shrinks not when called upon to endure; which accepts the necessary means by which God would perfect it as His own wholesome and sacred minis try; so accepts them as to be co-workers with Him. In such co operation wrong tendencies are steadily ground away through daily resistance of temptation, as the pebble was ground in the sands of the beach. Sharp concussions against the rocks of adversity may work more speedily, but hardly more effectually. The work goes on through the action of the waves which roll in constantly from the ocean of God's love. And by them the soul which holds its true position in, and yet not of, the world, is fitted for eternity. When fitted thus, according to His will, God will trace a heavenly picture upon it; what, we do not now knowbut we know it will be some reflection of His beauty.

In some souls well disciplined for heaven, we believe we see even here what may be called a heavenly sketch, or outline, of this beautiful work, which he will color and perfect in heaven. This thought should divest life, and even the prospect of death, of gloom.

Here we see a course of preparation-but the eye of faith looks forward, not only to a glorious home, but to the glorious fitness of the souls upon which the hand of God has thus wrought, both to occupy and adorn that home. E. E. C.

THE SAFETY OF A SHUT DOOR.

In the middle ages, when neither men nor manners were so mild as to-day, the castle door was protected by the portcullis, a sliding framework which could be dropped of a sudden, to shut out the entrance of an enemy. Friends came and went without obstruction, but foes were abruptly stopped. Those who fled for refuge to the castle could enter safely; the portcullis would fall behind them, and cut short their hottest pursuers.

This method was, indeed, not unlike the shutting of the eyelids, which nature has contrived for quick defense against the flying dust. Moreover, it has its parallel in the needs and in the provisions of our mental and moral natures. The security of the quickly closing door is just what we all require in our individual spiritual life, while so many entrances are necessarily open for use, and must remain open, except when sharply shut in order to the barring out of sudden temptations. Strong resolves must ever be hanging in ready grooves over all the open ways to our inner being. The price of moral security is shutting the door against the entrance of evil, and keeping it shut.

Our average experience teaches us the duty of often shutting the door of our lips. Reserve is, in many an instance, the price of success He who tells a half-formed plan defeats himself. Strong men have commonly an air of reserve. They learn how to ward off the approach of persons likely to interfere with their duty in hand. Reserve does not imply that there is anything that, for its own sake, needs hiding, but only the exclusion of those visi

tants who could not understand the heart, if it admitted them. There are, indeed, those with whom candor to the extent of our full confidence is well reposed; and, again, there are those to whom our best nature and our truest selves are hopeless enigmas. It was when the door was shut, and the circle of discipleship was guarded, that the risen Christ came to speak peace to his loved ones. Closed doors will ever give the opportunity of highest communion with Him who sees and is seen in secret.

The restrictions of a shut door are often none the less needful for being irksome. When those eight souls were shut into the ark, they may have fretted at the loss of liberty; but how much better for them to be thus shut in than to be exposed to the waves of the flood outside. Their strict inclosing was their safety.. An open door, even for a moment, would have been their ruin. So in many a spiritual inclosing; the closed door is a means of choicest grace.

The life that is shut in is not, by any means, in bondage. The absolute renunciation which shuts out a besetting sin, is one of the higher forms of liberty. It is never safe to have too many doors open and unwatched. Even of guests who might lawfully enter, not every one would make a wholesome guest to entertain. We need to keep the door of our personality shut against many indulgences, tastes, and habits which, if once admitted into our individual life, will domicile themselves, and fasten on our very natures like parasites.

Unguarded entrances to mind and heart are positive invitations to evil. The young are peculiarly exposed to temptation; and largely because they go about with a self indulgent curiosity of openmindedness. The duty of taking care of themselves seems superfluous to young people, who are rich in strength and leisure, and who are thoughtless of their daily losses in those things of which they have now less need than they will have by and by. They are robbed by the temptations of their young lives, without feeling the hand that empties their purses. When, finally, they have come to be men and women, they are aware, too late, of their many deficiencies growing out of their early neglect.

