There is yet another form of impressing our hearts with the shortness of time. God has deemed it worthy of making this a point even in the holy Scriptures. Some of the most impressive figures in God's works have been selected, in which to fix or frame this important idea, well knowing the tendency of men, with deceptive hearts-"To believe all men mortal but themselves."

God has written it on the earth-painted it on the heavens-fastened it to the wings of birds-made the zephyr to whisper it, the gliding rivulet to utter it, so that wherever we are or move, it may be before us to impress our hearts.

St. James says:"For what is our life? It is even a vapor, peareth for a little while, and then vanisheth away."

that apThe figure is impressive. We have all seen the vapor arising from the mountain base-ascending upward like a cloud, and in a few moments all vanished. Like that vapory cloud is our life. Now here, with apparently compact vital powers, then gone into so many little fragments that no one can discern it.

In the books of Psalms, we find language equally impressive: "As for man his, days are as grass: as a flower of the field so he flourisheth for the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more."

Grass itself is unstable. How soon is it withered by the sun! How brief its season, when the scythe enters and cuts it down! But the flower of the grass is still less durable. In spring see the flowers, ornamenting the trees, spreading over fields, born to blush even on the mountain tops and waste their fragrance on the desert air. See all this; then see how soon all is fled, and the barren skeleton forms of winter take their place, and you have an expressive type of men, cities, and nations. All passes away!

Job-though his time, because of his severe affliction, might appear longer than ordinarily, says: My days are swifter than the weaver's shuttle." How rapidly does it fly through the web from one side to the other, whilst behind it behold the woven cloth, expressive of the character which every day we, in our labor and motions to and fro, are weaving for eternity!

Passing thus rapidly through life, we reach at last the dreaded end— death. How? As a "thief in the night," sudden, quiet, unexpected. At this point, while the cold hand is approaching the heart, if we look back with the eyes now grown dim, how brief the period! but a span-a moment. We almost feel that, while our one hand trembles upon the cold coffin by our side, we can lay the other upon the cradle in which we enjoyed our first sweet infant sleep. Thus it seems to all-the most aged, as well as the young! How short the period of our days!

But the subject calls for another thought calculated still further to deepen this impression. Time itself is a comparative idea. Its length or brevity is the result of comparing it with something else. The life of one may be compared with that of another. Comparatively one may be long and the other short, yet in fact both are short. If we compare our lives with those of the patriarchs, how brief do they appear! If we compare time with eternity, what is the first? Less than a moment, compared with the whole of time! A drop of water, as compared with the ocean. How brief in this view the existence of nations! Egypt, where art thou?

Greece, with thy Homer, Hesiod, Eschylus, Sophocles, Euripedes and Pindar, and the great Socrates, where art thou? Rome, proud imperial Rome-the type of the iron conquering will, where are thy glories? Each of the great nations of antiquity had its day. How brief that day. The sun rose, passed rapidly over the heavens, and went down in darkness. And when time shall have travelled on but a few centuries more, what will be the condition of England, France, Germany, America? Compared with eternity, these nations exist but for a brief day. Compared with the same great fact, how infinitely insignificant the period of man's life! Oh Lord, remember how short my life is.

But there is still a more useful comparison, which teaches the same profound lesson.

Let any one contrast his life, even under its most extended form, with the work required to be done in it, and he will have cause to utter the same exclamation. In time, we are to prepare for eternity; during a brief moment, we are to get ready for an endless duration !

In doing this, see what we owe to ourselves-to our families to the community-to the world-to God. Get a full view of all this, and then think of a life of 60, 70, 80 years! How short!

Our time being thus short, we should be led to inquire earnestly, what is the object of time? Is it not to obtain that character which will qual ify for eternity? What is life without this? What will it profit, if, in the few moments during which we live, we should gain the whole world! There are many who thank God that their lives have been spared during another year; and yet in the end they may perhaps wish that they had died at its beginning. Life may be a blessing, and it may be a curse; and those are not by any means the most richly gifted whose lives and health are prolonged. There is no special merit in time as such. While our hearts grow faint at beholding the corpse of a little child, yet the question may well be entertained, would it not have been better for us to have died when children?

Time is a frame-the picture we must paint. It is a blessing only as, by the power of faith, we shall be able to use it in promotion of the high purposes for which it was given-in crucifying the flesh, resisting temptation, cultivating the fruits of the Spirit, overcoming the world, and preparing a character adapted to a blissful eternity. This gained, a long or short life will be a matter of comparatively little moment.

