Earlier text: OUR FAITH AND HOPE;Shining Christians.
By O. A. K.
Christ's injunction is: “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in Heaven.” Undoubtedly there is some measure of light in every true child of God. In every one who is a true believer in Jesus, there is light in proportion to his faith. The spark may be very feeble, just on the point of extinction perhaps; it is hidden under a pile of worldliness, or narrowness, or spiritual indolence; but it still glimmers. Rake open the coals, remove the ashes, and you can find that feeble spark. But this certainly is not the kind of Christian character that Christ had in view in uttering this injunction. Men will not take pains to see whether you are a Christian or not. They will not search for the feeble spark to see whether it burns, or has gone out. And, in a measure, they are right. Christ says to his followers, “Let your light so shine that men may see your good works.” You must fan the flame of your faith, love, and devotion, till it blazes up so brightly that men cannot fail to see that your religion is worth something; “that men may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in Heaven.” There are several ways in which this light, while it does exist, may be so obscured that men cannot see it. 1. A lack of Christian courtesy sometimes obscures the light. In dealing with men, our manners are by no means unimportant. Indeed, they have a very great effect oftentimes. Religion ought to sweeten and soften the whole man. A Christian ought to be a polite man; not necessarily with the airs and graces of mere fashionable society, but certainly with genuine heart-politeness. And yet it is to be feared that sometimes the light of Christian love is hidden under the bushel of a stern, forbidding, harsh exterior; and so men are not attracted to religion, but rather repelled from it. 2. Worldliness hides very completely this Christian light. So many of those who profess themselves Christ's, seem so absorbed in the things of this earth, in its “buying, and selling, and getting gain,” that men in general cannot always tell the difference between a Christian and one who makes no claims to the name. So many who profess to have this light shining within them, seem to be just as much occupied with earthly cares, earth's ambitions, cares, jealousies, joys, sorrows, achievements, as is any one else; and so their light does not shine out for men to see their good works. Only by careful scrutiny can it be determined that the light does shine. 3. Parsimon y obscures the light. I have reference here to this failing as it concerns Christian beneficence. Men reason in this way: “Here is one who professes to be a child of God, ‘bought with a price;’ a servant of God; a steward administering those things with which he has been put in trust, and yet see how slow he is to recognize the claims of a perishing world upon him; see how little he gives to the support and diffusion of the gospel.” This is a right method of reasoning; this is sound logic. There are far too many who call it forth. And they are most certainly obscuring the light. 4. Indolence is another way in which Christian light is obscured. And it is far too common. Many a man is known as a Christian, simply because his name is on the church-roll, and he is seen from time to time at the communion-table. He is not known as a Christian because of any work that he does. He is not seen in the prayer-meeting, or the Sabbath-school. His principle seems to be to get all he can, but to do correspondingly little in the line of religious activity. He woefully obscures the light of Christian example. Men certainly see no “good works” of his portraying, and hence are not led to glorify the Father in Heaven. 5. Another thing that obscures Christian light—and it is a fundamental thing—is a low tone of piety. You may have a strong, bright flame, but so shut in that it cannot beam forth. Remove the obstructions, and the light shines. But when you have only a feeble flame you cannot have much radiance. Just here is the trouble in the case of most Christians, the flame of piety is not strong enough, and so of course, there is not much shining. We look at such a life as that of Henry Martyn, and see that it was its devotion, its deep spirituality that made it so effective. The light burned with such intensity that the candle soon sunk into the socket, entirely consumed. But what a glorious radiance beamed from it! Its shining is not done yet. Just in the proportion that a high tone of piety makes the light shine, just in that proportion does a low tone obscure it. Hence the need of complete consecration, of entire devotion, that the light may shine brilliantly, and men “may see our good works, and glorify our Father which is in Heaven.” Would that there were more, not simply of Christians, such as shall be saved “yet so as by fire,” but of SHINING CHRISTIANS. Shall you and I let our light shine?—O. A. K., in Am. Messenger. Dr. Smollett’s Guinea.
By E. A. A.
