The first pure evening star; Were murmuring to the moon.' We went out at four o'clock in the morning. It was a grand, glad and glorious scene. Many gentlemen go to bathe at this time, as it can be done without being trammeled with the flannel regimentals, as by an ordinance, between the hours of seven in the morning and nine in the evening, no one is allowed to go into the surf, unless properly clothed. We left Atlantic city with much regret. Coming up the cars run over a cow, running at the rate of thirty miles an hour, and made a narrow escape of being killed. We were amused at an old gray-headed man, who, looking around awhile, said, "Well, I came near being killed, but death wouldn't have cheated me out of many years." WOMAN. As the dove will clasp its wings to its side, and cover and conceal the arrow that is preying on its vitals, so it is the nature of woman to hide from the world the pangs of a wounded affection. With her, the desire of the heart has failed. The great charm of existence is at an end. She neglects all the cheerful exercises that gladden the spirits, quicken the pulse, and send the tide of life in healthful currents through the veins. Her rest is broken, the sweet refreshments of sleep are poisoned by melancholy dreams, "dry sorrow drinks her blood," until her feeble frame sinks under the last external assailant. Look for her after a little while, and you will find friendship weeping over her untimely grave, and wondering that one who but lately glowed with all the radiance of health and beauty, should now be brought to "darkness and the worm." You will be told of some wintry chill, some slight indisposition that laid her low, but no one knows the mental malady that previously sapped her strength, and made her so easy a prey to the spoiler. THE SLEEPING DISCIPLES. SLEEP weighed their eyelids down. Oblivion, slow, The Saviour at that sight! And could ye not Watch with me one short hour? O, how they stung, Those words of meek reproach, to be forgot Ne'er till their hearts should cease life's pulses to renew? THE BRIDGE AHEAD! BY THE EDITOR. Don't cross the bridge before you come to it, Is a proverb old, and of excellent wit. THERE is a class of persons whose troubles and difficulties are always some distance ahead of them. They do not reach them, but have them always in sight, and are in great dread of them. They are getting along very well to-day, but what of to-morrow! They are provided for in the summer, but how will they pass the coming winter? They can get along themselves, but how will it be with their children? There is always some fearful apparition looking with terrible menacing toward them out of the dim distance before them; and oh, when they get there! They are laboring to cross the bridge before they have come to it. How many of our troubles after all are troubles ahead of us, to which we have not yet come; and, what is more, will perhaps never come to them. They are only crossing our path, or perhaps going away from us, and will not be there when we come. We seek for our troubles like children seek for golden spoons when the arch of the rainbow rests on the earth; when we reach the spot where we see them, or imagine we see them, they are still farther away. They move as we move; and we are always trying to cross the bridge before we come to it. Could we divide our troubles into two parts, putting those ahead of us on one side, and those actually with us on the other, we should find that the coming troubles would be far more than those which have come. Our present troubles may be enough, but we increase them by imaginary ones ahead. The lips of wisdom have said: Sufficient to the day are the evils of the day; and if we crowd the evils of to-morrow into to-day we make them too many, and we are trying to cross the bridge before we come to it. Here is a man brought suddenly to a stand. He has met a hard knot of duty. He sees that it ought to be laid hold of, and feels that a certain course in regard to it is right; but what will the consequences be! Perhaps he is a pastor: there is a reigning sin in his congregation to be reproved. There is a point at which discipline should be applied. He sees it all, and knows it all. The duty is plain. But what will the consequences be! Ah, the trouble ahead troubles him. Instead of fighting the giant aside of him, he is imagining how dreadful will be the war with the giants before him. Let such an one do present duty, and meet troubles as they come. He will find that there is a God of providence who has made it our duty to do right, and who will make the consequences right when we faithfully do our duty. He will find, like Don Quixotte, that what seemed an army ahead will be but rattling windmills when he gets to them. It is no more our duty to be frightened from the path of right by probable consequences ahead, than it is our duty to cross the bridge before we come to it. Here is a young man in whose bosom has long burned an ardent desire to enjoy a liberal education. Besides this he has strong drawings toward the office of the holy ministry. Even now he feels it to be his duty, and he has strong fears that he can never be happy in any other calling. He would long since set out in the way of his desires, but the difficulties ahead! He is poor. His friends will oppose him. The course of study is long. His labors cannot be dispensed with at home. He is entangled in the business of some other calling. He would have to forfeit some important worldly interests and advantages. What an array of terrible troubles lie in his path before him, it is true; yet he feels as if they must all be plain, and the path perfectly clear to the end, before he starts a step. He wants to cross the bridge before he comes to it. How he deceives himself. Does he not see how many others have started out with all these troubles ahead; and how they have overcome them as they met them, and reached the end of their desires? What has been done, can be done; and what is more, what is to be done, ought to be done bravely, and it must be done if the current of life is to run in the right direction. Young man, gird yourself and go forward; and be not so foolish as to spend your time in vain attempts to cross the bridge before you come to it. He can bear his pres- Here is a christian-perhaps an afflicted one. ent trials, but how will he bear what is to come. but fears the giants of gloom in the path ahead. or he forgets it-that strength is given as the day is; and that it is given in the day when it is needed, not before-grace suited to prosperity and to adversity; grace for health and grace for sickness; grace to live by and grace to die by; grace in the time of need, as it is needed, and in the degree needed. He forgets all this, and is quailing in view of troubles ahead; he is in agony to cross the bridge before he comes to it. Ho! all