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it impracticable for me to be edified under a ministry of a denomination to which I do not belong.

So could I work heartily and hopefully in almost any evangelical church where the whole Bible was received as the word of God. I would not sit under the preaching of a minister who tried to prove that Moses was not the author of the Pentateuch, or that Jesus Christ did not know what is meant by the law and the prophets; I would not sit at the feet of any man who denies the true and proper divinity of the Lord who bought me with his own blood. I would not have for a spiritual teacher one who says it shall be well with the wicked who die in their sins, or that one so dying will have another opportunity of repentance and faith when the door is shut. But with any faithful servant of God, who teaches a pure gospel, I could work and be happy, whatever the name by which he and his church were called.

And this ought to be the evidence that they who love Christ in sincerity and truth are one, whatever diversity may prevail in the order of their church and ministry. What a weight and world of sense there is in the old form of words, "In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity!" On that platform we stand up for what we know to be vital; we cordially unite with those who differ from us in things not fundamental; and towards all men we have that charity which never faileth.

STRAWBERRIES AND CREAM;

OR, THE PLEASURES OF GIVING AND RECEIVING COMPARED

IT was in the time of the war, the late war, I trust the last war. At my country-place on the Hudson River, some twenty miles above the city, I had a number of friends at dinner. The strawberries of the dessert were from my own garden, and their size excited the admiration of the party. Some one observed that he had seen strawberries so large

they could not be made to pass through a napkin-ring. The experiment was made, and every one had strawberries before him that would lie quietly on the top of the ring. Then the conversation turned to the prolific qualities of the vine, and one stated that a single root had been known to produce three hundred berries. This was quite as surprising as the size of the strawberries, and by and by we made a personal visitation of the garden and found plenty of vines with more than three hundred berries on a single root. Thus in size and number these equalled anything hitherto reported. Among my guests that day was a newspaper man, who made a note of what he saw and printed it. The story was deemed incredible. A pastor in the West was so shocked by the exaggeration, as he considered it, that he caused to be published an offer to supply the Synod of Ohio with plants if I would send him some specimens and they produced such fruits. In response to this challenge I made the public offer to send by mail, post-paid and without any charge, specimens of the plants to every person in the United States who would send me his post-office address!! Very soon the names began to come, by tens, by scores and hundreds. The gardener put up a dozen plants in a package with moist moss about the roots, and each evening on my return from town with a new batch of names I directed them and they went into the mail. Under the Post-office laws regulating the distribution of seeds and plants a packet weighing four ounces may be sent to any part of the United States for four cents. Names came to me from every State then accessible by mail. Frequently money came with the address, but it was always returned. Including what plants were sent for by neighbors and friends and taken away personally, it was calculated that we gave away in the course of the month of August more than three thousand strawberry plants. If only two hundred packets went by mail the entire outlay was only eight dollars, and many a good man spends twice that sum every month for things that I never use and would not if they cost nothing. But I am quite free to say that the same amount of money never brought me so much enjoyment. The next

year and the year after that came letters from distant States telling of the wonderful success of the plants. They arrived in good condition, were carefully set out and tended properly, and answered all expectations. I have no recollection of receiving one expression of disappointment, although it is quite probable that in many cases they failed to do well, but the people to whom they were sent were too polite to make complaint.

Twenty years ago those plants went into the rural regions of this wide country. And from that time to this they have gladdened more families than I shall ever hear of, for the originals have multiplied and gone into fresh fields and gardens new, until their number is not to be reckoned. Several bishops are credited with the remark that "Nature might have produced a more delicious fruit than the strawberry, but certainly nature never tried to." And there is no fruit that yields so much enjoyment and profit at so little cost. Therefore if my three thousand plants have in many instances continued to multiply and replenish the earth, furnishing a pleasant treat and refreshment to hundreds of families whose names I have forgotten and whose faces I do not expect to see in this world, great is my reward already and I ask no other, being more than paid. For in the strawberry season every year there is an hour each day when I am reminded of those splendid vines and rich, ripe fruit, which were my pride, and then in quiet thought I go from one end of the country to the other and unseen by them I sit by the board of those good people who sent me their names, and as they pour the rich cream (I wish I had some of it myself) over those big, salmon-tinted, oval, luscious strawberries, I have not a doubt that I enjoy the dessert more than they do. Then multiply that enjoyment by the number of households into which those delicious fruits have gone by the successive propagations of twenty years, and give me one good heart jump for each house and you see that with only a moderate degree of exercise my heart would jump out of its place if I did not regulate its movements with some considerable care. And that finishes my story of strawberries and cream. You say

that it is a boasting, egotistical story. Well, I can stand that : I have been telling you how I made a vast sum of personal enjoyment by the expenditure twenty years ago of less than ten dollars. I never made so profitable and paying an investment in all my life. And the income it yields is in harmony with religion, philosophy, history, and the personal experience of every one who has tried the experiment.

The Bible is so full of examples, illustrations, precepts, and principles bearing on this matter, that it evidently is of the essence of the Christian religion. It is too much to say that the sentiment cannot exist outside of Christianity. But it is right to say that no one has any sort of claim to be a partaker of Christianity, to be a partner of Him who gave himself for others, who does not enter with all his nature into the spirit of this doctrine. It is of the essence of that love which is the essence of Him who is Love. It makes the whole world kin.

An aged man--yes, the weight of more than fourscore years was on him now—lay dying. He said to me with deep emotion: "What pains me most is that I have never lived for any one but myself; I have not sought to make others more comfortable or happy."

But the case is not to be argued from a selfish point of view only. It does pay to be good; the good man serves the best paymaster in the universe; but it is well to make fruits and flowers grow all over this earth, and especially where they would not be if we did not send them, even if we never know that they gladden any hearts. A word in season may be more than a purse of gold to the hearer, and he who said it may never hear from it again. But the word is a treasure laid up in heaven. Hoarded wealth is no blessing to him who hides it in his strong-box. But when he touches the lock with the key of love a river of life flows forth to make the wilderness bud and blossom as the rose; the widow's heart sings for joy; ignorance yields to knowledge, as darkness flies before incoming light; the word of God is multiplied, and the living messenger of the cross, the angel with the everlasting gospel, goes forth on his errand of sal

vation to the ends of the earth. This is what the good man does with his money when the principle of these truths gets to work in his soul. He cannot buy happiness here, nor immortal bliss hereafter. But if he does what he can with his money now, and believes it to be more blessed to give than to receive, he shall have houses and lands and gold fourfold and in the end life everlasting.

"OUR SOUL LOATHETH THIS LIGHT BREAD."

THAT was said of bread that came down from heaven. I said it of quite another kind of food. It does not come from heaven. Some of it comes from the other place, and is evidently baked by the devil and his angels.

A parcel of new books was lying on my table, and late in the evening, when there was nothing else to do, I turned to them for soothing influence before going to sleep. Of the figs of Jeremiah it was said,

"The good were very good,

The bad too sour to give the pigs ;"

but in this bundle of books there were none of which I could conscientiously say "the good are very good," and perhaps there were none so bad as to justify their being destroyed. If books are to be separated into three classes, good, bad, and indifferent, the most of them would come readily under the last class. There is nothing in them to commend them as intellectual food; there is no active poison in them to kill the innocent reader; but there is also nothing in them wholesome or entertaining. I spent an hour or two in seeking one good book, a book that had solid information or sparkling wit, sense, or fun-something to feed one's mind with useful information or to make one laugh a right hearty laugh. And the quest was vain. Tired of reading insipid pages, and vexed with the shallow platitudes of religious, moral, and literary tales and essays, I turned away from them all, and cried

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