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"No, but I think perhaps others may follow my example. Will you, Harry?

Harry laughed still more at that.

"No, thank you."

"Well, perhaps you will do something better still. Will you accept my new-year's gift, Harry?"

"What is it?"

"A Bible."

“Oh, yes, I will accept it, certainly, Carry; but you must not ask me to promise to read it."

"Very well; I will only ask you to accept it; but if you should like to read it, I have marked some chapters that I think are very nice."

"I don't suppose I shall ever read them, but you are a good little sister to take so much trouble for me," said Harry; and his tone was softer than Carrie had heard it for many days.

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May I give your love to papa and mamma?"

"Yes, if you think it will do them any good." "And do write to mamma, Harry. You cannot think how delighted she would be. She watches for the postman night and morning, hoping to see your handwriting."

"I cannot think how any of you can care for me," said Harry. When the time for "good-bye" came, Harry said, softly, “If I were to ask to be forgiven, Carrie, do you think I should be?" 'I am certain of it. O Harry dear, will you?"

"I will think of it. Good-bye, little sister, and thank you for my new-year's present."

"Good-bye, Harry dear; God bless you."

It was a very hopeful heart that Carrie took home with her that day. And it would have been more hopeful still if she could have known that Harry would read a chapter in the Bible before he went to bed at night.

(To be continued.)

NOTICE TO CORRESPONDENTS.

The Editor of the CHRISTIAN WORLD MAGAZINE begs respectfully to intimate to voluntary contributors that she will not hold herself responsible for MSS. sent on approval. Unaccepted MSS. of any great length will be returned, provided the name and address of the owner is written on the first or last page, and provided also that the necessary stamps are enclosed for transmission through the post. Authors are recommended to keep copies of verses, short essays, and minor articles generally, since they cannot, under any circumstances, be returned. Miscellaneous contributions are not requested.

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BUT are you sure you can tell us how not to be? which, being common, is also mean and evil, and any one to suppose he knows a matter completely is a sign of vulgarity; but for any one to speak in affected humility, as if he knew nothing about that of which every observant man may know much is, again, vulgarity. To pretend to be nobody is a certain sign. that you wish more to be a somebody than you should. But to speak as if the settlement of a matter depended wholly upon you and upon your group shows that you are little advanced in the pursuit of wisdom. None can tell all that should be said of vulgarity, because it relates to various classes and conditions of men, to us all, in all the pursuits of our lives. Yet every one has felt that he or she has been tempted to do something that conscience has said is vulgar, and every one has been occasionally vexed, shamed, saddened with the vulgarity of others, neighbours or friends. A pig would be quite unaware that it was a vulgar animal; and it is not a vulgar animal. If it be permissible to put words into a phrase of that kind, it is plain that we are using the term "vulgar" in two senses, else we could not say that a pig is and yet is not a vulgar animal. It lives according to its "principles❞— not mental but instinctive: its preferences are very suitable for a creature of its form and general "style," but it represents that which should not be seen in man. It is not as an animal " vulgar," for no reproach attaches to what in it appears to us unclean. Its

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form is uncomely, its voice is not agreeable, its habits are not attractive; is it not then vulgar? It is what it was made to be; therefore it cannot be reproached as if it lived below that to which its nature prompts. Man has a nature which prompts, but in his nature that prompts there must be a sufficient light to guide. There is something within us beyond nature which nature shall presently serve, and that excellently; and if we only be in conditions that make us unattractive to our neighbours whilst yet we live so well as we may, we are not vulgar in any sense that allows of reproach, though we may be vulgar as compared with others who are more advanced in the excellency of human nature; for one man is low because he has not yet gone up, another low because he has come down. "My level is low," a man might say, but "I am not below it. Yours should be high, but you prefer the ground and even the mire.”

History relates that when a benevolent animal gave a great party, and was so bounteous as to extend the invitation even to the hog, in the very midst of the feast the hog distressed every one with any notion of propriety by saying, "Are there any grains ?" There were fruits and flowers and things that should have been agreeable to all animal senses, but the hog asked for grains! Was this indeed then an impropriety? It would be an impropriety for us to seek that which suits only a low taste when we had been introduced to pleasures of a higher kind. If we had fallen away from the love of books to the love of cigars merely; fallen away from the love of friendly converse to the mere love of dress; if we had ceased to care for our brains and only cared for our hats and our bonnets; if our voices had roughened and been heard too frequently and had become too loud, whilst aforetime we were modest and spoke with a soft voice, and only when we had something to say and were expected to say it, then we should have fallen away towards a condition from which perhaps our kind friends had taken much trouble to raise us; we should have become vulgar.

