Not only the father of waters, but water himself, scarcely visible at best, “hangs out” all day, rising soon after the sun, and setting as follows: On the 1st, at 9:36 p. m.; on the 16th, at 8:40 p. m.; on the 30th, at 7:46 p. m. Has a retrograde motion of 58′ 16″; and on the 16th, at 8:42 p. m., is 2° 13′ north of the moon. * * * * * We have now passed the boundary of the first century of our existence as an independent nation. We are as a people engaged in a confused struggle with the problem of our own national self-consciousness. We want to know what is the spirit that is in us as a nation. We must know this in order to be properly master of ourselves and of our destiny. We must know this in order to know our place in universal history.—_George S. Morris._ ENGLAND AND ISLAM. BY PRESIDENT D. H. WHEELER, D.D., LL.D. Within two years there have been three prophets in Egypt. Arabi Pasha is in exile; Chinese Gordon is dead; El Mahdi, the mysterious voice in the Soudan wilderness, mutters his prayers in the mosque of Khartoum. England bombarded Alexandria; Arab loss in dead perhaps 5,000. Then England fought and conquered Arabi in the open field, captured him, and sent him into exile; Arab loss in dead perhaps 7,000. Next there is trouble on the Red Sea, and another English army killed perhaps 9,000 Arabs. And last a battle or series of battles in the heart of the Soudan; Arab loss in dead perhaps 12,000. Probably not less than 30,000 have been slaughtered by Englishmen in less than two years. English loss, a few hundreds. The butchers have been liberally rewarded; one soldier has become a “lord;” promotions and extra pay and pensions have fallen in a silvery shower on “our brave fellows” in Egypt. Only one Englishman got nothing. He disappeared one day in the desert, and his dromedary was said to carry the destiny of England; and perhaps it did. He was a soldier seeking peace at the meeting place of the Niles. Chinese Gordon entered Khartoum in triumph, and almost at once there rose a cry: “We must rescue Gordon.” Then came the long delayed march of an army in search of the English prophet at Khartoum; then the butcheries, called battles of Metemneh, and what not. And then in the last days of January there was a slaughter, not this time by Englishmen in person, and perhaps 5,000 more Moslems perish by Moslem steel in the sack of Khartoum. Then a wail rises on every breeze in Christendom; “_Alas! alas! Gordon is dead!_” The story of his death is a parable: “Stabbed in the back while leaving his house.” Make the “house” stand for England, and the knives that pierced him the indecisions, tergiversations, and infidelities of an English ministry with a great Christian statesman at its head. The world has supped full of the horrors of that kind of Christian statesmanship. We have believed in it; we have hoped that it meant something, even in those bloody Egyptian campaigns.