and sentiment. There are some pastors who prefer not to press the missionary and educational enterprises of their denomination for fear that their own pockets will suffer; and, while they promise big things at the Association or the Convention, they go home to resume their habit of doing nothing. All this is old hard-shellism, anti-effort, anti-missionary, anti-education, and much of it results from pastoral ignorance or inefficiency.

Like people like priest, and, vice versa, like priest like people. Hard-shellism is an antichristian lie, and it is the only form of antichrist which seems destined to die in an age like this. God nor the devil has any respect for it, for it will not give nor work, and neither God nor Satan has the patience to deal long with stinginess and laziness. Hard-shellism— religiously, socially, politically, commercially, or otherwise would never have developed a world, an idea, an age, or a country. It is the boast of "masterly inactivity," the sin of negation and inertia, the hypocrisy in those who profess to be progressive, of impecunious lassitude-the end of which is an everlastting "innoccuous desuetude." It is fatalism or the presumption of negation and inertia which makes hard-shellism, and the sooner it dies, or we who have it die, the better for the world. So mote it be, if God will.

JEALOUSY;

OR,

THE BIG AND, LITTLE FELLOW.

ACING this sketch is the picture of an ass kicking at a lion. The lion is the majestic symbol of manhood; the ass, of pusillanimous littleness and stupidity, of small ability with big aspirations, jealous and envious of the lion's dignity and reputation. The little fellow, unable to cope with the big one, and immeasurably below him in character and achievement, brays and kicks at him; while the big fellow is scarcely conscious of the little fellow's existence, and pays no at tention whatever to his voice or his heels. His braying and his kicking are neither heard nor felt, and the more the ass brays and kicks the bigger and more prominent becomes the lion. Sometimes, of course, indifference and patience cease to be virtues. The little kicker ventures too close, and occasionally the lion has to make mince-meat of him. The bull-dog or the great mastiff ordinarily pays no attention to the barking fice; but sometimes the little fellow, emboldened by the big dog's indifference, will venture not only to snap, but to bite, and the big one annihilates him. Not often and not otherwise; and we are

thus frequently struck with the dignity of the larger brute as we notice his majestic unconcern or indifference when annoyed or attacked by smaller beasts.

In the picture before us, however, we have chosen the ass for an illustration of the little fellow. The character of the small man, jealous or envious of the great one, is pre-eminently asinine, rather than canine. It is the ass, as we call him, who manifests such a spirit and exposes such stupidity. Æsop, in one of his fables, shows the ass in the lion's skin, creating consternation among the other beasts until his ears popped out, when the terror subsided. It is the ass only that will pose as a lion so long as he can conceal his ears and suppress his voice, and it is the ass only that will bray and kick at the lion when his voice and his ears cannot be hid.

Shenstone has well defined jealousy as the "fear or apprehension of superiority;" and envy, "our uneasiness under it." It is the cancer in every man's breast, never wholly cut out, and only mastered by great minds. We all have more or less of this passion, which is an angel when it guards the truth of God and the honor of man, but when it turns the soul against itself and against its neighbor it becomes what the great poet familiarly calls it

The green-eyed monster which doth mock

The meat it feeds on.

It is said to be born of love; but, while love rarely exists without jealousy, it is true that jealousy often exists without love. cold, heartless, cruel as the grave. As Colton says, "Jealousy can feed on that which is bitter, no less than on that which is sweet, and it is sustained by pride as often as by affection." Suspicion and apprehension are its deepest and com