DR. SMOLLETT, the celebrated physician and writer, was once solicited by a wretched-looking beggar to give him a shilling. By mistake, the doctor handed him a guinea. The beggar turned away, but soon discovered the error. He hobbled back, and returned the guinea. Dr. Smollett was so pleased with the man’s honesty, that he gave him another guinea, saying as he did so, “What a lodging honesty has taken up with! I would rather be that man than a dishonest king,” It pleases God to see us honest. If you always live in the fear of God, a blessing will attend you. We must not think that, because nobody is near, we can do wrong and not be wicked. Said a little boy who had gone with his father to steal corn, after they had looked all around,—“Father, you did not look up.” The father did not steal any corn that day. God help you always to look up, and do always only those things which are pleasing in his sight.—E. A. A. The Last Day to the Christian.
WHEN the last day of this dispensation shall arrive, the last tear that you will shed over sin will then be wiped away. You are now blessed in your mourning upon earth; then and at that day you will be comforted forever; for God will wipe away all tears from all eyes, and there shall be no more weeping, or crying, or sorrow. At that day the last doubt shall have gone from your minds like a passing cloud from the sky; the last suspicion of the love of Him whom having not seen, ye love, will be dissipated forever; the glass through which you now see darkly will be broken; and those mysterious dispensations that you cannot understand; that cross, the load and pressure of which you are unable to bear, you will then and there discover to have been messengers from God, reasoning of righteousness, and temperance, and judgment; and that there was as great a need be that you should have gone through that baptism of sorrow, as there was that Christ should have died upon the cross, or that you should have been washed in his precious blood. You will then discover that your bitterest cup was your most precious one; that your darkest and dreariest night was that in which you grew most; and that the roughest road, and the heaviest storm, and the most crooked way, which seemed to you to be leading you off from the promised Canaan, was the nearest route to the everlasting rest that remaineth for the people of God. You will find, what you feel now, that the bud had a bitter taste; but you will then discover, as you have not yet, that sweet indeed is the flower. At that last day, the last sacrament of the Lord's Supper will be ministered. You will need no Bible there; for all space is radiant with its texts, and texts ten thousand times more precious still. You will need no sacrament of the Lord's Supper then; for you did it in remembrance of One who was not present bodily on earth, and in expectation of the advent of One who is not yet come into the earth. But then there will be no remembrance of Him, for He is present; there will be no more expectation of Him, for He is come. The sun is risen, the morning star is not wanted, the substance is present, the shadow is not needed; the temple has had its last cope-stone and corner-stone laid upon it, the scaffold must now be taken down and put away forever. In that day the last promise will be fulfilled, the last prophecy will be realized; what is now prospect to your hearts will then be possession—and what a possession! A possession exceeding all prospect, transcending all expectation; till you say, as she of Sheba said of Solomon's grandeur, “Half the glory and excellence of that blessed land was not told us by prophet, by apostle, or by evangelist.” The streams are sweet; but how sweet will be the fountain! The bread of our Father's house as it is distributed in crumbs is now precious, but how precious will be bread eaten in his own presence; where “they shall hunger no more, nor thirst any more, neither shall the sun light upon them, nor shall there be any heat!” The last toil, and struggle, and labor, of which you have now the bitter and tearful experience, will have passed away. The march of duty will be finished, the journey of life will be done, your days and nights of weariness will be ended, you shall enter into rest. “You rest from your labors, and your works do follow you.” When one thinks of all the tribulations, the sorrows, the trials, the distresses, the sicknesses, the pestilences, the plagues, the famines, the battles, amid which, as amid the waves of a stormy sea, thousands every day are struggling for a precarious existence, we cannot but hail the prospect, and pray for the joyous advent of that day, when the hopes of the humblest believer shall be realized, and this tangled web shall be unravelled, and these perplexing struggles, and toils, and trials shall be ended; and we shall hear the words—richer, sweeter, deeper, than the sweetest strains that ever angels sung,—“Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” And when that day comes, those we parted with on earth, to see no more amid its busy scenes, its trials, and its troubles, to sympathize with us as we suffered, or to strengthen us in the battle of life, shall emerge again from the shadow of the grave. Countenances long hid shall have all the darkness rolled away; voices long silent shall be heard again; broken circles completed; once happy groups more happy than they ever were before. For at that day, when all things old shall pass away and all things new shall begin,
