The black block makes no insignificant figure, after all, and its rapid growth suggests that to have, through neglect, a dense body of such dimensions depressed by ignorance were a blunder matched only by the wickedness of oppression. The size of the Indian and the Chinaman suggests strongly the outrageous meanness of ill-using them; it makes more striking the absurdity of a war policy against the red man, and of the demagogue’s appeal to fear on account of the presence of the Chinaman. What an opportunity, on our own shores, for strength to help weakness, for knowledge to help ignorance, for wealth to help poverty, and so to fulfil the law of a Christian civilization! Surely it is high time for us to heed the weighty saying of John Milton: “_A nation ought to be but as one huge Christian personage, one mighty growth or stature of an honest man, as big and compact in virtue as in body; for look, what the ground and causes of single happiness to one man, the same we shall find them to a whole state._” * * * * * GIVING, VIEWED FROM A COMMONPLACE STAND-POINT. REV. SAM’L SCOVILLE. We think this whole matter of giving is put so high sometimes that it gets clear out of sight of common people. We love now and then to put it down upon the basis of common virtues and moralities and see how it looks. Motives, springing from the highest spiritual insight and experience, are good and always in order, but they are not essential to a fair judgment nor to proper action in this matter. A man may have much less than John’s spirituality or Paul’s experience to decide that there is a glaring inconsistency in praying for the building up of God’s kingdom on the earth, and then withholding the means necessary to that end; in praying that the Gospel may fly to earth’s remotest bound, and then refusing to contribute to the amount of a single wing feather to help its flight. It does not take a great deal of spiritual insight to see that we cannot serve God and mammon at the same time in our churches with advantage, any more than we can in our own hearts, and that if the Judas of worldliness carries the bag, there is going to be a betrayal of the Master some day. The most common of common sense judgment is all that is needed for so simple a conclusion. And it is not necessarily any high revelation required, but only an appreciation and approval of square dealing, to convince us that a church must so raise its money, and to such amounts, that it will be able to do its share towards carrying on the great work of evangelizing the world.