AMONG the veterans present at the Presbyterian General Assembly, recently held in Scotland, were Dr. Richard Steele, of Auburn, aged 84; Dr. W. S. Plummer, aged 80; and Mr. Robert Carter, of this city, aged 76.

THE Catholic World exults in the growth of Romanism in the very home of Puritanism: "New England promises to be the first portion of the country which is likely to become distinctively Roman Catholic. The immigration into New England is small, but is composed mostly of Catholics; the increase of population is very largely Catholic; the emigration is almost entirely non-Catholic."

THE large lecture - room of the Wesley Monumental Methodist Episcopal Church, South, at Savannah, Ga., was opened for the use of the congregation on Sunday, May 12.

Ir is the custom in the Presbyterian Churches of Pittsburg for the congregations to stand during prayer with folded arms, raised heads, and open eyes, gazing directly at the speaker. On a recent Sunday in one of these churches the Rev. Dr. Junkin, in making the long prayer, used the words, "We are guilty-guilty-guilty!" An Eastern clergyman, who was also occupying the pulpit, and who tells the incident, felt a curiosity to see if the congregation responded to the confession, and uncovered his own eyes. At the first "guilty," he says, the heads were still erect; at the second, they scarcely moved; but at the third, as though by a common impulse, every head was bowed.

PROFESSOR MAX MULLER on April 25th delivered the first of a series of weekly lectures on "The Origin and Growth of Religion, as illustrated by the Religions of India." Mr. Robert Hibbert, a gentleman of property, a Unitarian in faith, who died in 1849, directed in his will that, after the death of his wife, $5,000 a year should be devoted to "the promotion of comprehensive learning, and thorough research in regard to religion, as it appears to the eye of the scholar and philosopher, and wholly apart from the interest of any particular Church or system." The trustees of the fund, by the advice of a number of well-known scholars, have instituted lectureship, and invited Professor Müller to deliver the first course. The use of the Chapter House, in Westminster Abbey, famous as the place in which the first English Parliament met, has been given for the lectures. Tickets

of admission are furnished gratuitously on application. The desire to be present is extensive, and as the Chapter House seats only about seven hundred, each lecture is delivered at half-past eleven in the morning and at five in the afternoon. On the above date the room was full to overflowing; many carriages with coronets were at the entrance, and the audience included a number of famous people in the Church, in society, in literature, and art. The subject was "The Perception of the Infinite." The lecture was an enlargement of a definition of religion, as "a mental faculty which, independently of sense and reason, enables man to apprehend the Infinite under different names and many disguises."

MISSION NOTES.

THE Advocate of Missions is a live, large-size, four-page paper, published at Richmond, Va., by Rev. S. A. Steel, at seventy-five cents a year, and devoted to the missionary work of the M. E. Church South." Its first number of Vol. I. appeared in October last. Its spirit and aim may be inferred from such editorials as these:

"Don't be ashamed to be earnest about missions. Moral earnestness is the grandest thing in the world." "The work of Missions is the work of the Christian Church. Its importance is paramount. It ought to take, if not the precedence, at least equal rank with the work at home. We ought to give as much to it and pray as earnestly for it."

"Long traces will balk any team. We must get the power nearer the load. The work of Missions must be pressed home to the hearts of the people."

"What would be the effect of $300,000,000 spent annually for the conversion of the heathen? And why should the Christian world not give that amount? The Churches of Christendom are able to do it."

A little more clear knowledge of Missions and missionaries, where they are, who they are, what they are doing, whom they are trying to help, how they are doing it, would do more to aid the Foreign Mission cause than all the hymns, addresses, reports of allopathic excitements now used in the lethargic body of the societies, tearful appeals, ad captandum speeches and other

Church."

If any one fancies $300,000,000 a year for Foreign Misit with the mere cost of war, in blood and treasure. sions is beyond the ability of Christendom, let him contrast Carefully compiled statistics of the cost of war from 1853 to 1877-twenty-five years-excluding the frightful slaughter and expense of the late Turko-Russian war, foots up as follows, viz.: Killed in battle or died of wounds and disease, 1,950,000; cost, £2,413,000,000, or $12,060,000,000. These figures divided by the years (25), give 78,000 lives and $482,000,000 as the annual cost of war, to Christendom, the past twenty-five years. Add to this the annual cost of intoxicating drinks in the United States alone, viz., Let the re$700,000,000, and we have $1,182,000,000. sources of Christendom be turned from slaughter and drunkenness to promoting the highest welfare of the ignorant, superstitious and degraded, and how soon the world might be evangelized.

South Pacific, instead of being a charge to the Society, THE Wesleyan Mission to the Friendly Islands, in the now contributes $10,000 a year to its treasury. Freely they have received, and now as freely they are giving in

return.