“There shall be no more farewells to the dying,
Or mournings for the dead;
The heart of Rachel, for her children crying,
Will then be comforted.”—Dr. Cumming. THE Detroit Post in enumerating the events of the past year says: Another event, which, from its very importance, requires no elaborate treatment, is the meeting of the Ecumenical Council and the decree of infallibility which it promulgated in July. It is one of those transactions in history which cannot be limited to any annual statement, but which spread far and wide, before their limits can be described or defined. It is enough to say, that since the pope was voted to be the infallible ruler of the world, and the vicegerent of the Almighty, he has lost every foot of his temporal possessions; the concordats which bound his interests to the civil governments of Austria and France have been severed; and the Pontifical Sovereignty now rests, as it ought, upon the spiritual and moral government of the Head of the Church. Having thus reviewed the events which nobody has forgotten, let us briefly glance at those of less prominence, and which perhaps characterize the year quite as much as those we have been considering, because, humanly speaking, they have been completed, and may be laid away in the archives of memory as of no further use except to the historian and antiquary. Man and nature have combined to mark it as a year of great destruction. The inharmonies of both have contrived to set the whole earth reeling with clash and conflict. Mexico and California have been upheaved by earthquakes. China, and Thibet, and Italy, have been tossed about like waves of the sea by the convulsions beneath, and many lives were destroyed in both of those countries during the month of October alone. The storms upon the Indian Ocean have been of such unusual violence as to severely injure the “Eastern trade” of England. The wrecks that have strewn the British coast testify to an extraordinary year of disaster in those stormy seas. The Gulf of Mexico was ravaged only two months ago with two terrible storms which destroyed scores of vessels and hundreds of human lives. Twice have Cuba and adjacent islands been prostrated with hurricanes destroying more than a thousand lives and many million dollars’ worth of property. In addition to the ordinary fires, which we presume do not differ in number or in the extent of the loss, from those which occurred in other years, there were fierce conflagrations, destroying a third of the city of Constantinople, consuming vast tracts of forest in Canada and New York, and seizing upon human victims as sacrifices to the god whom the Persians worship. On sea and land the recklessness and ignorance of men or their weakness in presence of Nature when aroused and angry, have furnished the average number, we presume, of railroad casualties, of shipwrecks, and explosions. But there were four maritime disasters demanding special remembrance; the loss of the United States naval steamer Oneida in Japanese waters, sunk by the British steamer Bombay, in January; that of the City of Boston, wrecked early in the year; of the British iron-clad Captain, which went down off Cape Finisterre on the 7th of September, with five hundred persons on board of her, who were all lost; and of the Cambria, wrecked off the coast of Ireland on the 19th of October. In these four vessels more than one thousand people perished. When we add to the destruction wrought by nature the loss which human nature has inflicted, in Cuba, in South America, and in the pleasant land of France, it is hardly extravagant to say that the property thus swept out of existence will scarcely be replaced by the labor of the world for the next ten years. The Chinese have massacred the Christians in China, and the Christians have massacred the Chinese in California. The Judgment Hastens.
By J. Cross
MULTITUDES of honest Christian people are in error concerning the nearness, the nature, and the duration, of the day of Judgment. It is generally placed far in the unknown future, and regarded as a mere judicial proceeding, similar to that of an earthly tribunal, begun and ended in a day. And the blind guides teach their willing hearers and readers that the world is destined, by a gradual improvement, under gracious spiritual influences and higher forms of civilization, to glide into the kingdom of Christ; and that the earth, by the constant increase and diffusion of gospel light, converting the nations to Christianity, is to be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. And the blindly-guided love to be deluded by such soothing strains, forgetting the Master's warning of the midnight approach and the startling summons; and they will not believe that the nations are ripening for doom, and that treasures of wrath are accumulating against the dreadful day; nor can they understand that Antichrist and infidelity must perish in storms of mingled fire and blood, and all tyrannous thrones of men go down in an earthquake such as never yet rocked the globe, before the full establishment of Immanuel's universal and everlasting reign. And shall we continue to charm