NOW.

BY JAMES LUMBARD.

THE realm of the Past belongs wholly to God,
And vain is the call for its long vanished hours;
The land of the future no footstep hath trod,
And Fancy alone may go thither for flowers.
The Present is all that we rightfully own,

The only bright tangible portion of time, Wherein we may tarry and build us a throne,

And bend to our purpose its treasures sublime.

Pale, cypress-crowned Memory presides o'er the Past, She strolls through its corridors dusty with age, Her eyes on its dim fading records are cast,

And while she is reading, her tears blot the page. But Action, stern Action the Present controls, She grapples it, measures it, files it at will, Neglecting no labor that duty unfolds,

And deeming no duty too small to fulfil.

Then let us be doing while yet it is Noon,

For the sun loiters not in his mid-day career,
Let us prove that we know how to value the boon,
By using it well the brief time it is here.
No matter how humble his station may be,

There is labor enough for each one to perform,
With Faith, Hope, and Love, the invincible three,

He can work out his mission in sunshine and storm.

Not a breeze wanders by but is freighted with sighs, Wrung out from the banned and the barred of the

race;

Shall we listen with cold unconcern to their cries, And say there are wrongs that we cannot efface? No, let us be out in Humanity's field,

Uprooting the wrongs that are going to seed, While yet we have hearts, hands and voices to wield, Giving home to no thought but that we shall succeed.

We cannot divine where an action may stop
In its influence on the far ages to be;
The wave set in motion at first by a drop,

May expand, till at length it encircles the sea.
A kind word may cheer the most desolate heart,
A smile nerve anew the most languishing soul;
They do not cost much, but the good they impart
May only be read on Eternity's scroll.

To-day set about the great work to be done;
To linger or doubt is no trivial sin;
The harvest is plenteous, and ripe in the sun,
Awaiting the reapers to gather it in.

And he who returns when his labor is done,

Bearing sheaves for the garner of virtue and peace, Shall receive the glad palm all the valiant have won, Whose brilliance the future shall ever increase.

THE SOUL AND ITS TRIALS.

BY REV. A. D. MAYO.

WE need the fact of the native worth of man to explain suffering and affliction. The trials of this life are dreadful and overpowering, because we hold ourselves in low estimation. We voluntarily degrade ourselves in our own eyes, and then wonder why we are afflicted beyond what we think our desert. Men treat themselves like children, and seem to think they were made to be petted and pleased by Providence. God is good to them when he gives a smooth path, a comfortable home, an easy duty, cheerful society, and agreeable surroundings. This is the common estimate we make of ourselves. We drag ourselves down into a state of perpetual spiritual infancy, and then complain because the Deity does not furnish us with nurses and food to suit our depraved wishes.

But do we ever consider what humiliation this complaint implies in us? Is not this a thing most surprising; that I, a being made in God's image, furnished for the everlasting pursuit of knowledge and holiness, capable of a destiny so grand that I could not endure the full comprehension of it; a

destiny that will lead me through every form of human experience, good or evil, will certainly not spare me in any point, but will test me on every side of my varied nature, will especially lead me up to every obstacle behind which lurks a good; a destiny to which I can trust myself with the assurance that under its guidance I shall know, feel, enjoy, and suffer all of which my soul is capable, and through these experiences become more capable of knowing, feeling, enjoying, and suffering; a destiny that shows me God to be forever approached through the universe in which he at once conceals and reveals himself;- is it not a thing most surprising that I, appointed to such a destiny, should, in its very beginning, attempt to question God concerning little measures of pleasure and pain; should so forget for what I was made as to give up my immortal hopes, and lay down the crown of my soul on conditions that I may be fed upon sweet things, and rocked in the cradle of my selfishness and conceit, and sung to by a voice that would cheat me out of my heavenly birthright? Oh it is surprising; yet this is what we do when we complain of our trials in this world. For we degrade ourselves when we ask God to give us uninterrupted happiness. He cannot give it to such beings as we, amid our circumstances. He may be able to give it to merely sensitive creatures, to some kinds of animals; but

when he puts reason into a being, and bestows upon it the gift of Immortality, and the possibility of ever-increasing likeness to himself, that gift brings in every sorrow of which humanity can conceive.

So, if we would escape from suffering, we must escape from our manhood, and our best hopes of eternal growth. The soul, to be free from it, must be of small proportions, and narrow expectations. Perhaps God could create a little garden, under a shelter, and make it perfectly regular and beautiful, with arbors and walks, and flower borders; but when he would create a planet he must not only make pleasant valleys, green fields and smooth rivulets, but the ocean with its awful depths and sounding shores, the volcano with its boiling caverns of lava, and its fires kindling heaven and earth with horrid glare, the torrent bearing destruction down from the snow-crowned mountain to the fruitful plain; the Desert, the Iceberg, the Abyss, the Cataract, and the Maelstrom; and this world must be set agoing to the music of storms and thunders, amid the play of lightnings and the contentions of all the elements; -a fearful thing, surely; and were this Planet endowed with life, it would, in the midst of some tornado or pestilence, complain to its Creator, and say, "this is all wrong!" But its Creator might reply: "If thou wouldst be free from this, thou must become that trim garden, built