In the truth of this subject we find the strongest reason in favor of youthful dedication to the service of God. Time is too short and the work of life too great for any waste of precious moments. Oh, how many of the young, infatuated and charmed with the toys of life, are forgetting the great truth which God is striving by every possible means to impress upon their minds! And how sadly will they be disappointed, when they shall wake up from their dream and look for the reality! Dear reader, bear in mind, that God has given you only one life, and this may be very short. If in this brief life you fail to secure the favor of God, the whole of it will be a curse and impart a curse also to the whole of eternity.

Select your objects. Let these be high and noble. Then link your lives with them. Bring all your powers to bear upon them. Let your character be the result of noble daring; and when the solemn hour of departure shall come, you will die under the benediction of God-"Well done, good and faithful servant."

Thus you shall vanish like the gale's last breath-like the red gleam of the evening's fading fire-like the brilliant star, beaming with brightness unimpaired and unclouded-like the perfume sweet that rises from the cups of flowers-like the early dew when morning's thirsty eye of fire is blinking like the plaintive tone that swells from harp strings touched by angel fingers-vanish gently, peacefully, calmly, yet triumphantly into the bosom of thy God.

ACROSS THE ALLEGHENIES.

BY THE EDITOR.

It is sometimes said, that rivers and oceans separate countries. The saying is untrue. They unite them. They form the media of international commerce the organs of intercourse. But mountains do divide. The Alps and the Apennines have ever formed a mighty wall between northern Europe and the Italian peninsula. Only Hannibal and Napoleon Bonaparte could scale them with their armies. The third Napoleon has defied their barrier, by boring a tunnel through Mount Cenis-like many of his other acts, a sort of coup d'etat. But they are a barrier still.

To many in Pennsylvania, Ohio still seems like the far West, on account of the intervening Alleghenies. In reality they are a barrier no longer. As you watch the mighty locomotive, winding laboriously its train upwards, along the ascending mountain curves, your heart swells with a sense of triumph. We say it reverently, the preparatory mission of John the Baptist, finds a more striking illustration now than it did in his day. The Roman roads were justly distinguished. But the present century has developed road-making the ancients never dreamed of. In travelling over our Rail Roads, how often one thinks of the time the prophets longed for, when "Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low, the crooked made straight and the rough ways shall be made smooth."

A DAY AND NIGHT ON THE RAIL.

A locomotive is a mystery. No marvel that a certain farmer, when he saw it from under his night cap, through his chamber window, vomiting fire into midnight darkness, thought that Lucifer must have broken out of his Plutonic confinings. Roger Bacon predicted, 600 years ago, that "machines can be constructed to drive ships more rapidly than a whole galley of rowers could do; nor would they need any thing but a pilot to steer them. Carriages also might be constructed to move with an incredible speed, without the aid of any animal." Coleridge says, "Principle is the germ of prophecy." This vision into the remote future by the erudite Briton, discovering principles far in advance of his age, shows the depth, thoroughness and extent of his learning. We have become familiar with the realization of his prediction. And yet to the great mass, the steam engine is still an enigma as puzzling as it is to the Bedouin of Arabia.

The latter seated in his hut, folds his arms across his breast, smokes his pipe, and salutes his wives and children with a solemn nod, and mutters, "Allah il allah," (God is good), as he hears the shrill whistle of the locomotive.

Abraham, Moses, Job, Joshua-what would they think, could they see these noisy novel trains? Are we sure that they do not see them? A long and tedious journey had "the father of the faithful" from Mesopotamia to Shechem, with his slow caravan. Twenty-four hours would have taken Moses from Goshen to Pisgah by rail, instead of forty years.

A great convenience for the clergy are these travelling facilities. What a tedious, expensive journey Paul and Barnabas must have had, from Antioch to Jerusalem, at the first Council or Synod of the Christian Church. Some of the Bishops of the early Church had to travel for months to reach the great oecumenical Councils. Now, a few days, at most, will suffice for such a journey.

