CASTLES IN SPAIN. . How fair they rise hyacinthine meadow-ground lies Within the shade. By snow-capped heights made! From that of wild sierras How gleaming white Those battlements beneath light! How marbles show Their brilliancy against the eternal snow! the morning How roof and spire Are daily kindled to a flashing fire, And over all Folds of silken banner rise and fall ! The court below Is moated with a stream of gentle flow, Whose crystal faco Reduplicates the beauty of the place. The perfumed breeze Cumes through the branches of fruit-laden trees, And song of bird, Flute-like and mellow, from the copse is heard. : With soothing sound Cool fountains scatter jewels all around, In flashing spray The :winbow bends its arch above our way. #o enter there »osom friends we bid share: We rest at ease: We go again at any time we please. With our joys to From mortal eyes Were veiled the glories bright of Paradise, * Yet there remain These glorious castles all our own—in Spain. —New York Home Journal. 4 THE GRAY STHER. Twelve hundred feet high is the sun-dial of the. Lazy J Ranch and nearly as broad—that cliff of divers hues which stands out from the wall of the canon of the Grand river. The opposite precipice serves the cowboys as gnomon or index to the hours of day, for its shadow sweeps over the stupendous, variegated face and marks the course of the sun through a sky that is always un- clouded. A ledge of porphyry, fifty feet deep, crowns the dial; often it looks like a strip of pink ribbon to the men below by the stream. But it was a glorious coronal, kindling in the first rays from the east, when Holden hailed it with uplifted eye and hand as he quirted his Lorse through the barway of the corral. “Sunup!”’ cried Holden, the young foreman, filled with “the joy of the morning. He is the son of the presi- dent of the cattle company; he had come straight from college to the cow- camp, and the old stroke of the ’var- sity eight set a hot pace in saddle for the Lazy J riders. He rode that morning a big-boned, Roman-nosed, blue-roan “‘outlaw’”—a horse pronounced irreclaimable by the boys; he had tied a bucking roll across the shonlders of his saddle to supplement the grip of his knees, and on top of that lay the big, loose coil of his fifty-foot cable line, for he was still young enough to disdain a lariat of lesser length and caliber. Behind Holden Navajo Jim lifted a light left foot to the stirrup; then his spurred right tripped clinking to the evasive dance of his young horse, and he slipped inimitably into his saddle. To its right shoulder hung the trim coiled ring of his rope of braided raw- hide, which, to that ef the foreman, was as steel to irom and would hold anything on hoofs. Foreman and follower struck out through the greasewood over ground without grass; the grazing range lay high on the mesa, fenced by the lofty wall of the canon. Its seémingly in- accessible height was scaled by the sure-footed, agile range cattle at a break in the porphyry ledge not far up the canon, and presently they took to the dizzy trail With slack cinches the blowing horses clawed up the loose footing at the top of the break and moved out on a narrow projecting tongue of the mesa. Still higher the mesa broad- ened and was set with squat cedars and pinons. Here the riders saw cat- tle already chewing their cuds in the shade. “We're too low down. nothing here,” said the man, his eyes roving over “It’s beef I'm after. There’s young fore- the stock. T've got to a hundred steers gathered yet!” “Quaking-asp putty good place for steer now,” said Navajo Jim. “Water sweet there .and stamein’- ground close.” “Yes, I know,” Holden returned, impatiently. ‘‘The boys started twenty head down yesterday and had them pointed for the .corral, when that blamed gray steer scattered the bunch, ¢nl they broke back for the hills.” “That gray steer like bull elk. Bet- ter corral him with six-shooter,’”’ said Jim. ‘‘One steer not much worth.” “Six-shooter nothing? What's our ropes for?” cried Holden. . “That big grizzly brute will feteh mp a whole carload to the top notch in the stock- pens. He goes on hoof te Omaha. I told the boys I'd give a $50-dollar saddle to the first man that “twined’ Lim and stayed with him.” “I already got putty good saddle, Mr. Holden,” said Jim, with a grin. “That steer seven,eight year old now, and all time run wild. Horns so long stick clean through horse.” “Well, beef’s up in the air; herses are down,” returned the foreman. “Quirt up, Jim. We'll strike up higher.” : On the loftier grazing-ground they found the cattle still at feed. Through thickening hosts of deer-flies and horse-fliee their horses strained up the steep oakbrush slopes. In banded resistanee to like winged attacks, the cattle of the higher range were begin- ning-to ‘bunch’ on each open