WITTY AND WISE.

"IT KEEPS IT IN MIND."-A clergyman writing for the American Messenger says: "Several little girls were in my study, seeking counsel to aid them in becoming Christians. One of them, a dear child not much more than eleven years old, said:

"I have n't been to two or three of the meetings lately.'

"Desiring to test her, I answered,

"Yes," said the man, "but I could not make any sense out of it."

A SMART RETORT.-The following anecdote used to be related by the late William Hazlitt: He was once visiting Mr. and Mrs. Bazil Montague, when Sir Anthony Carlisle came in, apparently in a state of more than his usual self-complacency, having just received a complimentary testimonial from the Apothecaries' Hall. In answer to the inquiries of Mrs. Montague, he said, very pompously, and somewhat profanely,

"I know that,' she replied at once, but it keeps it in mind..'

"Is there not much wisdom in the child's answer? It keeps it in mind.' We suffer a slight excuse to detain us from the house of God on the Sabbath day. Do we have as much in mind at our home the thought of God as the one whom we should worship? Are we

reminded as much of the great facts of our immortality

and responsibility, remaining away from the sanctuary, as if we had gone there? And if we continue in such a course for weeks, or months, or even years, is there not danger that we shall forget almost entirely that there is such a being as the Almighty God?"

No SILENT PARTNERS.-A minister was recently called upon by a business man, who said:

"I come, sir, to inquire if Jesus Christ will take me as a silent partner?"

The reply was,

Christ takes no silent partners! The firm must be Jesus Christ & Co.,' and the names of the Co.,' though they may occupy a subordinate place, must all be written out on the sign-board." Reader, are you trying to be a secret Christian? Jesus Christ takes no silent partners!

WHO MADE ALL THAT?-It is related that when Napoleon Bonaparte was returning to France from the expedition to Egypt, a group of French officers one evening entered into a discussion concerning the existence of God. They were on the deck of the vessel that bore them over the Mediterranean Sea. Thor oughly imbued with the infidel and atheistic spirit of the times, they were unanimous in the denial of this truth. It was at length proposed to ask the opinion of Napoleon on the subject, who was standing alone, wrapped in silent thought. On hearing the question, Is there a God? he raised his hand, and pointing to the starry firmament, simply responded, "Gentlemen, who made all that?"

UNINTENTIONAL JOKES.-The man that makes a joke without intending, often amuses us more than the most ingenious of professional jokers-as when the milkman in a play is charged with putting a calf's brains in his milk, replied:

praise me!" "But," retorted Mrs. Montague, "what say the noble army of martyrs, your patients, Sir Anthony?" Sir Anthony was so nonplussed by this witty rejoinder, that he somewhat suddenly took his leave.

ANOTHER.-Zimmerman went from Hanover to attend Frederick the Great in his last illness. One day the king said to him, "You have, I presume, sir, helped many a man into another world?" This was rather a bitter pill for the doctor, but the dose he gave the king in return was a judicious mixture of truth and flattery: "Not so many as your majesty, nor with so much honor to myself."

A CHANGE IN THE RITUAL.-Geo. Francis Train suggests that our modern marriage ceremony should read thus: "Clergyman-Will you take this brown stone front, this carriage and span, and these diamonds for thy husband? Yes. Will you take this unpaid milliner's bill, this high waterfall of foreign hair, these affectations, accomplishments, and feeble constitution for thy wedded wife? Yes. Then, what mammon has joined together, let the next best man run away with, so that the first divorce court may tear them asunder."

CHURCH MUSIC.-A Scotch lady, from a country town in the Highlands, being taken to Edinburgh, and hearing modern singing in a church for the first time, was asked by the lady who took her there, what she thought of the music, etc. "It's verra bonny, verra bonny; but O, my leddy, it's an awful way of spending the Sabbath."

DOMESTIC AFFLICTION.-A girl in Springfield, Mass., applied to her teacher for leave to be absent half a day on the plea that they had company at home. The teacher referred her to the printed list of reasons that the School Committee think sufficient to justify absence, and asked her if her case came under any of them. She naively replied that it might come under the head of "Domestic Affliction."