In travelling, a man's enjoyment greatly depends on his company. On the trip that suggested these notes, about fifty ministers and elders, were on the same train. One may well imagine what a buzzing so many active minds, turned loose on an ocean of talk, would produce. Subjects mirthful and solemn were discussed. Knotty points of theology were handled with the hair-splitting keenness of the old scholastics. Seats were exchanged; that is to say, when there were more passengers than seats, an occasional theft was committed. The meeting of an important Church Board was held. The clerk was instructed to date the proceedings from "somewhere between Altoona and Harrisburg." Never before had we a hand in transacting business at the rate of twenty miles an hour. At night a sacred concert was improvised. The car resounded with the grand chorals of the olden time. After the first few lines, all hats were doffed, as if the audience felt that God could even be worshipped on a train in motion.

A MIDNIGHT SCENE.

We were on our return from the meeting of the General Synod at Dayton, Ohio. A variety of persons were represented in our party. Men grown gray in hard work and scholarly strivings. Poets, philosophers, theologians, merchant princes, who live in palatial homes, and many of smaller pretensions, having all things in common. The gradual subsiding into sleep presented quite a scene. Tired Nature claims its remedies. In Hugo's les Miserables, Valjean cannot sleep in a soft bed, because he had been trained to sleep on a plank. These dignified scholars settled into the most grotesque postures, regardless of the shortness and hardness of their beds. The brief stopping of the train revealed strange sounds. An elder, the very pink of tidiness, wheezes as if in woful agony. A noted divine, always dignified and deep, is crouched in a corner, with jaws ajar, and heaving with long breaths. Ever and anon his head drops on his breast, as if saluting new ideas dawning upon his introverted vision. Another forgets to breathe, until his lungs rebel and demand redress in a somewhat boisterous style.

Men of might, who the day before had collared each other in fierce theological combat, lie in the arms of forgetfulness, and pipe their unconscious speeches on the same key. The lion and the lamb lie down together. Asleep, all men are equal. Like an army of mail-clad warriors after battle,

knights and their followers, fall asleep on the same ground, in their armor, so are these theologians, in undress. The hot, unhealthy air of the car, the intellectual battles of the few previous days, and their uneasy beds, account for these antics.

Thy spirit within thee, hath been so at war
And thus hath so bestirred thee in thy sleep
That beads of sweat have stood upon thy brow,
Like bubbles on a late disturbed stream;

And in thy face strange motions have appeared,
Such as we have seen when men restrain their breath
On some great sudden haste.

We have often had the pleasure of witnessing the discussions of learned assemblies; but never before have we heard and seen them when the speakers were asleep. The good sleep the soundest. "Tyrants never go to sleep." "Tis after all an uncomfortable rest, we thought.

car.

Leaving our friends to their dreams, a dozen of us retired to a sleeping The sides of the car are lined with three shelves, or berths. Much as we dread being prematurely "laid on the shelf," "a good berth" is not to be despised. Our men of weight, for such we had, were laid on the lower shelves. For two reasons: 1. Because the ballast is always stowed away in the lower part of the ship. 2. To guard against breaking the upper berths, and the consequent disasters to those under them. We have a vivid recollection of such an event. It was on a canal packet. While asleep, a man of prodigious corpulence rolled in above us. The first we knew of it was a terrific crash, as though the heavens had been falling. And something did fall, and leave its mark on our forehead. We learn wisdom from experience.

How strange is the power of association. The moment the head touched the pillow, a torrent of unpleasant recollections threatened to banish sleep. The narrow confinings called up certain unpleasant memories of nauseous nights on mid-ocean, and of the sighs and groans of sea-sickness in a storm. Surely there can be no danger of that here. Other perils may be impending. To Israel's Keeper we commit us for the night. A blessing on the man that invented sleeping cars. They give you all the nightly comforts of a first class steamer, without any of their annoyances.

DAYTON.

Dayton is a charming city. "Too rectangular," remarked one of its citizens to us, who hails from the crooked streets of an English town. He may be partly correct. Some one says: "Nothing contracts the heart like symmetry." He must mean mechanical symmetry. Dayton may have too much of this. Yet it is not without its crooked streets, crossing each other obliquely. The streets of most European cities are too irregular. They are a puzzle to the traveller. Woe betide him, if he wanders from the most familiar thoroughfares. He will soon find himself "in wandering mazes lost." The only city with wide rectangular streets we know of, is Manheim, in Germany. For this modern peculiarity it is indebted to a fire. It has 11 straight streets, crossed by 10 others at right angles, and at equal distances. Cultivated Europe protests against its monotonous regularity. As for most of the other cities of Europe, the