CHRISTMAS HYMN. Brightest and best of the sons of the morning! Dawn on our darkness, and lend us thine aid! Star of the East, the horizon adorning, Guide where our infant Redeemer is laid! Cold on His cradle the dew-drops are shining, Low lies His head with the beasts of the stall; Angels adore Him in slumber reclining, Maker and Monarch and Saviour of all! Say, shall we yield Him, in costly devotion, Vainly with gifts would His favor secure ; Dearer to God are the prayers of the poor. EARLY PIETY. By cool Siloam's shady rill How sweet the lily grows! How sweet the breath beneath the hill Of Sharon's dewy rose! Lo! such the child whose early feet The paths of peace have trod, By cool Siloam's shady rill The lily must decay; The rose that blooms beneath the hill Must shortly fade away: And soon-too soon-the wintry hour Of man's maturer age Will shake the soul with sorrow's power, O Thou, whose infant feet were found Whose years with changeless virtue crowned, Dependent on Thy bounteous breath, We seek Thy grace alone, In childhood, manhood, age, and death, To keep us still Thy own! MISSIONARY HYMN. From Greenland's icy mountains, Their land from error's chain! What though the spicy breezes Can we, whose souls are lighted The lamp of life deny? Has learned Messiah's name. Waft, waft, ye winds, His story, It spreads from pole to pole! HECKER, ISAAC THOMAS, an American clergyman and philanthropist, born in New York City December 18, 1819; died there December 22, 1888. He obtained his education in the intervals of the labor which his parents' straitened circumstances made necessary. With his brothers he engaged in business, which he relinquished for the study of metaphysics and theology. He spent several months. at Brook Farm, which he left with Thoreau, and with him made a series of experiments to ascertain the lowest cost of necessary food. After this he re-entered business with his brothers, and took charge of their workingmen, for whom he provided a library. At the age of twenty-three he entered the Roman Catholic Church, and in 1849 went to Europe to study for the priesthood. He returned in 1851, and in 1858 founded a new missionary society under the name of "The congregation of St. Paul the Apostle." Its members are called the Paulist Fathers. In 1865 he founded a magazine, The Catholic World, of which he was the editor. Among his works are Questions of the Soul (1885), Aspirations of Nature (1857), Catholicity in the United States (1879), Catholics and Protestants Agreeing on the School Questions (1881), and The Church and The Age (1891). STEPS TO HIGHER LIFE. There are few among us who have not felt, at times, that life should be an uninterrupted act of piety; that our deeds, to be true, should be acts of worship; that what is not directed to God, is lost, profane, if not sinful. We know it, and speak not at random, when we say, that a large class of our people are earnest, seriousminded, and dissatisfied at heart with the life around them, and are unwilling " to decline on a range of lower feelings." They are eager, anxious, restless to be freed, and to live a better and more spiritual life, and hence they grasp and catch at any enterprise, scheme, theory, or doctrine, however absurd, so long as it promises to discover to them the secrets of spiritual life, or to afford them the means to live it. But some of the reasons why this class of persons is more numerous in this country than among any other Protestant people, may be distinctly stated. Our first reason may be called a political and economical one. To be freed from the cares and toils, of the common duties of life, is necessary to the development of the nobler powers of the soul. Here in the United States, competence is more easily acquired than in any other land, thanks to our political institutions and the advantages of our country; hence, those who feel strongly called to live a higher life have the lesisure so necessary to their growth and development. Many, in whom under less favorable circumstances, all instinct of a diviner life would be stifled and trodden out, here come to a full consciousness of their nobler powers and true destiny. Another reason, and one that may be called geographical, is the nature and state of our country. It is not enough to be freed from care and toil for the development of our secret powers and aspirations after a purer and holier life-more is needed-silence, solitude is needed. Our country presents these to us with a lavish hand, and on the grandest scale, in her deep forests, her vast prairies, in her unexplored regions and uncultivated lands; these, with our sparse population, force a great part of our people to silence and into solitude. And these conditions give quiet and tranquillity to the mind, qualities which conduce, and so to speak, provoke man to the meditation and contemplation of his own nature, his destiny, and of God. For solitude gives birth to our noble impulses, and nature, rightly viewed, leads upward step by step, as it were, to our common Author, in whom all secrets are opened to our view.-Questions of the Soul. MIDDLE-AGE. Fair time of calm resolve-of sober thought! Only spring-tide our freighted aims to bear How art thou changed! Once to our youthful eyes Farewell, ye blossomed hedges! and the deep Like holly leaves for a December wreath. To lull its meaner fears in easy sleep. |