stamp- ing-ground. Toward these trampled circles the seattered steers were one by one making their way. ‘“The boys ean rua in all these steers tomorrow,” said Holden. ‘‘You and I, Jim, are going to twine that gray steer today.” ° ‘“He got big scare yesterday: too sharp to show up on stampin’-ground today,” Jim suggested. ‘‘Like enough,” Holden assented, “but we'll rustle him out. Tle boys lost him late yesterday in the long quaking-asp patch in that guleh np there, just below the rim-rock.” He pointed to the rim-rock of the spruce ridge, rising yet loftily above tops furrowing the get a train-road off by the first and not | Slash them with innumerable aspen gulches and brushy slopes draining down into the side canons. Quickening their horses, they pres- ently rode into the green gloom of the guleh, where the quaking-aspens trembled over hidden springs. Here mighty hoofprints dinted deep the mud and the sodden trails. ““‘Dere his track, fresh,” said Jim, stooping from his saddle over a print like a post-hole. where.” “We'll put him up,” said Holden, confidently; ‘‘and once he shows, stay with him, Jim.” “You bet I stay!” said Jim, simply. They threaded the winding thicket on separate trails and met near its head without a sight of the gray steer. “It’s mo use looking for him down in here,” said Holden. ‘‘He’s gone up higher. Let's try in the spruce below the rim-Tock.” He led the way upward along the steep, brushy side of the gulch until, stopped by the rim-rocik, they sat in their saddles and looked down and back in disappointment. Below them the gulch enclosed the fastness of the deer, a space darkened to twilight by a growth of young spruce and aspen saplings. “Maybe he down in those,” said Jim, with a drop alike of voice and hand. ‘‘Hide hisself in daytime like blacktail buck.” “But we can’t get into that ‘pocket’ on horses,” Holden replied loudly, in vexation. “Wait! Tl try for him!” As he spoke he dismounted to act on a boyish inspiration. He had noticed a big block fallen from the rim-rock and lying tilted up on the slope. With mighty heaving he overturned it, and dewn the slope it crashed in smashing leaps through the brush and swaying timber to the very heart of the spruce thicket. Snorts came up from below; Holden marked the course of startled, hurry-- ing creatures by the lines of swaying still, green sur- face, and three grand bucks sprang out,their horas showing brown in the velvet as they topped the lower brush; but a bearer of mightier horns was breaking through the pliant young trees, and a glimpse of a grizzly hide was exultantly caught by the young foreman. “Al, he show up now!” shouted Navajo Jim, erect in the stirrups, as the great steer came out below. 3 Bred from the finest of the Lazy J | SN : a | tramp of his rushing horse,the whirr- stock, he would have weighed near 2000 pounds; but such speed and bot- tom were his “rustling’’ on that rough range that the big body rose over the brush with the wild grace of a buck, and with deer-like ease his frontlet, and threatening, was thrown back over his stopped and eyed his hunters for an instant. One defiant shake of his per- fect horns, then he raced onward,and only bending brush marked his path. Holden was already galloping after him, smashing the undergrowth in a | straight course down the slope to in- tercept him below. shouting as he ran. Jim, with Indian ecircumspection, ran his horse in an easier descent along the slope, keeping his eyes on the swaying brush beneath and waiting for an opportunity of closing in more open ground. Now Holden’s horse, the blue out- law,showed once more his spirit and brought Holden close behind the game. Navajo Jim emerged from the thicket to see the young foreman in full career, swinging- his big rope, while the haltered head of the horse and the huge-horned frontlet of the steer reached out im an even race across the little open space beyond. The loop of Holden’s cable lit fairly over the widespread horns; but his hand was hardly quick enough in closing it. While it hung slack the steer leaped with both front legs through it, and then Holden’s tardy jerk brought ittight around the grizzly flanks. The beast bellowed as the plunge of his great gray body drew the turn of the rope swiftly from the saddle- horn. Vainly Holden tried to stay it. Recklessly he threw the slack end in a hitch around the steel horn and clapping his hand over it braced his horse for the shock, With forelegs outplanted and quar- ters lowered, the stubborn blue out- iaw stanchly set himself to the tight- ening rope. For an instant he was jerked along, stiff-legged, then over they went, dragged down, fierce horse and reckless roper. Clearing his legs, hanging at the side of his struggling horse, Holden stil] held the saddle-horu with power- ful grasp. Another bawl, a plunge