ye who are ready to fall before the war begun, give your folly to the winds and be wise. Remember who hath said: Take therefore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof; why then seek ye to crowd to-morrow into to-day, and thus increase the troubles that are by the troubles to come. Why do you labor to cross the bridge before you come to it. LITTLE CHILDREN. Little children, flowers from heaven, From the fields of angel-land; Gems of morning, From the fields of angel-land! Little children, blessed creatures, Yes, we feel it, Childhood's hours soon flee away. "DARK CORNERS." BY THE EDITOR. MEN do not feel as they ought, how much the well-being of individuals, of families, and of nations depends upon the influence of the church. It is truly the salt of the earth-the great, all-pervading preservative element: It is truly the light of the world, shedding beams of brightness and beauty upon all individual thought and feeling, and upon every social relation in the family and the State. As a plain illustration of the truth of what we say, we need but refer to communities and circles of social life where the influences of the church is only feebly felt. There are in all country regions, as well as in cities, places which are familiarly called "dark corners"-places of ignorance and immorality, where the inhabitants are sunken to a low level of debasement, and where there is little refinement and higher social cultivation. In such places there is no church-going, and all its elevating influences are repelled and debarred. Parents are ignorant and low in their thoughts and feelings; youths are permitted to herd about without any aims or impulses above the instincts of an animal mind; the minds and affections of children grow wild and wayward without any direction as to the true meaning and end of human life. Such "corners" are always the pest-spots of the communities in the midst of which they exist. They are like stagnant pools, breeding reptiles and fearful things, while they send sickening and death-working malaria into all healthful regions around. What do such places need but the purifying and preserving salt of religion. Let the light of the church penetrate their darkness, let religion enter those abodes, let those families be made christian families, let the youth be brought under the elevating power of the church, and let the children be nurtured in its sanctifying bosom, and the "dark corner" will soon become bright, and the moral swamp of stagnant pools will give place to a garden of the Lord. The influence of the church, if permitted to enter such a "dark corner," would not only change the thoughts and feelings of those who have dwelt in darkness, but it would silently work change in their outward temporal condition. Idleness would give place to industry, cleanliness would take the place of filth in their abodes and in their clothing, rags would disappear and children would go forth in that tidiness which is a mark of true civilization; and a higher interest in one another would appear between husband and wife, parents and children, brothers and sisters, as well as in social life generally. No one can deny this influence to religion. Its influence upon industry, cleanliness, and general outward refinement and prosperity is as clear as facts existing around us everywhere can make it. The degradation of the spirit is the source of all degradation; and when it is without religion there can be no true elevation beneath it. Christianity is the golden cord which binds hearts, families and communities up to God and heaven; when that is broken off, hearts, and families, and communities will soon be turned into "dark corners." Such "dark corners" always have some prominent ruling peculiarity about them. If they are in the country, they generally surround some low tavern or beer-shop. They are the places where shooting-matches, rafflings, and rude "hoe-down" dances are held. Here the old vultures linger and hang about, to allure the younger ones to the carcass. The ruling spirit of the place is ignorance and vice. You also generally find one or two "smart" infidels, or some pert universalists, who "know the scriptures," around the place, acting in the way of pastors to breathe a pleasant, soothing influence upon any troublings of conscience that may arise. Hence you almost always find that such a "a dark corner" is at the same time either an infidel or universalist nest. It can only preserve itself, and keep out the influence of religion by keeping up some bitter prejudices against the church, its ministers and its people. We recollect one instance in which the tavern-keeper himself acted as priest over the "dark corner" which surrounded him. He "knew the scriptures," he could "speak out of the scriptures like a preacher," and he could make it as plain as daylight to the red-noses ranged around him, that inasmuch as "there was no hell," that therefore of such as they were would be the kingdom of heaven! On the way home to their desolate families and ignorant children, they would blubber to one another, "What a smart man; how he can explain the scriptures; that is just what I always said." Thus are the festering wounds of the soul soothed, and there is the cry of peace to those who sit in the darkness of their own misery, in sure prospect of still deeper gloom. What does such a "dark corner" need?-what but the church. There is no help for it, but in that which it hates. It is strange that such corners are often so long and entirely neglected by the church. Do you ask what is to be done for them? The answer is plain-plant a church into their midst. But you say there is one long-established within a mile of it, so that there is no room for one more. True-but they will not go to it, you must take the church to them. We mistake when we expect the darkness of the world to advance toward the light. They will not do it-they never did it. The light must seek them out. Christ did not wait for men to seek him, he went in search of them. Christianity is aggressive-it must be so. Go ye into the lanes, and dark places, do not wait for them to come to you. Go into these "dark corners" with the Sabbath-school, the Bible-class, the Church. Raise the standard in the midst of them. The light will then work its way. If it is too late to redeem the old, you can preserve the young; and if the church has the children of the present generation, it will have the parents of the next. He that plants a tree is so far a benefactor to those who come after him; how much more he who erects a tent of the Lord in a "dark corner." Let it be ever so humble, it is a beginning that will work its own way. The tent may become a temple in the end; and there may be a "latter house" which will be greater in glory to that of the former. Christian reader, turn your attention towards that "dark corner" near |