ance. "I have preached to Chloe, and prayed for her," said he; "but she remains stubborn."

"I am surprised at you, Chloe!" exclaimed the widow. "You have been told a great many times that it is your duty to obey the minister and to obey me; yet you have put him to the trouble of coming three times to talk with you. I sha'n't put up with any more such doings. You must make up your mind once for all to marry Tom. What have you to say about it, you silly wench?"

With a great break-down of sobs, poor Chloe blubbered out, "S'pose I must."

They left her alone; and O how dreadfully alone she felt, with the memory of that treasured look, and the thought that, whatever it was Jim wanted to say, he could never say it now!

The next day, soon after dinner, Mrs. Lawton entered the kitchen, and said: "Chloe, the minister has brought Tom. Make haste, and do up your dishes, and put on a clean apron, and come in to be married."

Chloe's first impulse was to run away; but she had nowhere to run. She was recognized as the property of her mistress, and wherever she went she would be sure to be sent back. She washed the dishes so slowly that Mrs. Lawton came again to say the minister was waiting. Chloe merely replied, "Yes, missis." But when the door closed after her, she muttered to herself: "Let him wait. I didn't ax him to come here plaguing me about the cuss o' Ham. Don't know nothin' 'bout Ham. Never hearn tell 'bout him afore." Again her mistress came to summon her, and this time in a somewhat angry mood. "Have you got lead tied to your heels, you lazy wench?" said she. "How many times must I tell you the minister's waiting?" and she emphasized the question with a smart box on the ear.

Like a cowardly soldier driven up to the cannon's mouth by bayonets, Chloe put on a clean apron, and went to the sitting-room. When the minister told Tom to stand up, she did not even look at him; and he, on his part, seemed very much frightened. After a brief form of words. had been repeated, they were told that they were husband and wife. Then the bridegroom was ordered to go to ploughing, and the bride was sent to the fish-flake.

Two witnesses were present at this dismal wedding besides Mrs. Lawton. One was the widow's daughter, a girl of seventeen, whom Chloe called "Missy Katy." The other was Sukey Larkin, who lived twenty miles off, but occasionally came to visit an aunt in the neighborhood. Both the young girls were dressed in their best; for they were going to a quilting-party, where they expected to meet many beaux. But Catherine Lawton's best was very superior to Sukey Larkin's. Her gown was of a more wonderful pattern than had been seen in that region. It had

been brought from London, in exchange for tobacco. Sukey had heard of it, and had stopped at the Widow Lawton's to make sure of seeing it, in case Catherine did not wear it to the quilting-party. Though she had heard much talk about it, it surpassed her expectations, and made her very discontented with her own gown of India-cotton, dotted all over with red spots, like barleycorns. The fabric of Catherine's dress was fine, thick linen, covered with pictures, like a fancifully illustrated volume of Natural History.

"Mr. Gordonmammon thinks a deal of the Widow Lawton," said the hostess of the quilting-party.

"Yes, I know he does," replied Sukey. "If he was a widower, I guess they'd be the town's talk. Some folks think he goes there full often enough. He brought his Tom there to-day to marry Chloe. I wonder the widow could spare her time to be married, though, to be sure, it didn't take long, for the minister made a mighty short prayer."

Poor Chloe! Thus they dismissed a subject which gave her a lifelong heart-ache. There was no honey in her bridal moon. She told Tom several times she wished he would stay at home; but he was so perseveringly good-natured, there was no possibility of quarreling with him. By degrees, she began to find his visits on Saturday evening rather more entertaining than talking to herself.

"I wouldn't mind bein' so druv wi' work," said Tom, "ef I could live like white folks do when they gits married. I duz more work than them as has a cabin o' their own, and keeps a cow and a pig. But black folks don't seem to get no good o' their work."

"Massa Minister says it's 'cause God cussed Ham," replied Chloe. "I thought 'twas wicked to cuss, but Massa Minister says Ham was cussed in the Bible. Ef I could have some o' the fish I clean and dry, I could sen' to Lunnun for a gownd; but Missy Katy she gits all the gownds, 'cause Ham was cussed in the Bible. I don't know nothin' 'bout it; seems drefful queer."

"Massa tole me I mus' work for nothin', 'cause Ham was cussed," rejoined Tom. "But it seems like Ham cussed some black folks worse nor others. There's Jim Saunders, he's a nigger, too; but he gits his. feed and six dollars a month."

The words were like a stab to Chloe. She dropped half a needleful of stitches in her knitting, and told Tom she wished he'd hold his tongue, for he kept up such a jabbering that he made all her stitches. run down. Tom, thus silenced, soon fell asleep. She glanced at him as he sat snoring by her side, and contrasted him with the genteel figure and handsome features that had been so indelibly photographed on her memory by the sunbeams of love. Tears dropped fast on her knitting

work; but when Tom woke up, she spoke kindly, and tried to atone for her ill-temper. Time, which gradually reconciles us to all things, produced the same effect on her as on others. When the minister asked her, six months afterward, how she and Tom were getting along, she replied, "I's got used to him."

