kindly expressions. "Such criticisms wound the pastor's heart like lance thrusts, and become the secrets of failure, especially when persisted in by the prominent members of the church, who themselves are prone to forget their responsibilities, and are thinning the meetings by thickening the murmurs.' Christian, never complain to your pastormake yourself his friend and cheer him out of despondency and gloomlet the sunlight of your heart beam in upon his, and thus make him feel happy with you and his surroundings. When troubles thicken around him, go take him by the hand-press it fondly-look him in the face, and say: "The darkest hour is just before the breaking of the day—I'll pray for you-I'll stand by you. We are commanded of old to bear one another's burdens." Oh, what a full-tide effulgence would stream in upon an overburdened pastor's heart, could these words be made an actuality! What strength, what courage, a pastor would have in the great life-work surrounded by a body-guard of such spirits as this! If you would make your pastor a source of power in the pulpit and around the hearthstone, give him your hearts, give him your words of cheer, give him your countenance, beaming life and heartexpressed sympathy. Speak well of your pastor to every one-do it unreservedly do it whole-heartedly, then you will soon discover to your own astonishment what a marvel of success he has become in winning souls to the dear Redeemer's cause. Encourage your pastor, and it will be a fruitful source of encouragement to your own souls.Presbyterian Witness.

EXTEMPORANEOUS PREACHING.

THE address of a man to persons who are present with him, who can hear his voice, and look into his eyes, who can watch the play of his features, and recognize his emotions, is, naturally, free from any trammels of words previously prepared. It is not only what you thought yesterday that we want to know, but what you think to-day; and not alone the feelings by which you were moved in some other place, and under other circumstances, but what you feel now— -now when you see us and we see you. Nature prompts to such spontaneousness of utterance, that there is always, of necessity, a difficulty in compelling ourselves to the use of prepared forms of speech. The river will never repeat its windings; it "runs at its own sweet will;" and the elm and oak, leafing out in the spring, will never assume precisely the same form of spray and leafage as in the year before.

Extemporaneousness of utterance hath one advantage-it gets at last to make real what otherwise might have been wholly formal and insincere. It is more genial than reading and repetition. A man who uses it sooner loses himself in the hearts of his hearers. He respects them more; he gets kindled by them into a warmth of feeling that is true to nature, and so he becomes true to them.

Extemporaneousness is demanded everywhere else, except in the pulpit or the lecture-room. A man who reads his speech is thought

not to know his own thoughts, and not to have command of his own ■ powers. The almost universal demand for extemporaneousness is a sufficient reason why ministers should practice it, and congregations allow or ask for it. People outside of the church know how vivacious is the utterance that is not prepared; how the eye sparkles; how very widely the tones of the voice vary; how high or how deep it sounds, how low and soft it becomes, or how loud and how rapid it utters itself. The speaker, too, becomes animated through all his form. Every muscle speaks, and every nerve; the man is alive. It is impossible to read as one would speak without a manuscript. No one can equal nature. All the best teachers of elocution in the world can never make the reader equal to the same person as a speaker. Declamation, with all its arts, with all its most successful and most applauded arts, can seldom hide the art it practices. The world seems to know all this, and so requires people to talk, and not to read.

Doubtless the architecture of our pulpits-the height of them above the audience, the rich and polished mahogany, and the satin upholstery of them, their removal to a distance from the pews, and the general architecture of the meeting-house itself, with closet-like and exclusive pews-suggest a style of preaching far different from the speaking of the popular assembly. But the fault is with the architecture; mahogany and satin ought not to dictate the style of the preaching; the living thought ought to be held superior to silk and wood; and ought at last to brush them altogether away, if they compel a man to read instead of speaking, if they give formality and a tone and dullness to his utterance.

And it is not at all to be feared that ministers who can speak well at public gatherings, should not speak with equal dignity, and fire, and eloquence, in the pulpit. The ability of extemporaneous speech is evidently very common, and probably is as common as the ability to write with correctness, force, and elegance, and is as capable of being acquired as the other power. No man writes well except as the result of long practice and most careful study. We have no reason to suppose that similar study and practice would fail to make accomplished speakers without the use of notes.