While there is a depressing side to the general listlessness of the world, and even of Christian believers, in regard to shutting out temptation from the mind and heart, there is comfort in the thought that God does not let evil come in upon the souls of men, to the extent of its inviting-by the doors deliberately left open by them. Beyond the limits of sight there are outlying walls of protection which keep back the hosts of evil from pouring in upon the world. Within the heart there is something that restrains, so that not even the worst passions can do their worst. The chiefest safeguard against the freest entrance of evil into human hearts is God's restraining grace. God has put shut doors into every life. Considering the destructive agen cies under the surface of society, it would seem that the suppression of evil is due to more than the fear of the police, of disclosure, or of punishment;

is due, in short, to the constraint of a direct pres sure of God's constraining power. The hope of society is in the peace-making and peace-compelling grace of God, which stands as a door divinely closed between the good that is, and the evil that might be.-S. S. Times.

LONDON YEARLY MEETING, 1885.

The two-hundred-and-eighth Yearly Meeting of Friends at London has just concluded. Since the year 1678 a year has not passed without the gathering of the Quaker tribes at Devonshire House, for the "ordering, managing and regulating of the public affairs of Friends relating to the Truth" and "service of the Church of Christ."

It seems a general feeling that we have had a good Yearly Meeting; there was a general spirit of love and condescension, and a frequent sense of the Lord's favor. Many of those from the upper part of the meeting, who had borne the burden in past years, are no longer with us; we missed especially Isaac Robson, whose decease was announced at one of the sittings, and Thomas Harvey, whose devotion to duty in far off Canada was, alas, soon followed by his removal to a higher service; the memory of his wisdom, his keen, sanctified, intellectual power remains, and a young Friend, himself visited on a sick bed by T. Harvey a little before his death, bore witness to his work.

As in former years, the meeting owed much to the labors of the Friends at the table, especially of Joseph Storrs Fry, the Clerk, whose genial, happy spirit much promoted the harmony of the discussions.

One of the first subjects to claim notice (on Fourthday, 20th of Fifth mo.), was the correspondence with the American Yearly Meetings. Many Friends feel that the Epistles exchanged with these year by year are sometimes burdensome, and sometimes place us in difficulty, when a meeting in America divides, and we have to choose to which body to address our letter. A conference was appointed to meet in the autumn to take this whole matter into consideration. The Epistle from Canada was followed by the report of the deputation of four Friends (T. Harvey, J. B. Braithwaite, Wm. Robinson, and T. Pumphrey), set apart last year to visit that Yearly Meeting, to try and heal the disputes which had arisen. They could not report any great success; the lawsuit is still proceeding, and the two bodies of Friends seem irreconcilable. A long address had been issued by the deputa. tion, setting forth very clearly the principles of Friends and the importance of mutual charity. Some desired that this Yearly Meeting might send an Epistle to both the Yearly Meetings in Canada, but most felt that we must this year continue to write to the one with which we have always corresponded since the division in 1881. After long discussion and much diversity of view, it was agreed to write a short minute addressed to all Friends in Canada, and to send our Epistle to the same as before.

On Fifth-day, 21st, Triennial Reports, this year from the South and West of England, were read. The Birmingham report spoke of the 4000 scholars in the Firstday schools with 80 teachers, and 693 members in the Christian Society." Bristol, Devon and Cornwall, Sussex, &c., also furnished interesting accounts of their meetings, of a generally encouraging nature. But the most striking report was that from Western Quarterly Meeting. In its narrative of progress and extension it stands quite unique. Herefordshire and Radnorshire Monthly Meeting had nearly trebled its membership in three years; 99 persons had been received by con

vincement in the last three years,—all were abstainers. The revival began with a series of meetings in some of the old meeting-houses. That at Almeley, built by Roger Pritchard in 1660, was reopened last year, and

23 members, with double that number of attenders, now meet in it. There is a resident missionary. Pales, a meeting long kept up by one solitary attender, an old man on crutches, now numbers 63 members, two of them acknowledged ministers. The influx is the result of the persistent work of twenty-five years past, although this was long in showing much fruit. It is an agricultural district, and was fruitful in sufferers in the early days of the Society.

