p. 215 | The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 55, No. 14 (April 1, 1880)

THE LOST.

By E. D. Santee

BY E. D. SANTEE.

Lost? Aye, and lost forever; a soul has gone down to death, Leaving this life's troubled fever, with a gasp and a struggle for breath; Down to sleep in the darkness, resting alone in the gloom, Coffined, and shrouded, and quiet, with folded hands in the tomb.

Close in the grave's dark prison, closed are the eyes, and dark; One less ship on life's ocean, one more foundered bark; Offers of mercy were slighted, now they are gone for aye; For the chill and awful darkness has ended life's fleeting day.

Sometimes almost persuaded to look unto Christ and live; Sometimes the troubled spirit almost prayed God to forgive; But the lures of the tempter did blind him till he passed life's border across, Out from the light into darkness—God pity the soul that is lost;

Lost to all hope of Heaven, to love, and hope, and peace; Lost to the joys of the blessed, and the home where sorrows cease; Never a sadder being the grave's dark portals cross, Than the soul that goes into darkness under God's frown,—and lost.

Mercy, with drooping pinion, slowly turns away, Leaving the gloom and the darkness, taking the beautiful day; Leaving the gloom and the terror by which the soul must be tossed Deep in the darkness of error—God pity the soul that is lost!

JOSEPH COOK ON SPIRITUALISM.

By Joseph Harvey Waggoner

BY ELD. J. H. WAGGONER.

Questions are frequently asked concerning the present standing of spiritualism; whether it is becoming obsolete, or still making progress. Spiritualism will not lose its hold upon the minds of the masses while they are so ready to “turn away their ears from the truth, and be turned unto fables.” 2 Tim. 4:4. Spiritualism is a flattering delusion; it exalts man in his own estimation, even denying that he is dependent, for existence or for salvation, on a Supreme Being. The Scriptures assert man’s frailty and his fallen condition, and his entire dependence on Christ for a future life and happiness. It also calls for humility and self-denial as essential to securing the blessings of the gospel. It is easy to tell which system will be most readily accepted by the carnal mind.

Joseph Cook, in a recent Boston lecture, presented some facts concerning the status of spiritualism in Europe, among the learned and the noble. Mr. Cook speaks as follows:—

“Six renowned German names, to their own credit or discredit, can now be quoted in the list of believers in the reality of the alleged facts of the modern psychical spiritual manifestations. They are Professors Zollner, Fechner, and Scheibner, of Leipsic University, Professor Weber, of Gottingen University, Professor Fichte, of Stuttgart, and Professor Ulrici, of Halle University.

“Professors Wundt, Thiersch, and Ludwig, of the same University saw only a portion of the experiments, and express themselves as not convinced of the objective reality of all the facts. Professor Wundt has published an article, which has been translated into English, in reply to Ulrici, and insists much upon the tricks of legerdemain.

“The court prestidigitator of Berlin, however, has given to the public an affidavit, in which he says that the explanation of Slade’s experiments by legerdemain and the allied arts is wholly impossible.

“Henry Slade, having proceeded to St. Petersburg in order to fulfill his engagement with M. Aksakof and Professor Boutlerof, and to present the phenomenon of psychography to the scrutiny of a committee of scientific experts, has had a series of successful sittings, in the course of which writing has been obtained in the Russian language. At one recent sitting, writing in six different languages was obtained on a single slate.

“On Wednesday, Feb. 20, accompanied by M. Aksakof and Professor Boutlerof, Slade had a most successful sitting with the Grand Duke Constantine, who received them cordially, and himself obtained writing on a new slate held by himself alone.”

Prof. Zollner gives the following result of an experiment with a closed “book-slate,” within which he had placed paper blackened with smoke:—

“I closed this slate, and remarked to Slade that if my theory of the existence of intelligent four-dimensional beings in Nature were well-founded, it would be easy for them to give the impression hitherto obtained on an open slate, inside a closed one. Slade laughed, and was of the opinion that this would be absolutely impossible; even his ‘spirits,’ whom he asked, seemed very much perplexed about this proposition, but at last answered on a slate, with a cautious, stereotyped reply, We will try it. To my great surprise Slade agreed that I should lay the book-slate (which, since I had blackened the paper, I had not once let go out of my hands), during the séance, upon my knees, so that I could always see half of it. We had been sitting perhaps five minutes at the table in the brightly lighted room, our hands linked with those of Slade upon the table in the usual manner, when I felt twice, at short intervals, that the slate upon my knees was pressed down without the slightest visible cause. Three knocks on the table announced that all was finished; and when I opened the slate I found inside, on one side the print of a right, and on the other of a left foot, the latter the same as we had obtained the two previous evenings. My readers may judge for themselves how fair it is for us, after such facts, to look upon Mr. Slade as a deceiver and trickster. Slade’s own astonishment at the success of the experiment was almost greater than mine.”

