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The World's Sunday-school Convention in Rome was a great occasion and a notable success. Poetically significant was the gathering amid the memorable ruins of the Colosseum. Here on the very sands that have been soaked with the blood of early Christian martyrs, where thousands have met the fierce Numidian lion and been torn to pieces for Christ's sake, over a thousand delegates peacefully assembled to bear witness to the very Nazarene in whose cause those martyrs suffered. The pagan Roman persecutors sought to wipe out the remembrance of His name from the earth; and here this great company of Christian delegates meet to celebrate His name, never before so widely worshiped and adored as to-day.

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TRIVIAL CAUSES

The clock of the Potsdam Garrison Church, which Frederick the Great in his day had placed in the tower of that cathedral, and which hourly chimed familiar strains, suddenly stopt. The cause of this sudden cessation of both its works and its music was the intrusion of a brown butterfly, which alighted in its wheel-works.

Is it not often thus with the heart of man, out of which well songs of joy and praise—songs suddenly and unexpectedly reduced to silence? The cause of it often is so insignificant a thing as a transient thought, a carking care, which becomes entangled in the delicate spiritual works and brings the heavenly music to a standstill.

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TROUBLE

Blest is that person who can make the following lines part of his philosophy:

'Tis easy enough to be pleasant When life flows by like a song, But the one worth while Is the one who will smile When everything goes dead wrong.

For the test of the heart is trouble, And that always comes with years, And the smile that is worth All the praises of earth Is the smile that smiles through tears.

(3298)

We must not always interpret our destiny by the aspect of the present. If we contend patiently and bravely with current adversity, out of the darkness prosperity may be brought to light.

A certain great company runs a copper-*smelting plant. The sulfur fumes generated in this plant were seriously injuring vegetation in the surrounding country. The State brought suit to compel the company to prevent this injury to vegetation, and won the suit. The company was put to much trouble and expense, but in its effort to find some method of preventing that injury to its neighbors it discovered that the gases could be captured and converted into sulfuric acid. Thus, out of what was not only a waste product but an injurious product, this company has discovered a new source of great profit. And all because it "got into trouble." The "afterward" of all the troubles that come to us in life has never yet been dreamed of by the wisest seer. (Text.)

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TROUBLE, BORROWED

Dr. S. B. Dunn gives some good advice in this bit of verse:

The heart too often hath quailed with dread, And quite its courage lost, By casting its glance too far ahead For the bridge that never was crossed.

The toughest fight, the bitterest dregs, The stormiest sea that tossed, Was the passage-at-arms—no, the passage-at-legs, Of the bridge that never was crossed.

A wind that withers wherever it goes, And biting as winter frost; Is the icy blast that constantly blows From the bridge that never was crossed.

What folly for mortals to travel that way, As many have found to their cost— To tempt the terrors by night or by day Of the bridge that never was crossed.

The adage is old and worn a bit, But worthy of being embossed— Never cross a bridge till you come to it— The bridge that must be crossed.

(3300)

Nobody is made so uncomfortable by borrowing trouble as the borrower himself, altho, of course, everybody in the region is