ACTIVE REST.



INACTION is not always rest, nor is rest always inaction. A brain-weary poet or composer can find rest in busying himself with a demonstration in Euclid. It is change, not idleness, that the mind needs in order to be refreshed, some shift in the mental machinery that will knit up the web of life where another kind of motion has unraveled it. Says a clergyman:

I met a student toiling up a mountain. His face was flashed, and the perspiration was starting from his brow.

"What are you doing here?" I said.

"Resting," was the reply, and he was not jesting with me.

He meant what he said. He was brain-weary. He was tired of books and of the narrow walls of his study. He wanted to be in the open air, to develop his muscles and rest his nerves. The very toil of climbing relieved the pressure on the brain. Physical exercise stilled the throbbings of thought and care, and gave him an exquisite feeling of relief.

Like this will be our rest in Heaven, not inactivity, but fresh activity in a new sphere.




WINTER.


WINTER comes to us as a blessing, inasmuch as 'it reminds us of the stern realities of life. Were we to have continual summer, we would become indolent, and neglect to provide for our wants. But not so. Winter comes to remind us that the earth needs rest; and that in summer we, by earnest labor, must lay by provisions sufficient to meet our demands during that rest.

Thus it is in life. All is not summer; but winter alternates with it, and teaches us that there must be an ingathering of knowledge and virtue, to meet the demand against ignorance and vice which we meet from day to day, that we may "be as corner stones, polished after the similitude of a palace;" that we may be fitted for the life that now is, and also for the life to come. Let us heed the lesson taught, and during the long winter evenings, search for the gems of knowledge that lie around us on every hand. 



A. A. JOHN.




PRAISE.


AT thy feet, our God and Father, 

Who has blessed us all our days, 

We with grateful hearts would gather,

And Begin the year with praise, 

Praise for light so brightly shining

On our steps from Heaven above; 

Praise for mercies daily twining 

Round us golden cords of love.