seeing the château all illuminated, Gaspard said to Balthazar : "I am curious to know whether our man has abused the use of his flute, and if, now that he is rich, he has kept his promise to be charitable to all." "We will see," replied Balthazar, curtly. They then dressed themselves as beggars, and, going to the château, asked for food and lodging for the night. They were received very roughly, and, as they insisted, making a great noise, Fleuriot put his head out of the window, saw them, and bade the servants loose the dogs; whereupon the kings beat a hasty retreat, not without receiving wounds on the limbs, however. "I suspected as much," grumbled the skeptical Gaspard, rubbing his ankle. "He shall not remain long in his paradise," replied Melchior. "He shall feel the weight of the vengeance of the three Magi." Meanwhile the revelers continued to make merry. They had just come to the dessert, and Fleuriot was brandishing a knife over a colossal cake, when the sound of bells was heard below in the court as a chariot entered, drawn by four magnificently caparisoned steeds. Fleuriot put his head out of the window once more, and, seeing the nobles, he ordered them shown up in all haste. He even came with a torch to light them up the staircase. When the kings entered, with their crowns and purple robes, he recognized his former guests, and, although disconcerted, he begged them to sit down at the feast. "Thank you," replied Balthazar, “but we do not care to eat with a man who treats the poor so badly." "I compliment you on the way you have kept your promise," said Melchior, in his deep voice. "So you set dogs on beggars!" exclaimed Gaspard, rubbing his leg. "Just wait! I will play you a tune you have not learned yet!" And, drawing from his pocket a little flute like the one given to Fleuriot, he blew on it with terrible force. In the twinkling of an eye, the revelers, tables, and château vanished, and the woodman found himself standing on the edge of the forest before the ruins of his hut, his wife and children in rags beside him. "Fortunately, I have my flute left," he thought. But he searched for it in his ragged pockets in vain; the talisman had disappeared with the three kings. Ever since that time it has been the custom, when cutting the Twelfth cake, carefully to put aside a portion for the poor. Skepticism: Its Cause and Cure' By the Right Rev. Henry B. Whipple, D.D. [These paragraphs are taken from the autobiography of Bishop Whipple, recently published by the Macmillan Company. For some account of this volume see The Outlook for November 4, 1899.—The Editors.] Μ' UCH of the doubt and unbelief of our day is a revolt from a caricature of God, or from hard lines of extreme Calvinistic theology, and it only needs the presentation of the infinite love of our Saviour, who has revealed to us that God is Love, to answer most of the doubts that perplex men. The tone and temper of the times reveal widespread unbelief. The press has familiarized the people with infidel literature. Many religious teachers have drifted from their moorings and have no anchorage. Science, which ought to be the handmaid of religion, has teachers who resolve faith into the unknowable. It is well to look the evil in the face, but there is no cause for alarm or for falling into a panic. The religion of Jesus Christ is not an opinion; it is a fact. Christianity has borne eighteen centuries of critical examination, and has conquered on every battlefield. No assault upon theological opinions, no criticism of the Bible, can change the facts of humanity. While men sin, suffer, and die, no philosophy of men, no achievement in learning, can destroy human aspirations. If Christianity were destroyed to-day, to-morrow's sun would find men world-wide testifying of their needs. Men can never be satisfied with the teaching that nature is a selfcreated and a self-perpetuating machine. The voice within and without testifies of God. The Incarnation is the revelation of God's love toward his suffering creatures. It reveals the Creator of the Universe as the Everlasting Father. It brings to us the Eternal Son as a Brother and Saviour. It gives us the Holy Ghost as a Guide, the Comforter and Helper of man. Sinful and suffering men have not only asked to know righteousness, but they ask for help to be righteous. These great truths will always be near the heart of humanity. Men can never love a God who has merely laid down immutable laws 1 Copyright, 1899. The Macmillan Company New York. 1 without giving to man the help to obey these laws. It is in the revelation of the Eternal Fatherhood of God, in the Infinite Love of Jesus Christ who gave himself for us, in the vivifying and new-creating power of the Holy Ghost, that burdened hearts find help. This revelation comes home to the wants of every man. It helps amid burdens; it lightens the load of poverty; it soothes the anguish of pain; it leads out of darkness and despair. We may pledge God's revelation to that which it does not teach and was never designed to teach; we may caricature God's truth and make it the devil's lie, but the great central facts of divine revelation will stand. Honest doubt should not be denounced. Every sympathy of a Christian heart should be unsealed at the sincere confession, "I have lost my faith; I am without a clue to the labyrinth of life." No God to love, no Christ to pity, no Holy One to save! For such a one there should be the profoundest compassion. No words can express the righteous indignation which should be aroused against the man who makes sport of the highest aspirations of the soul, or who answers with smile and sneer the hopes of men who sin and suffer. Honest, critical Biblical scholarship is not to be feared. The Holy Scriptures were written by men who were guided by God the Holy Ghost. As its custodians were human, it is possible that in the lapse of ages errors might have crept into the text, but all the research of the greatest scholars has not discovered a single error affecting in the slightest degree the revelation of God in Christ, which is the hope of the world's redemption. Suspicion should not follow earnest investigators in the domain of nature. The name of our king is "The Truth." God's truth will bear all facts. Science, since the days of Ptol my, has been reconsidering supposed established facts. One generation has modified or overthrown the work of its predecessors. True scholars are always clearing up doubt, removing error, and seeking after truth. The great scientists like Newton, Brewster, and Agassiz have been reverent believers; they have not lingered at the threshold of God's temple, but have gone in to worship with the heart of a forgiven child. Every truth which man has gained has revealed more and more of the power and wisdom of God. Christianity has been the handmaid of civilization, and has always won its greatest triumphs in the time of the greatest intellectual activity, and the enfranchisement