The moral principle that puts a man into the pulpit attends him there. It does not suffer him to be a trifler in the preparation of his discourse. It does not allow him to be careless of his style; it does not allow him to enter the pulpit without full thought of his subject, of his people, of his responsibility, too, as a Christian preacher, a servant of God. Even a common, worldly ambition, would have some influence upon preachers, if they were required to speak without notes; they would still want the honor which they now enjoy, the praise which now attends successful efforts; and would be touched even by emulation toward the many successful orators to whom the community now listen with delight.

Would it not be well, in the early life of the student of theology, to begin the work, so that when first he enters the pulpit he can speak freely the message which it is required from him to convey!

UNIVERSALITY OF INTEMPERANCE.

avenue of vice is fully opened up, and iniquity, like a flocd, ng all over this broad land. Murder, Sabbath desecration, theft, and every other species of vice, is alarmingly on the But truly frightful is the ravages of this insatiable demon erance who is making many rich and easy conquests, marchy forward, and like a strong man armed, is firmly holding t of vantage ground gained.

the worst features of the inroads this evil is making in its universality. It knows no North, no South, no East, no amid the rocks and hills of sterile New England many imbibe d" to keep themselves warm," while away down South, berays of an almost tropical sun, the same ruinous practice is alged in "to nullify the effect of the extreme heat." In car and tage, in town and village and hamlet, in our densely-crowded upon our sparsely-settled frontiers, in wretched hovels and palaces, in our halls of legislation and our political conventions, e we behold the bleared eyes and the bloated form of the oftentimes we meet corpses of our fellow-men, being borne to grave, while the heart-rending moans of the wretched wife teous cries of the half-clad, half-starved children of the are continually resounding in our ears; every where we are to witness the fearful ravages of this rapacious monster, h about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour," tirs up more strife, ruins the peace of more households, e bloodshed, sends more paupers to our alms-houses, more our prison, more patients to our lunatic asylums, more prertal souls to hell than all other Satanic agencies combined. feature especially alarming to every true Christian patriot is of this vice by such a large number of our public men. The xample of this nature will readily occur to every mind, the brance of which mantles the cheek of every true American and indignation. But this high official is not alone in his By his side stands one who wields the power behind the alas, he, too, is a wine-bibber, no better in this respect than Alas for our noble old Ship of State! That in this hour of k storm clouds hanging over us, the lightning's flash athwart hunderbolts crashing around us, the billows rolling mountain orm winds whistling through the rigging, breakers and hick around our pathway, now when we have a greater er before for able, honest, temperate leaders, we have an captain on our upper deck, and a wine-bibber at the wheel! ad the marble halls of Congress, as Representatives of this have more than once formed an intimate acquaintance with Pennsylvania Avenue, and whose characters are so degrarespect, that the very boot-blacks and newsboys of the them as they pass along the streets. But this feature ding vice is not confined to the District of Columbia.

it extends to such a degree as to cause us to tremble for the safety of our country.

men.

But there are signs of reformation visible even amongst our public Those dens of iniquity which under the specious names of winestalls, restaurants, &c, have so long been nourished beneath the very halls of Congress, have been banished from the Capitol grounds. A Congressional Temperance League was organized last winter. Gov. Fenton, of New York, in defiance of the rules of political etiquette, has banished all intoxicating liquors from his reception-tables; other prominent men have acted in a similar praiseworthy manner. But what is far better, the people of the whole land are awakening to a sense of their imminent dauger and the necessity of decided action to stay the progress of this great and growing evil.

Friends of Temperance and humanity: we have fought this common enemy of mankind, this grand ally of Satan, with kid gloves on, too long already; we must throw them away, we must change onr tactics, if we would ever conquer him. Let us continue this contest then with redoubled energy, let us marshal all our forces, attack the enemy in front and rear, surround him; mass all our artillery; bring all our needle guns to bear; charge bayonets, and keep up a steady fire of musketry through the press, from the pulpit and the rostrum.