The most remarkable of the manifestations recorded by the Professor is that of having three knots tied in an endless cord. This, to us, seems utterly impossible. Of this, Mr. Cook says: “Zollner insists that the tying of knots in an endless cord proves the existence of a fourth dimension of space. Explanation of the phenomena in our three dimensions there cannot be, and so he is forced to adopt Kant’s idea that there is a fourth dimension of space.”

If spiritualism thus baffles all science and philosophy, the world must soon accept the idea that it does

work miracles, and we claim that in this it fulfills Rev. 13:11-14. Other scriptures show, with equal clearness, its origin and tendency.

Again he quotes from Professor Zollner, as follows:—

“At about half-past eleven o’clock, in bright sunlight, I became, wholly without expectation or preparation, a witness of a very extraordinary phenomenon. I had, as usual, taken my place with Slade at a card-table. Opposite me, and near the card-table, stood a small round stand. Something like a minute may have passed after Slade and I had seated ourselves and placed our hands, one above the other, together, when the round stand began slowly to sway to and fro. We both saw it clearly. The motions were soon more extensive, and meanwhile, the whole stand drew near to the card-table, and placed itself under the latter, with its three feet turned toward me. I, and as it seemed also Mr. Slade, did not know in what way the phenomena were to be further developed. For perhaps a minute nothing at all happened. Slade was about to use the slate and pencil to ask the spirits whether we were to expect anything, when I resolved to take a nearer view of the round stand which was lying, as I thought, under the card-table. To my greatest amazement, and Slade’s also, we found the space under the card-table perfectly empty. Nowhere in the rest of the chamber could they find the stand which a minute previously had been before our eyes. After five or six minutes spent in breathless waiting for the re-appearance of the stand, Slade claimed that he saw appearances of lights of which I, as usual, could see nothing. Looking with more and more anxiety and astonishment in different directions in the air above me, Slade asked me if I did not see the appearance of large lights, and while I answered the question with a decided negative, I turned my head in the direction of the ceiling of the chamber, and suddenly saw, at a height of about five feet, the lost table with the legs directed upward into the air, float downward rapidly upon the top of the card-table.”

The following quotation shows that Mr. Cook has some rays of light falling on his mental vision on the subject of these spirits:—

“I am no partisan for or against any yet unrisen star beneath the horizon of science. If the Biblical view of spirits, good and bad, could by modern evidence be proved to be true, I should be only the firmer believer in the Bible, with its whole supernatural history. If spirits that ‘peep and mutter,’ to use the Scriptural phraseology, are abroad in the world, and if there be need of warning modern generations as the ancient ones were warned not to have commerce with demonical powers, I wish to listen to that warning made of old a part of Divine Revelation. I am not in danger of supposing that these atrocious, poisonous whisperings which mislead men and women only too often into erratic opinions and conduct are from on high. Whenever good angels appear in the Biblical history, they flame like the sun, or otherwise exhibit openly overawing powers. The angel that stood at the mouth of the sepulcher could not be looked at by the soldiers. They were as dead men in his presence. Always the appearance of good spirits puts into awe the human observer. I do not read of such appearances in our modern circles. I am ready to receive scientific evidence from any quarter. Prove to yourselves, if you can, that Archbishop Whately was right (see his treatise on Scriptural Revelations concerning Good and Evil Angels) when he asserted that the Biblical truths concerning good and evil angels are truths for all time. I believe that already; but if you were to fortify this belief by modern instances, I should yet stand in Archbishop Whately’s position, and make the teaching of modern spirits, especially of such as ‘peep and mutter,’ subject to the angelic spirits whose effulgence has made mortals as dead men, and to those communications which, by being absorbed into the veins of the ages, have been proved to give full health to human civilization. As the viper beneath the heel is subject to man, so would I have the witchcraft which peeps and mutters subject to Him who spake as never man spake.”

But Mr. Cook cannot leave the subject without giving spiritualism a little “aid and comfort,” as is his wont in the infolding of his favorite theory. Following the remarks above quoted are these words:—

“The more you prove the better. I think you have proved nothing of importance except that there is a psychic force, and that the place for materialism is in fragments on the horns of Jupiter’s moons.”

No one who believes the Bible will deny that there is “psychic force,” or spirit power and intelligence, outside of and beyond human control. But by “materialism” Mr. Cook means, and his hearers understand him to mean, a denial of the immortality of the human soul. But with this idea of materialism his conclusion has no just relation to his premises. No matter how clearly the existence of psychic force is proved, it is not, and cannot be proved that that force is of human origin. Neither the Bible nor reason will justify the conclusion that these “spirits of devils working miracles,” Rev. 16:13, are the spirits of dead men and women. It is easy to say a thing is proved when the essential part is taken for granted. But Mr. Cook makes his assertions with great confidence and complacency because he knows the popular feeling is with him in his assertion. It takes but little proof to confirm prejudice. We should very much like to see Mr. Cook try to prove that the doctrine of the immortality of the human soul has any necessary connection with the fact of the existence of psychic force. To do this he must prove that there are no other spirit existences but human spirits. Will he undertake this task? We think not. Yet this is exactly what is taken for granted in all his lectures against materialism. Without this grant, his arguments are without point and force.—Signs of the Times.

Plain Speech Reaches the Common People

—Edward Everett once said he had long since found that the great mass of what are called plain and common people could always understand a speaker if he understood himself, and used plain and simple language,

PROF. PHELPS ON SPIRITUALISM.

Prof. Austin Phelps, in a recent number of the Congregationalist, gives the following as his views of spiritualism. We bespeak for it a careful reading, as the views expressed are those of a candid, thoughtful man, who has evidently examined the subject carefully. He says:—

I do not hold to the hypothesis that spiritualism is of satanic origin, without qualification. I hold it as an hypothesis the probability of which must depend on the degree of mastery which science obtains over the whole subject. It is only under the condition that, before some of the phenomena in question science is dumb, that I resort to the supernatural theory at all. In common with the rest of the world, I am waiting for science to recover from its “despair,” and to give us some explanation of the facts, which shall deserve respect. It is not wise to find more of the demonical in the universe than we are compelled to find. But so long as science gives us nothing better, my mind falls back upon the biblical demonology, as being the most probable thing we have, within the range of human knowledge, in explanation of the mystery. As a believer in the Biblical demonology, without qualification or deduction, I find no great difficulty in settling accounts with spiritualism.

Some minds can rest in having no theory on this subject. Others cannot. I doubt whether anybody can, whose nightly sleep is broken up for months by the sports of “racket-sprites” in his chamber. When we come upon phenomena which the police give up as beyond their province, and which Signor Blitz gives up as beyond his art, and which established and recorded science gives up as beyond its ken, and which even hypothetical science, within the range of natural operations, does not touch at all, we are impelled to ask, “What next?” Has anything else ever been known to human faith, or suggested to human thought, which possibly can give us some result better than the “despair of science?”

It is just here and under these conditions that the Biblical demonology comes to our relief. Why believers in the Scriptural demonology should hesitate to make the application, thus qualified, I do not understand. It surely is not unscriptural nor unphilosophical. If there is a world of demonic intelligence, and if incursions have been made from that world into this, it is not unphilosophical to believe that similar incursions may be made again. Be it so, then, until science can explain the facts in some more satisfactory way. It is only when science stands stock still, and says, “Beyond this line I know nothing and can explain nothing,” that we feel at liberty to look elsewhere; and not even then, except as we get the hint from a divine revelation.

I am less reluctant to admit the demonology of the Scriptures into the problem, because I suspect that our indignant and shamed recoil from the Salem witchcraft was given to our faith in the explicit declarations of the word of God. This is evinced more by silence than by speech, but is none the less real for that. We believe, not only less than our fathers believed of the kingdom of Satan, but less than the Bible positively affirms. The reaction of the Salem tragedy is not a wise use from an abuse. There is danger in a truth ignored. This is specially the fact where supernaturalism is involved. That, in a certain amount, the human mind will have. If men do not find it, they will make it. Taught to ignore the divinely revealed forms of it, they will grovel in false forms. The readiness with which spiritualism has made headway, I suspect, is due to the larger disease, both in popular and clerical thought, of that portion of the supernaturalism of the Scriptures which concerns the personalities and activities of superhuman orders of created beings. That instinctive faith in the supernatural, which the Bible feeds with dignity and purity, if denied such food, we might naturally expect to find rotting in some such putrescent heap as that of modern spiritualism. There may be more danger than we think in believing nothing. Spiritualism is not an error of the schools; it is in the homes of the people. It is extending, broadcast. Our home missionaries find it away up in the mountains. Young pastors inquire what to do with it. Not a religious newspaper in the land has so large a circulation as that of its leading organ. We cannot afford to wait indefinitely, meanwhile believing nothing, for science to rid us of it. If it is a device of Satan, the sooner we find that out, and as religious teachers proclaim it, the better.

SUNSET

By Frank S. Porter

BY FRANK S. PORTER.

There is a lesson to be learned from the sunset. Jesus said to his followers, “Ye are the light of the world;” and again, “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in Heaven.” If the last few rays of the setting sun have an unusual splendor and brilliancy, should not our last efforts in the cause of God be the best?

In view of the soon-coming Judgment, let us redouble our diligence, and walk in the light, while we have the light, that we may be the children of light. Begin now; now is the accepted time. Delays are dangerous.

Professed Christian, is your lamp trimmed and burning? Are you exerting all your powers to spread the light of present truth? The tract and missionary, Sabbath-school, and temperance works are all good agents to help us spread the truth. The last sunset is approaching; the last opportunity for doing good will soon be gone. The shades of evening are fast settling upon us; the hours of probation will soon cease; and shall it then appear that we have not done our duty, that our work is still unfinished?

Oh! let us work while the day lasts, and be prepared, when Jesus comes, to look up and exclaim, “Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, and he will save us;” for soon “the night cometh, when no man can work.”

Two Paths Along the South Downs

—The following illustration covers a wide range: Along the South Downs are two paths, one a very few inches from the edge of the cliff, another about two yards off. Many have walked, and walked safely, along the first path, but it was dangerous. One step to the left, and they would have fallen, perhaps, several hundred feet, into the sea below; or, if a piece of loosened rock suddenly separated from the other parts, it would have carried the person who chanced to be treading it down, down with it, into the abyss below. Many, too, and I among them, have trodden the path farther in; we had as pleasant a view, with this great distinction from the more danger-loving passengers, we were safe; if we took a step to the left we were still on solid ground; if the edge were jagged, or even a huge mass of rock fell, we only saw unevenness or felt a slight shock. A gust of wind could not hurl us over, neither would sudden giddiness send us rolling down the precipice. Which path was best, was wisest, was safest? “The last,” you say? Yet both have been walked without accident.

What We Pay for Tobacco.—

A writer in Blackwood’s Magazine computes the whole amount of tobacco grown on the face of the globe at not less than 4,000,000,000 pounds. The price paid for tobacco by consumers, including all varieties, must exceed 25 cents a pound. A curious estimate makes the expenditures consequent on tobacco-using, direct and indirect, in a single century, to equal all the property on the earth. If 50 cents a day be spent by each devotee, the 300,000,000 in the world would waste $3,000,000,000,000 in a single generation.

No Emulsion Between Church and World

—There is no emulsion by which the church and the world can be taken together.—Central Presbyterian.

INTELLECT IN BRUTES.

By S. E. Peal

The Duke of Argyle, in his “Reign of Law,” was, I think, the first who promulgated the dictum that man is the only tool-making animal. As far as I can ascertain, this assertion is admitted by developmentists, yet it is undoubtedly true that the Indian elephant makes two implements, or forms and alters certain things so as to adapt them specially to fulfill definite purposes, for which, unaltered, they would not be suitable.

