though it broke forth in fury occasionally, and killed its thousands, it would be comparatively harmless when measured with the fumes of the deadly nicotin, the smoke of which arises forever and ever from the mouths of its hapless victims. A few miles to the back of us are several active volcanoes [One of these was given upon the first-page cover of the REVIEW last week.—ED.], and Bromo, one of the most noted in Java, is said to present a magnificent spectacle at certain periods. It is our intention to visit this mountain in the near future if circumstances are favorable, and I shall be pleased to write an account of our trip.
Sockapoera, Java.
Kissing
By Mrs. S. M. I. Henry
ONE girl came to me, her face suffused with blushes, but with a determined expression about her mouth, and said: “I am going to ask you something right out plain, because I think you will not laugh. I’ve never dared ask any one yet, because every one always laughs in such a mean way if you try to find out anything about such things; and I’d like to know how girls are going to know just what to do. Now it’s just this way: I am going with Charlie, and he is a nice boy; he wants to do what is right, I know he does, but all the boys have such queer ideas about their ‘rights.’ When he takes me home from church or any place—and I’ve just got so I dread to have him; and sometimes I think I won’t go with another boy as long as I live, because you see, when I go to say ‘good night,’ he—he thinks I am so queer because I won’t let him kiss me. But I won’t; I never let any one but my own folks. I don’t like it; I don’t think it’s nice to do that way unless it’s some one you’re sure of and love very much. He says I’m queer; and he gets provoked, and says it’s his right, if he goes with me. Now I want to know—is it?” “No, it is not,” I said, positively, and perhaps with a little flavor of indignation. “And no properly instructed young man would make such a claim. He is not to blame of course,” I added more mildly, “for he is young, too; but your instincts are all right; they are true; they are of God, who made the kiss, and gave it its own place in common, human language. It belongs to the home, and to the purest Christian fellowship between man and man, woman and woman; to society never.”—Mrs. S. M. I. Henry.