Some discussion followed on the methods of work and the practices of reading the Bible and singing in some meetings. Whilst some Friends deplored these, Isaac Brown warned the meeting against limiting the Holy Spirit, or the lines on which He shall work. The will of Christ is the conversion of souls and the holy living of those who have been converted.

The Statistical Returns showed our total membership as 15,381, being 162 more than last year. The births were 172, being still much fewer than the deaths (241); 128 of our members had married in the year. These figures compare unfavorably with the general population, owing largely to the peculiar character of our membership: many elderly persons and fewer of younger age. The admissions from the outside were 351 in the year, a larger number than in any year since the records were kept (1861). The balance of admissions over loss by resignation and disownment gives, on an average of the last four years, a gain of 164 per annum. We have 315 meetings and 5629 habitual attenders, non-members. There is a constant loss, owing to the children of Friends marrying out of the Society being lost to us; on the other hand, many who thus leave us carry a Friendly influ ence into other spheres of action; we may often ascribe in part to their Quaker training the conscientiousness, strength of conviction and philanthropy which they manifest.

The General School Conference was held in the evening. Our twelve public schools hold 1059 children, Ackworth taking the lead with 278, and Saffron Walden 143. The average cost per child is £30. How to provide school education for Friends of smaller means, and many newly received, is a question which received some attention. Many Friends object to the public "Board Schools;" day schools, to be kept by Friends, were suggested for children up to 12 or 13 years, the present boarding-schools being taken as finishing establishments.

The "State of the Society" came under review on Sixth-day, 22d. Many Friends had come up to Yearly Meeting full of thought and fears about doctrine. The Essays entitled "A Reasonable Faith" had aroused very diverse feelings and were early alluded to, both in the meeting on Ministry and Oversight, and in the Yearly Meeting itself. In both a very full testimony was borne by J. B. Braithwaite and others to the atoning work of the Lord Jesus, the propitiation for our sins. The same is expressed with no uncertain sound in the General Epistle now being issued. As Scripture words and phrases were mainly used, all could agree to what was said, including the authors of the Essays. The three authors avowed their work, and protested its harmony with sound gospel truth. W. Pollard, Francis Frith and W. E. Turner are the writers. Without professing to state dogmatically on a subject of such depth and so unsearchable, it may be said that probably the work in question dwells too exclusively upon one aspect of the atonement, so as to present a seriously incomplete view of it; and the

issue of a fuller exposition of this cardinal doctrine in the Epistle is therefore timely. There are at the same time extreme and unscriptural expressions often used by some evangelical writers, which are also to be deprecated. We must seek to hold the truth in its completeness, and remember also that it is not the intellectual understanding, but the receiving into our hearts of the great truths of the gospel, which is essential. (To be concluded.)

tion. In 1846 the Legislature of this State gave us a no license act. And you will recollect that the Supreme Court immediately afterward pronounced the act unconstitutional. In 1855 the Legislature passed a prohibitory law, but the next Legislature repealed it. In 1872 we were granted local option, and forty-two out of the sixty-seven counties of the State voted that saloons should not be licensed, but within two years the Legislature repealed the law. We do not desire that any of these unsatisfactory

on Constitutional Prohibition.

BY JOSHUA L. BAILY.

(Continued from page 735.)

MORALLY RIGHT OR MORALLY WRONG.

Now, fellow-citizens, the traffic in intoxicating liquors is either morally right or it is morally wrong. If it is right, nobody should be prohibited from engaging in it; everybody should be as free to go into the saloon business as into the grocery, the hardware, or the dry goods business. But if it is wrong, everybody should be prohibited from engaging in it, and not all the gold of Golconda should suffice to purchase a license. Neither is the rightfulness or wrongfulness of the traffic conditional upon the number of persons who are engaged in it. What, then, is our remedy?