One evening soon after my arrival in Eastern Asam, and while the five elephants were as usual being fed opposite the Bungalow, I observed a young and lately caught one step up to a bamboo stake fence and quietly pull one of the stakes up. Placing it under foot, it broke a piece off with the trunk, and after lifting it to its mouth, threw it away. It repeated this twice or thrice, and then drew another stake and began again. Seeing that the bamboo was old and dry, I asked the reason of this, and was told to wait and see what it would do. At last it seemed to get a piece that suited, and holding it in the trunk firmly, and stepping the left fore-leg well forward, passed the piece of bamboo under the armpit, so to speak, and began to scratch with some force. My surprise reached its climax when I saw a large elephant leech fall on the ground, quite six inches long and thick as one’s finger, and which, from its position, could not easily be detached without this scraper, or scratch, which was deliberately made by the elephant. I subsequently found that it was a common occurrence. Leech scrapers are used by every elephant daily. On another occasion, when traveling at a time of year when the large flies are so tormenting to an elephant, I noticed that the one I rode had no fan or wisp to beat them off with. The mahout, at my order, slackened pace and allowed her to go to the side of the road, where for some moments she moved along rummaging the smaller jungle on the bank; at last she came to a cluster of young shoots well branched, and after feeling among them, and selecting one, raised her trunk and neatly stripped down the stem, taking off all the lower branches and leaving a fine bunch on top. She deliberately cleaned it down several times, and then laying hold at the lower end broke off a beautiful fan or switch about five feet long, handle included. With this she kept the flies at bay as we went along, flapping them off on each side every now and then. Say what we may, these are both really bona fide implements, each intelligently made for a definite purpose.—S. E. Peal, in Nature.

The White Soul.

VIRTUE has ever two followers. The first walk in the train for the love they bear her divine form, for the delight of gazing on those lines of beauty which glorify her face, and for the ineffable serenity she breathes into their souls. The other class have their eyes solely on the rewards scattered along her path. Blind to her rare symmetry and the majesty of her step, deaf to the music of her voice, they are only eager to clutch the shining gifts she lets fall. The first do right because right is right, not for love of gain, nor for fear. Gain is the motive of base spirits, and fear the spur of craven souls.

A young Frenchman brought to D'Alembert the solution of a difficult problem. Said he, “I have done this in order to have a seat in the Academy.” “Sir,” replied D'Alembert, “with such disposition you will never gain one.” Science must be loved for its own sake, and not for the advantage to be derived. No other principle will enable a man to make progress in science. And so of virtue. He who would progress in virtue must love her for her own sake. There are two ways in which this progress can be made. First, by the positive love of all that is high, pure, just, and true; and, second, by uprooting from the heart every base passion, every vicious inclination, every low tendency, every ignoble feeling. Here each has his own besetting sin. A vindictive disposition dominates over one; with another, pride is the bane of virtue; with another, jealousy. The person who is eager in his pursuit of virtue has no temptation to corrode his heart with schemes of revenge, no enthusiasm to waste on trivial objects, no time to throw away on trivial enterprises. His eye is ever fixed and steady; and though it may catch and reflect fleeting images of strife, envy, or revenge, they are soon forgotten, and melt away in the earnest gaze upward.

One excellent way of cultivating whiteness of soul is by reading biography.

“Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime.”

We want to see those we read about in their true characters, as they appeared in the simplicity of fireside associations, and stripped of the robes they wore before the crowds that honored them. When we thus know Lincoln, for example, how little consciousness the man seems to have had of himself; how earnest he was to get at the exact truth of statements made; how sincere in his charity for all, how incapable of malice toward any. The interior life of Alice Cary appears to have been, in an uncommon degree, serene, pure, and high. Envy, detraction, selfishness, scorn, had no part in that noble womanhood. She saw not the excellence she had reached, but that which was still to be pursued; she considered, not how far she had outrun others, but how far she herself was from the goal.

Scorn and vindictiveness tarnish and blacken the soul more quickly and effectually than any other of the passions. Revenge taken into the heart and cherished there, poisons every noble aspiration. Envy, hatred, pride, pollute the soul to its very center; but the love of truth, purity, honor, justice, and intelligence, because these are in themselves worthy of our highest love, will mold the character, and insure a consciousness of integrity and spotlessness of soul that will be in possession when—

“Victors’ wreaths and monarchs’ gems Shall blend with common dust.”

TEMPERANCE AND EDUCATION.

By Canon Farrar

I READ a story the other day which impressed me very much. It was from the Jewish Talmud, and it touches very much upon the position of teachers. The story runs that there had been a long drought in Palestine, and all the chief heads of the Jewish religion were engaged in praying for rain. The priests prayed for rain; the Pharisees prayed for rain; the rabbis, and the scribes, and all of them prayed for rain, and yet no rain came. At last one person, whom no one knew at all, stood up and prayed to God for rain, and immediately he who causes his wind to blow and his rain to fall, blackened the whole sky with clouds, and there came a burst of abundant rain. And then all the priests, and scribes, and Pharisees turned to this obscure and unknown person, and said, “Who art thou whose prayers are heard when all our prayers have been rejected?” and his answer was, “I am a teacher of little children.”