A NATIVE Georgian in Asia, named Pauloff, who was trained by Rev. Dr. Oncken, the venerable Baptist missionary of Hamburg, is carrying on an encouraging mission in the Caucasus, on the borders of the Caspian Sea.

THE REV. S. G. McFarland, for eighteen years a missionary in Siam, and who with his family recently visited this country, has been tendered a position under the Siamese Government, to organize a system of popular education.

MR. MCALL, and several others under his direction, are carrying on an important mission among the ouvriers, or laboring men of Paris. During the past year four preach

Not less than 5,100 meetings have been held, attended by over 460,000 persons.

one.

THE Governor of Bombay, India, presided recently at a meeting connected with the mission of the Free Church of Scotland in Bombay, and made a speech in which he referred to the value of such institutions, and paid a glowing tribute to the good work of men like Dr. Duff, Dr. Hislop, Dr. Anderson, and the late Dr. Wilson.

A MISSIONARY of the American Sunday-school Union in Wisconsin, who has spent about nine months on his new field of labor, reports these results, in part: Organized, 15 new schools; visited and aided by donation, 18 schools ; aided otherwise, 70; addresses, 37; other public addresses not included; families visited, 537; Bibles and Testaments donated, 302; supplies to destitute schools amounting to $42.45; sales of books and papers, $63.40. He has also held many meetings in regions where Sunday-schools are lightly esteemed even by the churches, and where Winter Sunday-schools are held only in villages.

Y. M. C. A..NOTES.

THE anniversary of the London Y. M. C. A. was, as is usual, an occasion of enthusiastic interest to the great audience who crowded Exeter Hall. Geo. Williams, Esq., the originator of the Society, whose visit to this country in 1876 endeared him to the members of our Associations, presided. The report presented by Mr. Shipton, the Secretary, was full of encouragement as to the varied phases of the work of this efficient Society. It now numbers 5,639 members, who are encouraged to engage in the various fields of Christian effort in the great city; such as prayer-meetings, Sunday-schools, ragged-schools, night-schools, Bands of Hope, and open-air preaching. It accomplishes a great deal in stimulating and encouraging work for young men in different parts of the kingdom, and even in establishing kin

dred Associations in foreign countries. The report referred to the spread of the movement in Sweden and Turkey, and mentioned the formation of one in Jerusalem called "The Lily of Zion." Addresses were delivered by S. Morley, M.P., T. A. Denny, Esq., and Rev. Dr. MacEwan, of Trinity Presbyterian Church, Clapham Road, London.

Rockford, Ill., we learn that the Association is in a very

FROM the second annual report of the Y. M. C. A. of

prosperous condition. The public exercises were largely attended, and the reports of the officers were full of encouragement.

UNTO HIM.

MR. WILLIAM B. ASTOR has recently given $200 toward the erection of a Protestant Episcopal Church at Orange Park, Fla.

MR. HARTSON, of Poland, N. Y., has given $5,000 to construct a tabernacle on the Chautauqua grounds, and it is expected that by July 1st the building, accommodating 3,000 persons, will be completed.

THE will of the late Charlotte Harrison, of Orange, N. J.,

bequeaths $2,000 to the Orange Orphan Asylum; $5,000 to the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society; $1,000 to the New York Bible and Common Prayer Book Society; $1,500 to St. Mark's Church, Orange; and $6,000 to the American Church Missionary Society. The residue of the estate, valued in all at $30,000, is to be divided equally between the Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church of New Jersey and the Domestic Committee of the Church.

THE late Thomas Fatzinger, of Waterloo, N. Y., left $1,000 to Hobart College, Geneva, N. Y.; $2,000 to the Protestant Episcopal Diocese of Central New York; $1,000 to the Diocese of Western New York; $1,500 to the Protestant Episcopal Domestic and Foreign Missions, and $1,000 to St. John's School, Manlius, N. Y.

'GOOD-NATURED.

VERY few epithets have been more misapplied than this word, "good-nature." It may be serviceable to examine some cases where this word is misused, but it is important that, in advance, we settle what the word ought to mear.

What kind of a nature is a good nature? We may answer that it is certainly not a weak nature. Weakness is not good, and goodness is not weak. When we come to speak of a man, he may be weak in some particulars, but if he be a good man, he is not good in those particulars in which he is weak; he is good in spite of them.

Goodness implies health of spirit. A man is a good man who does right from the impulses of his soul guided by his intelligence. The greater a man's intellect, and the greater his culture, the better it is possible for a man to be. He is not good because of that intellect, nor because of that culture; but, if his soul be healthy, he is all the better man for the healthy intellect.