the popular ear with songs of millennial joys, when the Judge is even now at the door? Shall we still congratulate the Church on her prospective gentle transition into the Canaan of perfect peace and righteousness, while there are seas of blood and continents of flame between her and the promised land? Shall we talk of long ages of tranquillity and triumph on this miserable earth, where Satan reigns supreme and sin riots in unlimited license, while the dire prelude of vengeance is thundering over the nations, and the signal-trump of Armageddon is summoning them to the last conflict? Awake, awake, ye heralds of my God, and let the warning thrill the drowsy world—“Fear God, and give glory to him, for the hour of his judgment is come!” The omens are everywhere—natural omens, and political omens, and ecclesiastical omens—omens commercial, and omens mechanical, and omens scientific and literary—omens in the heavens above, and on the earth beneath—in the air, and on the sea; the Moslem trembles for his approaching doom; and the hoary Mystagogue of the seven hills reels blindly toward the brink of the unsounded gulf; and men's hearts are failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth; and falling thrones, and dissolving empires, and revolution threatening all rule, and Anarchy with crimsoned hands and clotted hair shrieking through the visioned future, and all are heralding Him “who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom.”—J. CROSS, D. D., in Banner of the Church. W. G. Schauffler draws the following interesting reflections on the tenderness which Jesus manifested over human suffering:— “Jesus wept over the woes of a single city; and do you think that he never wept over the woes of a world? He wept in public, where he certainly would have restrained his feelings as much as possible; and do you not think he wept in secret? Could we lift the sacred veil of his solitary hours, of his seasons of retirement while an obscure workman at Nazareth; of his forty days’ fasting and prayer in the wilderness; of his vigils on the mountain top and in the desert,—what prayers! what intercessions! what tears! what tender and heavenly sympathies with the sorrows and woes of humanity, would come to light! His affections were not limited to Judea; he did not love those merely who loved him. He wept at the grave of Lazarus, and over the distress of Martha and Mary; and why not over the great congregation of the dead of a hundred and thirty generations past, and over all the broken hearts of widows and orphans from the beginning of the world? Why not over the distresses of all the sick, the delirium of the deranged, the agonies of the dying? Do you not see why he went about with restless assiduity to console, to comfort, to bind up broken hearts, raising the dead, curing and cleansing and restoring men to the enjoyment of health, sight, hearing, and reason? How could he do otherwise, with a heart like his? He would have done so, though no man would have believed in him on that account, or returned to him a grateful word or look.” I FEEL all that I know and all that I teach will do nothing for my soul if I spend my time, as some people do, in business or company. My soul starves to death in the best company, and God is often lost in prayers and ordinances. “Enter into thy closet,” said he, and “shut thy door.” Some words in Scripture are very emphatical. “Shut thy door” means much: it means, shut out not only nonsense, but business; not only the company abroad, but the company at home; it means, let thy poor soul have a little rest and refreshment, and God have opportunity to speak to thee in a still, small voice, or he will speak to thee in thunder.—Cecil. Live a Holy Life and Go and See
JOHN BUNYAN was once asked a question about Heaven which he could not answer, because the matter was not revealed in the Scriptures, and he thereupon advised the inquirer to live a holy life, and go and see. Many professed expositors of the prophecies, are racking their inventive powers over recent events in Europe, to make many declarations of the prophecies, the application of which has heretofore been considered settled, apply to the present Franco-Prussian conflict. This conflict, it is true, is a startling one; the revolution that has been accomplished is tremendous, both in the suddenness of its execution, and the extent of its effects; and it is natural that the inquiry should be raised as to what place it occupies in the prophetic chain, and what bearing it has on the fulfillment of the word of God. But we should not allow ourselves to be so carried away with the excitement of these scenes as to rashly unsettle all past expositions, in order to find prophecies adequate, in our estimation, to the magnitude of the present crisis. There are many prophecies which have been thoroughly studied in less exciting times than these; and an application of them has been carefully and judiciously made in the light of history. These applications have all along, at least till more recent years, been considered as correct and final. But some at present seem to be governed but slightly by these established landmarks; a tendency is manifested by them to concentrate everything upon the present; a striking event transpiring before their own eyes, startles them out of all exegetical