Finally, let us all unite and pray and work and speak and write and fight in the grand and holy cause of Temperance, until this citadel of Satan is entirely demolished; this gateway of hell effectually barred; all the subjects of King Alcohol captured, compelled to renounce their allegiance to him, and become honest citizens of the great Cold Water Republic.-R. J. CRESSWELL, in the Albion Herald.

MEMORY AT THE JUDGMENT.

AMONG the records to be produced at the judgment of the great day will be the book of memory. The faculties of the soul, we may be sure, will not sleep in the other world. On the contrary, we are given to understand that they will be wonderfully quickened. Often in this life the powers of the mind are immensely stimulated by some great emergence of peril or of joy, so that the whole past in thronging memories, seems in an instant to flash upon it. In a vastly higher degree it is probable that in the future state the spirit, unfettered and free, will peruse with astonishing celerity and accuracy the annals of life in the flesh.

We are told of a river in Africa which, because it runs many miles under ground, was fabled by the poets to be one of the rivers of hell, and because its name (Lethe) signifies oblivion, was feigned to cause forgetfulness of all that was past, to those who drank of its waters. This myth, in which the heathen world blindly reposed, and to which evil-doers now give easy credence, whenever thoughts of their accountability and final retribution disturb the mind, is the creation of the unsanctified imagination, and wholly unsupported by the word of life. Such a fancy quickly vanishes before the light of revealed reli

gion. The histories of time can never be obliterated. How can they die out of the recollection of the immortal human spirit? God himself will require that which is past. And his almighty requisition will be fully and promptly obeyed. Even the behest of created intelligence, in its backward glance, will be quickly met. Before it the deeds and events of mortal life will rapidly marshal themselves in the unclouded light of eternal day. In what crowds will the reminiscences of time come to that final review! The numberless items of temporal being will be easily exhumed from the dust and rubbish of the past, and straightway recognized in the spirit world. A mightier power than the friendly hand of "Old Mortality," chiseling afresh the epitaphs of the dead, will cause the soul to retain among its stores of knowledge the ineffaceable records of memory. These are treasures which the devouring teeth of time cannot touch, and of which not even the insatiate king of terrors can rob the soul.

Now it is not uncommon for mortals to forget, fail to recollect, try to banish, or only occasionally recall the past. Many times we let slip the things we have heard and learned, even as water escapes from a leaky vessel. The effort is often made to wipe out the pencilings of life. Not to speak of the lull of sleep, or stupefying potions, or the inroads of disease, which sometimes dim the light of the understanding and the memory. wave after wave of folly drench the soul, until the vestiges of other days, like careless tracings or foot prints upon the sandy beach, are well nigh washed out. But the days of dreams and opiates, disease and stupefaction, will soon be passed. There will be no potion to dull the activities of memory; no hand to draw a veil of oblivion over the fields of personal experience and human history.

No gleaner ever more faithfully harvested his field than will memory in the other world carefully gather up every sheaf of her past. Over and over again will she eagerly revisit and traverse all the way by which she came up to the judgment seat of Christ. She will seem to live over again each epoch of mortal life, and treasure up the number of those years which were spent in the earth, as a tale that is told. Each incident of that tale will be distinctly defined, and some of its occurrences prominently delineated among the pictures of memory. There will be a grouping of the recollections of childhood, of youth, of manhood, and old age, in their appropriate variety and order. Seasons of grace and of trial, of wandering, of peril, of conversions, of the spiritual conflict, of prayer, praise, Christian fellowship and gracious attainment, and of the dying hour, will come thronging to the mind like bees to their hives-like doves to their windows. Privileges, opportunities, invitations, warnings, appeals of conscience, strivings of the Spirit, sermons, Sabbath hours and ordinances of God's house; the vicissitudes and associations of business; memorable events of domestic and social life, of school days and of subsequent years, will flock for recognition to the door of memory. And that door will be thrown. wide open.

Many of the stores of time are wrapped up in mystery, or jealously guarded as the secrets of the individual breast; known only to consciousness and to the Omniscient eye. But hereafter we may expect