SPIDERS ON THE MARCH. any chemical process." Those who have studied "the chemistry of the candle" will appreciate what this means. To telegraph without wires, to get light without heat, to make solid walls in effect transparent-such are some of the strange possibilities after which students of electricity may now strive with fair hopes of success; and the attainment of these erds would mark but a single step in the advance of modern science. SPIDERS ON THE MARCH. In almost every part of Texas there is a large burrowing spider commonly known as the tarantula, though some naturalists consider such a classification as incorrect. However that may be, the giant spider of Texas has a body equal in size to an ordinrry human thumb, and spread of legs covering an area of about four inches, while a thick growth of coarse black or brown hair gives it a general appearance anything but pleasing. The creature, without being aggressive, is slow to take alarm, and is one representative of the lower animal kingdom which seems to have no fear of man. "Several years ago," says a gentleman who has large landed interests in Western Texas, "I was taking a trip by ambulance through the eastern portion of Williamson county in company with two companions. "We had just entered upon a wide, level expanse, then almost devoid of vegetation, when I saw severai tarantulas crossing the road just ahead of us. "Borrowing the driver's whip, I sprang out and despatched three of them, when a cry of warning from the ambulance caused me to examine my surroundings. "I immediately became aware that a heavier contract confronted me than 245 I was prepared to carry out; for a few yards away the earth swarmed with big spiders, moving slowly in the same direction as those that I had first seen. "I hurriedly resumed my seat in the vehicle, and our party had moved forward for some distance without encountering more tarantulas, when suddenly we came upon what might be called the main body of their grand army, marching due west. There could be no question as to the course pursued, as we were moving directly towards them, which was then almost sun down. As our route lay southward, we had come upon the column at a right angle, and on either hand, as far as the range of vision extended, there was no apparent diminution in the spider force, which moved with the uniformity of a trained army. In this vast concourse about one square foot seemed the individual marching space allowed. "Our driver glanced uneasily about and said something about turning back, but by this time the spiders had covered the ground in our rear, so that retreat was quite as hardous as an advance. The horses were urged rapidly forward. "I suppose some commotion was created among the tarantulas immediately in the road, but those on either side seemed totally oblivious of our presence. We felt some uneasiness about the horses, but they came through without being bitten. "Amid surroundings so distracting I took little note of the distance travelled, but we must have gone fully half a mile before leaving the spiders behind us." "Whence came so grand an army, and whither it was tending I am unable to say, but there is little doubt that the spiders, by some mysterious understanding, had assembled from a considerable territory, and were mov. ing by common consent to some more desirable region." The gentleman adds that, fearful of being called a Munchausen, he for a long time said nothing about this adventure, but that he has recently found an experience similar to his own chronicled in the official report of some United States surveyors, who, while working in the West saw vast numbers of huge hairy spiders moving in a body with the regularity of well-disciplined soldiers. For the Young People. SOUL MIRACLES. The great question of miracles and their great value as testimony are challenging attention. It is common istic. The material is to untutored life more engaging, more present; it is easier to see than to reflect to feel than to reason. Matter ever appears and flourishes while man fades. It requires conclusion that matter is less than a process of abstraction to reach the mind, because mind searches out matter and wields and moulds it; so miracles wrought on matter are only "supra natura," and most of our Lord's miracles were of this kind. But the cles wrought upon the mind, and are Spirit of God brings into being miraphysical only in the media employed. than the raising of Lazarus from the These would seem greater miracles dead, for he succumbed to death again. But death never arrests the life-giving miracle of regeneration in a dead soul, because the regenerated are kept through faith unto salvation. The life given is not mere resuscitation, but is ETERNAL Life. place to say that our age is materialPhysics lead the popular thought. "The bread and butter sciences," as the Germans call them, in contradistinction to the moral and metaphysical sciences, are ahead, and whatever obtains respect in the meditations of men must stand the test of the senses. Hence the world of mind, with mind phenomena, is by multitudes hardly considered a determining force. The mind itself is regarded as a product of a high organization of