EDITORS ON THE FREE LIST.-An editor was shaved in a barber's shop recently, and offered the barber a dime, which was refused, Because," said he, "I understand dat you is an editor." "Well, what of it?" "Why, we neber charge editors nuffin." "But such liberality will ruin you." "O, neber mind, we make it off de gemmen."

HUMBUGS. A man advertised lately to forward, on

It was the same sort of a case when a juryman havEng asked the judge to excuse him from serving on account of deafness, the judge said,

"Could n't you hear my charge to the Grand Jury?"

would be applicable at any time and to all persons and conditions of life." On receipt of the stamps he sent his victim the following: "Never give a boy a penny to watch your shadow while you climb a tree to look into the middle of next week.”

TRIAL A MEANS OF GRACE.-There is a large amount of Christian wisdom and excellent advice in the following little episode:

'How am I ever to make progress in religion?" said Mrs. Morris to her old aunt Martha, who had come to spend the day with her. "I really think if I had nothing to do but attend on the means of grace; if we could have constant Sabbaths, and prayers, and hymns, I might endure; but each week's cares seem to wash out what Sunday does."

Daughter!" said aunt Martha, "you have n't got hold of the right end of the skein. It won't unwind as you are doing it."

Do tell me, then, what is the right end?"

The right way is to call your crosses and your cares your means of grace. They are better than prayers, and psalms, and hymns, when they are taken in that way. Your means of grace this week have been your servants' ill-tempers; the breaking of your glass dish; your children's heedlessness; the little unjust, provoking things people have said of you. Call these your means of grace, accept, value, use them as such, and you will grow faster in religion than if you went to Church every day of the week."

Mrs. Morris was silent. A whole new vein of thought was awakened within her.

"Now," said aunt Martha, "have you told your Father in heaven all these things you have been telling

"It seems they are great enough to hinder your peace; to stand in the way of your Christian life; if they can do that they are not little things. Call them your lessons; take them into your prayers; speak freely to your Father of them; look at them as the daily tasks he sets you; believe every one of them has an appointed meaning, and no Church or sermon can do so much for you. My child, I had not been alive this day if I had not learned to do this."

Mrs. Morris knew that her aunt had been through the long trial which only the wife of a drunkard knows, and yet the peace of God was written in every line of her face, and these few words showed the secret of that peace. She resolved that the next week she would try and begin the skein at the right end. Good friend, if your life-skein will not wind smoothly, try the same experiment.

PIETY THE SUM OF HAPPINESS.-Two things are essential to sanctification-pains and pleasures. St. Paul informs us that it is "through much tribulation, and afflictions without number, we must enter into the kingdom of God." Now this ought to comfort those who feel these afflictions, because being forewarned that the path to the heaven they seek is full of them, they ought to rejoice at finding so many marks of their be

| ing in the true way. But the pains are not without their pleasures, by which alone they can be surmounted. For as those who forsake God to return to the world, only do it because they find more enjoyment in the pleasures of the world than in those of union to God; and because this victorious charm draws them aside, making them repent of their first choice, and rendering them, as Tertullian speaks, the devil's penitents; so men would never abandon the pleasures of the world to embrace the cross of Jesus Christ, did they not feel more real delight walking in the narrow way," than in all the pleasures of sin. And, therefore, we are not to suppose the Christian life is a life of sadness. We never quit one pleasure but for the sake of a greater. "Pray without ceasing," says St. Paul; "in every thing give thanks, rejoice evermore." It is the joy of find ing God which is the spring of our sorrow for having offended him, and of the whole change of our life. He that has found a treasure hid in a field, according to the parable of our Lord, is so transported as to go and sell all that he has, and buy that field."