that no eincheseould withstand—and, lo, the saddle was stripped from the outlaw and jerked high and far from Holden's hand! Navajo Jim checked his horse, but “Oni” roared the young foreman, and | the steer took him the nearer | corral, the wise >| | of the mesa—the | abyss—the trapped steer i from the saddle-horn, | ened | 2 iohe : “Ha lie close, some- | the steer’s high-plunging { Once more the | free. | with the spurs, | up his rope, grizzly shoulder as he | | head was | young. foreman, on the obedient Indian spurred after the wild steer and the flying saddle. The great steer seemed scarcely to feel the 50-pound drag of the bump- ing saddle. Yet it tightened the rope about loin and flanks, and by making it harder for him to breathe so lessened his speed that Jim easily kept him in sight. Through yielding brush and swaying thicket, thromgh bunches of frightened cattle that split to let him pass and came stringing after,bucking and bawling in sympathy, the brute plunged on. Each bawling bunch in turn was distanced. The brushy slopes broke away. As the mesa, sprinkled with pinons, began to offer to Jim smooth spaces for handling his horse, he un- | buckled the strap that held the coil of his rope, but still, as every leap of to the Indian only held the rawhide ringed ready in his hand. Down the rapidly narrowing tongue mesa which tipped precipitously out into the river-gorge and was bounded on either side by an sped. He at a standstill or at- must soon be | tempt to return on his tracks. The Indian’s eves had already kin- dled with anticipation of triumph, when | at the last of the pinons the bumping, hurtling saddle caught fast between projecting roots. It scarcely checked the steer! Holden’s cable tore loose and its slack- speedily kicked from haunches. great gray brute was loop was “Ah, he on the push now!’ said Jim and looked to his loop as the steer reversed his big body, gave a high, | writhing leap over the spurned rope, | confronted the herder with the threat- ening crescent of his sharp horns and’ plunged forward to the combat. The Navajo lifted his horse aside swung the loop open in his right hand and rose, half tarned { in the stirrups, in a quick underthrow | for the front hoofs of the steer as he lunged by. Jim’s eyes saw, for an instant, low- ered horns and uplifted hoofs mingled together, and his throw was true. But so quick was the play of the ponder- ous feet that the loop caught one fore- leg only and passed over the face and hung across the horns. The loop, drawn tight by the roper’s instantaneousjerk and kept from slack- ening by his nimble horse,bound horn and hoof together. Now the steer was in sad plight. With head drawn sidewise, with tongue lolling from open jaws, bellowing, he surged on three legs, but his spirit was un- broken. The roper slowed his horse to the strain. From horn to cantle the sad- dle creaked as, trampling and tugging in a wild, wide waltz, straining horse and hauling steer made the mad cir- cuit of the precipices. The Navajo, active in the saddle with rein,spur and rope, was, in spite of all his efforts, dragged past the break where the trail ran down the slope. His horse, always straining desperately, was tugged on and on until he circled along the perilous porphyry brink, and Jim glanced longingly from the saddle on the cor- ral, seemingly almost directly beneath him, its great square shrunk to the measure of his saddle-blanket. Holden, pounding dewn bareback on the blue roan, had stopped to gather but now Jim heard his encouraging shont. The quickened ing of his big rove as he swung it aloft, sounded close at hand, and the sweating roper relaxed his strain. The steer, alert to the slack, jerked his hoof from the loop. Heedless of the cutting rope, instantly tightened across face and frountlet, his stately lifted, and he stood, wild- eyed, quivering, cornered, caught but not conquered. He was on four legs again. Conquered? Never! With resistless pull on the rope ,he wheeled and broke for escape across the cliff that rises, red-banded, above the cor- ral. “Stay with him, Jim!” roared the swinging his rope, sure the steer would stop at the edge. Stay with him? Tt meant death surely. Already under the plunging front hoofs of the desperate rebel the porphyry rim crumbled. Jim's obedi- ence did not falter, although he was fairly staring down on the corral How would the falling feel? The Indian had a swift picture of it —the steer lowest in the air on the taut lariat, horse and man whirling after—but Navajo Jim set his savage jaws. No foreman to stay with a roped beast! He would not look on the faces of white ropers sneering. He was hired body and soul-—he was obedient—he would stay. Holden, for this mad second, watched incredulously. The steer would not go over—surely not. What? Straight on! And Jim! Was the man also erazy? Then the Navajo heard once more his master’s voice. “For God’s sake, Jim—Ilet gol heavens!” Jim obeyed. He flung loose the rope, but on his horse staggered. And the black length of the lariat was still whipping out with the defiant horned head that pitched off into space when the agile horse saved himself and his rider on the very brink. Holden dropped his useless rope as the Navajo, skimming the porphyry edge like a swallow, rode back and stared into the eyes of the white man. ‘‘He was brave, that steer,” said Jim, with a queer choke in his throat. ‘He saved himself from the stock- pens.’’ Holden held -ont his hand and grasped the Indian’s. ‘‘You beat my time, Jim,” was all he said, but some- thing in the tone called a new pride into the Navajo’s stern face.— Frank Oakling, in Youth's Companion. o should dare him- REY. THLMAGE'S SUNDRY: SERMON. Writing in Dust” the Subject—=A Denun- ciation of Hypoerisy=The Injustice of Condemning in Woman Sins That Are Overlooked in Man. Text: “Jesus stooped down and with His fingers wrote on the ground.”—John viii., 6. You must take your shoes off and put on the especial slippers provided at the door if you would enter the Mohammedan mosque, which stands now where once stood Herod’s temple, the scene of my text. Solomon’s temple bad stood there, but Nebuchadnezzar had thundered it down. Zerubbabel’s temple had stood there, but- had been prostrated. Now we take our placesin a templethat Herod built, because he was fond of great architecture, and he wanted the preceding temples to seem in- significant. Put eight or ten modern ca- thedrals together, and they would not equal that structure. It covered nineteen acres. There were marble pillars support- ing roofs of cedar, and silver tables, on which stood golden cups, and there were carvings exquisite, and inseriptions re- splendent, glittering balustrades and orna- mented gateways. In that stupendous pile of pomp and magnificence sat Christ, and a listening throng stood about Him when a wild dis- turbance took place. A group of men are puiling and pushing along a woman who 1ad committed a erime against society. When they have brought her in front of Christ, they ask that He sentence her to death by stoning. They are a critical, merciless, disingenuous crowd. They want to get Christ into controversy and public reprehension. If He say ‘“‘Let her die,” they will charge Him with cruelty. If He let her go they will charge Him with being in complicity with wickedness. Which- ever way He does, they would howl at Him. Then occurs a scene which has not been sufficiently regarded, He Jleaves the lounge or bench on which He was sitting, and goes down on one knee, or both knees, and with the forefinger of His right hand He begins to write in the dust of the floor, word after word. But they were not to be diverted or hindered. They kept on de- manding that He settle this case of trans- gression, until He looked up and told them they might themselves begin the woman’s assassination, if the complainant who had never done anything wrong himself would open the fire. ‘‘Go ahead, but be sure that the man who flings the first missile is im- maculate.” Then He resumed writing with His finger nail inthe dust of the floor, word after word. Instead of looking over His shoulder to see what He had written, the scoundrels skulked away. Finally, the whole place is clear of pursuers, antag- onists ard plaintiffs, and when Christ has finished this strange chirography in the dust He looks up and finds the woman all alone. The prisoner is the only one of the court- room left, the judges, the police, the preose- cuting attorney having cleared out. Christ is victor, and He gays to the woman: “Where are the persecutors in this case? are they all gone? Then I discharge you; go and sin no more.” I have wondered what Christ wrote on the ground. For do you realize that this is the only time that He ever wroteat all? IT know that Eusebius says that Christ once wrote a letter to Abgarus, the King of Edessa, but there is no good evidence of such a correspond- ence. The wisest Being the world ever saw, and the One who had more to say than anyone whoever lived, never writing a book or a chapter or a paragraph or a word on parchment. Nothing but the lit- erature of the dust, and one sweep of a brush or one breath of a wind obliterated it forever. Among all the rolis of the volumes of the first library- founded at Thebes there was not one scroll of Christ. Among the books of the Alexandrian Library, which, by the infamous decree of Caliph Omar, were used as fuel to heat the baths of the city, not one sentence had Christ penned. Among all the infinitude of volumes now standing in the libraries of Edinburgh, the British Museum; or Berlin, or Vienna, or the learned repositories