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There do not seem to be many foreigners here
this year.
The climax of our kind seemed reached to
day. A man and his wife, who are New York
ers, came up after the service and said to your
correspondent: "We do not know you, but
have you not been coming here for so many
years ? it would not do to say how many
years," they said. It is not polite to tell 011
yourself, but they simply wished to show a
friendly feeling because of tlio fact that the
fact seemed to enable them to claim him as a
friend. Such is Northfield friendliness.
Miss Esther Moody, the gifted and accom
plished daughter of Mr. Ambert G. Moody, 1 lie
nephew of the great evangelist and business
manager here, is about to sail under the Amer
ican Board of the Congregational Chureli to
Peking, China, as a missionary. She gradu
ated at Wellesly College with the degree of
B. A.
At our table we find very pleasant com
panions : Rev. A. M. Osgood, a sweet-spirited
and much beloved minister of the Methodist
Church, and his genial and pleasant wife.
Then we have Judge and Mrs. Cooke, now of
Philadelphia, though for many years Judge
Cooke was one of the judges of the Supreme
Court of Colorado. He is an elder in the Pres
byterian Church. He is quite a scholar and fit
one time in his earlier life taught both Hebrew
and Greek, a man of brilliant and versatile
mind.
Then we have Miss Whit, the accomplished
librarian of the large library here, ar.d the
Misses Morris and their aunt from Now .Jersey.
Five out of ten are Presbyterians. The very
kind and efficient service at our tables is largely
rendered by young ladies who are dtuiients at
the Northfield Seminary. The students of the
Seminary have done well and honored their
alma mater in this country and in many for
eign lands, as have also the students of Mount.
Herman, a boy's school under the same man
agement.
We had last night a learned lecture by Dr.
Clay on archaeology and explorations in Bab
ylonia, and we were shown on a screen large
pictures of the ruins of the Tower of Bab?'l
and also of the ruins of Babylon. Dr. Jones,
from Bournemouth, England, is lecturing here
on the events that happened between the times
of the Old Testament and the New Testament.
He has evidently studied the subject well.
Rev. Dr. Floyd Tompkins, the beloved rector
of the Church of the Holy Trinity, Philadel
phia, has been delivering some addresses on
the Christian life, which have helped and com
forted his hearers.
Many come here in automobiles. The one
from the greatest distance, so far as we know,
is from California, and may have cost $7,000 or
$8,000. There is also a car here from your
near city of Petersburg, Va.
Today on the State Road we passed a stone
monument having this inscription. "Na
thaniel Dickinson was killed and scalped by
the Indians at this place April 15, 1747. Age
48." This is just on the outer edge of this
campus.
(To be conitnued.)
RESTLESSNESS IN THE MINISTRY? THE
REMEDY.
By S. h. _
The writer has been much impressed with
the restlessness which appears in many quar
ters on the part of many ministers. The de
sire for change of fields and the general un
satisfied condition of many brethren show the
restless spirit. Now, two causes that inay
seem to be good ones, appear to even casual
observers. In many instances the minister is
poorly paid and stintingly provided for, and
this may make him feel that another field is
more desirable, for it gives him a feeling that
if the people cared for him to remain with
them they would make greater effort to give
him material support. In many instances, too,
the people of the churches fail in moral sup
port and the attendance on the services is
slim and the people careless about supporting
the preacher in his ordinary efforts to carry on
the work in its different phases.
Then the state of drift and indifference is
on and half-hearted work is the result on the
part, sometimes, of both pastor and people, and
the pastor is ready to leave, and people ready
for him to leave. So the minister feels that a
new field would enable him to do a better work
and use his talents to much better advantage.
May an unbiased observer suggest a pos
sible remedy. Suppose instead of seeking a
new field of labor the minister should go to
the proper source of wisdom and seek it, and
purpose to revive business in his church, and
instead of drifting in old ruts, get up on a new
and higher plane of operation. Look well to
the failures of the past, and seek out the
causes, and change the mode of operations and
try hard and faithfully to put new life in all
lines of work.
We have heard of men who tried working
prayer meetings in a different way from the
old beaten paths and succeeded. "We have
heard of ministers who devised plans by which
officers and private members were shown how
they could do some work, and by that revived
the general work of the church; and every
body got interested. Instead of running away
from the old field, get up a purpose to use the
best of your talents and energies and methods
in it and revive the work right there. Go to
t lie work looking to Ilim through Whom you
may do all things.