That story shows, what is also confirmed by many other passages from the Jewish writings, the high estimation in which they held the teachers of the young; and I think all the wisest men in all ages have done the same. You will all remember what Luther’s estimation of them was when he said if God had not called him to be a preacher of the gospel, the one office he would have chosen in preference to all others would have been that of a teacher of the young.

You need hardly be reminded of how a celebrated Roman Catholic ecclesiastic remarked, when he was speaking of the conversion of England to Roman Catholicism, in which he was a firm believer, “Give me the children, and I will give you the parents;” and I for one may safely say to the large body of English teachers, under whose influence, perhaps, many thousands of children are passing year after year, “Give me the children of England for a time, and then, even if the parents are entirely absorbed in the public house, we may have some hopes of the future.”

One thing is quite clear—that you may with perfect safety encourage your children to become total abstainers. I think you may not in the least degree fear the consequence of leading your children to take the pledge, but rather in doing so you will be conferring on them the possibility of spending a life saved from thousands of temptations, and far less liable to the danger and misery attendant upon the lives of the class from which those children are drawn.—Canon Farrar.

THE NICE USE OF WORDS.

I USE nice in the sense of fit and elegant. No young lady who has enjoyed the advantages of a good education should make mistakes in the use of her native vocabulary. She ought, as by intuition, to pitch at once upon the right word to express her thought.

Let me illustrate by some examples:—

“I did not anticipate your sorrowful tidings,” writes Anna to Maria, meaning that she did not expect them. She would have been very cruel had she anticipated them, for anticipation always carries with it a certain soft ringing of joy-bells.

“I was not in the least disappointed when I heard of your cousin’s death,” observes Miss Rachel to her friend, Miss Susan. She should say she was not surprised. To have been disappointed would have implied that she had hoped for the person’s death, a state of mind quite unlikely.

“How can she be so disinterested, when everybody else is so full of enthusiasm?” cries Tillie. Not disinterested, please, but uninterested, or, better still, indifferent.

When you wish to have a remark repeated, “I beg pardon?” interrogatively, is preferable to “What, ma’am?” or “What, sir?”

You beg pardon when you have unintentionally offended, when you differ in opinion and wish to state the fact, and when you have done something awkward. You say, “Excuse me,” when it is necessary to interrupt a conversation, to pass between some one and the fire or the window, or to leave the room or the table.

A little attention to these seemingly small matters will help our girls to become elegant and attractive women.—Christian at Work.

Education Versus Culture: Learning Into Character

—The words “education” and “culture” are by no means synonymous terms. It often happens that a person upon whose education many long years of study have been spent, and of whose learning and acquirements there can be no question, is almost wholly deficient in that gentle deportment and that evident mental aptitude and discipline which mark the man of culture. On the other hand, real culture is not infrequently to be found among those whose opportunities for study and learning have been few, and whose field of observation and action has been limited. One of the surest marks of culture is a power of assimilating that which is learned, and of so disposing of it, in the mental structure, that it may best be used when it shall be called for. The person of culture has a large view, and a ready, but graceful, command of his knowledge. Learning should not be a matter of mere accumulation; it should also be made subservient to a desire to build up a rounded, full, and usable character and disposition. When there is a constant endeavor to attach to each thing learned its reason, and to put it in its proper place in the whole intellectual fabric, it will be found that a well-rounded culture is thus more likely to be attained than by any mere accumulation of wisdom, or by any process of intellectual miserliness in the hoarding of facts in the memory.—S. S. Times.

St. Louis Schools Add Oral Etiquette Lessons

—The St. Louis Board of Education has decided to add to the course of study in the public schools of that city a series of oral lessons in etiquette. The Advance thinks the time may come when lessons not only on courteous and well-bred behavior, but on the common principles of morality, the laws of health, etc., will be regarded of as much importance as drilling in the art and mystery of “parsing” and “cyphering.”

Reformed German Spelling Adopted in Prussian Schools

—A reformed orthography is to be introduced into all the Prussian schools the first of April, and no educational works with the old spelling will be used in schools after the lapse of a certain interval. The governments of Austria, Bavaria, and Würtemburg have also adopted the new spelling.