We by no means overlook the value, nay, the necessity, for all moral agencies, but we are speaking now only of the legal remedy, and those whom I have the honor to represent here believe that no effectual legal remedy can be found short of the Constitutional prohibition of the drink traffic. We fully approve those strong words of Mr. Gough (John B. Gough), the able and eloquent and long experienced apostle of prohibition, where he says: "The liquor traffic has no moral right to exist; none whatever to be protected in its existence, and all legislation should aim at its extinction."

That other great apostle of temperance, who lived forty years before Gough, Father Mathew, declared after his long life of experience: "The practice of prohibition seems to me the only safe and certain remedy for the evils of intemperance. This opinion has been strengthened and confirmed by the hard labor of more than twenty years in the temperance cause." To quote from one other authority-going back one hundred and forty years -I find that Lord Chesterfield, that eminently polite and learned man, said in the British Parlia ment: "Luxury, my Lords, is to be taxed, but vice is to be prohibited, let the difficulty in the law be what it will." The noble Lord went on to say: "Would you lay a tax upon a breach of the Ten Commandments? Would not such a tax be wicked and scandalous? Would it not imply an indul gence to all those who could afford to pay the tax?"

WHY CONSTITUTIONAL PROHIBITION? But do you ask why we want Constitutional prohibition? We want something that shall be permanent-not subject to the vagaries of every elec

thing which, when once adopted by the sober sense of the people, shall remain as a part of the fundamental law.

OBJECTIONS TO PROHIBITION.

Many objections to prohibition have been suggested, but I shall attempt to night to answer only a few of the most prominent. One class of objectors assume that what we ask for is sumptuary legislation-a sort of legislation supposed to be very odious. I understand a sumptuary law to be an attempt to regulate the dress, diet, or manners of the citizen. There were such laws in England once; one law forbade the wearing of short doublets and long coats, and another ordained that no man should be served a dinner with more than two courses. The prohibition we advocate is nothing of this kind. It makes no attempt to deal with individual habits, but only with the manufacture and sale-very proper objects of legislation. It is not claimed that men can be made sober by law. It would be too much to expect that human hearts and human propensities can be changed by act of Legislature. But this is what the law can do: it can provide protection for the citizen by removing the temptation to vice and crime. "The law can make it difficult to do wrong," as some one has aptly said, "and easy to do right."

IN ADVANCE OF PUBLIC SENTIMENT.

We often hear it objected that prohibition is in I am by no means advance of public sentiment. satisfied that such is the fact; but, even were it so, should that stand in the way of its adoption? Some of the best laws that have ever been adopted for the protection of society have, at the time of their promulgation, been very much in advance of public sentiment. Such were the laws which were given to mankind from Sinai, and in which may be found the germs of all moral law. When Moses came down from the Mount, bearing in his hands the tables of stone upon which these laws were written, and found his people kneeling before a golden calf, it did not take him long to discover that these laws were very much in advance of public sentiment, and he threw the tables to the ground and broke them. But did the Lord. call him back into the Mount to repeal the laws? Not at all, but to rewrite them. Not one jot of the prohibition was expunged, not one tittle of the penalty remitted.

I heard General Neal Dow say, that when the first prohibitory law was passed in Maine it was very much in advance of public sentiment, but it had an

THE COLOR BEARER.

You have heard the story of the color-bearer in the army, who left his regiment in the valley and went and raised his ensign upon the hilltop, and when the colonel of the regiment called to him to bring the colors back to the regiment, he replied, "Bring your regiment up to the colors." And that must be the cry of every moral reformer today. When you are thoroughly convinced as to what moral reform requires, do not stop to inquire whether the people are ready for it, but bring them by the force of education up to the standard.