A good nature is a nature that loves high principles and right modes of living. A good nature grows stronger and stronger. Certainly, all that is what ought to be meant whenever we employ the phrase "good-natured." Now how do we employ it? Let us see.

Washington Irving first gave us in English the character of Rip Van Winkle, which had appeared originally in Spanish. It has been successfully presented upon the stage, has drawn tears from many an eye, and created pity for the poor, shiftless drunkard of the Catskills. Rip Van Winkle was no thief, no liar, not quarrelsome, not troublesome to his neighbors. He was a fair specimen of what thousands of people would call a good-natured, good-for-nothing fellow. But is a "good-natured" man "good for

nothing?" Can there be anything better than a specimen of good human nature? A good-natured man is a man who reflects God from the mirror of human nature. In proportion as a man is good he is like God. Now, wherein was Rip Van Winkle god-like? Wherein was he strong? Wherein was he helpful to his fellowmen? A good-natured man is the best thing on the face of the earth. He is better than good bread, better than good meat, better than good water, better than a good picture, even better than a good horse.

And yet, ordinarily, are not people who are considered goodnatured, on the whole, worthless? Perhaps you may not be able to go the length of answering that question in the affirmative; but you must perceive that this description is given of many a man who is of no worth to the world except as people can impose upon him. Worthless tramps and designing beggars find out so-called good-natured men, and impose upon them. Good-natured men are the cat'spaws with which the monkeys of mischief pull their hot chestnuts from the glowing coals. "Good-natured men," as they are called, never set their faces like flint against an evil; never oppose wickedness in high places; never try to lift up those who have fallen. They just let the world wag on, eat their meals, take their ease, and care nothing for the world's past or the world's future.

Here is a man who is married, and has children. He never curses; he never rages through the house; he never storms at wife or child; he says "yes" a hundred times where he says "no" once. He never opposes anything. If his children want to eat rats or ratsbane, he lets them. If all there is in the house be spent at once, he lets it go. He does not whine around his family in regard to the probable wants of to-morrow. No: "he is such &

good-natured fellow," is so easy; he will do anything you want him to do. If he has five dollars, and his children are barefooted, he will let you have it, and let them go without shoes. He makes no attempt to provide for his wife and children. He is in good health, and yet allows his wife to support him. And there are people who will know that the man has gone one whole month eating the bread his wife has earned-not attempting to do anything for her support-and they call him good-natured.

Now that, sweet, gentle, smiling, complaisant, good-natured gentleman is a scoundrel to the core of his existence. He is much worse than the man who rips and roars and rages in a storm of sudden passion, but who is honest in all his dealings, faithful in the discharge of all his duties, laborious, exacting and conscientious in meeting all his obligations. This latter man is judged by the outward exhibitions which are unpleasant to those about him, and not by that stern and noble quality which marks his manliness in the sight of his God.

We are growing a little sick of good-natured people. We feel as though they needed a shaking up. They are too sweet; they are sickening; they are too yielding; they are tiresome. There is iron in healthy blood; there is some stern stuff in good-nature. A good nature is an industrious, active, stirring nature. But these so-called good-natured people, who do nothing in families, nothing in business circles, nothing in the Church, they just sit and simper and sing about "The Sweet By-and-By." It would be healthy for such people if some good, strong-armed Christian would take them by the nape of the neck and shake them into a good, solid sense of the claims of "the great Now and Now."

We must correct our speech; we are teaching bad morals. We are taking the edge off of our discriminating powers. The nature that is not striving to discharge all its known duties against the weakness of the flesh, the seduction of the world and the wiles of the devil, is a bad nature. The nature that yields to everything, good, bad and indifferent, is not a good nature.

It gave him a pleasure to show that wife that there was another woman whose affections he could retain while he was still Kate Southern's husband. If he had behaved himself as every man is bound to behave toward his wife, Kate Southern would not have imbrued her hands in blood; would not have had the disgrace of flight and the distress of exile; would not have had the torture of a public trial and the horror of a public condemnation to death; would not have had the wretchedness of being a prisoner with one babe in her arms and another under her heart: and the poor woman who, in the heat of her own passion, was precipitated into eternity would not have died a violent death.

The husband in this case stands, in morals, condemned as the murderer of his friend and the torturer of his wife. There may be no legal ground for an indictment in a criminal court on earth, but we must all stand before the judgment-seat of Christ.