6

Worldly men have their sorrows, but they have not that joy which Jesus Christ said the world can neither give nor take away. The blessed in heaven possess this joy without any mixture of sorrow. And Christians have this joy mingled with sorrow, for having followed other pleasures, and for fear of losing it by these other pleasures, which are tempting them without ceasing. We should, therefore, unremittingly endeavor to preserve this fear, which both preserves and moderates our joy; and when we find ourselves carried too far toward the one, we ought to incline ourselves teward the other, that we may keep ourselves upright. "Remember your comforts in the day of affliction, and your afflictions in the days of rejoicing," says the Scripture, till the promise which our Lord has given us of making his joy perfect in us be fulfilled.

Let us not, therefore, suffer ourselves to be beaten down by affliction, nor imagine that piety consists only in bitterness without consolation. True piety, which only receives its completion in heaven, is nevertheless so replete with consolations that they fill its beginning. its progress, and its crown. It is a light so resplendent that it brightens every thing which belongs to it. If some grief be intermixed with it, especially at its commencement, this proceeds from ourselves, and not from virtue; for it is not the effect of that piety which has been begun in us, but of that impiety which still remains. Root out impiety, and your joy will be unalloyed. Let us not, therefore, ascribe this sadness to devotion, but to ourselves; and let us only expect relief in our sanctification.-Pascal.

AN ANGEL STANDING BY.-We have read of a certain youth in the early days of Christianity-those periods of historic suffering and heroic patience and legendary wonder, to which I call your attention—we read of a Christian youth on whom his persecutors put in practice a more than common share of their inge

nuity, that by his torments-let those who can or will go through the horrible details-they might compel him to deny his Lord and Savior.

After a long endurance of those pains they released him, in wonder at his obstinacy. His Christian brethren are said to have wondered too, and to have asked him by what mighty faith he could so strangely subdue the violence of the fire, as that neither a cry nor a groan escaped him.

"It was indeed most painful," was the noble youth's reply; "but an angel stood by me when my anguish was at the worst, and with his finger pointed to heaven."

O thou, whoever thou art, that art tempted to commit a sin, do thou think on death, and that thought will be an angel to thee! The hope of heaven will raise thy courage above the fire-cast threatenings of the world; the fear of hell will rob its persuasions of all their enchantment; and the very extremity of their trial may itself contribute to animate thy exertions by the thought that the greater will be thy reward hereafter.-Bishop Heber.

CHRIST THE BELIEVER'S PILOT. "I have seen," says Jeremy Taylor, "young and unskillful persons sitting in a little boat, when every little wave sporting about the side of the vessel, and every motion and dancing of the barge seemed a danger, and made them cling fast unto their fellows; and yet all the while they were as safe as if they sat under a tree, while a gentle breeze shook the leaves into a refreshing and cooling shade. And the unskilled and inexperienced Christian shrieks out whenever his vessel shakes, thinking it always a danger that the watery pavement is not stable and resident like a rock, aud yet all is in himself, none at all from without, for he is indeed moving upon the water but fastened to a rock. Faith is his foundation, and hope is his anchor, and death is his harbor, and Christ is his pilot, and heaven is his country; and all the evils of poverty, or affronts of tribunals and evil judges, of fears and sad apprehensions, are but like the loud wind blowing from the right point; they make a noise, but drive faster to the harbor. And if we do not leave the ship and jump into the sea; quit the interest of religion, and run to the securities of the world; cut our cables, and dissolve our hopes; grow impatient, hug a wave, and die in its embraces, we are safe at sea, safer in the storm which God sends us, than in a calm when we are befriended by the world."

THE INFLUENCE OF A CONSISTENT LIFE.-In one of the older States once resided an infidel, the owner of a saw-mill, situated by the side of the highway, over which a large portion of a Christian congregation passed every Sabbath to and from Church. This infidel, having no regard for the Sabbath, was as busy, and his mill was as noisy on the holy day, as on any other. Before long, it was observed, however, that at a certain time before service the mill would stop, remain silent, and appear to be deserted for a few minutes, when its noise and clatter would recommence, and continue till about the close of service, when, for a short time, it again ceased. It was soon noticed that one of the deacons of the Church passed the mill to the place of worship during the silent interval; and so

punctual was he to the hour, that the infidel knew just when to stop his mill, so that it should be silent while the deacon was passing, although he paid no regard to the passing of others. On being asked why he paid this mark of respect to the deacon, he replied, "The deacon professes just what the rest of you do; but he lives also such a life, that it makes me feel bad here"putting his hand upon his heart-" to run my mill while he is passing."