LOSS OF REVENUE.

We are told that the prohibition of the drink traffic would occasion a great loss of revenue to the Government. Not long ago, when some prohibitory measure was under consideration in the English Parliament, some London brewers called on Mr. Gladstone to remonstrate, because, as they said, such a measure would greatly diminish the national revenue. Mr. Gladstone promptly replied: "Gentlemen, I cannot permit a question of mere revenue to be considered alongside a question of morals; but give me a sober population, not wasting their earnings on strong drink, and I will know where to get my revenue." Very much in accord with that was what was said by Chief Justice Grier, of the United States Supreme Court, when questioned as to the effect of prohibition, that "Even should there be a loss of revenue, the Government would be a thousand-fold the gainer in the health and wealth and happiness of her people."

(To be continued.)

From the Independent.

THE FUTURE OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

Of all the languages now known, the English bids fair to be the most widely prevalent. If there is to be one universal speech, the English has at present no approximate rival in the line of such a result. The great Anglo-German philologist, Max Müller, holds the theory that very many of the alphabets and languages now existing will, as he phrases it, "be improved away from the face of the earth." He is having reference to a gradual process of elimination and absorption, and insists that it would be well if the different languages of the earth might all be reduced to five or six "great historical languages." In such a reduction he would escape the confusion that arises from excessive multiplicity of tongues, while also escaping the equally dangerous extreme of one all inclusive language. On the principle of natural selection, he ventures an enumeration of the Italian, French, Spanish, German and English, as making up the list of such historic tongues. On the basis of such a list as this an approximate estimate might be formed as to the probable prevalence of our vernacular as compared with that of the other languages mentioned. Such an estimate has been

In the remarks of Gladstone, already referred to, the computation of a British statistician is accepted to the effect that, within the next century, the English will be spoken by about one thousand millions of people.

Axon, in his "Future of the English Language,' and De Candolle in his "History of the Sciences," have furnished facts by which Müller's position may be tested and the prospects of English assured. After first showing the number now speaking respectively the five languages mentioned, and showing the number of years in which these five nations respectively double their populations, the estimate is made of the exact number of persons who, at the close of the next two centuries, will speak the respective languages.

The result is as follows: Italian, 53,370,000; French, 72,571,000; German, 157,480,000; Spanish, 505,286,000; English, 1,837,286,153. We reach here, in round numbers, two thousand millions of people speaking the English language at the close of the next two hundred years. This is substantially the ratio of increase accepted by Gladstone as mathematically assured, and quite enough to confirm the statement that the vernacular has no dangerous rival in the line of leadership and possible universality. Mr. Cook's recent estimate as to the four hundred millions that would probably speak English in America at the close of the next century is reached by the same series of ratios. If, in addition to this numerical supremacy, it is remembered that the English nations are, as yet, the historic exponents of Protestantism and popular rights, such a picture of the ever widening prevalence of the language is full of hope to the race. It is at present clearly manifest that to the English speech in its more popular expression there would seem to be given in trust the educational and ethical rule of the world. Nothing seems to remain but that this trust shall be accepted and applied in the spirit and to the ends designed by Providence; that the English-speaking people be hind the English language shall prove themselves in all respects worthy of so solemn and precious a heritage. The future of the English language depends on the future of the English people.

Princeton College.

PROF. T. W. HUNT.

"THERE are some religious teachers" says Dr. Maclaren, "who are always preaching down enthusiasm, and preaching what they call 'a sober standard of feeling' in matters of religion, by which, in nine cases out of ten, they mean precisely such a tepid condition as is described in much less polite language, when the voice from heaven says, Because thou art neither cold nor hot I will spue thee out of my mouth.' That is the real meaning of the 'sobriety' that some people are always desiring you to cultivate. I should have thought the last piece of furniture which any Christian Church in the 19th century needed was a refrigerator. A poker and a pair of bellows would be much more needful for them."