Let all married men pause, and study this case. Who would have his wife indifferent to his relations to other women? When a husband's relations to any woman are discovered to be disagreeable to his wife, what is his duty as a Christian, as a gentleman, as a man? Plainly, to break up those relations, and to do it so promptly, so thoroughly, and so manifestly, that his wife may be perfectly satisfied-no matter what pain it give to the other woman, no matter what pain it give to the husband. Surely no rightminded husband will controvert that position. If it be sound, then a married man must feel that if crime or sorrow come through his carelessness, even in the absence of evil intent, he is responsible to God, and that God will not hold him guiltless, however he may stand in the courts of men. The weaker the wife's will, or the more powerful her passions, the more the husband must control himself, in the recollection that her failures do not mitigate his sins. Let us be charitable, but do not let us run into a maudlin sentimentalism which shall confuse our perceptions of ethical distinctions and of moral truths.

KATE SOUTHERN.

SOME time ago, a woman in Georgia stabbed another amid the festivities of an evening merry-making. The slayer and the slain belonged to families whose connections extended through a large part of the county in which the affair occurred. The husband of the slayer filed with his wife to North Carolina, and, after some time had elapsed, was discovered; and the wife was brought back to Georgia, tried and condemned. It was not only an exciting trial to the neighborhood, and to those throughout the State of Georgia who knew something of both families, but it became very interesting to many people in all the States of the Union.

There were several things to create this interest. The condemned was a woman; she was the mother of a child that was born and a child that was still to be born; she was passionate; she had been exasperated into a fit of jealousy; and the woman she slew-so it was reported-had flaunted in the eyes of Kate Southern that which would naturally arouse the passions of a woman who loved her husband intensely and saw him before a crowd showing marked attentions to a woman who had been that wife's rival certainly before marriage, and most probably after.

When the deed was done, the husband's better characteristics reasserted themselves. He stood by his wife. He forsook all for her sake. He exhausted his resources for her safety. He loved her, and showed his love.

The circumstances of the case justified the excellent Governor of Georgia in re-examining it, and all the country had a sense of relief, if not gratification, when he commuted the death-penalty to long imprisonment Since that generally approved official act, Governor Colquitt has been urged to pardon the woman entirely, on the ground that she has suffered enough for her offense, that the ends of justice have been met, and on other grounds, showing that the sex of the convicted person has had much to do with the sympathy so generally manifested in her case.

He

We have no advice to give the Governor. We know him. has the disposition to be merciful and the nerve to do right. We would not say a word to restrain the effusion of expressions of kindness toward an unfortunate woman.

But there is a moral aspect of the question which deserves notice. Who slew the victim? What answer to that question stands on the record in the Court of God? Does that answer render a verdict against Kate Southern alone? Assuredly not. Her husband knew her feelings toward the other woman. He trified with those feelings. In gratification of his vanity-if the reported accounts be correct-he danced with the objectionable woman; he showed her attentions which he knew would exasperate his wife.

THE USES OF AN ENEMY.

ALWAYS keep an enemy in hand, a brisk, hearty, active enemy.
Remark the uses of an enemy:

1. The having one is proof that you are somebody. Wishywashy, empty, worthless people never have enemies. Men who never move never run against anything; and when a man is thoroughly dead and utterly buried, nothing ever runs against him. To be run against is proof of existence and position; to run against something is proof of motion.

2. An enemy is, to say the least, not partial to you. He will not flatter. He will not exaggerate your virtues. It is very probable that he will slightly magnify your faults. The benefit of that is twofold; it permits you to know that you have faults, and are, therefore, not a monster, and it makes them of such size as to be visible and manageable. Of course, if you have a fault you desire to know it; when you become aware that you have a fault you desire to correct it. Your enemy does for you this valuable work which your friend cannot perform.

3. In addition, your enemy keeps you wide awake. He does not let you sleep at your post. There are two that always keep watch, namely, the lover and the hater. Your lover watches that you may sleep. He keeps off noises, excludes light, adjusts surroundings, that nothing may disturb you. Your hater watches that you may not sleep. He stirs you up when you are napping. He keeps your faculties on the alert. Even when he does nothing he will have put you in such a state of mind that you cannot tell what he will do next, and this mental qui vive must be worth something.

4. He is a detective among your friends. You need to know who your friends are, and who are not, and who are your enemies. The last of these three will discriminate the other two. When your enemy goes to one who is neither friend nor enemy, and assails you, the indifferent one will have nothing to say or chime in, not because he is your enemy, but because it is so much easier to assent than to oppose, and especially than to refute. But your friend will take up cudgels for you on the instant. He will deny everything and insist on proof, and proving is very hard work. There is scarcely a truthful man in the world that could afford to undertake to prove one-tenth of all his truthful assertions. Your friend will call your enemy to the proof, and if the indifferent person, through carelessness, repeats the assertions of your enemy, he is soon made to feel the inconvenience thereof by the zeal your friend manifests. Follow your enemy around and you will find your friends, for he will have developed them so that they cannot be mistaken.

The next best thing to having a hundred real friends is to have one open enemy. But let us pray to be delivered from secret foes.