Now there are very few people but in some or other time of their life have felt, what many with insufficient control of their tongues have said, "I wish I had never been born." But I once heard a wise lady say, "And why should not we be born as well as other people?" And truly that is a question worth considering; for if to be born means to enter into a world where there is much to be done that you like little, and much to be suffered that you like less, is it not a shame to us that we should complain of our part of the burden when we see so many others that are burdened even more heavily than we? Ought we to despond because we must work long before we get the gain that we desire? Ought we to wish to be promoted immediately from the crowd, without having our

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qualities proved, that we may get some of the praise due to those that are high up, and more of the pleasure that we suppose these persons high up can obtain? Ought we to wish for promotion without trial? Ought we to desire freedom from cares which press so heavily on other men? Truly, why should we not be born as well as others? Why should we not be tried as well as others? Why should we not have our share of poverty and trouble as well as others?

May we extend the question, and say, why should we not be amongst the vulgar as well as others? If "vulgar" means common, then the most of people must be common. If vulgar means that which has to do with the more familiar services that human beings require, then the most of men must be engaged in rendering those services? Who is to scrub the stones? Who is to hoe the potatoes? Who is to put away the dust and refuse-if nobody is to be vulgar? Ah, but then are these services vulgar? Is it not possible that there may be a gentlemanly dustman? Is it not possible for one to scrub the stones, and with rough hands, and yet have the heart of a lady? Consider what is done in our own houses day by day, and especially in the days of sickness. Are not those whose feelings are finest ready to take upon themselves services that are most unpleasant? Does anybody think that his wife, his mother, his sister, is vulgarised by a service that is unpleasant to the senses, but which is performed readily at the prompting of the love of the spirit? Now the greater part of the work done in the world is common work. Great multitudes of people are common people. Most of the services we render may be represented by the hoeing of the potato, and the scrubbing of the stone, and the sawing of the plank, and the twisting of the ropes, and so on. It is not for us to complain if we have our share of these offices: it is rather for us to glorify common work by doing it in an uncommon temper a temper uncommon on earth, but which is the every-day temper of the skies. Does any one suppose that an angel of the third heaven will refuse to speak to an angel of the second heaven? Does any one think that a rising angel is jealous of a risen angel, and talks of "that stuck-up Gabriel"? There are no stuck-up angels; there is no evil temper in the sky. Whatsoever services require to be done there, however simple they be, have a splendour attendant upon them because of the good will and perfectness with which they are accomplished. But then you say, There is no more need of services for the removal of that which is noisome? There is not. But the love that on earth is trained amid things hard and uncomely enjoys the felicities that are uncorrupting because the spirit has become incorruptible. For a man to rise into what is called a good position without any purifying change operated in

his heart is for him but to rise as the fish does to the surface, where the hook will catch him, because of the bright fly; or as the climber does to a cold and windy place where his health is imperilled, or he may be cast down by the tempest and broken upon the rocks. There must be an interior work go on in us to prepare us for ascending in society. We are born into a world where there is much to do that we like little, and much to suffer that we like less; and every one has some share of life's burden, and those that are most beloved and honoured have had appointed to them, even though their lot may apparently have been eminent, difficulties the pressure of which is peculiarly painful.

Luther is commonly thought of as a scholastic person, reasoning so as to put you almost to sleep with the scholastic difficulty of his utterance about "justification by faith;" but Luther's notion of a man as cared for by God, and therefore secure in the Divine life because of his faith in God, was curiously represented by his homely talk about infants. "For," says Luther, "see how troublesome they are; see how disagreeable their management is, and yet see how the love of the mother prevails. Does she complain because the child has to be dressed and undressed? Does she complain because of the occasional noisomeness even of pure infancy? Nay, her love is stronger than that; it overcomes all feelings of repugnance. And so," says he, "the love of God is stronger to incline Him to us than all our iniquities and uncleanness are to turn Him away from us." I speak according to Luther's sense, not quoting his exact words. If you have faith in God and trust Him, you trust a love that is forbearing with you, notwithstanding all theannoyance that your sinful and, as it were, noisome state must present to the great and pure eyes and pure heart.

Now, if we enter into the spirit which Luther saw to be the Spirit of God, then we shall judge of all life in this way. And the love of man, overcoming our sense of the unpleasantness of particular men, we shall certainly not account a thing to be base because it is common; we shall not consider it beneath us because the touch of it bemires our hand for a while; we shall not account ourselves vulgarised by it because it obliges us to consort with roughhanded and rough-tongued men; yes, and to be ourselves engaged in rough work till our hand grows horny, and in the utterance of very plain words till when we come to talk with men of more leisure it seems as if these words of ours were as grass to flowers in comparison with theirs. No, we shall learn that there is nothing reproachfully vulgar but has its relation to selfishness, and that what may be called in a social sense vulgar, without reproach, has relation only to immaturity. If there be a person whose feelings and thoughts have not been developed, who cannot feel very richly

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