life in every zone and latitude, climate and longitude, under all circumstances, and at all times and in all places, to cast the net on the right side of the ship, and we shall find all that the heart can desire or mind conceive or soul enjoy: find that which were hell to lose and heaven to gain: find love and life and truth; laughter, sunshine and blessing; hope and joy and peace; purity, wisdom and goodnessmany and great mercies. And for all they be so many yet shall not the net be broken. For the soul's capacity for heaven shall enlarge with use, and strengthen as God vouchsafes His glorious gifts. Only let us cast the net on the right side, in simple trust; in obedience, faith, and love; with never a fear, misgiving, or doubt, and great shall be our reward: "For if ye love your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again, your reward shall be great." The prologue of our text is suggestive of many an act in the drama of everybody's life. The disciples had toiled all night and taken nothing. Not that the darkness was to blame, as hindering their work; for night is the best time for fishers to drag their nets and ply their symbolical handicraft and typical calling. And, spiritually, we may catch men best sometimes when darkness sits upon the soul, and the night of affliction and trouble is near; when the sun of prosperity ceases to shine, and sets in adversity, sadness and gloom. When hope, and love and joy are dead, and anguish harrows up the soul; when consternation stalks abroad, in fearsome guise, like an appalling ghost, to make the night of our calamity hideous with terror, and a measureless, nameless, dreadful horror; then is the supreme moment to win a soul, and make a lasting friend; then is the time to whisper hope; and then the time to speak a loving word and cast the net in on the right side. And as one fool And with a plenti But the disciples toiled all night and took nothing, to teach us how not to do the same. It was Peter, the noisy apostle, ever forward and pushing, that said "I go a fishing," "I," "I," "I." "You may do just what you like, but Ego, I, myself, I go a fishing." makes many, they all went at it in this same spirit. ful lack of humility, we know how many do the same in other things, who meddle and muddle, and blunder into a like ridiculous measure of success, and show empty nets. Oh for the wisdom to cast them in on the right side! Are there not men whose piety is of a hard, harsh, repulsive nature, who know just how not to do the right thing lovingly, who have a back-handed awkwardness, a left-handed ungainliness for those things which should bear the impress of the beauty of holiness and the sauvity of Christian gentleness? There are those who ever wear a 'painful look and bitter aspect; who stand the dark embodiment of suspicion and a chronic doubt, and look the very picture of an incarnate negative. You scarce ever hear them say sweet Yes to anything, it is with them a surly everlasting No. One scruple avails with them more than a thousand affirmations. They stumble at a straw, and rather like it. But oh, it is a sad spirit, and if cherished, becomes so engrafted in one's nature, that it induces a sort of spiritual paralysis, that cripples, with sinister force, one side. of our moral constitution, making us perverse, peevish, sullen, sour. It is the fly in the pot of ointment. Better, far better, to bear all things, and believe all things, and hope all things, and endure all things, than to doubt everything and believe nothing. Better to be a fond fool for Christ's sake than a curt caitiff for our own. Charity teaches trust, and says, "Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find;" while the unwisdom and lack-love of distrust toils for self-ends, honours, power, riches, and a name; toils in futility all night and takes nothing, and gets cursed for its pains. Oh, let Charity reign in us, and let patience have in us its perfect work, that we may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing. And in every state, condition, circumstance, and event of life, let us remember the Gospel meaning of our Lord's command when He said, "Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find," and we shall be blessed in our deed, with the favour of God and the friendship of men. JOIADA'S PROPHECY. TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF RACINE ("ATHALIE”). WHY trembles now my heart with sacred dread? By God's high Spirit is my spirit led? E'en so. He warms me, speaks, and opes mine eyes, And darkling centuries before me rise. Ye Levites! lend me harmonies of song, And aid emotions that within me throng: Heav'ns, hear me ! Earth, lend ear in silence deep! 1 Joash. Who is this high priest1 slain in holy place? He deems thine incense but an unclean thing. What New Jerusalem doth God reveal, Rising in light from desert dark and drear? And bids thee, Earth, now banish grief and fear: See kings astonied gaze at thy true worth; In living love and warmth of soul aspires! Rochdale. H. W. ROBILLIARD. GOOD SOCIETY. To mix in good society is the desire of all who possess refined tastes, and also of others who would be thought of similar character; it may not therefore be undesirable to consider briefly what is good society, with what motives it should be sought, and how to attain it. Good society, as commonly understood, includes a great number of individuals who are not really good: the wealthy, the fashionable, the aristocratic, as well as the refined, are numbered in its ranks; but goodness itself is almost left out of count as a passport into its midst, in comparison