If many of the brethren seeking new fields
knew that that fact created a suspicion that
they were not doing much for the old, they
would stir all the life in them and in the people
of the present field, before looking for some
thing that might appear to them better. May
not there be a possibility that it is more the
lack of doing our best with God's help where
we are, than the need of going where pastures
seem greener, and sheep easier to lead? I have
been thirty years in the work of the ministry
and have never known a time when so many
preachers wanted new charges. Is the real
reason that there is a better work for them
somewhere else in the Lord's vineyard, or that
they are not stirring up properly the gift of
God that is in them and so are not stirring up
the people whom they serve?
WHEN THE MOON SET AT SUNRISE
By Rev. Geo. IT. Ray.
On July 8th I saw a vision of splendor ami
beanty which one sees, possibly, only onoo
in a lifetime. As the sun was rising, the re.-on
was setting. I make no effort to describe the
scene, because, I think, it cannot be ?Vseribe&
It so happened that the night before I had
been reading a lesson in the New Astronomy
as recorded by Garrett P. Serviss in the Octo
ber Mentor. This lesson flashed into my mind
as I watched the moon set while the sun was
rising.
?I turned to the star Betelgeuse in the Con
stellation of Orion. It has a diameter which
has been measured by the Michelson Inferom
etcr and found to be 240,000,000 and
the star is about as large as the orbit the
planet Mars. The diameter is nealy three
times as great as the distance from the rising
snn to yonder setting moon.
Mr. Serviss tells of the star clusters which
have been photographed at the Mt. Wilson
Observatory, and gives us one ph >t/>gr ipl: ?
a million suns in a cluster ? whoso distance is
so great that all of its membevs blend their
light into a hazy speck, barely visible even
with the largest telescope. The most distant
point in the known universe in the globular
star cluster, No. 7000. Light travels 5,8G0 bil
lion miles in a year, and takes 215,000 years
to come from the cluster 011 the journey to
the earth.
Mr. Serviss describes the Milky Way as a
great galactic system driving through space
like a flat shining raft, built up of hundreds
of millions of stars, our own little system being
lost among them, and drawing in from either
side, and from distances of hundreds of quad
rillions of miles, vast stellar organisms, the
globular star-clusters, on which it feeds and
grows. In front of the Milky Way, and not of
it, are the spiral nebulae. These nebulae, im
pelled by a force unkonwn, like frgilitcned
flocks of strange winged creatures hatched in
the midst of the mysterious and boundless
ether ? these spiral nebulae flee onward from
the Milky Way, speeding madly on ? on ? on.
While I thought on these facts as revealed
in the Xew Astronomy, the moon has set
behind the hills, trailing clouds of glory more
delicate and beautiful than the artist's or
the poet's dream. The sun had pushed away
the clouds that had clothed him with illimi
table splendor and was revealed," rejoicing as
a strong man to run a race." It was time
for me to be about my morning's work. I went
to it with a glad heart, humming the words of
an old song:
"And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, conies in the light;
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,
But westward look, the land is bright."
Mt. liydal, Amherst, Va.
"THE UNSEEN HAND."
Mr. Philip Mauro says: "One never-to-be
forgotten evening in New York City, I strolled
out in my usual unhappy frame of mind, in
tending to seek diversion at the theater. This
purpose carried me as far as the lobby of a
theatre on Broadway, and caused me to take
my place in the line of ticket purchasers. But
an unseen hand turned me aside, and the next
thing that I remember I had wandered far from
the theatre, and my attention was arrested by
a very faint sound of singing which came to
my ears amid the noises on Eighth Avenue,
near Fofty-fourth Street." A few moments
meeting and was converted to Christ. The
later Mr. Mauro found himself in a prayer
"unseen hand" did it. ? John Y. Emert, D. D.
THE JOY OF THE WINNER.
While traveling down the Ohio River on a
steamboat my attention was called to the
pilot, who was a coarse looking man. The
captain informed me that three weeks ago, as
the boat Mas going through the rapids, the
pilot called him to take the helm. He had just
seen a boy struggling in the water. lie sprang
into the boiling waters and saved the boy. I
wrent up to the brave man and spoke to him:
"Do you ever see the boy whom you saved!"
"Yes," he answered, "at every trip he comes
down to the bdfit to see me." "And how do
you feel when you see him?" "More than I
can tell you," he replied. "More intense in
interest than in any of my own seven at home,
for whom I have run no such risk."