ogs heaped high, there are joyful faces, there is healthy
music of voices. Be all ungentleness and harm excluded from the temples of
the Household Gods, but be those remembrances admitted with tender
encouragement! They are of the time and all its comforting and peaceful
reassurances; and of the history that reunited even upon earth the living
and the dead; and of the broad beneficence and goodness that too many men
have tried to tear to narrow shreds.

HELEN CORRIE.--LEAVES FROM THE NOTE-BOOK OF A CURATE.

Having devoted myself to the service of Him who said unto the demoniac and
the leper, "Be whole," I go forth daily, treading humbly in the pathway of
my self-appointed mission, through the dreary regions, the close and
crowded streets, that exist like a plague ground in the very heart of the
wealthy town of L----.

They have an atmosphere of their own, those dilapidated courts, those
noisome alleys, those dark nooks where the tenements are green with damp,
where the breath grows faint, and the head throbs with an oppressive pain;
and yet, amid the horrors of such abodes, hundreds of our fellow-creatures
act the sad tragedy of life, and the gay crowd beyond sweep onward,
without a thought of those who perish daily for want of the bread of
eternal life. Oh! cast it upon those darkened waters, and it shall be
found again after many days. There we see human nature in all its unvailed
and degraded nakedness--the vile passions, the brutal coarseness, the
corroding malice, the undisguised licentiousness. Oh, ye who look on and
abhor, who pass like the Pharisee, and condemn the wretch by the wayside,
pause, and look within: education, circumstances, have refined and
elevated your thoughts and actions; but blessed are those who shall never
know by fearful experience how want and degradation can blunt the finest
sympathies, and change, nay, brutalize the moral being.

How have I shuddered to hear the fearful mirth with whose wild laughter
blasphemy and obscenity were mingled--that mockery of my sacred profession,
which I knew too well lurked under the over-strained assumption of
reverence for my words, when I was permitted to utter them, and the shout
of derision that followed too often my departing steps, knowing that those
immortal souls must one day render up their account; and humbly have I
prayed, that my still unwearied zeal might yet be permitted to scatter
forth the good seed which the cares and anxieties s