of all nations, not one word written directly by the finger of ‘Christ. All that He ever wrote He wrote in dust, uncertain, shifting dust. My text says He stooped down and wrote on the ground. Standing straight up a man might write on the ground with a staff, but if with His fingers He would write in the dust He must bend clear over. Aye, He must get at least on one knee, or He can- not write on the ground. Benot surprised that He stooped down, His whole life was a stooping down. Stooping down from castle to barn. Stooping down from celestial homage to monocratic jeer. From resi- dence above the stars to where a star had to fall to decignate His landing-plaea. From Heaven's front door to the world’s back gate. From writing in round and silvered letters of constellation and galaxy on the blue seroll of Heaven to writing on the ground in the dust which the feet in the crowd had left in Herod’s temple. Christ came. down from the highest Heaven to the broiling of fish for His own breakfast, on the banks of the lake. From | emblazoned «chariots of eternity to the saddle of a mule’'s back. From the hom- age cherubie, ceraphie, archangelic, to the | paying of sixty-two and a half cents of tax to Cesar. From the deathless country to a tomb built to hide human dissolution. | The nplifted wave of Galilee was high, but He had to dome down before, with His feet, ile could touch it, and the whirlwind that arose above the billow was higher yet, but He had to come down before with His lip He could kiss 1t into quiet. Bethlshem a stooping down. Nazareth a stooping down. Death between two burglars a stooping down. Yes, it was in consonance with humiliations that went before and self- abnegations that came after, when on that memorable day in Herod's temple He stooped down and wrote on the ground. Whether the words He was writing were in Greek or Latin or Hebrew, I cannot say, for He knew all those languages. But He is still stooping down, and with His finger writing on the ground; in the winter in letters of crystals, in the spring in letters of flowers, in summer in golden letters ot harvest, in autumn in letters of fire or fall- €n leaves. How it would sweeten up and enrieh and emblazon this world, could we see Christ’s caligraphy all over it. This world was not flung ont into space thou- sands of years ago, and then left to look out for itself, It is still under the Divine care. Clrist never for a half second takes His hand off of it, or it wonld soon be a ship- wrecked world, a defunet world, an obso- lete world, an abandoned world, a dead world. ‘‘Let there be light,” was said at the beginning. And Christ stands under the wintry skies and says, let there be snow- flakes to enrich the earth; and under the clouds of spring and says, eome ye blos- soms and make redolent the orchards; and in September, dips the branches in the vat of beautiful colors, and swings them into the hazy air. No whim of mine is this. “Without Him was not anything made that was made.” Christ writing on the ground. If you could see His hand in all the pass- ing seasons, how it would illamine the world! All verdure and foliage would be allegoric, and again we would hear Him say, as of old, ‘Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow;’’ and we would not hear the whistle of a quail or the cawing of a raven or the roundelay of a brown- thresher, without saying, “Behold the fowls of the air, they gather not in barns, yet your Heavenly Father feedeth them;” and a Dominic hen of the barnyard could not cluek for her brood, but we would hear Christ saying, as of old, “How often would I have gathered thy childrentogether, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings;”” and through the redolent hedges we would hear Christ saying, ‘I am the rose of Sharon;” we could not dip the sea- souing from tha salt-cellar without think- fur of the divine suggestion, “Ye are the snlt of the earth, but if the salt hath lost its savor, it is fit for nothing but to be cast out and trodden under foot of men.” But when Christ stooped down and wrote on the ground, what did He write? The Pharisees did not stop to examine. The cowards, whipped of their own con- sciences, fled pell mell, Nothing will flay a man like an aroused conscience. Dr. Stevens, in his “History of Methodism,” says that when the Rev. Benjamin Abbott, of olden times, was preaching, he ex- claimed: ‘For aught I know there may be a murderer in this house,” and a man rose from the assemblage and started for the door and bawled aloud, confessing to a murder he had committed fifteen years before. And no wonder these Pharisees, reminded of their sins, took to their heels. But what did Christ write on the ground? The Bible does not state. Yet as Christ never wrote anything except that once you cannot blame us for wanting to know what He really did write. But I am cer- tain He wrote nothing trivial or nothings unimportant. And will you allow me to say that I think IT know what He wrote on the ground? I judge from the circum- stances. He might have written other things, but kneeling there in the Temple, surrounded by a pack of hypocrites who were a self-appointed constabulary, and having in its presence a persecuted woman, who evidently was very penitent for her sing, I am sure He wrote two words, both of them graphic and tremendous and re- verberating. Aund the one word was “hypocrisy’’ and the other word was “‘for- giveness.”’ ; Yes, I think that one word written on the ground that day by the finger of Christ was the awful word hypocrisy. What pretensions to sanctity are the part of those hypocritical Pharisees! When the fox begins to pray look out for your chick- ens. One of the cruel magnates of olden times was going to excommunicate one of the martyrs, and he began in the usual form—“In the name of God, Amen.” “Stop!” says the martyr, ‘“don’t say ‘in the name of God!’ ”” Yet how many outrages are practiced under the garb of religion and sanctity! When in synods and con- ferences. ministers of the Gospel are about to say something unbrotherly and un- kind about a member, they almost always begin by being ostentatiously pious, the venom of their assault correspond ng to the heavenly flavor of the prelude. About to devour a reputation they say grace before meat. But I am sure there was another word in that dust. From her entire manner I am sure that arraigned woman was re- pentant. She made no apology, and Christ in nowise helittled her sin. But her sup- plicatory behavior and her tears moved Him, and when He stooped down to write on the ground He wrote that mighty, that imperial word, forgiveness. When on Sinai God wrote the law, He wrote it with finger of lightning on tables of stone, each word cut as by a chisel into the hard granite surface. But when Hp writes the offence of this woman He writes it in dust so that it can be easily rubbed out, and when she repents of it-—oh, He was a merciful Christ! I was reading of a legend that is told in the far East about Him. He was walking through the streets of a city and He saw acrowd around a dead dog. And one man said: ‘‘What a loath- some object is that dog!’ ‘‘Yes,” said an- other, “his ears are mauled and bleeding.” “Yes,” said another, ‘“‘even his hide would not be of any use to the tanner.” ‘Yes,’ said another, “the odor of his carcass is dreadful.” "Then Christ, standing there, said: ‘‘But pearls cannot equal the white- ness of his teeth.” Then the people, moved by the idea that anyone could find any- thing pleasant concerning the dead dog, said: “Why, this must be Jesus of Naza- reth!” Reproved and convicted, they went away. ut while I speak of Christ of the text, His stooping down writing in the dust, do not think I underrate the literature of the dust. It is the most tremendous of all literature. It is the grandest of all libra- ries. When Layard exhumed Nineveh he was only opening the door of its mighty dust. The excavations of Pompeii have only been the unclasping of the lids of a nation’s dust. Oh! this mighty literature of the dust: Where are the remains of Sennacherib and Attila. and Epaminondas and Tamerlane and Trajan and Philip of Macedon and Julius Caesar? Dust! Where are the guests who danced the floors of the Alham- bra or the Persian palaces of Ahasuerus? Dust! Where are the musicians who played, or the orators who spoke, and the sculptors who chisled, and the architects who built, in all the centuries except our own? Dust! Where are the most of the hooks that once. entranced the world? Dust! Pliny wrote twenty books of his- tory; all lost. The most of Menander's writings lost. ~~ Of one hundred and thirty comedies of Plautus, all gone but twenty. Iuripides wrote a hundred dramas, all gone but nineteen. schylus wrote a hun- dred dramas, all gone but seven. Quin- tilian wrote his favorite book on the cor- ruption of eloquence, all lost, Thirty books of Tacitus lost. Dion Cassius wrote eighty books, only twenty remain. Bero- sius’s history all lost. Where there is one living Look there are a thousand dead hooks. Oh! this mighty literature of the dust. It is not so wonderful, after all, that Christ | ehose, instead of an inkstand, the impres- sand on the floor of an ancient pen, put sionable temple, and, instead of a hard | forth His forefinger, with the samo kind of nerve and muscle and bone and flesh as that which makes up our own forefinger, | and wrote the awful doom of hypocrisy, and full and complete forgiveness for re- pentant sinners, &ven the worst. We talk about the ocean of Christ's mercy. Put four ships upon that ocean and let them sail out in opposite directions for a thou- sand years, and