matter; so whatever might have the temerity to claim to be a miracle as a factor in investigation would have to be physical. New Testament miracles were addressed to a sensuous age, and were exhibitions largely of Divine power over matter. The difference between a ritualistic and formworshipping age, and one whose philosophy is only materialistic, is not appreciable. They live together and breathe the same atmosphere, and their cry is identical, "Show us a sign," or conviction by the senses. Materialism and ceremonialism are never prosperous nor dominant where mind and its phenomena are under inxestigation by purely mental processes. It is not strange that matter should be for ever be in competition with mind. THE BATTLE OF BETH-HORON. A new suggestion in regard to the standing still of the sun and the moon at the apostrophe of Joshua, is given by the Rev. J. Sutherland Black in in his edition of "Joshua," issued as one part of the Smaller Cambridge Bible series. His new postulate is to the effect that no physical miracle occured, or was desired; he thinks the cosmical features of the event do not touch upon the super AN ANCIENT TRAGEDY. natural at all. His explanation runs thus: "To understand the quotation from the book of Jasher, we must figure to ourselves the speaker at two successive periods of the summer day-irst on the plateau to the north of the hill of Gibeon, with Gibeon lying under the sun to the south-east or south, at the moment when the resistance of the enemy has at last broken down, and again, hours later, when the sun has set, and the moon is sinking westward over the valley of Ajalon, threatening by its dissapearance to put an an end to the victorious pursuit. The appeal to the moon, is of course, for light-i.e. after sunset, The moon appears over Ajalon; that is somewhat south of west, as seen by one approaching from Beth-horon. There was therefore evening moonlight. Joshua prayed first that the sunlight and then that the moonlight following it, might suffice for the complete defeat of the enemy." AN ANCIENT TRAGEDY. Students of natural history are much interested in the recent discovery in New Zealand of an extensive deposit of the remains of the gigantic extinct birds called moas. The discovery was made in ploughng through a slight depression in a field, where a bog containing several springs had evidently once existed. Here, buried in a deposit of peat, at depths of three or four feet, the skeletons of eight or nine hundred moas were found, packed and intertwined together in a remarkable manner. It was evident that these great birds, which were much larger than the modern ostrich, varying in height from ten to fourteen feet, had perish ed there by wholesale. An enormous quantity of smooth quartz pebbles, which they had carried in their crops, 247 There was found with the skeletons. was also found the remains of extinct species of other large birds. Various explanations have been suggested to account for the destruction of such an army of powerful birds. One theory is that they were overwhelmed by a great storm, and that their remains were heaped together by the combined action of wind of water. What renders the question still more puzzling is the fact that collections of the moa skeletons, mingled with those of other giant birds, have been found in similar situations elsewhere in New Zealand. Students of geology are aware that evidence is sometimes found in the rocks of the sudden destruction of great numbers of animals that formerly existed on the earth, and the resemblance of such cases to this of the New Zealand moas is interesting. We are thus continually reminded of the perils that have beset the inhabitants of the globe, on every side, from the very beginning of its history. THE UNIVERSAL BOOK. Most books are limited to a small circle of readers because the teachings they contain are only adapted to a few. The tastes, education, customs, condition, and needs of the inhabitants of different sections of the earth differ so widely that a book which meets the wants of one people may be of little value to another. Hence we have English books, Welsh books, French books, German books; we have books for farmers and manufactuerers, for scholars and for the unlearned, for young people and adults. But the Bible is every man's book. Its doctrines are universal. It has been translated into hundreds of languages and introduced into all parts of the globe, and everywhere it strikes a responsive chord in the hearts of the people. It comes to the men of all natious, all climes, all languages, all professions, and all conditions, with a message suited to every one, and wherever it is read it produces the same marvellous social and moral reformations and improvements. THREE PROCESSIONS. was a band of aged men, the victors FAITH INSPIRES COURAGE. Courage comes from faith! Faith always leads us out of self and teaches us to believe in the possibilities of others. No nature can be strong that is not enthusiastic, and no nature can be enthusiastic that has no faith. The man who has more faith in other men and other things, and other manifestations of life and character than his own, will always have courage. And this faith