from the bonds of ignorance has prepared the way for that freedom wherewith God has made us free. The only way to meet the infidelity of the times is the way in which the Apostles met the heathen wisdom of their daywith the truth of a personal Christ and Saviour. It is not enough to know the philosophy of religion. We must be able, out of the depths of our own personal experience, to show in its fullness the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The only way to make men believe is to believe one's self. It is not the theory of a religion or its philosophy which conquers hearts; it is the Christ-life, the Christ-love, which overcomes the world. Men do not care for the old watchwords of sectarian strife, nor have they an ear for the dry details of theological dogma, but they do care for the Christ-love and Christ-work for suffering souls. The world may doubt a historical Christ and scoff at a historical Church, but the living Christ who dwells in the hearts of his children, sending them on errands of mercy, speaking through them and healing the broken of heart, none can gainsay or deny. A dear friend who had passed through much sorrow asked one of the most celebrated Biblical scholars living if he thought it wrong for a Christian to hope and pray that a time would come when all wanderers would find mercy. The answer was: "The Good Shepherd sought the lost sheep until he found it. Our Saviour said, 'If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto me.' St. Paul said that a time was coming when all should be in subjection to him, and God would be all in all. One of the most blessed truths of God's revelation is that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever.' The Saviour said to St. John, 'I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades.' Do you not think,” said the wise scholar, "that we had better leave it all in God's hands and do our work, help all poor souls that we can, and when we cannot know, trust?" Men talk much of salvation without asking the simple question, Saved from what? If sin brings sorrow, if the way of the transgressor is hard, salvation means saving from sin. If heaven and hell do not exist beyond the grave, they do exist here; sin, shame, sorrow, broken ties, alienations between brothers, and separation from God make hell. Love, peace, fellowship with brothers, and rest in God make heaven. The Church has a long roll of departed saints, but she has never inserted one name in the roll of the lost. She leaves all to God. I have stood by many graves where I could not leave the poor soul to the judgment of the holiest man on earth, but I have always with loving faith committed it to God our Father, knowing that the Judge of all the world would do right. WINTER PICTURES From James Russell Lowell's " The Vision of Sir Launfal” Down swept the chill wind from the mountain peak, On open wold and hill-top bleak It had gathered all the cold, And whirled it like sleet on the wanderer's cheek; From the unleafed boughs and pastures bare; For the gladness of heaven to shine through, and here And hung them thickly with diamond drops, Within the hall are song and laughter, The cheeks of Christmas grow red and jolly, With the lightsome green of ivy and holly; WEIMAR AND By Hamilton W. Mabie The one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the birth of Goethe, which fell on the 28th day of last August, found Weimar not only eager to honor the memory of the great poet who was for fifty-six years its best-known resident and is likely to remain to the end of time its most illustrious citizen, but essentially unchanged since Goethe's death in 1832. Even in a quiet German town, off the great highways of travel, changes must come in sixty-seven years, and if Goethe were to step out of his old home to-day and walk to the grandducal palace, rebuilt in part under his own direction, he would doubtless come upon strange sights. But Weimar remains in essentials a town of the old time; quaint, thoroughly German, and rich in association, not only with great men, but with some of the earliest statements of the modern conception of the relation of art to life. The little town is pre-eminently fitted to be the custodian of literary traditions. It has an old-time dignity of bearing, as if it had always been the mother of great spirits. The quiet Ilm, flowing through its domain, is sacredly guarded along its entire course on both shores by a charming park; the homes of the poets are piously regarded; and there are worthy memorials of greatness in public places. The statue of Herder, one of the purest and most penetrating of modern minds, stands in front of the StadtKirche, and bears his favorite and very characteristic motto, Licht, Liebe, Leben; in front of the theater Goethe and Schiller are commemorated in a noble group; the Grand Duke Augustus, in an equestrian statue, wears the laurel secured for him by the great spirits whom he had the sagacity to recognize and bring into his service; while Wieland is remembered in the fine salon which bears his name in the palace. One may spend many hours with profit in Goethe's house, now restored as nearly as possible to the condition in which the poet left it; a fine house, notable chiefly for the range of interests expressed in the collections of several kinds which it contains, and for the evidence which it gives of the mingled dignity and simplicity of the poet's life-the first expressed in spacious rooms given over to pictures, busts, and memorials of great men, and the second disclosed by the extreme plainness of the working-room, and the tiny chamber opening from it, in which Goethe died. It is profitable to walk through the palace and study the elegant salons in which Goethe and Schiller are commemorated by mural scenes from their works, and then go directly to the simple little rooms, not far distant, in which the two poets died; or to enter the grand-ducal vault in the new cemetery and note the presence of wreaths and flowers on the coffins, not of princely rulers, but of the two poets, whose beautiful friendship finds here its final expression. Best of all, perhaps, is it to walk through the winding, shaded park, barely kept from wildness; to come in a secluded place upon the coiled serpent in bronze which symbolized for Goethe the genius loci; to make one's way slowly to the garden house which Goethe loved so well, and in which he so often sought solitude and silence for his work, and to sit in the places which were dear to him. Never, surely, did a meditative spirit find more congenial surroundings than Goethe found in these green and fragrant places of peace. It is a piece of special good fortune to fall in, along those walks, as did the writer, with an old-time resident of Weimar who has grown up in its traditions and loves it for its poets, and to hear his eager, affectionate narrative of events and story of localities; and then to go into some secluded spot |