This incident illustrates the power of a holy, consistent life, and shows us very clearly the kind of influence we should exert upon those around us. This good man, it appears, "walked in wisdom" toward those without the Church of Christ, as the apostle exhorts all Christians to do. He exhibited in his daily intercourse a temper and conduct corresponding with the principles which he professed; and while such deportment will not always induce a scoffer to embrace those principles, it will go so far as to disarm his prej. udices, that his esteem for one professing them may in the end lead him to a hearty embrace of the truth.

THE LIVING EPISTLE.-Dr. Guthrie says in the Sunday Magazine: "He who so orders his life and conversation as to bring no dishonor or reproach on religion, who gives no occasion to his enemies to blaspheme, nor by his falls and inconsistencies furnishes scandals to be told in Gath and published in the streets of Askelon, does well. He may thank God that, amid life's slippery paths he has prayed, nor prayed in vain, 'Hold up my goings that my footsteps slip not.' He does better still in whose life religion presents itself less in a negative, and more in a positive form; for while it is well to depart from evil, it is better to do good; nor does he live in vain who exemplifies by his daily life and conversation the pure and virtuous, and holy and beneficent, and sublime and saving doctrines of God and his Savior. The first is good, the second is better, but the last is the best of all. So to live as to be beautiful as well as living epistles of Jesus Christ, seen and read of all men-so to live as to recommend the truth to the admiration of others-so to live as to constrain them to say, What a good and blessed thing is true religion!—as in some measure to win the encomium of her, who, looking on Jesus, exclaimed, Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps that gave thee suck!'-so to live, in fact, as to resemble those books, which, in addition to their proper contents, are bound in gold, are illuminated and illustrated with paintings; or those pillars which, while with their plainer neighbors supporting the superstructure, are also in ornaments, raising gracefully from the floor in fluted columns, and crowned with wreaths of flowers-this is the best of all!"

THE LOGIC OF LOVE.-These chaste affections, these throbbings of heart, these thirstings of souls for the loved and absent, at once assure us that true love does not readily die-that God has made the ties which bind human hearts together-that celestial Love and infinite Goodness have ordained a reunion of the good and true as in part the best realization of heaven. "Thou hast redeemed us by thy blood out of every nation, and people, and tongue," is a song which expresses the joy of praise to Christ, and of mutual recognition as fellow-saints..

FEMALE SUFFRAGE.

OUR leisure time in our "study" during the past month has been largely spent in studying the sayings and doings of the world through the cotemporary press. A large supply of home and foreign periodicals has been for some time lying on our table unexamined. As we open these we are at once struck with the large share of attention given, both at home and abroad, to questions involving the rights and interests of women, the relations of the sexes, and grave social questions involving an almost radical reconstruction of society. In England and America there is evidently great restlessness on the subject of the so-called political rights of the female sex. We think we can trace the history of this restlessness. Though just now, perhaps, predominant in boldness and vigor of assertion in our country, its origin is not American but English, and its first demands were not for extravagant political rights for females, but the right to live, and to procure the means of life. The superabundance of female population in England, the great number left in an unmarried and unprotected state, the very few vocations left open to women for the exercise of their industry and the means of living, the miserable pittance doled out to them for whatever labor or service they were permitted to perform, at length aroused the attention of both sexes to the hardship of the lot of unmarried women, and the injustice that society was perpetually practicing toward them. At the same time education and intelligence were steadily advancing among the female population, and soon out of their own number arose women of talent who were able to make themselves felt as advocates and defenders of their own sex. The demand was for enlarged opportunities by which females could provide for themselves the means of independent livelihood. For years the subject was agitated in these simple aspects. Wise and philanthropic men and women discussed the question, formed societies, tried experiments, endeavored to devise means by which independent and remunerative employment could be provided for women. The same questions very naturally passed over to our own country, where the same difficulties to some extent exist, but in a very much less degree than in the Old World, the fundamental fact in the case-an excess of female population-being in our country exactly reversed. Yet the instances in which females were left, either voluntarily or involuntarily, in singleness, and the multitude of instances of struggling widowhood and the rapaciousness and injustice of employers, gave ample ground in our own country for the agitation of these questions.