see if they can find the shore of the ocean of the divine mercy. Let them sail to the north and the south and the east and the west, and then after the thousand years of vogage lot them come back and they will report ‘“No shore, no shore to the ocean of God’s merey!” And now I can believe that which I read, how that a mother kept burning a candle in the window every night for ten years, and one night, very late, a poor waif on tha street entered. The aged woman said to her, “Sit down by the fire,” and the stranger said, “Why do you keep that light in the window?” The aged woman said, “That is to light my wayward daughter when she returns. Since she went away, ten years ago, my hair has turned white. Folks blame me for worrying about her, but you see I am her mother, and sometimes, half a dozen times a night, I open the door and look out into the darkness and cry, ‘Liz- zie! ‘Lizzie!’ But I must not tell you any more about my trouble, for I guess, from the way you cry, you have trouble enough of your own. Why, how cold and slek you seem! Oh, my! can it be? Yes, you are Lizzie, my own lost child! Thank God that you are home again!” And what a time of rejoicing there was in that house that night. And Christ again stooped down, and in the ashes of that hearth, now lighted up, not more by the great blazing logs than hy the joy of a reunited household, wrote the same liberating words that had been written more than eighteen hundred years ago inthe dust of the Jerusalem temple. Forgiveness! A word broad enough and high enough to let pass through it all the armies of Heaven, a million abreast, on white horses, nostril to nostril, flank to flank. Relief Needed in Spain. Countess de Casa Valencia, wife of the former Spanish Ambassador to Great Britain, appeals through the London papers for contributions to her fund for the Spanish sick and wounded. She says: “There are many thousands lying in hospitals at San Sebastian, Las Palmas, Santiago de Cuba and Guantanamo without bandages or lint or even beds to sleap upon, owing to inade- quate funds. And there are. many widows und orpbaus who are in most urgent need 1 of relief.” | | [HE SABBATH-SCHOOL LESSOR INTERNATIONAL LESSON COMMENTS: FOR AUGUST 21. Text: Vay Lesson “Naaman Kings 1-14—Golden Text: Jer. xvii, 14=Commentary on the Day’s Lesson by the Rev. D. M. Stearns. Healed,” II 1. ‘Now Naaman, captain of the host of the king of Syria, was a great man with: his master and honorable.” The verse goes on to tell why, but closes with the sad statement that he was a leper. The Word ot God from beginning to end reveals God to us working in and through and for His people and for all who are willing to re- ceive His mercy. Even by those who do not know Him He sometimes works as in this case, delivering Syria by Naaman. All the great and honorable men of Seripture, such as Boaz, the mighty man of wealth (Ruth ii., 1); Mordecai, who was great among the Jews (Est. x., 3), and others lead the believer to say with heartfelt grat- itude. ‘I know a greater and more honor- able than all others, and He can heal even lepers.” 2, ‘Brought away captive out of the land of Israel a little maid, and she waited on Naaman’s wife.”” Thus did the Syrians with God’s permission, but what about the little maid’s father and mother, and what about her own poor little heart? It is very evident that God does not alwaysseek the comfort of His people, but He does al- ways seek the highest good, and the great- est eternal glory of each one. Consider Joseph and Daniel, ete. 3. “Would God my lord wera with the prophet that is in Samaria! For he would recover him of his leprosy.’”” But for the love of God manifested throughthe little maid we might never have had the story of Naaman. The faithfulness of the little boy Samuel and of this little girl are great lessons for all boys and girls. Jesus at the age of twelve was about His Father’s busi- ness, and it is the business of all who know Him to make Him known to others. 4, “Thus and thus said the maid that is of the land of Israel.” 80 said one to the king, and thus the mbisage of the little maid is passed on to headquarters, even the words of a little boy or zirl are worth being passed on and will aceomplish God’s pleasure if they concern Him or His ser- vants who live unto Him. He will use any vessel that is willing to be used by Him that He may be glorified. 