LET US REFLECT. OLIVER C. HAMPTON. IF bastiles and dungeons could never repress But under the cause they could earnestly bless And calmly restrain all their yearning desires To parry the pain of his rod; If prisons and sickness, starvation and stripes But as the grim miser his heritage gripes They joyfully welcome the stake; How should we the called of the Lord in this day Our privileges duly esteem, And carefully walk and persistently pray Our talents and time to redeem? How instant in labors, in season and out, The seal of the cross to maintain, How quick to dismiss all discouraging doubt How blessed to live in the light of this day Or willfully-carelessly run the broad way O, bless'd in our basket and bless'd in our store, The Winter of sorrow and dark discontent Be banished from every sad heart, In view of conditions, with mercies so blent! And from the vain world set apart- To sit in the Heavens in union and peace, Our labor each other to bless; Our progress in Holiness never to cease, O let us commence with the dawn of the Year With days that are over and gone to compare When Martyrs and saints to the dens of the earth And only could claim their immaculate birth Lord, fill us with charity, peace and good will In this fervent furnace we must learn to live The horoscope bright for the swift rolling Year Our faith and our hope and our courage to cheer How good and how pleasant it is to increase By doing good actions in kindness to these AH, whence this doubting, faithless heart! Correspondence. is the dark gulf that man has to pass through from ideal to essential being. We can only obtain this most desirable of all things by submission to God's order as established through the spirit of Christ. There can be no misgivings if we seek first the kingdom of God, when all that is necessary for us in the intellectual and physical will be added in due Shaker Station, Conn. Mar., 1884. BELOVED EDITOR ;-The Manifesto is more and more interesting. Much good may be gained by reading it. The article on Confession agrees with the experience of all who have proved it. Other writers are doing good by their labors of time. love. We should look, carefully, to the As I have been a partaker of a monthcultivation of the spiritual interests. Ily feast since our paper started on its have observed, with concern, a growing beneficent errand to humanity, I thought tendency to give the outward too much I would let you know how much I apsupremacy. This is a mistake, and dur- prove of our little missionary. ing my long experience I have witnessYour Brother, ed with sorrow its fatal effects upon the soul. In the earlier part of my life I was exercised in the acquisition of outward science and know quite well its tendency when it becomes a basis of action instead of being subordinate to the highest spiritual development. I view with much anxiety any leaning toward science as a basis for true religion. Man is ever between an innermost and an outermost, and when he leaves the first for the last, he becomes divested of all true spirituality. Robert Aitken. Shaker Village, N. H. Oct. 1883. BELOVED ELDER HARVEY:-How about that Bible class? Have they all written in defense of their faith, and are we the last to speak a good word in behalf of a cause to which we owe so much? Ah! believe me-Your daughter F. is more genuine in her consecrations, and more fervent in her devotions than might sometimes be apparent. If we remember correctly you placed However much he may clothe himself us at the foot of the class and said that with the intellectualism of spirit, he re- we were either the most honest, or the mains still intellectual or animal and the most indifferent to the Christ principles. Divine Spirit or religious love mature" Except a man forsake all that he hath, and its development is entirely lost from he cannot be my disciple." sight. He then goes on in his delusive idea of supremacy while he is only an intellectual man. We have thought that he was only two thirds of a man, in this state, instead of being a whole one. No doubt all outward knowledge may become useful when guided by the divine mind, but without this it will work more and more evil for humanity. This We understand, that no reserves of any name or nature can be tolerated in a genuine Christian, but how few Christians there are!—because "Straight is the gate and narrow is the way that leadeth unto life." Who will ever reach this perfected state? Be assured, dear gospel parent, the name of your daughter shall be enrolled with the few or the many who will know about our position in the class, which no surrender in the glorious work of con- mortified us a bit, but did no harm, as quering self. We speak not as one un- we were sure we should not stay at the acquainted with human frailties, but foot very long, if there was any way to as one who means to find salvation, and get to the head. In the meantime we will know no defeat. had one consolation, and that was, that We understand that the religion which the Teacher generally stands pretty near Jesus, the Christ, taught and lived, was the foot of the class, so the place did not a consistent one, therefore, whoever seem so bad after all. About being would preach effectually must reduce the most honest, we admit we like to be theory to practice in daily life, as did thought well of both at home and Jesus. The gospel which he adminis- abroad, but we fail to see the advantage tered was a saving grace and so appar- to be gained by assuming a worth or ent was this salvation to men that they virtue not our own, although we do hate acknowledged him to be the Savior of deceit and lies; notwithstanding our own men, and all who become his true dis-composition may be sufficiently tinctured ciples must follow the pattern closely. Although "I may not reach the height nor depth of God's great love to me," yet this is our faith, our strife and aim, and by our faith and our works shall we be justified. We could say much more in behalf of our beautiful gospel faith, our heart's dearest treasure," indeed, the only treasure worth possessing, but it is unnecessary. Enough has been said to prove to you that we have no sympathy with the selfishness that clings as naturally to the unregenerate heart, as the moss clings to the stone, whether found in Shaker Village or elsewhere. It all belongs to Babylon. One phase of selfishness is just as good as another, and we do not wish for any of it. But as Heaven cannot be reached by a single bound, we are content to work out our salvation by the good old way of the Cross and self-denial, just as our Parents have done before us, with none of the modern revisions which culminate in shams; and what is more detestable than a shammy Christian? with these ingredients to render it troublesome at times, yet as a whole we prefer to be what we seem to be and seem to be what we really are. Accept the universal love and prayers of the household for our worthy gospel friends at South Union. Now, father, just place us at the foot or head of the class according to our merits, but we pray you give us a place somewhere in Christ's school, and we will not complain but shall always hope to remain among the wise virgins. LIFE'S JOURNEY. BETSEY J. KAIME. Flora. COME home, my soul and meditate Before we close, let us say a word How loath the gilded bait to lose! How eagerly we take the cup We find earth's charms are all, all vain! Those who have proved its emptiness, We should escape a score of ills I grasped them, but the grasp was vain, They further on were always viewed. Passion then spoke: Yet longer wait, To feed on when this life shall end. EVOLUTION AND REVELATION. LOUIS BASTING. - THE doctrine of Evolution, so widely accepted at the present time, is not entirely of modern origin, for it is distinctly enunciated in the first chapters of Genesis. There the story may be read how Chaos was changed to Order, and how the lower forms of life preceded the higher, culminating in the appearance of man. But science has chosen not to be satisfied with this account of the origin of things; while accepting the idea of the appearance of forms of life in an ascending scale, in successive periods of time, it denies separate acts of creation, asserting that all life. man included, originates from one primordial organism. The late Charles Darwin, in his great work, "the Descent of Man," has accumulated an immense mass of facts, apparently confirm ing that theory. Learn, then, O man, whence thou art sprung! This is the animal that first was, from which all life originated, according to Darwin. It is an animal inhabiting the sea, permanently attached to a support, incapable of locomotion; a little brown leathery sac; without eyes, ears, brain, heart or vertebra, the lowest form of life. But Darwin fails to demonstrate whence the spark of life that animates that humble creature. Is not the principle of life the same in all forms, the highest as well as the lowest? It This is the immediate ancestor of man, the famous "missing link." Neither Darwin nor anybody else has ever seen it, but according to science, it ought to exist somewhere. is covered with hair, both sexes having a beard; ears are pointed and capable of being moved; the foot is prehensile and the body provided with a tail. The males possess great, formidable, canine teeth. It is arboreal in its habits and has its home in warm, forest-clad land of the Old World! from personal experience and other information, proves that most of the savage races are given to extreme licentiousness, and that infanticide, especially of female children is a common practice with them, in order to keep down the population. Therefore, he concludes infanticide to be a beneficial practice! He goes further, and says: "If men were reared under the same condition as hive-bees, there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would, like the worker-bees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters; and no one would think of interfering. " Of celibacy, Darwin sneeringly speaks as a "senseless" practice, stating however, that since it requires great self-command, it has been honored as a virtue from a remote period. It is startling to note the complacency with which the foremost scientist of the century speaks of child-murder as being beneficial and justifiable, and to witness, at the same time his cool contempt for celibacy, which is the only justifiable and moral solu that "the belief in God is ennobling, " but he is very far from admitting his personal belief in the existence of God, or to acknowledge Him as the cause of life and its phenomena; that would be unscientific, I suppose. The present high state of morality among civilized nations, Darwin attributes to expe One of the strong points insisted upon, in fact the pivotal point of the theory; for the author himself designates it but as a theory-tion of the population question. Indeed, the is the law of inheritance, the operation of apostle of evolution condescends to admit which accounts for all the diversified species of animals and races of men. Under that law, in conjunction with the law of natural selection, individuals distinguished by some physical peculiarity, relating to structure, voice, color, etc., were unconsciously selected and favored by their fellows to propagate and transmit those peculiarities to their pos-rience and reason, by which man has become terity. Now, every one knows that the peculiarities of parents are frequently transmitted to their offspring, but it is not generally known that such variations are sufficient to have ever produced a new species of animals or a new race of men. Man may artificially create a new breed of chickens, like the Plymouth Rocks, for instance; but as soon as man ceases to interfere and they are left to natural conditions, they will revert to the original stock. The same materialistic line of reasoning is pursued in the treatment of virtue, morality and spirituality. Temperance, charity, benevolence, honesty, chastity, aye, even the Golden Rule, it is affirmed, is the natural result of the social instincts of man. Darwin convinced of the beneficial effects of virtue, has therefore formed virtuous habits and transmitted them, and he thinks that these habits will become permanently fixed by inheritance. Here is a new theory of the Millennium: Man will be virtuous by inheritance! It is submitted for the reader's consideration what the consequences would be if for one single generation all influences that now work for virtue and morality, were withdrawn, and the virtuous impulses of the rising population consisted solely of what it had inherited! Would not the race sink at once below the level of the dark ages? Under the providence of God, by the aid of revelation, a large portion of the human race, having been irresponsible savages, have |