Beloit College's Longest-Serving President Chapin

—President Chapin, of Beloit College, Wis., who was elected in 1851, is the oldest college president in this country, so far as actual service goes.

A PRAYER.

By E. R. Champlin

FATHER, take not away The burden of the day, But help me that I bear it As Christ his burden bore, When cross and thorn he wore, And none with him could share it: In his name, help! I pray.

I only ask for grace To see that patient face, And my impatient one; Ask that mine grow like his— Sign of an inward peace From trust in thee alone, Unchanged by time or place. —E. R. Champlin.

THE SABBATH-SCHOOL COURSE.

By C. W. Stone; S. Brownsberger; Wm. C. Gage

The Committee appointed at the recent session of the General Conference to consider the matter of Sabbath-school Lessons, and to suggest through the REVIEW subjects for future study, present the following:

The Sabbath-school, rightly conducted, may be one of the most important agencies in the salvation of the children and youth, as well as of those of riper years. Any system of public worship which does not provide exercise for all who attend, falls short of accomplishing that which the gospel is designed to do for every body of true worshipers. No one can remain a mere spectator in the church of Christ and retain a good interest. To cultivate that lively interest, to promote that spiritual growth, to make that acquaintance with the things of God, which are essential to the development of a symmetrical Christian character, one must have something to do. He must have a chance to exercise, and must learn to feel and bear responsibilities. In this, the Sabbath-school furnishes just what is demanded. In the Sabbath meeting no one is obliged to sit listlessly during the service while the minister and a few of the congregation bear their testimony. Every one may have a part to act.

But right here two most important qualities must be considered; namely, 1. The exercises should be of such a character as to accomplish the greatest good by imparting the best instruction upon the most appropriate topics; and, 2. They should be so planned and executed as to create and maintain an ever-increasing interest in the minds of the pupils.

The first of these qualities will be looked for chiefly in the lessons written for study; therefore, in deciding upon subjects to be presented, the number of lessons to be devoted to each subject, and the general character of each lesson, careful thought and earnest prayer should be exercised, and the wisest counsel sought. It is our opinion that while Sabbath-school scholars should be thoroughly instructed in the great doctrinal truths specially applicable to the present time, yet great care should be taken that the doctrinal framework be well joined, filled, and covered with the priceless, practical material found in the history of the life and teachings of the world’s Redeemer, the “author and finisher of our faith.” The lessons should be of such a nature as to enable the teacher to lead the pupil to Christ. It is a good thing to commit to memory his precious words. The plan of redemption, the great love of the Father, who gave his only begotten Son to die for us, the infinite sacrifice which Christ has made for our salvation, his rich lessons to guide us in every-day life, the “old, old story” of the cross, the work of Jesus as our Advocate at the right hand of God, and the glorious truth that he is about to come to earth again, to give life to his faithful ones, are themes which are full of interest, and which will find their way to the heart that is not hopelessly closed to everything good.

The second essential quality may be secured by a proper connection of subjects, by devoting enough and not too many lessons to each, and lastly, by the hearty co-operation of superintendents, teachers, and pupils, who have the interests of the school at heart. Of this we cannot now speak further.

In view of the foregoing, and from a belief that our Sabbath-schools are feeling the need of such a change, we would recommend that the subject at present being studied from the lesson leaves be closed up as soon as practicable, and that leaves be issued bearing lessons upon the following subjects, the number of lessons being indicated at the right:—

CHRIST.

His glory with the Father before the world was, 1
Association with the Father in the Creation of the Worlds, 2
The Plan of Redemption, 3
Leader of the Israelites, 1
His First Advent Foretold, 2
His Birth and Childhood, 1
His Baptism and the Temptation, 2
His Miracles and Teachings, 10
His Oneness with the Father, 2
His Betrayal, Sufferings, Crucifixion, and Resurrection, 2

Our Advocate, 2
His Second Coming Foretold, 2
When Expected, 5
Our Preparation, 5

Interwoven with each lesson, should be some direct appeal to the heart, based upon thoughts suggested by the lesson.

Praying that God may bless in the study of these touching themes, the Committee would respectfully submit the foregoing, while the subject of lessons for the younger scholars will be considered in a future article.

C. W. STONE, S. BROWNSBERGER, Wm. C. GAGE, } Committee.

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