Notes

NOTES.

— God knows all about you the best and the worst of you. All your weaknesses, your struggles, your successes, your failures, your joys and your heartaches are open to the eyes of him with whom you have to do. As Dr. Mathews beautifully said in a recent sermon, "There are many woes in the British empire with which the good Victoria is unacquainted; but there is one throne against which every human perplexity beats in such a manner as to provoke a sympathetic response. If you are a sin- cere man, this thought cannot fail to be a source of comfort to you. Your fellow-man may pass you by without any notice at all, or if they deign to regard you, may misconstrue your conduct and misinterpret your character; but your Father in heaven will never suffer you to slip away from his observant eye nor judge you save in truth and tenderness. Be courageous, therefore, and confident in the midst of even your most trying difficulties.

When the microscopic search of skepticism, which has hunted the heavens and sounded the seas to disprove the existence of a Creator, has turned its attention to human society and found a place on this planet where a man can live in decency, comfort and security, supporting and educating his children unpolluted and unspoiled; a place where age is

revered, infancy respected, womanhood honored, and human life held in due regard, —when skeptics can find such a place, ten miles square, on this globe, where the Gospel of Christ has not gone and cleared the way and laid the foundation and made decency and security possible, it will then be in order for the skepticalliterati to move thither and venti-

late their views. Bnt so long as these very men are dependent on the religion they discard for every privilege they enjoy, they may as well hesitate a little longer before they seek to rob the Christian of his hope .and humanity of its faith in a Savior who alone has given men that hope of life eternal which makes life tolerable and society possible, and

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948 IMPROVEMENT ERA.

robs death of its terrors and the grave of its gloom. James Russell Lowell.

God, our Heavenly Father, whose gift is length of days, help us to make the noblest use of mind and body in our advancing years. According to our strength apportion thou our work. As thou hast par- doned our transgressions, sift the ingatherings of our memory that evil may grow dim and good may shine forth clearly. We bless thee for thy gifts and especially for thy presence and the love of friends in heaven and earth. Grant us new ties of friendship, new opportunities of service, joy in the growth and happiness of children, sympathy with those who bear the burdens of the world, clear thought and quiet faith. Teach us to bear infirmities with cheerful patience. Keep us from nar- row pride in outgrown ways, blind eyes that will not see the good of change, impatient judgments of the methods and experiments of others. Let thy peace rule our spirits through all the trial of our waning pow- ers. Take from us all fear of death, and all despair or undue love of life; that with glad hearts at rest in thee we may await thy will con- cerning us, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. The 'Congrega- tionalist.

The Assayer, published at Philadelphia, Pa., makes the following sensible remarks on the mob violence recently suffered by the Latter-day Saints in the Southern States: "Freedom is a term which is as much abused as religion. The crimes which are committed in the name of freedom are largely responsible for the lack of freedom from which humanity suffers. To encroach upon the rights of any man anywhere is to strike a blow at liberty every- where. In a certain community in the south recently, a little band of Mormon missionaries were subjected to the worst forms of mob violence. They escaped with their lives, and but little else. Their church was destroyed by vandals with such malignant ingenuity that they were unable to recover their insurance. It does not matter whether these missionaries were Mormons or Mohammedans, Christians or Fire Wor- shipers, the principle is the same and the offense against freedom is equally great. Their rights were abridged, without pretext or law; their freedom abrogated by brute force; their liberty to worship accord- ing to the dictates of their conscience was denied and destroyed; and in the same proportion the liberties of the community where these things were done have been lost. That man, or community of men, who destroy the freedom of others, yield up just so much of their own rights and

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"become in exact ratio the slaves of ignorance and evil and the prey of the tyrant and oppressor. Man can only preserve his own rights by protecting in the fullest measure the rights of others."

The following note shows the remarkable growth of the English language "Two-thirds of all the letters which pass through the post-offices of the world are written by and sent to people who use the English language. There are 500,000,000 persons speaking colloquially one or the other of the chief modern languages, and of these about one-fourth speak English, •90,000,000 Russian, 75,000,000 German, 55,000,000 French, 45,000,000 Spanish, 35,000,000 Italian and 12,000,000 Portuguese. The remainder speak Hungarian, Dutch, Polish, Flemish, Bohemian, Gaelic, Roumanian, Swedish, Finnish and Danish. Thus, while one-quarter of those who make use of the postal departments of civilized governments speak English, as their native tongue, two-thirds of those who correspond do so in the Eng- lish language. This arises from the fact that so large a share of the com- mercial business of the world is done in English, even among those who do not speak it as their native tongue. There are, for instance, more than 20,000 post-offices in India, the business of which in letters and papers aggregate more than 300,000,000 parcels in the course of a year, and the business of these offices is done chiefly in English, though of India's population, which is nearly 300,000,000, fewer than 300,000 pe.- sons either speak or understand English."