propriety; and they immediately tear up all the past, and overwhelm the present actors in the drama of history, with declarations of prophecy, which have heretofore been considered as applying to other actors and other scenes. A well-connected chain of fulfilled prophecy in the past, seems to them of no account, if by any means they can make capital out of the material, for a present sensation. As the reader may readily guess, Napoleon III. comes in for a large share of these false applications. He is about the worst abused man in this respect, that has ever lived, the most thoroughly abused of any one now on the stage of action. It makes the head whirl to think what, according to these expositors, the poor fellow is, and staggers the imagination to try to comprehend what he is not. He is the Man of Sin, the Antichrist, the destined monarch of the world, the prince of the covenant, the little horn of Dan. 7, the little horn of Dan. 8, the beast whose number is 666, the head of the beast that was wounded to death, the “vile person” of Dan. 11: 21, the subject of the last 25 verses of Dan. 11 entire, and how much more, we have not been able to sufficiently control our patience to inquire. These positions, and perhaps more, are asserted in a little publication now before us, entitled “The Alarm Bell,” a document more calculated to excite alarm as to the sanity of the author, than in reference to the events which he predicts as soon to transpire. Is Napoleon a head of the beast? Is such an application possible? The ten horns of the Roman beast of the seventh of Daniel represent the ten kingdoms that arose out of the old Roman empire. France was one of them. The same empire is represented by symbols, in Revelation, which have seven heads and ten horns, the horns in this case representing precisely the same kingdoms as the horns in the first. France is one of these horns. One of the heads of the beast as presented in Revelation, was wounded to death. Is that also France? In other words, is France at the same time both a horn and a head? When a head of John's beast was wounded to death, was a horn of Daniel's beast knocked off? Did either John or Daniel see any of their symbols made into a chowder as if run into by a lightning express train, at the rate of sixty miles an hour? Patience with such expositions ceases to be a virtue. Again: Those who make France a head of the beast, have the wounding of that head fulfilled in the fall of the first Napoleon; and the healing accomplished in the coronation of Napoleon III. But lo! Napoleon III. has fallen; and now they have an excellent opportunity for another application—so excellent they cannot resist the temptation; so here goes: The fall of Napoleon III. is a “second fulfillment” of the deadly wound; for such an application they openly contend, and do not even blush. But has the prophecy anywhere spoken of a second wounding, making a “second fulfillment” necessary? Not an intimation of the kind. Thus prophecy is manufactured, when it is lacking, suppressed when there is too much, and stretched and perverted in any other manner necessary, to suit the phantasms of their own brains. Of the absurdity of making the little horn of Dan. 7, identical with that of Dan. 8, of applying the last twenty-five verses of Dan. 11, to one man, making the king of France the prince of the covenant, and a dozen other things in this medley, we need not speak to any intelligent reader. With respect to the seven heads of the beast, they have always been supposed to denote the seven forms of government that successively appeared in the Roman empire, the seventh and last being the papal, which was wounded to death in 1798. No valid objection has yet been urged against this application; we can offer it without seeming to have lost our senses; then why not let it stand? But has the present war, then, no significance as viewed in the light of prophecy? Undoubtedly it has; but we think this is secondary rather than primary, remote rather than direct; that is, that its significance pertains to other powers more than to the ones immediately engaged in the conflict. The prostration of France has the effect to fulfill prophecy, or prepare the way for its fulfillment, in two important particulars: 1. It has taken out the last prop of the pope's secular power, and caused the entire consumption of his temporal dominion. 2. It has prepared the way for the overthrow of the Turkish empire. For France is an essential member in the coalition formed to maintain the integrity of that empire; and the revolution which has rendered France unable to interfere in eastern affairs, has had such an effect on other nations, that they are unable to do anything without her co-operation. This state of things could not have been brought about in any other way so rapidly and effectually, as by the overthrow of France. But the loss of the pope's power, and the destruction of the Turkish empire, are marked events to occur at the very close of this dispensation. The present war is leading directly to these results. Has it not therefore significance enough, although its actors may not be personally brought to view on the inspired page? Does it help the matter to bury them beneath a heterogeneous mass of perverted prophecies? The Political Corruption of Our Nation.
