of bitterness into his face. With this in view he said to him, "Are you Hillel, whom men call the first man in Israel?" "I am Hillel !" "Then may heaven grant that Israel may never produce another like you !" "And why so?" "Because through you, I have lost an hundred shekels !" "Your money is not entirely lost" said Hillel consolingly and with a smile, "For it will be a lesson to you in future to be more careful so that you may not make any more foolish bets. Moreover, it is much better that you lost your money, than that Hillel should have lost his meekness." XX. THE MERCIFUL MAN DISTRIBUTES HIS GIFTS ACCORDING TO CIRCUMSTANCES. Mar Ukba was one of the first men among the people of Israel; and besides great wisdom and science, he possessed also great riches. But no man knew better how to make use of wealth than he. He did not only accomplish much good in general, but he also gave much every year to the poor, that they might be cheerful. To one of these he was accustomed every year, the day before the great day of Atonement, to give four hundred crowns. It happened, however, that one time he sent this gift by the hands of his son; and when he returned, he told his father, that he was bestowing his bounty on a very unworthy man. "How so? In what way?" asked the father. "I saw the man," said his son, "whom you regard as poor, and who does not blush to subsist on your gifts; and I found him and his family living in great enjoyment, drinking costly wines !" "Did you ?" asked Mar Ukba again serenely. "Know then, that this unfortunate man once saw better days. Having been accustomed to better circumstances in life, I am surprised that he is able to get along on the small gift which I annually send him. Take this money also to him, and hereafter let my gift to him be double what it has hitherto been !" XXI. CHILDISH REVERENCE. Honor thy father and thy mother; that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.-Ex: xx 12. He who can forget the untold blessing bestowed upon him by his parents must be worthless and ungrateful indeed, for they are the authors of his being, his supports in youth, the best and most faithful friends amid the wants and tribulations of mature years. They share our joys, and prevent half of our sorrows and cares, and cheerfully endure weariness and suffering to render us happy. He who does not love and honor them sins against the laws of nature; and he who does not obey and reverence them openly resists the commandments of God. "Would you know this?" said the great Rabbi Eliezer to his pupils when they asked him how far reverence to parents was a duty. "Would you know this? take an example in Damah, the son of Nethina. "His mother, unfortunately, was not in possession of her right mind. She often treated him badly, and struck him when his friends were present. Still the dutiful son did not suffer an angry word to escape his lips; but, on such occasions, only said: 'Enough, mother! Let that do, mother!'" Once the most costly gem that adorns the High Priest's garment was lost. The priests knew that the son of Nethina possesssed a gem like it, and they went to him offering him for it a large sum of money. He was satisfied with the sum offered, and went into the side room to bring the costly gem. But when he saw that his father was sleeping, he remained silently standing on the threshold of the chamber door wherein his father lay; and without disturbing his father, he returned and told the priests that he must for the present forego the advantage of the money offered for the gem, as his father was sleeping. The matter was urgent; and the priests supposed that he only spake on this wise in order to obtain a higher price for the gem. Then they offered him a greater price for it. "No," answered the pious son, "No, not for all the treasures in the world would I disturb the rest of my father for a single moment!" Then the priests waited till his father awoke; and then Damah brought them the costly gem. Then they offered to give him the sum they had proposed him the second time. But the pious son refused it, saying: "I will not corrupt the joy arising from having done my duty by receiving a reward. Give me what you first offered, and I am therewith content." They did so, and gave him their blessing! Damah was a heathen, and lived in Askelon. If a heathen can act thus, what ought we to do, on whom this duty is enjoined by the holiest and most solemn laws? VARIETIES. WHENEVER you find a great deal of gratitude in a poor man, you may take it for granted there would be as much generosity if he were a rich man. A good minister in a country village lately prayed fervently for those of his congregation "who were too proud to kneel and too lazy to stand." ENVY pursues its victims throughout life. Its ceases to gnaw only when the grave-worm, its reptile, begins. VATER, ICH RUFE DICH! A Battle Prayer by Theodore Boerner, the poet-hero of the "War of Liberation," born September 21st, 1791, at Dresden. On the breaking out of the war against Napoleon, he enlisted as a volunteer in Lutzow's corps, aided the cause of freedom by the strength of his arm, and the power of his muse. He fell in a skirmish near the village of Gadenbusch on the 24th of August, 1813. The fiery tone prevading his lyrics. and the brilliant valor of the young volunteer, have procured him a greater fame in Germany than usually falls to the share of one who dies so young. Says Goedecke: "The fatal bullet deprived them of a man, but left to the youth of Germany the inspiring recollection of a hero." We give below an English version of one of his most interesting productions. The translation is by H. W. Duleken, published in London in 1856, and never before printed in this country: THE LAND OF DREAMS. THERE is a strange, weird land, whose shore I have trod Full many and many a time; It is not of earth, nor the land of our God, But a faint and shadowy clime; It may not be seen in the glare of the day, When wearied the body, and saddened the soul, Then enchantments of sleep steal over my sight, With golden, flushed fancies, and luminous light, On the dim, misty shores, of that phantom-like world, The fairest of scenes to the eye are unfurled, And the clearest of rivers flow; The brightest of suns on those magical fields And when the spent sun has withdrawn his fair face, When night wraps the scene in a mantle of grace, Then the tender-eyed stars in the blue-vaulted heaven Such glories resplendent as only are given In the mystical land of Dreams. And sometimes I meet, on that peaceful shore, Of those I shall see on the earth no more- O'er the beautiful vale and far reaching plain, Where the ills and the troubles of life are forgot, Where is found an eternal calm Where the wished-for Fountain of Youth, long sought, Fit emblem indeed of that realm serene, WHAT WOMEN HAVE DONE FOR CHRISTIANITY. FROM THE GERMAN OF HESSENMULLER. BY THE EDITOR. AUTHUSA, the mother of St. Chrysostom, was the wife of Secundus, who occupied an important position in the staff of the military General in the Eastern Asiatic provinces of the Roman Empire; and after his death, though she was then only twenty years of age, she remained a widow during life, in order to devote herself wholly to the proper training of her only son, John. She was the very pattern of a good mother; and the celebrated heathen orator, Libanius, who had become acquainted with her, felt himself moved to the exclamation, "What wives these Christians have!" Authusa was a devoted christian woman, and regarded it as her highest duty to care that her son John should follow in the same blessed path. She saw in her boy a treasure committed to her by God. Henceforth the end of her life, of all which she did or forbore to do, was to train him up for God, to make of him, by divine aid, a genuine christian. During the first years of her life she kept him with herself; the child enjoyed instruction, and, what was equally important, the society of his excellent mother. When he had become a youth, and showed unusual capacities, his mother decided to give him the benefits of good learning, and put him in the school of Libanias. This may be thought rash, for Libanius was a pagan, soul and body, and therefore a foe to christianity; nay more, he was a man who, at that time, strove and wrought beyond any other to uphold Paganism, to exalt it on high again, and, if possible, to destroy the power of christianity. Nor was he deficient in ability. He was a learned, shrewd, eloquent man; he could boast that Asia, Europe, Africa, and all their islands, were filled with his scholars. The eyes of the pagan world were turned to him, and they hoped from him much aid to their cause. Yet Authusa placed her son in the school of this man, because, in respect to human knowledge and culture, he could receive more thorough instruction and skillful guidance than from any other teacher of that time. This, I said, may be thought perilous rashness. But Authusa knew her son. She knew he had not merely received christianity into his memory and his thoughts; it had taken root also in his heart and conscience; he had experienced it as a living power in his soul, and had entered into communion with God. Hence she trusted, and had a right to trust, that words and thoughts, even the finest pleas of a man for what had no truth and no power, as was the case with the pagan faith of that age, would not injure her son. She was not mistaken. John remained in the heathen school, what he had become by intercourse with |