necessaries and luxuries are cheaper and more varied, his happiness is therefore greater. Thus utility, in making men happier, secures the permanenee of modern civilization. And as long as men hold to these inventions and discoveries civilization will not only continue her life, but will force herself on less civilized nations. Already she has imported railroads and telegraphs into India and the East. Her other useful inventions will follow. Thus has Christianity aided civilization in her onward march.

In addition to these two principles Christianity taught civilization peace.

In ancient times civilization had taught each nation that its high position and enlightenment was it sown, and therefore it must destroy every other civilization that rivaled its own. Thus nations warred against each other. Thus they fell one after another, and their civilization with them. But Cristianity came and taught "peace, among men, good will." Slowly civilization learned this strange principle, and taught her nations to be less cruel. She bade her soldiers be kind to the prisoner and the wounded enemy. She instructed them to build hospitals for the sick and wounded, whether of friend or foe. It took civilization a long time to learn all this. Only in the present age is she beginning to appreciate the value of peace, when she feels how much more happily and honorably national disputes can be settled by arbitration, as in the Alabama claims. At present nations are loth to begin a war. It takes such tremendous exertions to prepare for battle. And civilization teaches men that peace is more beneficial to their business. And her nations now find that they can use their men and money more profitably in peace than in war. Men now look upon the millions of lives and the vast sums of money that have been spent in war as wasted. Civilization now teaches men that they can get their disputes settled with less hard feeling, with less blood and money, in a better and more lawful way, by arbitration. Thus civilization has endeared this principle of peace to the hearts of men. And yet it is Christianity that has taught all this to man, thereby making men happier and civilization more permanent.

But Christianity also taught civilization that woman must have a higher position. The ancients believed woman to be an inferior being, far below man in the scale of humanity. This civilization taught to men for many centuries, and her decay and ruin was always the penalty. But Christianity came and taught that woman too has a soul, a jewel not to be roughly handled nor to be tarnished. As civiliza

tion learned this, woman became elevated, and civilization became elevated with her. For to woman we owe our birth. In youth she directed our minds. Were she degraded and low, she could only impress that degradation on her child; but if she were noble and cultured she could impress that nobleness and culture on her child. This is the influence that woman has had on civilization. If she was degraded, it was degraded. And civilization has learned this lesson, and now teaches man to have the highest regard for woman. Here slavery has given place to love, and therefore his life is happier, his home blest, and his labor made lighter and pleasanter.

Intimately connected with the condition of woman is that of morality. If she is low, immorality always follows. If her sphere is elevated, immorality departs, as she becomes more honored and as her virtue is more prized. And Christianity has therefore crowned all her gifts to civilization by teaching her what a high morality she must have.

དནས།

Immorality was the great plague spot of antiquity. By it mainly civilization saw her efforts fail. She could not notice its advances, so insidious were they. She tried to legislate against it, but human law could not stop it. Only when Christianity descended far into the depths of the heart, and held up before that heart a perfect moral being and a perfect moral law, and thundered through its recesses the threatenings of a future retribution, did immorality begin to disappear. And now society has toned itself against immorality, and casts from its bosom the wretch who dares violate this law. Now no longer are religions polluted by licentious rites, while in the Christian Church we see noble examples of pure and moral lives, more numerous as the Church becomes more widespread. Thus has Christianity made use of civilization to teach her own divine ideas and principles to man. But the end is not yet. Civilization is still elevating men. She bids fair to continue doing so. We have never yet seen the decline of a thoroughly Christian civilization. On the other hand we see Christianity elevating civilization higher and higher above the low plane of superstition, to which in ancient times she so often fell. And Christianity, as she has proffered immortality to man, now bids fair to give immortality to our modern civilization, elevating civilization higher and higher, and making her work out for her Maker a nobler, purer and happier race.

Thy presence bodes no coming good,
It may bode nothing evil,

But superstitious tales are told:

That if thou'lt cross the level,

Some dire event

Will soon be sent

Upon the house thou'lt fly in,

And with the devil,

Thou there wilt revel,

And there, will soon be cryin'.

What e'er thou art, or where thou go'st,

A question is profound,

And thou alone to mortal man

This question can'st expound.
But without doubt,

Thou comest out

When light has flown away,
To circle round,

And skim the ground,

Rejoicing in thy play..

E. X.

A NIGHT AMONG THE DOCK RATS.

It was a bitterly cold night early in January. The streets were piled with snow, and the horse cars, drawn by double teams, labored wearily over the icy rails. River navigation had closed early in the season, and weeks of intense cold had ere Christmas spanned the broad, deep Delaware with a glistening bridge of ice, so thick and firm as to justify the nursery legend of the olden time, that New Year always skates across from Jersey, while the State House clock is striking twelve. But business must be done at all events, and if Nature hinders she must be conquered; so heavy iron ice boats and puffing tugs ran day and night, crashing through the forming ice, and succeeding with some difficulty in keeping open a channel for the Camden ferry boats.

I had just stepped from the deck of one of these, when the old State House sounded the hour-one heavy resonant stroke, whose echoes died away among the tall shadowy masts, rising endlessly like a gigantic palisade between the dark wharf and the jagged, glistening ice gorges of the river.

I was standing alone on the curb.

nearly out of sight.

all fur and overcoat.

Few passengers had crossed with me, and these hurrying off in different directions, were now How funny they looked, those muffled figures, They didn't seem men. Under the fitful moonlight, darkened each moment by a passing cloud, they glided away among the shadows, more like the elves of old fable than actual men of every day. I had amused myself during the ride over by imagining my fellow passengers in characters of ghosts and goblins; and now in the weird nour of silence and darkness these fancies seemed real. That tall, thin figure, striding so fast up the street, is the Gray Brother bearing his curse from the Pope. That queer little creature creeping away through the stacks of boxes-oh, how he stared at me, coming over, with his deep-set, sinister eyes!—is the Wraith of Odin. That oafish boy is surely the Lost Page in the Lay of the Last Minstrel.

Old superstitions like these are not agreeable companions on a dark night, and I found the ghosts, with which I peopled the locality, were bent on scaring me out of it. Far up Market street the receding light of a car was now only a speck in the distance. "No more cars

for an hour," thought I; "poor chance of getting home-wretchedly lonely place here!" The temperature and my courage were both below zero, and the best chance I saw of raising them was in that potent agent equally remarkable for its alleviation of physical discomfort and its exhilarating influence on the mind.

It bringeth wit, it bringeth joy,
It bringeth friends and favor,
The timid man it maketh brave,

The brave man, maketh braver.

Far down the avenue a feeble glimmer of red light betokened a temple of Bacchus, and I lost no time in reaching it, though the way, much longer than it appeared, brought me to a locality by no means the safest. The dim burner flickered over a steep, dark stairway, ending below in a large door, the glass of which was shabbily covered with red curtains.

The place outside looked dismal enough, and my impression on entering was even worse. The air was hot and very smoky, a big rusty stove, and a dozen rusty smokers, big and little, amply producing both conditions.

The combination of odors from scorching oysters, bad whiskey,