with polish of manners. A moment's consideration will show why this is; the phrase "polished manners" literally means 1 Zachariah, manners in whose polished aspect can be seen reflected, as in a burnished mirror, the forms of speech and act which love to the neighbour of right assumes; and as no real neighbourly love can exist, among those of any cultivation of mind, without manifesting itself in manners, which, to some extent, correspond to and reflect the good-will within; therefore the presence or absence of refined methods of speech and action comes to be regarded by the world, which notes only the outside, as a proof of belonging, or not belonging, to good society. Polished manners are consequently only an apparent and not a real test of good society, and it is certain that those who deem themselves its members often show to persons of inferior grade a rudeness the most keenly felt, just as a polished dagger pierces more sharply than a rusty pike. Plainly therefore some other test of good society must be sought for than that at present adopted; its limits must be narrowed below and widened above, shutting out all that is falsely so called, and admitting much that is now unrecognised as such. Good society in its widest sense embraces all human associations whose influence can warm the heart with active and unselfish love, enlighten the mind with pure and ennobling thoughts, and make every act part of a good and useful life; and it does not include such as are inwardly evil, only outwardly good; it does not include those who, being without the necessity of working in any employment, pride themselves on being of no occupation, and spend their lives in idleness and self-gratification, although these constitute the largest part of good society, so-called. It embraces good angels, good people, good literature, beautiful lives, beautiful ideas, beautiful objects. The living members of good society are those whose affections are god-like, glowing with an earnest zeal for their neighbour's good; whose thoughts are the thoughts of justice and sincerity, untarnished by the stains of earthly or selfish imaginations; whose lives like sunbeams heed not the motes amid which they pass, but bear wherever they go an image of the heavenly sun: whose polish reflects no lifeless effigy of goodwill, but whose courtesy of demeanour springs from a ruling desire to benefit others, and harmonises with it as does excellent music with the tones of a sweet instrument. Such as these are good society. The literature that is good society is above all else the Word of God; of human writings, those stand first that treat of His works, and while they accurately describe the things of nature, and render to the Caesars of science their due, constantly attribute the origin, the beauty and the uses of all things to the Lord alone. Of imaginative compositions they are not good society whose aim is to thrill the reader's sensual imagination, or please his outward memory, by exciting scenes, sentimental descriptions, and immoral suggestions; that treat transgressors of the moral law as subjects on which youthful minds may properly dwell, representing them as venial offences, instead of the most direful means of destroying all that is good and true; nor that make pleasing pictures of unreal conceptions serve instead of lofty thought and true portraiture; but they are those books that depict heroes, not faultless but struggling against their faults; that portray partners in marriage chosen for their qualities of heart and mind, not for their outward appearance, vivacious demeanour, or position in society; that use faults and follies instead of vice and crime as a foil to virtue, and in describing the relations of the sexes, neither shock the modesty of youth, nor offend the innocence of childhood. They are those books that show the ordinary hum-drum duties of daily life fulfilled with a love of the use contained in them, so as to elevate them from drudgery into poetry; that depict petty vexations overcome by a self-forgetful, magnanimous regard to lofty aims; that represent true motives for conduct, right methods of obeying them; and deeds of service to others, performed simply for sake of the good that will result; in a word, they are books which depict life not on its merely material or earthly side, but as it is experienced by those who are influenced by heavenly thoughts and purposes, as it presents itself to those who are under the influence of heavenly thoughts and purposes. The lives that are good society are those, whether unwritten or embalmed in story, of men and women who, thrown like others in the midst of temptation, and tried by all such things as tempt them most, have yielded not, but have been repaid for victory by the love of their fellow creatures, and by virtue's own reward. The ideas that are good society are those contemplations that show the nothingness of one's self, and the littleness of one's aims; those perceptions of heavenly truth that transport the soul during the faithful discharge of duty to a perception of angelic delights; those which lead men to serve others not for the ease and comfort which the pecuniary reward of their toil may bring, but for the gratification which the service contains within itself, and which is sure, however other recompense may be missed or foregone. The beautiful objects that are good society, good for the mind to associate with, are all whose beauty is the form of truth; in other words all whose form is the true expression of their inmost nature, and is not a mere outside sham. Among them are to be counted |