But yet another difficulty remains. If everything in the universe is ordered according to law, how is it possible for miracles, and in a more general sense, answers to prayer, to take place? Perhaps the comet may help us here. Could anything seem more miraculous, more to contradict the general experience of the solar system, with its planets ever revolving in closed orbits round the sun, than the appearance of a body which rushed straight toward the sun, took one half-turn round it, and then receded from it by a different path, never, never to return? Could anything seem more like an interference by the Maker with the laws which he had made? It _did_ seem so until the underlying law was discovered, and then the seeming discord was perceived to be really the note needed to complete the perfect harmony. We at best only stand where Kepler stood, we know only little fragmentary laws, and we can not affirm that occurrences which seem as much outside their scope as comets are outside Kepler’s laws, are not really necessary members of the greater system of which we have no knowledge as yet. That miracles are ruled by law may be gathered from many a passage in the Holy Word. Miracles are “set” in the Church, as much as apostles and teachers. “This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting;” “he could do no mighty works there because of their unbelief,” are not obscure hints of such a law—a spiritual law, it is true, but none the less a law. We can watch the progress of science, then, without anxiety or fear; “rooted and grounded in faith,” believing that the Lord is King.—_London Sunday Magazine._ [_End of Required Reading for March._] MY WINTER GARDEN. By HARRIET MABEL SPALDING. The frost lies thick upon the pane, The fields are white with falling snows, O’er frost-bank, in meadow-lane, The drifted ice of winter glows. The buds that crowned the mountain-side, The moss that fringed the lakelet’s shore, Passed with the fleeting summer-tide, And spring’s fair graces are no more. I trace the pictures on the pane, Then turn, where in my quiet room The summer lives for me again, And June’s sweet gifts in freshness bloom. ’Mid emerald moss and growing vines, The fair lobelia’s lifted face, Nestled among the lilies shines, That blossom in their snowy grace. With tender hands I lift them up, Sweet flowers, no breath of winter dimmed! How pure each radiant jeweled cup, Each vase with sparkling nectar brimmed. The aloe’s flood of molten flame, The vervain with its crimson hue. The rose that with the spring-time came, And in the mountain’s fastness grew.