5. “And the king of Syria said, Go to, go and I will send a letter unto the king of Israel.” So Naaman departed, taking as a present ten talents cf silver, 6000 pieces of gold and ten changes of raiment. God gave His Son freely and with Him freely all things (Rom. iii., 2%; viii., 32). Those do not know Him who think to buy His gifts, neither do those know Him as they should who bring Him no thank offer- ing. 6. “Now, when this letter i3 come unto thee, behold I have therewith sent Naa- man, my servant, to thee, that thou mayest recover him of his leprosy.” Our mes- sages for God often get twisted and per- verted by those who hear them, but God will somehow accomplish His pleasure. It is not for us to worry if we have acted ac- cording to Jer. xxiii., 28. The little girl had said that the prophet, not the king, would do it. 7. “Am. I God,.to kill and to make alive, that this man doth send unto me to recover a man of his leprosy?’ Thus said the king of Israel when he had read the letter and imagined that the king of Syria sought to quarrel with him. True, he was not able either to kill or make alive, but he should have known the God of Israel and His servants, the prophets, and have been able to point people tothe one only living and true God. 8. “Wherefore hast thou rent thy clothes? Let him now come to me, and he shall know that there is a propiaet in Israel.” Thus sent Elisha to the king when he heard that the king had rent his elothes. Here is a man conscious of the fact that he is on earth for God and that God is with Him. He has seen the power of Cod in the dividing of the waters, the healing of the waters and in the miraculous sup- ply of water, in the increase of the oil, the raising of the Shunamite’'s son and the healing of the pottage. He knows God and feels free to expect whatever will glorify Him. 9. “So Naaman came with his horses and with his chariot and stood at the door of the house of Elisha.” A wonderful sight truly to be seen at a poor man’s door! It makes us think of the time whan all kings shall fall down before Him whom Elisha served, when every high thing shall be brought down and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day (Ps. lxxii., 11; Isa. ii., XY, 10. “Gro and wash in Jordan seven times, and thy flesh shall come azain to thee, and thou shalt bo clean.” Thus said the meos- senger whom Elisha sent to the door, for Elisha thought it not necessary to go him- self. He stood like Elijah before God and considered no greatness that was not of God. 11. “But Naaman was “wroth and went away and said, Behold, I thought he will surely come out to me.” Naaman had it all planned in his own mind just how it ought to be done, for was not he a great and honorable man and did hie not deserve to be honored before his soldiers and by this Israelite? Was he not prepared to pay well for all he got and was this any kind of a way to treat sueh as! His pride would not stand it, and he wont away in a rage. 12. ‘*Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel?” The water might he as good or possibly better for some purpos«s, but they were not God's way for lis cleansing. Cain’s fruits were probably much more at- tractive than Abel’s bloody lamb, but they were not God's way. (good orks and a good moral character A y beautiful and all right in their place, i y are not of sin, Te God’s way of cleansing the leprosy and theretore of no avail. 13. “How much rather then when he saith to thee, Wash and be clean?” His ser- , vants, wiser than he, thus reasoned with him that he would gladly do some great thing, and why not: this simple thing? There are many who would give much money aud do many so called good works itthus they could besaved, but simply to receive Christ and depend whotly upon Him and to have all their righteousness count for nothing istoo humiliating for some peo- ple, and they will not submit (Rom. x., 3). 14. “Then went he down and dipped him- self seven times in Jordan, according to the saying of the man of God, and his flesh came again like unto the flesh of a littie child, and he was clean.”’ He certainly was - not worthy, but he was obedient, and he was cleaned. There is no other way but God’s way (Acts iv., 12), and all, without exception, who accept the way (John $ix., 6) are made clean (John xiii., 10: Rev. i., 5; 6; I Cor. vi..11: Isa. i..18).— Lesson Helper. The Reason Why. Dumas, the elder, was rarely spiteful to or about his fellowmen, but one day, when he happened to be in that mood, a friend called to tell him a piece news. ‘‘They have just given M. the Legion of Honor,” he said. he added. in a significant tone, “Now, can you imagine why they should have given it to him?” “Yes,” answered the eregst dramatist, promptly, *‘they have given it to him because he was without it.’ § The men in the fleet Havana are beguiling the weary days by shark- fishing on somewhat novel lines. The men fasten a small dynamite cartridge to the end of a wire ettached to an electric machine. A lump of pork is at- tached to the cartridge and thrown overboard, and as soon as the creature swallows the bait the current is turned on, the dynamite explodes and the Off shark is blown to pieces.
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers