to argue, he admits a doubt that neither
evidence nor argument is of avail. God's truths call for no evidence.
If they are not self-evident, no process of poor human reason can
make them visible. An argument in behalf of such is a confession and a
defeat. The man who undertakes to prove that the sun shines is insane
and a bore.

The pulpit work of worthy divines who think aloud upon their legs has
lost its attraction in losing its novelty. They imitate the late Henry
Ward Beecher. And these immediate divines are filling their churches
as merely platform-lecturers indulging in certain mental gymnastics
that glitter and glisten like a winter's sun on fields of ice. It is
all brilliant and amusing to a few, but it is not religion.

A BEAUTIFUL LIFE.

"Died at New York, 28th of November, 1888, Mrs. Eleanor Boyle
Sherman."

The above simple announcement of a sad event was read through more
tears than usually fall to the lot of one whose unassuming, quiet life
was passed in the privacy of a purely domestic existence. This not
because she was the wife of a noted officer, nor the daughter of one
of Ohio's most famous statesmen, but for the excellence of her
character and the Christian spirit of her retired career, that made
her life one long, continuous deed of goodness. If ever an angel
walked on earth administering to the sorrows and sickness of those
about her, that angel was Mrs. Sherman. Inheriting much of her great
father's fine intellect, she added a heart full to overflowing with
the sweetest sympathy for affliction in others. Self-sacrifice was to
her a second nature. She not only carried in patient humility the
cares imposed upon her by our Saviour, but cheerfully took up the
woful burdens of those whose failing spirits left them fainting on
their way. Her exalted social position was no bar to the poor,
downtrodden, and oppressed. Her hand like her heart was ever open.

The heroism of private life is little noted among us. Acting out great
deeds of self-sacrifice in the silent, unseen walks of domestic
existence, it lacks the sustaining plaudits of a thoughtless public,
and has no incentive to effort other than that found in the conscious
presence of an approving God, and no hope of recompense beyond the
promised approval of the hereafter when our heavenly Father shall say,
"Well done, thou good and faithful servant."

No man, however exalted his position may be, or distinguished his
services, is ever follo