of which we hear so much in the matter of religion is not only a Bible quality; it is a quality which is found in the busiest market-places of life, and among the most successful of earthly heroes. Columbus bound in his prison was, after all, a stronger nature than the crowned Ferdinand upon his throne, for his faith realised REV. an undiscovered continent. It was said of William Pitt, the younger, the Prime Minister of England at twentythree years of age that no one ever entered his closet, if it was only for five minutes, who did not come out of it a stronger and braver man than he was when he went in, Count Cavour, when he made Italy the free kingdom that it is, was once asked how he came to be so trusted by every one, and said, in reply that it was simply because he believed in men, and trusted them. There can be no courage without faith; for it is faith which bears our trembling natures away from their earthly moorings to some unknown, unseen reality, which exists because the soul believes in its existence. Thus DEWITT TALMADGE ON "THE WELSH." (From the Christain Herald,) In all departments of American life we feel more and more the influence of Welsh immigration. It is good blood, and it is corrective of many kinds of blood, not so good. Those of us who have seen the Welsh in their native country know that they are the most genial and hearty of all people. When they laugh they laugh; when they cry they cry; and when they cheer they cheer, and there is no half work about it. Their language is said to be only second in sweetness and rhythm, but the English tongue seems to be crowding it out. The melody of the Welsh vernacular we must, however, take on faith. We REV. DEWITT TALMAGE ON "THE WELSH.” give our readers an opportunity of practicing the music of the names of some of the Welsh valleys, such as Llanfairpwllgwyngyll gogyferchwyrn drobwyll-Llandiseilo-ger-yr-ogofgoch, Llangollen, Maentwrog and Ystwyth; of some of the Welsh medicinal springs, such as Llanwrtyd, Trefriw, and Llandrindod; of some of the Welsh mountains, such as Pencwmcerwyn and Arranfawddwy. If you are at all puzzled with the pronunciation of these names you will please get one of the Welsh dictionaries entitled, "Dymchweliad uchel allor y Pab." And if then you can not succeed, you will perhaps stop, and be as ignorant as I am of the language which the Welsh say has in its capacities for tenderness and nice shades of meaning and pathos and thunderings of power beside which our English is insipid. Within comparitively a few years the English government has found Wales to be her most valuable treasure-house. She has the largest coal fields in Europe, and in vertical thickness the strata surpass the world. Her Iron and lead, copper zinc, silver and gold must yet command the attention of all nations. Her minerals, unlike those of most countries, are within fifteen or twenty miles of the sea, and hence easily transported. Considering the fact that the language is spoken by less than a million of people, the literature of the Welsh is incomparable for extent. The first book was published in 1531 and consisted of 21 leaves. Four years after another book. Eleven years after, another book which they strangely called "The Bible," containing the alphabet, an almanac, the Ten Commandments, the Lord's prayer, the Apostles' Creed and something about their national games. An astounding "Bible" that was. Eighteen years after this another book appeared. 249 The slow advancement was because the prominent men of the English nation wanted the Welsh to die out, on the supposition that these people would be more loyal to the throne if they all spoke the English language. But afterwards the printing press of Wales got into full swing, and now books and periodicals by thousands of copies are printed and circulated in the Welsh language. But excepting a few ballads of an immoral nature, corrupt literature dies as soon as it touches this region. Many bad English novels that blight other countries can not live a month in the pure atmosphere of these mountains. The fact is that the Welsh are intensely religious people, and one of their men declares that in all their literature there is not one book atheistic or infedel. The grandest pulpit eloquence of the centuries has sounded through these gorges. I asked an intelligent Welsh lady if their were any people living who remembered the great Welsh divine, Christmas Evans. She replied, “Yes, I remember him—that is, I remember the excitement. I was a child in church and sat in a pew, and could not see him for the crowd, but the scene made on me an indelible impression." For consecrated fire the Welsh preachers are the most effective in the world. Taken all in all, there are no people in Europe that more favorably impressed me than the Welsh. The namby-pampy traveller afraid of getting his shoes tarnished, and who loves to shake hands with the tips of his fingers and desires conversation in a whisper, would be disgusted with Wales. But they who have nothing fastidious in their temperaments, and who admire strength of voice, strength of arm, strength of purpose and strength of character will find among the Welsh ilimitable entertainment. |