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Supper. How ridiculous such an excuse! If a man did not feel his unworthiness, I should cer tainly say that he was unworthy. The real atti tude that one should feel in approaching the Lord’s Supper is that of• the penitent man in-the temple: “Lord, have mercy upon me a sinner!” I never partake of the Lord’s Supper that I do not feel my proneness to sin. Others do not partake because they say there will be those present in whom they have no confidence. That is the same old trick of the devil. He tells the man out in the world, “Don’t you join the church for there are hypocrites in it.” I have found that the people who are always hunting for hyproerites are having other folks hunting for them in the same way. Oh, my broth er, sister, do not bother about the folks that are unworthy; think about the worthiness of Jesus and the unworthiness of yourself. Some people do not partake because their loved ones are not present. Here again the eyes are turned in the wrong direction. We are not told to commune with one another; we are to commune with Jesus, our crucified and risen Lord. But the most hopeless man in all the world is he who refuses to come to the Lord’s table from sheer indifference. When I see such turning away, I always think of the poor Egyptian, when the destroying angel came and found no blood on the lintel and door posts. If today the fell stroke should come for the same reason, I am afraid there would be many a dead man and woman whose name is written on the church book. Oh, brother, sister, this is a great privilege; do not surrender your place at the Lord’s table. It is His command. It begets and strengthens our love for Him; it makes it easier to abstain from sin; it makes brighter our hopes of heaven. “Millions of souls, in glory now Were fed and feasted here, And millions more still on the way, Around the board appear. All things are ready; come away, Nor weak excuses frame; Crowd to your places at the feast, And bless the founder’s name.” A Beautiful Resignation. In a short story entitled “An Angel in the House,” in Harper’s Magazine, Harriet Prescott Spofford tells about a woman who suddenly became blind in her old age. Quickly her prayer came, “Oh, our Heavenly Father, come to us with thy Spirit. Help us to be willin’. Be with us in the dark; —oh, be with us in the dark!” With her husband, whose heart was breaking un der the affliction, she visited the oculist, who gently told her that nothing but a miracle could bring back her lost sight, “And the days of miracles are gone,” he added. “No,” she said quietly, “it may not be worth while for me. But the Power that made this world must still be living in it.” “And can transcend law? I wish it could and would. ’ ’ “Perhaps not that way,” she answered with a loving dignity. “But by cornin’ to me—and helpin’ me to bear. By comfortin’ him,” for her husband had dropped his head in her lap and was crying like a child. “Dear, it is the Lord’s will;” she said, her hand resting on his head. “I would have liked to see the beautiful world again,—but in the next life there will be so much to see, p’rhaps it is best to rest a little first. Dear, dear,” as he shook with his sobs. “I would let you have your will. Shan’t the Lord have His will, too, when we love him so?” “There is no charge,” said the doctor when the man drew out his ancient wallet. She has done more for me than I could do for her.”—Teachers’ Guide. The Hamburg-American line steamer, Rugia, ar riving from Hamburg, brought 141 cabin and 844 steerage passengers, 666 of whom were from Rus sia, many of them Jews. This is the Rugia’s first trip to New York. The Golden Age for April 19, 1906. An Unique Phase of Rapid Transit. Many an anomalous situation has been met with in our great western country from which glamour and romance have not been altogether eradicated by commercialism. In a great part of the South west, men literally “dig for wood and climb for water;” dig for wood, which consists of mesquite roots upon which a large territory depends for fuel, and climb for water to some of Nature’s mountain reservoirs where melting snows accumu late and furnish the only water for many miles during much of the year. But in Denver the startling scene is presented of horse passengers on street cars! Denver has a splendid street railway system extending miles into the suburbs which is supplemented by connecting lines run to towns yet farther away. These priv ate lines are often old horse cars owned by indi viduals. One of these does service between Engle wood, the end of the Broadway line, and Cherre lyn, a little town nestling in the foothills several hundred feet above the starting point of the old time tram way. The dilapidated car which does service on this route shows the