There is no surer precursor of ruin, than corruption. It is like the hectic flush on the cheek of the doomed consumptive. When moral principle is lost by the rulers of a people, when those in high places of responsibility and power, cease to regard justice, righteousness, and truth, the stability of that nation is gone. Anarchy and ruin will speedily make it their prey. All history attests this; and our own government may not expect to follow in the steps of past nations as they sunk into vice and corruption, without sharing their fate. According to the present aspect of affairs, we could not expect this nation much longer to remain peaceful and united, did not prophecy indicate that it will continue as a unit till the end. But this does not prove that the government can long continue; it only proves that the end is very near. The disgusting objects that occasionally come to the surface on the agitated sea of political strife, only reveal the corruption that exists in the foul depths below. The papers severely comment upon these abuses, and are supposed to be exaggerating; but the half is not told. Astonishing disclosures have been made since the resignation of Secretary Cox; on which the Nation says:— “The newspapers are generally believed to exaggerate most of the abuses they denounce; but we say, deliberately that no denunciation of the condition of the civil service of the United States which has ever appeared in print has come up, as a picture of selfishness, greed, fraud, corruption, falsehood, and cruelty, to the accounts which are given privately by those who have seen the real workings of the machine.” In connection with this, look at the following picture of the state of things in N. Y. City. A late New York daily says:— “The Rev. D. C. Crawford, D. D., preached last evening at the West Eighteenth street Methodist church on ‘Political Reform,’ from 1 Sam. 9:6, ‘And he said unto him, Behold now there is in this city a man of God, and he is an honorable man.’” “This city is governed by a cabal called the ‘Ring,’ which is in turn controlled by all the thieves, murderers, rum-sellers, rum-drinkers, blacklegs, and keepers of houses of infamy, within the city limits. They say to this Ring, ‘Put in nomination for office such men as we want, or we won’t vote for them.’ The Ring obeys the commands of this ruffian rabble—this detestable ‘riff-raff’—and what is the result upon that most important branch of the government, the judiciary? It has become corrupt, and the ermine has fallen on the shoulders of men before whom it is impossible to secure the conviction of the most notorious criminal.” And these exhibitions of corruption are not the freaks of some individual political monster, but the organized workings of the different parties. For instance, it has come to be the practice of political managers, to make an assessment upon all those holding office under the party, of a certain rate per cent upon their salaries, in order to raise money to promote the interests of the party, and keep it in power. And this assessment is made, not on the legitimate amount of their salary, only, but on the amount, also, which it is calculated they will steal! Think of that! This fact comes to light in the correspondence given below. A person whose salary was $6,000, was called upon for $1,000 for party purposes, it being an assessment of 2 per cent upon $50,000; that is, upon the $6,000 legitimate salary, and $44,000 stealings! Thus they proclaim themselves an organized company of thieves, as verily as the lowest combination of villains, who make it their business to purloin goods from the shops of our cities. If history furnishes a parallel to such practices in any nation claiming a position in the social scale above semi-barbarism, we should be glad to learn it. “In the Nation for November, 17th, there is published what that paper very properly declares to be, one of the most singular bits of correspondence ever laid before a civilized public. It has long been usual for the party in power to procure funds to defray election expenses by assessment on the salaries of those in office. But the correspondence from which we give the extracts below presents the agents of the Republican party as levying this assessment, not only on the lawful salary of the incumbent, but on the supposed amount of his stealings. Thus, the salary of Gen. Francis Barlow, of New York, was $6,000. This was all that an honest man could make out of the place, though others have made out of it as much as $50,000; and in political circles, this was understood to be the value of the office. Last year, before the time of election, the General received the usual printed circular calling for money towards the party expenses, the blank space for the amount being filled with the words, ‘$1,000 for yourself and subordinates.’ The General, in his reply, says:— “I presume this amount was fixed upon, under the impression that this office was very lucrative to me and my deputies. My income from this office can by no possibility exceed $6,000. The general rate of assessment on salaries I understand to be two per cent, and I enclose my check for $120, being at that rate. Whether in or out of office, I am desirous of contributing whatever I can afford to the necessary and proper expenses of the party, and I regret that I can now only afford to give this amount. “As to my deputies, they must each contribute such amounts as they feel able to do. I cannot impose it upon them as a duty, and I cannot undertake to collect anything from them. I have submitted the communication to my subordinates, and you will no doubt hear from them.
Yours, etc., FRANCIS C. BARLOW.
United States Marshal.” “This check for $120, was returned to General Barlow, with the statement that the assessments made on government officials were not made on a basis of two per cent on their salaries, but on the ascertained income of their respective offices. General Barlow, in his reply, says:— “You speak of the “ascertained value of my office,” as distinguished from its salary, which is only $6,000. I do not know from where you ascertained its income; but I do know that whoever has received more from it than $6,000 per annum has not received it honestly. I should be sorry to believe that dishonest gains of public officers were so recognized and accepted as matters of course, that they are made the basis of expected contributions,” and adds, “The check for $120 is at the service of the committee if they feel that they can accept it.” This last letter was returned to the writer without observation, and the check never called for.” All honor to Francis C. Barlow, the man who stood up against such political rottenness, and refused to barter his honor for his office! But what a state of things does this reveal! Does not the prophet’s description apply here: “The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it, but wounds and bruises and putrifying sores”? And what is the threatening against such a state of things? A country desolate, cities burned with fire, and for the evil doers, the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah.