merly concealed; so does old age rob us of our enjoyments only to enlarge the prospect of eternity before us.-Jean Paul Richter. COTTON ON THE GALLOWS. on Dock street, Philadelphia, between two and three o'clock, to witness the experiment of extinguishing fire by means of carbonic acid gas. A small wooden structure was erected. Its interior was pretty well strewn with shavings saturated with coal oil, or some other equally combustible material, and then the match was applied. The flames, of course, spread with great celerity. Four machines for generating and forcing the gas were brought into requisition, fire was extinguished. About four gallons of the preparation were thrown into the building. The success was attended with a round of applause, conem-tributed by the spectators. Carbonic acid gas is forty to fifty times heavier than the atmospheric air. hence the latter is suppressed simply by the power It destroys all the oxygen which gives life to fire; of the gas thus introduced. There are many ways in which this effect may be attained.-Philadelphia Press. and in less time than it takes to write about it the Less than one hundred and fifty years ago, the masses of the people of Great Britain believed that the introduction of cotton clothing and its manufacture would ruin the kingdom. Woollen and linen garments were then almost universally worn, and large manufacturers, ploying many thousand workmen, were engaged in supplying the demand for them. It was thought that the woollen and flax machinery would be useless and a total loss, and the workmen thrown out of employment, if cotton should take the place of the fabrics then worn. Even Parliament shared this belief, and in 1721 passed an act imposing a penalty of five pounds upon the seller of a piece of calico. The common people, on one occasion, took a singular way to show their prejudice against the new fibre, and to bring it into disrepute. One Michael Carmody was executed at Cork, in Ireland, for felony: upon which the journeymen weavers (who were short of work, and who attributed the "hard times" to the introduction of cotton manufacture) assembled in a body and dressed the criminal, the hangman and the gallows, in cotton, in order to bring the wearer of it into disgrace; and at the place of execution the criminal made the following remarkable speech: "Give ear, O good people, to the words of a dying sinner. I confess I have been guilty of what necessity compelled me to commit, which starving condition I was in, I am well assured, was occasioned by the scarcity of money that has proceeded from the great discouragement of our woollen manufactures. Therefore, good Christians, consider that if you go on to suppress your own goods by wearing such cottons as I am now clothed in, you will bring your country into misery, which will consequently swarm with such unhappy malefactors as your present object is, and the blood of every miserable felon that will hang, after this warning, will lie at your doors." Nevertheless, happily for Great Britain, the wearing of cotton continued to be extended, so that in thirty years afterward, the yearly manufacture was estimated at $1,000,000, and at the present day nearly 400,000 steam looms are at work there upon cottons, directly employing at least 500,000 persons, besides the millions engaged in producing the staple.-American Agriculturalist. ITEMS. CARBONIC ACID GAS AND FIRE.-A large crowd of citizens and police officers assembled yesterday, in and around the yard of the old Pennsylvania Bank, Nitro-glycerine is being largely used by the Calitors of the Pacific Railroad, in blasting passage ways fornians in mining operations, also by the contracthrough the mountains. The article is made on the spot, and no accidents have occurred in its application. It is more economical and efficient than pow der. The International Ocean Telegraph Company expects to have its line, as far as the Island of Cuba, in working order in Seventh month next. Although the railway tunnel under Mt. Cenis makes but slow progress, the railway over the mountain is almost completed, and it is anticipated will be opened for this line is opened the railway journey between traffic by the middle of Ninth month, 1867. When Paris and Turin can be accomplished in twenty-two hours. It is shown that in the five years preceding the American war the average yearly value of cotton imported into England from India was £3,862,776. £24,844,646. The quantity imported during the In the five succeeding years the average rose to year 1866, the year just closed, is the largest known, amounting to 1,747,710 bales, worth upwards of £33,000,000. The papers in the Southwestern States are unanimous in saying that there never was a better promthe Southern States are almost as promising. ise for the crops than now, and the accounts from is said now to amount to ten thousand tons, which The annual exportation of copper from California is five times as large as the annual product of the whole United States only ten years ago. A former slave of the Davis family holds the valuable plantations of Jeff and Joe in Mississippi, having purchased them of the government for $400,000. He is said to be a skilful manager, and will make $80,000 a year profit. During the year 1866 there were 34 slave vessels captured on the coast of Africa by the British fleet. One vessel captured on the West Coast had no slaves on board, but was fully equipped, and 550 slaves were waiting to embark from the shore. The Dahomey, from Portugal, also captured on the West Coast, had only three slaves on board, but 600 were held in readiness to embark. All the other captures were made on the East Coast; 1303 slaves were found on board the vessels captured. Several, however, had no slaves on board, but had landed slaves -one as many as 176. One large Arab vessel from Zanzibar had 200 on board; 28 were captured and the rest drowned. Five of the vessels are described as unseaworthy. FRIENDS' INTELLIGENCER. "TAKE FAST HOLD OF INSTRUCTION; LET HER NOT GO; KEEP HER; FOR SHE IS THY LIFE." COMMUNICATIONS MUST BE ADDRESSED AND PAYMENTS The Ministry of the Senses and Appetites to Human Culture 261 MADE TO Companionship.. ... 263 REVIEW OF THE LIFE AND DISCOURSES OF I then take my bread, and my water, and my F. W. ROBERTSON. BY S. M. JANNEY. flesh that I have killed for my shearers, and give it unto men whom I know not whence they be ?" "I have selected this passage for our subject this evening, because it is one of the earliest cases recorded in the Bible in which the interests of the employer and the employed-the man of wealth and the man of work-stood, or seemed to stand, in antagonism to each other. (Continued from page 227.) There are two of Robertson's discourses relating to the rights of property and the rights of labor--the relative duties of the rich and the poor-and the effect of Christian principles in promoting the adjustment of antagonistic interests, which are applicable to the present condition of affairs throughout Christendom, and It was a period in which an old system of worthy of our consideration. The first of these things was breaking up, and the new one was sermons is entitled, "The message of the Church not yet established. The patriarchial relationto men of wealth." We learn from his biog- ship of tutelage and dependence was gone, and rapher that "it brought him into undesired no- monarchy was yet in firm existence. Saul was toriety." Being accused of advocating demo- on the throne; but his rule was irregular and cratic principles, he answered, "that the ex-disputed. Many things were slowly growing up pression, democratic principles,' was too vague to deal with, the only expression in his sermon which bore upon the subject of democracy was a distinction drawn between the reverence to authority which is declared in Scripture to be a duty, and the slavish reverence to wealth and rank which is confounded with that duty, and in Scripture nowhere declared a duty: that if by democratic principles was meant Socialism, -Socialism was not only not advocated, but distinctly opposed in his sermon." His text was 1 Sam. xxv. 10, 11.-" And Nabal answered David's servants, and said, Who is David? and who is the son of Jesse ? There may be many servants now-a-days that break away every man from his master. Shall into custom which had not yet the force of law; and the first steps by which custom passes into law, from precedent to precedent, are often steps at every one of which struggle and resistance must take place. The history of the chapter is briefly this. Nabal, the wealthy sheep-master, fed his flocks in the pastures of Carmel. David was leader of a band of men who got their living by the sword on the same hills,-outlaws, whose excesses he in some degree restrained, and over whom he retained a leader's influence. A rude, irregular honor was not unknown among those fierce men. They honorably abstained from injuring Nabal's flocks. They did more: they protected them from all harm against the ma 6 rauders of the neighborhood. By the confession of Nabal's own herdsmen, they were a wall unto them both by night and day, all the time they were with them keeping their flocks."" "David presented a demand, moderate and courteous enough (v. 6, 7, 8.) It was refused by Nabal, and added to the refusal were those insulting taunts of low birth and outcast condition which are worse than injury, and sting, making men's blood run fire. One court of appeal only was left. There remained nothing but the trial by force. Gird on,' said David, 'every man his sword.'” Now, observe two things. 1. An apparent inconsistency in David's conduct. David had received injury after injury from Saul, and only forgiven. One from Nabal, and David is striding over the hills to revenge his wrong with naked steel. How came this reverence and irreverence to mix together? We reply: Saul had a claim of authority on David's allegiance; Nabal, only one of rank. Between these the Bible makes a vast difference. It says, the powers which be are ordained of God. But upper and lower, as belonging to difference in property, are fictitious terms: true, if character corresponds with titular superiority; false, if it does not. And such was the difference manifested in the life of the Son of God. To lawful authority, whether Roman or Jewish, even priestly, He paid deference; but to the titled mark of conventional distinction, none. Rabbi, Rabbi, was no Divine authority. It was not power, a delegated attribute of God; it was only a name. In Saul, therefore, David reverenced one his superior in authority; but in Nabal he only had one surpassing him in wealth. And David refused, somewhat too rudely, to acknowledge the bad, great man as his superior; would pay him no reverence, respect, or allegiance whatever." this, that he demanded for wealth that reverence which had once been due to men who hap pened to be wealthy. It is a fallacy in which we are perpetually entangled. We expect reverence for that which was once a symbol of what was reverenced, but is reverenced no longer. Here, in England, it is common to complain that there is no longer any respect of inferiors towards superiors; that servants were once devoted andgrateful, tenants submissive, subjects enthusiastically loyal. But we forget that servants were once protected by their masters, and tenants safe from wrong only through the guardianship of their powerful lords; that thence a personal gratitude grew up: that now they are protected by the law from wrong by a different social system altogether; and that the individual bond of gratitude subsists no longer. We expect that to masters and employers the same reverence and devotedness shall be rendered which were due to them under other circumstances, and for different reasons: as if wealth and rank had ever been the claim to reverence, and not merely the accidents and accompani ments of the claim; as if anything less sacred than holy ties could purchase sacred feelings; as if the homage of free manhood could be due to gold and name; as if to the mere Nabal-fool who is labelled as worth so much, and whose signature carries with it so much coin, the holiest and most ennobling sensations of the soul, reverence and loyalty, were due by God's appointment. No. That patriarchal system has passed forever. No sentimental wailings for the past, no fond regrets for the virtues of a by-gone age, no melancholy, poetical, retrospective antiquarianism, can restore it. In church and state the past is past: and you can no more bring back the blind reverence than the rude virtues of those days. The day has come in which, if feudal loyalty or patriarchal reverence are to be commanded, they must be won by patriarchal virtues, or feudal real superiorities." "2. This great falsehood, respecting superior and inferior, rested on a truth. There had been a superiority in the wealthy class once. In the patriarchal system wealth and rule had gone together. The father of the family and tribe was the one in whom proprietorship was cen- "Want and unjust exclusion precipitated tered. But the patriarchal system had passed David and his men into this rebellion. It is away. Men like Nabal succeeded to the patri- common enough to lay too much weight on arch's wealth, and expected the subordination circumstances. Nothing can be more false than which had been yielded to patriarchal character the popular theory that ameliorated outward and position; and this when every particular condition is the panacea for the evils of Sociof relationship was altered. Once, the patri- ety. The Gospel principle begins from within, arch was the protector of his dependents. Now, and works outwards. The world's principle David's class was independent, and the protec- begins with the outward condition, and expects tors rather than the protected,-at all events, to influence inwardly. To expect that by able to defend themselves. Once, the rich man was the ruler in virtue of paternal relationship. Now, wealth was severed from rule and relationship; a man might be rich, yet neither a ruler, nor a protector, nor a kinsman. And the fallacy of Nabal's expectations consisted in changing the world without, in order to suit the world within, by taking away all difficul ties, and removing all temptations, instead of hardening the man within against the force of outward temptation,-to adapt the lot to the man, instead of moulding the spirit to the lot, is to reverse the Gospel method of procedure. | all thy days.' Here is a truth revealed to that Nevertheless, even that favorite speculation of age. Nabal's day, and the day of such as Natheorists, that perfect circumstances will pro- bal, is past; another power is rising above the duce perfect character, contains a truth. Cir- horizon. David's cause is God's cause. Worth cumstances of outward condition are not the does not mean what a man is worth,—you sole efficients in the production of character, must find some better definition than that. but they are efficients which must not be ig- Now, this is the very truth revealed in the nored. Favorable condition will not produce Incarnation. David, Israel's model king,excellence; but the want of it often hinders the king by the grace of God, not by the conexcellence. It is true that vice leads to pov-ventional rules of human choice,-is a sheperty, all the moralizers tell us that, but it is herd's son. Christ, the king who is to reign also true that poverty leads to vice. There are over our regenerated humanity, is humbly born some in this world to whom, speaking humanly, the poor woman's Son. That is the Church's social injustice and social inequalities have message to the man of wealth; and a message made goodness impossible. Take, for instance, which, it seems, has to be learned afresh in the case of these bandits on Mount Carmel. every age. It was new to Nabal. It was new Some of them are outlawed by their own to the men of the age of Christ. In His day crimes; but others, doubtless, by debts not they were offended in Him, because He was wilfully contracted,-one, at least, David, by a humbly born. Is not this the carpenter's most unjust and unrighteous persecution. And son?' It is the offence now. They who rethese men, excluded, needy, exasperated by a tain those superstitious ideas of the eternal sense of wrong, un taught outcasts, could you superiority of rank and wealth have the first gravely expect from them obedience, patience, principles of the Gospel yet to learn. How meekness, religious resignation ?" can they believe in the Son of Mary? They may honor Him with the lip: they deny Him in His brethren. Whoever helps to keep alive that ancient lie of upper and lower, resting the distinction not on official authority or personal worth, but on wealth and title, is doing his part to hinder the establishment of the Redeemer's kingdom." 2. The second truth expressed by Abigail was the Law of sacrifice. She did not heal the grievance with smooth words. Starving men are not to be pacified by professions of good-will. She brought her two hundred loaves (v. 18), and her two skins of wine, her five sheep ready dressed, &c. A princely provision !" "The message of the Church contains those principles of Life which, carried out, would, and hereafter will, realize the Divine Order of Society. The revealed Message does not create the facts of our humanity: it simply makes them known. The Gospel did not make God our Father: it authoritatively reveals that He is so. It did not create a new duty of loving one another: it revealed the old duty which existed from eternity, and must exist as long as humanity is humanity. It was no new commandment,' but an old commandment which had been heard from the beginning. The Church of God is that living body of men who are called by Him out of the world, not to be the inventors of a new social system, but to ex"David's men and David felt that these hibit in the world by word and life,-chiefly were not gifts of a sordid calculation, but the by life, what humanity is, was, and will be, offerings of a generous heart. And it won them in the Idea of God. Now, so far as the social-their gratitude, their enthusiasm, their uneconomy is concerned, the revelations of the feigned homage. Church will coincide with the discoveries of a Scientific Political Economy. Political Economy discovers slowly the facts of the immutable laws of social well-being. But the living principles of those laws, which cause them to be obeyed, Christianity has revealed to loving hearts long before. The spirit discovers them to the spirit." "In Abigail's reply to David we have the anticipation, by a loving heart, of those duties which selfish prudence must have taught at last. 1. The spiritual dignity of man as man. Recolleet David was the poor man; but Abigail, the high-born lady, admits his worth The Lord will certainly make my lord a sure house; because my lord fighteth the battles of the Lord, and evil hath not been found in thee This is the attractive power of that great Law, whose highest Expression was the Cross. I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me.' Say what you will, it is not interest, but the sight of noble qualities and true sacrifice, which commands the devotion of the world. Yea, even the bandit and the outcast will bend before that, as before a Divine thing. In one form or another it draws all men,-it commands all men. Now, this the Church proclaims as part of its special message to the rich. It says that the Divine Death was a Sacrifice. It declares that death to be the law of every life which is to be like His. It says that the Law, which alone can interpret the mystery of life, is the self-sacrifice of Christ. It proclaims the law of His life to have been this: For their sakes I devote (sanctify) Myself, that they also may be blessing: blessing her who gave and him who took. To the spirit of the Cross alone we look as the Remedy for social evils. When the people of this great country, especially the rich, shall have been touched with the spirit of the Cross to a largeness of sacrifice of which they have not dreamed as yet, there will be an atonement between the Rights of Labor and the Rights of Property. 3. The last part of the Church's message to the man of wealth touches the matter of rightful influence. Very remarkable is the demeanor of David towards Nabal, as contrasted with his demeanor towards Abigail. In the one case, defiance, and a haughty self-assertion of equality in the other, deference, respect, and the most eloquent benediction. It was not, therefore, against the wealthy class, but against individuals of the class, that the wrath of these men burned. See, then, the folly and the falsehood of the sentimental regret that there is no longer any reverence felt towards superiors. There is reverence to superiors, if only it can be shown that they are superiors. Reverence is deeply rooted in the heart of humanity,—you cannot tear it out. Civilization, science, progress, only change its direction; they do not weaken its force. If it no longer bows before crucifixes and candles, priests and relics, it is not extinguished towards what is truly sacred and what is priestly in man. The fiercest revolt against false authority is only a step towards submission to rightful authority. Emancipation from false lords only sets the heart free to honor true ones. The free-born David will not do homage to Nabal. Well, now go and mourn over the degenerate age which no longer feels respect for that which is above it. But, behold-David has found a something nobler than himself. Feminine charity-sacrifice and justiee-and in gratitude and profoundest respect he bows to that. The state of society which is coming is not one of protection and dependence; nor one of mysterious authority, and blind obedience to it; nor one in which any class shall be privileged by Divine right, and another remain in perpetual tutelage; but it is one in which unselfish services and personal qualities will command, by Divine right, gratitude and admiration, and secure a true and spiritual leadership. Brother men, the early Church gave expression to that principle of sacrifice in a very touching way. They had all things in common. "Neither said any of them that aught of the things which he possessed was his own.' They failed, not because they declared that, but because men began to think that the duty of sharing was compulsory. They proclaimed principles which were unnatural, inasmuch as they set aside all personal feelings, which are part of our nature too. They virtually compelled private property to cease, because he who retained private property when all were giving up was degraded, and hence became a hypocrite and liar, like Ananias. But let us not lose the truth which they expressed in an exaggerated way: Neither said any of them that aught of the things which he possessed was his own.' Property is sacred. It is private property; if it were not, it could not be sacrificed. If it were to be shared equally by the idle and industrious, there could be no love in giving. Property is the rich man's own. Nabal is right in saying, my bread, my water, my flesh. But there is a higher Right which says, It is O let not the rich misread the signs of the not yours. And that voice speaks to every rich times, or mistake their brethren: they have less man in one way or another, according as he is and less respect for titles and riches, for vestselfish or unselfish coming as a voice of terror ments and ecclesiastical pretensions; but they or a voice of blessing. It came to Nabal with have a real respect for superior knowledge and a double curse, turning his heart into stone superior goodness; they listen like children to with the vision of the danger and the armed those whom they believe to know a subject betranks of David's avengers; and laying on ter than themselves. Let those who know it David's soul, the sin of intended murder. It say whether there is not something inexpressicame to the heart of Abigail with a double bly touching, and even humbling, in the large, |