hat we are
not satisfied with just the work that God has given us to do. The
water-wheel wants to come inside the mill and grind the grist, and
the hopper wants to go out and dabble in the water. Our usefulness and
the welfare of society depend upon our staying in just the place that
God has put us, or intended we should occupy.

A RELIC OF EDEN.

For more compactness and that we may be more useful we are gathered in
still smaller circles in the home group. And there you have the same
varieties again; brothers, sisters, husband and wife; all different in
temperaments and tastes. It is fortunate that it should be so. If the
husband be all impulse, the wife must be all prudence. If one sister
be sanguine in her temperament, the other must be lymphatic. Mary and
Martha are necessities. There will be no dinner for Christ if there be
no Martha; there will be no audience for Jesus if there be no Mary.
The home organization is most beautifully constructed. Eden has gone;
the bowers are all broken down; the animals that Adam stroked with his
hand that morning when they came up to get their names have since shot
forth tusk and sting and growled, panther at panther; in mid-air iron
beaks plunge till with clotted wing and eyeless sockets the twain come
whirling down from under the sun in blood and fire. Eden has gone, but
there is just one little fragment left. It floated down on the River
Hiddekel out of Paradise. It is the marriage institution. It does
not, as at the beginning, take away from man a rib. Now it is an
addition of ribs.

THE HOME ASSAULTED.

This institution of marriage has been defamed in our day, and
influences are abroad trying to turn this earth into a Turkish harem
or a great Salt Lake City. While the pulpits have been comparatively
silent, novels--their cheapness only equalled by their nastiness--are
trying to educate, have taken upon themselves to educate, this nation
in regard to holy marriage, which makes or breaks for time and
eternity. Oh, this is not a mere question of residence or wardrobe! It
is a question charged with gigantic joy or sorrow, with heaven or
hell. Alas for this new dispensation of George Sands! Alas for the
mingling of the nightshade with the marriage garlands! Alas for the
venom of adders spit into the tankards! Alas for the white frosts of
eternal death that kill the orange blossoms! The Gospel of Jesus
Christ is to assert what is right and to assert what is wrong.

THE