Yet life seemed more dreary to her than it did before she had that brief experience of a free feeling. She never thought of that look without longing to know what it was Jim wanted to say. But, as months passed on, the tantalizing vision came less frequently, and at the end of a year Chloe experienced the second happy emotion of her life. When she looked upon her babe, a great fountain of love leaped up in her heart. She was never too tired to wait upon little Tommy; and if his cries disturbed her deep sleep, she folded the helpless little creature to her bosom, with the feeling that he was better than rest. She was accustomed to carry him to the fish-flake in a big basket, and lay him on a bed of dry leaves, with her apron for an awning. As she paced backwards and forwards at her daily toil, it was a perpetual entertainment to see him lying there sucking his thumbs. But that was nothing compared with the joy of nursing him. When his hunger was partially satisfied, he would stop to smile in his mother's face; and Chloe had never seen anything so beautiful as that baby smile. As he lay on her

lap, laughing and cooing, there was something in the expression of his eyes that reminded her of the look she could never forget. He had taken the picture from her soul, and brought it with him to the outer world; but as he lay there, playing with his toes, he knew no more about his mother's beart than did the Rev. Mr. Gordonmammon.

One balmy day in June, she was sitting on a rock by the sea-shore, nursing her babe, pinching his little plump cheeks, and chirruping to make him smile, when she heard the sound of footsteps. She looked up, and saw Jim approaching. Her heart jumped into her throat. She felt very hot, and then very cold. When Jim came near enough to look upon the babe, he stopped an instant, said, in a constrained way, "How d'ye, Chloe," then turned and walked quickly away. She gazed after him so wistfully that for a few minutes the cooing of her babe was disregarded. "'Pears like he was affronted," she murmured, at last; and the big tears dropped slowly. Little Tommy had a fit that night; for, by the strange interfusion of spirit into all forms of matter, the quick revulsion of the blood in his mother's heart passed into his nourishment, and convulsed his body, as her soul had been convulsed.

But the disturbance passed away, and Chloe's life rolled on in its accustomed grooves. Tommy grew strong enough to run by her side when she went to the beach. Hour after hour he busied himself with pebbles and shells, every now and then bringing her his treasures, and

calling out, "Pooty!" When he held out a shell, and looked at her with his great brown eyes, it stirred up memories; but the pain was gone from them. Her heart was no longer famished; it was filled with little Tommy.

W

Mark Hopkins.

BORN in Stockbridge, Mass., 1802. DIED at Williamstown, Mass., 1887.

LIMITS OF LIBERALITY IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF.

[Teachings and Counsels. 1884.]

E have thus three spheres and standards of liberality. In the first the relation of man and of nature to supernatural agency is immediately in question; in the second it is the relation of a belief in truth to practice that is in question; and in the third it is the relation of the practical life to the spirit of Christianity and to the moral government of God. But while the questions are thus apparently different, their central point is the same. They all find their unity and interest in the relation of the human will to supernatural control. Eliminate but this one idea, and the crested waves of these controversies will subside to the merest ripple; and the terms that may be used, however intense in form, will be charged with no divisive elements. The real questions are, the existence of a holy God claiming control over the human will, and the extent of the control thus claimed.

Is there then any criterion of liberality in these several spheres? May we know where narrowness ends on the one side, and laxness begins on the other?

And first, what is our criterion in the sphere of belief respecting supernatural agency, involving a belief in efficient causation and in final causes or ends intelligently proposed and pursued in nature? If we begin with Fetishism and pass up, resolving phenomena that had been attributed to spiritual agency into general laws, where shall we stop?

We must stop at the point where negation begins to affect the sum and grandeur of being. This is the criterion. In passing up from Fetishism we do indeed constantly deny, but we also constantly affirm. As we diminish the number of supernatural agents we increase their greatness, till we resolve all natural laws and forces directly or indirectly into the will of the one infinite God. If now we clothe him in our conceptions with perfect moral attributes, we have the highest conceivable sum and mode of being. This is the condition, and the only condition, of the

perfect working and indefinite progress of the human faculties. Here we reach the point of the liberality without narrowness and without laxness. Beyond this we pass into negation and tenuity.

The criterion is one not merely to be seen by the intellect, but to be felt as a condition of growth. The condition of indefinite growth in intellect is thoughts of God still unfathomed; and the condition of growth in the moral nature is a recognized goodness in God that transcends ours. Man cannot live in negations. If he could reach a point where the imagination even could transcend the possibilities of being he would begin to be dwarfed. As in passing upwards we reach a point where breathing becomes less effective from the thinness of the atmosphere, so the moment we begin to deny intelligent will to God, or to impair his moral attributes, or to limit his control over the universe by anything but the conditions which He has himself imposed, we come into a mental atmosphere of less vitality. All history shows that from that point constructive power wanes, and moral torpor begins.

What we say then is, that our criterion here must be the condition of highest activity and fullest growth for the human powers; that that condition is the complement and perfection of being as recognized in an infinite and personal God; and that for man to apply terms of commendation to virtual negations that must stifle his own life and dwarf his own growth is to call evil good.

But secondly, what is the criterion of liberality in regard to the importance of religious truth?

It is here virtually the same as before. Truth is of importance only as it ministers to life, and as it is the only thing that can thus minister. What we claim for truth in the religious sphere is the same that we claim for it elsewhere-just that and no more. Everywhere it is the basis of all rational action, the very light in which man must walk if he would not stumble. Men hold truth that is not acted upon. There is much that cannot be the basis of action, and that which may, and should be, is often held, or rather imprisoned, in indolence and unrighteousness. Be its adaptions what they may, let any truth lie in the mind undigested, unassimilated, giving no impulse or guidance, and it might as well not be there. Still, whatever rational action there may be, is, and must be, based on the belief of something as true. Men do something because they believe something; and in religion no less than in other things they must believe in order to do, unless, indeed, we resolve the religious life into that mere muddle of unintelligent feeling called mysticism. Men may believe in God and not worship him, but they cannot worship him unless they believe in him. Unless they believe that "Christ has come in the flesh," they cannot follow him. Unless they believe in a moral government, they cannot fear to sin; nor can they "flee from the