of our souls the soft flowing in of the tides of the great sea of God's love. Ages ago, Plato, "der grosse Pfaffe," as Eckhart called him, before whose bust Marsilio Ficino was wont to keep a lamp burning day and night as to a saint, the one pagan who has influenced Christianity almost as much as St. Paul or St. Augustine, wrote the following passage, one of the noblest and most beautiful in all literature: "The object of love is not Beauty, but Eternity, though only in the beautiful can it bear fruit. The lover begins by loving some one beautiful person: then he feels bodily beauty everywhere; then beautiful souls and deeds and habits, till at last he can open his eyes to the great ocean of the beautiful in which he finds his real life. Perfect Beauty is not like any face, or hands, or bodily thing; it is not word or thought; not in something else, neither living thing, nor earth, nor heaven. Only by itself, in its own way, in one form, it forever is. If a man can see that, he has his life and nothing in the world can ever matter to him."

If we live with this object in view, there will come a day when the confusion of life will cease; when all we study, books and nature, science and art, and the experiences and feelings of our lives, will fit into a harmonious system; when we shall be able to say with Wordsworth:

Whate'er

I saw or heard or felt, was but a stream,
That flowed into a kindred stream.

If we live with this purpose in view we may enjoy our youth while it is here, may take our part in the battles of life, and may have a serene and peaceful old age.

It is one of the strangest things in literary history to me that, in an age when active life is so supreme, a book like the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam should be so popular. Admire if you will the subtle charm of these verses of a pagan pessimist: Yet Ah! that spring should vanish with the rose!

That youth's sweet-scented manuscript should close!

The nightingale that in the branches sang,

O whence, and whither flown again, who knows?

Yet let us not take these lines for our motto in life. We

know indeed that the days of youth and wine and roses pass away, that changes come over us all; but work and love and duty still remain. More wholesome by far is the teaching of Emerson, the great American mystic, as he has been called, "whose beautiful character was as noble a gift to mankind as his works": "That which befits us, embosomed in beauty and wonders as we are, is cheerfulness, and courage, and the endeavor to realize our own aspirations. Shall not the heart which has received so much trust the Power by which it lives?" All, indeed, is vain without religion. With it we can feel the joy of life, the subtle charm of nature and art, the vigorous satisfactions that accompany the activities of a healthy mind and body, the sweetness of love for family and friends, and above and beyond all things we can have peace in the feeling that over us all is the God of pity, tenderness and love. And at last it may be our privilege to look out on the unknown sea of the future with unruffled calm and untroubled eyes, as Tennyson did when, a short time before his death, he wrote these lines:

Sunset and evening star,

And one clear call for me!

And may there be no moaning of the bar

When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,

Too full for sound and foam,

When that which drew from out the boundless deep

Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,

And after that the dark!

And may there be no sadness of farewell

When I embark;

For though from out our bourne of time and place

The flood may bear me far,

I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar.

Oscar Kuching.

ART. XII.-SOME MORE "GOOD TIMES IN RELIGION"

THE train boy came along. I called him Mercury, because he was as indefatigable, irresistible, and, I fear, as unreliable, as that classical old pagan could have been in his wildest moments. Having refused pepsin, chewing gum, milk-chocolate, blue glasses, peppermint drops, smelling salts, peanuts and bananas, a feeling of mingled pity and mirthfulness made me buy a magazine. In my search through Mercury's pile for a good one I pounced upon the March Everybody's. A few hours later, while we were waiting in Cincinnati for a southbound train, my companion, Helen Palmer, began to read aloud Mr. Wood's interesting article, "An Old-fashioned Revival, or Good Times in Religion." Soon the station was filled with an eager crowd who, like us, were going to Nashville; for the great convention of the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions was to begin there the next day, and we were delegates. As we went to the train there was much shouting of college yells and waving of banners; but beneath the gaiety was an earnestness and expectancy unlike anything we had ever known. Lying in our berths that night, as the train rushed southward, we felt that there was a "good time coming," a time which, though not old-fashioned, was to be rich in feeling. It began the next day, even before we reached our destination, in the sense of fellowship we found with other travelers on the long train: a German missionary from Borneo, an American from Japan, a courteous Canadian, were pleasant to talk with. Then, as soon as we entered Nashville, the citizens began to give us a good time, so good, in fact, that, when the Convention closed, we didn't want to leave. The courtesy, hospitality and graciousness of the South, the beauty of the city, the exhilaration of the great assembly, all went into the making of a good time. But how about the religion in all this, do you say? It follows closely. The gathering of five thousand students, teachers, bishops, missionaries, and secretaries was opened by singing two martial hymns.

The volume of sound, the earnest faces, the real feeling made these hymns a sacrament. Then, Mr. Mott and Mr. Speer, two great leaders of the Movement, in short, simple, direct speeches, gave to the hushed audience their high spiritual ideals, their conception of the Student Volunteer Movement as a means for the "evangelization of the world in this generation," and the significance of the Convention in the purifying and strengthening of the life of every delegate. That was "a good time in religion.” There was no emotional excitement, but there was a quickening of the intellectual and spiritual being as earnest-faced, sensitive students, the picked men and women from the colleges of all North America, who had come together to study the needs of the world, thought seriously of the purification of their own spiritual lives as the beginning of real service to the world.

That was "a good time in religion" when, after singing, "O Zion, haste, thy mission high fulfilling," Dr. Robson, of Edinburgh, talked on "The Supreme Business of the Church," and J. Campbell White made a forcible appeal for the giving of our best to the world, as he emphasized the fact that every instant a soul from the non-Christian world passed into eternity. Slowly, solemnly, he began to count the seconds till sixty had passed, and the thought of the threescore departed lay heavily on the congregation, while one after another said to himself, "Shall I not go?" Then, as if in answer, came the song,

"The Son of God goes forth to war,

A kingly crown to gain;

His blood-red banner streams afar!

Who follows in His train?

Who best can drink his cup of woe,

Triumphant over pain,

Who patient bears his cross below,
He follows in His train."

"A noble army, men and boys,
The matron and the maid,
Around the Saviour's throne rejoice,
In robes of light arrayed;

"They climbed the steep ascent of heaven,
Through peril, toil, and pain;

O God, to us may strength be given
To follow in their train."

And some said, thinking of the sixty souls a minute, "I follow in their train."

But one cannot even mention all the marvels of that week. The five days were one continuous good time, with the strongest of intellectual and spiritual reasons for solemn rejoicing. The greatest Protestant leaders of the religious thought and feeling of all the world were there. All colleges, from Cambridge and Edinburgh to our Western schools, were represented; all denominations, from the Church of England to Mennonites, met fraternally, and all races were either represented or pleaded for. Ah! that was a good time, when differences of country, of race, of denomination, of creed, all melted away. John Wesley would have rejoiced in it. How it would have touched his heroic nature to see the response, silent but very real, made by the throng of serious students, as, one by one, eager workers told of their fields, showed the needs of the world, and called for the strong young lives before them. When a head was bowed suddenly one knew that the battle was on. Perhaps after a while, when the quartette sang as a prayer,

"Nearer, my God, to Thee,

Nearer to Thee,

E'en though it be a cross
That raiseth me,"

the battle was won, and those sitting near saw a pale but glad face with a light not of this earth upon it and the destiny, not of one soul, but of many lives, was settled. The Fathers themselves could have wished for no better time than when the multitude, after such experiences, sang:

"Faith of our fathers! holy faith!

We will be true to Thee till death!"

On Sunday morning, when Bishop Thoburn, weak yet strong, wearied yet earnest, made an impassioned plea for India, and called for one hundred young men and one hundred young