to-day, has the theater asked for the support of Church members. And the ideal stage, with virtuous performers, and with pure dramas, are held up as a sample of what Christian people are invited to attend. Dr. Cuyler says: "Every person of common sense knows that the actual average theater is no more an ideal playhouse than the average pope is like St. Peter, or the average politician is like Abraham Lincoln. A Puritanic theater would become bankrupt in a twelvemonth. The great mass of those who frequent the playhouse go there for strong, passionate excitements..I do not affirm," says Dr. Cuyler, "that every popular play is immoral, and every attendant is on a scent for sensualities. But the theater is a concrete institution, it must be judged in the gross and to a tremendous extent it is only a gilded nastiness. It unsexes womanhood by putting her publicly in male attire--too often in no attire at all." "So competent an authority as the famous actress, Olga Nethersole, recently declared that the only kind of play which may hope for success with English-speaking audiences at the present day is the play which is sufficiently indicated by calling it immoral. There is no doubt about it that the theater, as at present conducted, is pulling the stones from the foundations of public morality, and weakening, and in many quarters endangering, the whole structure of society. The atmosphere of the modern theater is lustful and irreverent. It is a good place for Christians to keep away from. It is a good opportunity for the strong man to deny himself for the sake of his younger or weaker brother." PART II. WORTHY SUBSTITUTES. "Get the spindle and thy distaff ready, and God will send thee flax." VI. BOOKS AND READING. MANY BOOKS, MUCH READING. TO-DAY every one reads. Go where you may, you will find the paper, the magazine, the journal; printed letters, official reports, exhaustive cyclopedias, universal histories; the ingenuous advertisement, the voluminous calendar, the decorated symphony; printed ideals, elaborate gaming rules, flaming bulletins; and latest of all, we have begun to publish our communications on the waves of the air. In this hurly-burly of many books and much reading, it is no mean problem to know why one should read; and what, and how, and when. Especially does this problem of general reading confront the student, the lover of books, and those of the professions. Essays are to be read, the historical, the philosophical, and the scientific; novels, the historical and the religious; books of devotion, books of biography, of travel, of criticism, and of art. What principles are to guide one in his choice of reading, that he may select only the wisest, purest, and helpfulest from all these classes of books? WHY READ.