AN AMIABLE, RELIGIOUS WIFE--HER DOWER.

'We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of
the power may be of God, and not of us.'--2 Cor 4:7

'For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my
ways, saith the Lord.'--Isaiah 55:8.

'Though ye have lien among the pots, yet shall ye be as the
wings of a dove covered with silver, and her feathers with yellow
gold.'--Psalm 68:13.

When the Philistine giant, Goliath, mocked the host of Israel,
and challenged any of their stern warriors to single combat, what
human being could have imagined that the gigantic heathen would be
successfully met in the mortal struggle by a youth 'ruddy and of
a fair countenance?' who unarmed, except with a sling and a stone,
gave the carcases of the hosts of the Philistines to the fouls of
the air, and to the wild beasts of the earth.'

Who, upon seeing an infant born in a stable, and laid in a manger,
or beholding him when a youth working with his father as a carpenter,
could have conceived that he was the manifestation of the Deity
in human form, before whom every knee should bow, and every tongue
confess Him to be THE ETERNAL?

Father Michael, a Franciscan friar, on a journey to Ancona,
having lost his way, sought direction from a wretched lad keeping
hogs--deserted, forlorn, his back smarting with severe stripes,
and his eyes suffused with tears. The poor ragged boy not only went