THE PARSEE, JEW, AND CHRISTIAN.

A Jew entered a Parsee temple, and beheld the sacred fire. “What!” said he to the priest, “do you worship the fire?”

“Not the fire,” answered the priest: “it is to us an emblem of the sun, and of his genial heat.”

“Do you then worship the sun as your god?” asked the Jew. “Know ye not that this luminary also is but a work of that Almighty Creator?”

“We know it,” replied the priest: “but the uncultivated man requires a sensible sign, in order to form a conception of the Most High. And is not the sun the incomprehensible source of light, an image of that invisible being who blesses and preserves all things?”

“Do your people, then,” rejoined the Israelite, “distinguish the type from the original? They call the sun their god, and, descending even from this to a baser object, they kneel before an earthly flame! Ye amuse the outward but blind the inward eye; and while ye hold to them the earthly, ye draw from them the heavenly light! ‘Thou shalt not make unto thyself any image or any likeness.’”

“How do you name the Supreme Being?” asked the Parsee.

“We call him Jehovah Adonai, that is, the Lord who is, who was, and who will be,” answered the Jew.

“Your appellation is grand and sublime,” said the Parsee; “but it is awful too.”

A Christian then drew nigh, and said,—

“We call him Father.”

The Pagan and the Jew looked at each other, and said,—

“Here is at once an image and a reality: it is a word of the heart.”

Therefore they all raised their eyes to heaven, and said, with reverence and love, “Our Father!” and they took each by the hand, and all three called one another brothers!

De Nomine Jesu.

I	n rebus tantis trina conjunctio mund	I
E	rigit humanum sensum, laudare venust	E
S	ola salus nobis, et mundi summa, potesta	S
V	enit peccati nodum dissolvere fruct	V
S	umma salus cunctas nituit per secula terra	S.[^[9]]

The letters I. H. S. so conspicuously appended to different portions of Catholic churches, are said to have been designed by St. Bernardine of Sienna, to denote the name and mission of the Saviour. They are to be found in a circle above the principal door of the Franciscan Church of the Holy Cross, (Santa Croce,) in Florence, and are said to have been put there by the saint on the termination of the plague of 1347, after which they were commonly introduced into churches. The letters have assigned to them the following signification:—

Jesus hominum Salvator—Jesus, the Saviour of men.

In hoc salus—In him is salvation.

A maker of playing-cards, which, like missels, were illuminated in those times, was one day remonstrated with by St. Bernardine, upon the sinfulness of his business. The card-maker pleaded the needs of his family. “Well, I will help you,” said the saint, and wrote the letters I. H. S., which he advised the card-maker to paint and gild. The new card “took,” and the saint himself travelled about the country as a poster of these little sacred handbills of the Church.