The case made out in behalf of woman on these grounds is one that appeals powerfully to our sense of justice and our sympathy. The condition of woman, alone and unprotected and unprovided for by the strong hand of man, whether that loneliness be desolate widowhood, or stricken orphanage, or unloved maidenhood, is even in our own day and country one of the gravest

facts of our social life, and how to remedy the evils which encompass such women, increase the opportunities of independent livelihood, ameliorate their suffer. ings, remove their temptations, and place them beyond the power of rapacious and unjust men is one of the greatest and most interesting social problems of our day. The solution is evidently to be found in opening up more numerous and remunerative avocations to female industry. This again enlarges the question, and opens up for discussion the capabilities of woman, the fields of labor into which it is possible for her to enter, and her comparative worth as a laborer when placed side by side with man in the industries of life.

From the importance and breadth of these questions we can readily see how their discussion would soon run into what is popularly known as the "woman's rights" agitation, and from the greater sprightliness and activity and more independent habits of thought and action of our country women, it is not strange that they should soon outrun their transatlantic sisters in the urgency and extent of their demands. With us the problems of the welfare of unmarried women were soon supplemented by more agitating problems growing out of the marriage relation itself, and the agitation of these problems has given rise to anomalous relations and modes of life as yet almost unknown in European life, startling to travelers and observers who visit us from abroad, and sending them back to Europe to astouish whole nations by books on “Marriage in the United States," "New America," "New Religions of the United States," "Social Problems of the Great | Republic," etc. From just demands in behalf of women for enlarged means of independence and self-provision, with which every wise man and woman could heartily sympathise, the leaders of these agitations would "claim every thing that society allows to men, from pantaloons and latch-keys to seats in the legisla ture and pulpits in the church." They would effect a complete revolution in all our social, political, and industrial interests and institutions. The most advanced women of this school renounce all creeds, are ready to pull down all churches, and "rejoice that an age of religion has given way to the age of free inquiry." The marriage relation with its necessary ties and duties is a burden to these free and independent women. "The whole theory of the common law," they say, "in relation to the married woman, is unjust and degrading," and discuss such questions as, What are the natural relations of one sex to the other? Is marriage the highest and purest form of these relations? What are the moral effects of marriage upon man and wife? Is marriage a holy state?" etc. The answer to all these questions is intended to imply that marriage is a degradation and servitude to woman.

While many of the questions of "woman's rights," which are rife in our country, are wholly unknown in Europe, it is a singular fact that in this last phase of the agitation-the right of female suffrage—it would be hard to determine whether England or America is en

titled to precedence, either with regard to time or the earnestness with which the demand is made. In England the demand grew out of the agitation in behalf of enlargement of the franchise to Englishmen, some leading politicians and some talented women soon sug gesting the question-Why not also embrace certain classes of women in this enlarged enfranchisement? Its chief representative among English statesmen is J. Stuart Mill, who is also the advocate for the enfranchisement of all English freeholders and householders. In our country the demand arose amid the discussions of the enfranchisement of the freedmen throughout the South; and the proposed extension of the right of suffrage to the colored men of the North. In England, Frances Powers, Lydia Becker, and other talented women, have become the champions of the cause through the power of their graceful pens. In our country the school of Lucretia Mott, Lucy Stone, Elizabeth Cowles, and Elizabeth Stanton have taken the lead, sometimes with the pen, but more frequently on the stump and forum. In both countries the right and expediency of the measure are advocated by some of the leading journals and most dignified and serious reviews.