effects of many years of hard usage. One horse pulls it with its occasional human passenger, slowly, tortuously, carefully, around the curves and up, up the steep grades to Cherrelyn. On the return trip, however, the motive becomes the passenger. The car is per mitted to run back down to Englewood of its own gravity, the conductor applying the brakes, and the horse wisely, sedately and with all dignity fill- ___________ 11 ■' ■ V. RAPID TRANSIT. ing the smokers’ platform! This practice is a matter of some years standing. The horse backs himself upon the platform and steps off at the proper time. He is a remarkably intelligent ani mal and no power can induce him to make more than the given number of hourly trips to which he is accustomed between feeding times. Unsuc cessful efforts have been made in recent years to have the brute passenger draw the car down hill, but not for Dobbin! He will draw the car up, but insists on riding down, and will no more pull down hill than he will make an extra trip after feeding time comes. To My Mother. Deep in the bosom of the silent woods, I dream of thee, my mother—mine no more! The spirit of the brooding solitudes, Falls on my soul, and grief unknown before Doth mantle me black as Egyptian night. How bitter is the fate I now deplore! Exiled from’ thee until the morning light Os sempiternal life shall us again unite. ’Tis strange perchance, but as I brood on thee, And all thou wert to me since childhood’s days, I ife grows a deeper, blacker mystery, And overwhelmed I contemplate God’s ways, Yet yearn to trust Him who thus trusted slays The holiest love to fallen man e’er given, And then, like one who in a desert lays Him hopeless down, I lift my cry to heaven, And feel as one into long, weary exile driven. My soul cries out to thee through boundless space: No answer comes—thou canst not hear my cry. Throughout the universe I catch no trace Os aught revealing thy abode—or why One of such truth or gentleness should die, And leave me in this starless wilderness. 0, Mighty God, who reign est supreme on high, Didst thou ordain this grief and bitterness Should, for all time, upon my burdened spirit press ? 0, Death! thou ebon angel of despair, Thou brooding nightmare of mortality, Thou arch assassin of the good and fair, Thou grim tragedian of life’s mystery— ’Tis vain man lifts his futile cries to thee! Thine is a kingdom where no mercy smiles, Thine is a reign of Sphinx-like cruelty, Thy home is fixed midst pestilential piles Os ruined cities, where no faintest hope be guiles. Thy smile is in the lightning’s fatal flash, Thou walkest with the earthquake where it rends, Thy voice is in the ocean’s roar and crash, ■Commingled with the fury of the winds, Thy breath with the volcano’s lava blends, Thy cachination is the thunder’s roll, Thou dancest with the simoon when it sends Its fiercest blight upon Sicilian fold— With these thou scrawlest Finis on Time’s rug ged scroll! ’Twas worse than cruel to have swept her hence Beyond the reach of all my mortal years; Ah! is it thus thou wouldst vain man convince That life is but a threnody of tears; Or dost thou seek to fill my soul with fears, Which all earth’s sunshine never can dispel? Thine was a cruel stroke which blights and sears My soul with grief no human speech can tell— If woe like this must strike where is man’s need of hell! But I must not forget! My mother taught The pathos and the beauty of God’s love. She told me how His yearning heart was fraught With such compassion, that no calling dove In springtime ever a soft love-song wove To its lost mate but He did hear the cry; And somewhere from the balconies above Her angel spirit heaves a longing sigh That I should call to heaven with this weak, human Why. And so to thee a long and last farewell— 0, gentle spirit of a vanished past! Time—the-physician—may have power to quell Some of the grief that o’er my life was cast When I beheld thy placid form the last, And saw the smile of death sit on thy brow As if thou hadst been dreaming. But the blast Os stormy fate hath swept me. I must bow Beneath the stroke which rends my bleeding bosom now. Wait patiently, ’neath the architrave where looms The jeweled gate of Heaven’s city fair. Wait 0, my mother! ’till life’s gleams and glooms Have ended. I will meet thee smiling there. And, kneeling at thy feet, will lisp the prayer I used to say in childhood. I will come And greet thee with a radiance as rare As sunlight sleeping on old ocean’s foam, And we will sepnd the sweet, unending years at home. —ARTHUR L. HARDY. The New York branch of the National Red Cross announces that a total of $7,870 toward the Japan ese famine fund has been forwarded to the national treasurer. Jacob 11. Schiff, treasurer of the state branch, acknowledges contributions of $675 since March 1. 5