The demand presents different phases in the two countries. With us it is simply the question of universal suffrage; in England, as is the case with all suffrage, the question is partial, and proposes to extend the suffrage to certain classes of women, possessed of a certain amount of property in their own right, and having no proper male representative. Leaving the English to take care of the subject as it presents itself among them, we propose to glance at the question as it is agitated among us.

Here, where scarcely any limitations are placed on the exercise of the franchise when it is once granted to a certain class, that is, where no property qualification, or in most places, even any measure of intellectual qualification, is required of the voter, it is the simple question, Shall the right of suffrage be extended to all American women of proper age? or, in other words, shall we strike the word male out of our National and State Constitutions? In this broad meaning it is at least American; limited, it would be inconsistent with the genius of American institutions. With this broad significance, then, it does not mean to extend the right of suffrage to a certain class of intelligent, refined, virtuous American women, but shall we open the polls to all classes of American women, native-born and naturalized, the intelligent and the ignorant, the refined and the degraded, the virtuous and the debased? As voting implies electing, and we can not say to the enfranchised elector you may vote, but it must only be for candidates of our nomination, the question in its full meaning implies also the election of females to any and all offices.

To this question we would vote a decided negative, and proceed to give our reasons. And, first, we do not for a moment suppose that the women of our country, taken as whole, are not quite as competent to exercise the political function of voting as the men, and we freely concede that multitudes of our women are incomparably more fitted for it than multitudes of men to whom our democratic liberality has extended the franchise. Nor do we suppose that if admitted to the suffrage they would revolutionize the State, or

greatly modify any of our institutions, or that we would be any worse governed then than at present. Quite possibly some things might be made better by feminine participation and influence. And yet it would be a complete revolution of society; it would completely change the status of woman, and, by consequence, that of man also. Woman may possibly assert her right to be a man, but hardly, we think, to be a man and woman too. If she gains the one, she must inevitably, to a greater or less extent, lose the other. If she ceases to be the home companion, the friend, the confident, the co-worker of man in the privacies and affections of domestic life, and becomes his rival and competitor in public strife, man can do nothing less than recognize and treat her as such. If it be said the woman would not become the rival and competitor of the man in these new political relations, but his companion and co-worker, then the demand is not for free and untrameled suffrage, but for the right to vote according to the opinions and wishes of her husband or male relatives, and it means nothing. In this sense she is already fully represented in her desires and opinions by the voice of her male representatives. Of course the demand means that she shall think and vote as she pleases; that she may stand at the same election polls and nullify the vote of husband, father, or brother; that she may meet in clubs, publish journals, advocate or denounce measures according to her own opinions, and use all ordinary political methods to carry her points, whether they may be in opposition to or accord with the views and wishes of her male relatives. It is possible that her views and opinions may be nearer right than those of her male friends; but who can suppose that antagonism of political view and action could long exist without completely revolutionizing the social relations of the sexes as they now exist? To suppose that these oppositions and antagonisms would not arise, is to suppose that female suffrage is to be a mere nominal thing without force or meaning; and to suppose that these antagonisms could exist without destroying the peace and harmony of our domestic relations, is to be ignorant of the delicate and sensitive nature of these relations, and of the strength and violence even of political prejudices and passions.

But this revolution of society is exactly the thing avowedly aimed at by many of the male and female leaders of the agitation. "It is," say they, "the first great step toward the emancipation of woman;" "it is the first step toward her deliverance from the degradation of all past history." "The right of suffrage will be to woman what the right of suffrage is to be to the freedmen of the South, their defense against oppression, and the instrument of independent self-protection." It is the assertion and vindication of the entire equality of women with men, and we demand that the word male be struck out of all State Constitutions, and that females be admitted to every right, privilege, and responsibility now enjoyed by men." Such demands, of course, imply a complete revolution in all social, polit ical, and industrial interests and institutions-revolution, we mean, in the sense of radical reconstruction.

But what would be the effect of this revolution on society? To us it seems the result would be evil, and only evil, and that continually. Its worst effects would