lean hard? And then there came the Master's own voice, ‘If you love Me, you will lean hard;' and I leaned on Him too, and felt that He had sent the poor woman to give me a better sermon than I might have heard even with you."

After her return to America she was appointed for a time to preside over the daily devotional exercises in Mount Holyoke Seminary, where she had been educated. During January and February, 1861, her room was thronged by those who sought her counsel and prayers; and fifty or sixty of the young ladies gave tokens of being converted. During the following year, out of three hundred and forty scholars, only nineteen, as far as could be known, left without an interest in Christ.

She had hoped to return to Persia, but the Lord willed otherwise. In 1864 she became very ill. Her arms were so swollen that she could not write, and she had at times intense suffering. Her last message to the teachers and pupils of Mount Holyoke was, "Live for Christ." On July 26th, 1864, she died. "And I heard a voice from heaven, saying, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them."

EVERLASTING LIFE AFTER DEATH.

"I know that my Redeemer liveth."—Job xix. 25.

HE autumn wind is moaning low the requiem of the year;
The days are growing short again, the fields forlorn and sere;
The sunny sky is waxing dim, and chill the hazy air;

And tossing trees before the breeze are turning brown and bare.

Those withered leaves, that slender song, a solemn truth convey;
In wisdom's ear they speak aloud of frailty and decay:
They say that man's apportioned year shall have its winter too,
Shall rise and shine, and then decline, as all around him do.

And be it so I know it well,-myself, and all that's mine,
Must toil on with the rolling year, and ripen to decline.
I do not shun the solemn truth; to him it is not drear
Whose hopes can rise above the skies, and see a Saviour near.

It only makes him feel with joy, this earth is not his home;
It sends him on from present ills to brighter hours to come;
It bids him take with thankful heart whate'er his God may send,
Content to go, through weal or woe, to glory in the end.

Then murmur on, ye wintry winds; remind me of my doom:
Ye lengthened nights, still image forth the darkness of the tomb.
Eternal summer lights the heart where Jesus deigns to shine:
I mourn no loss, I shun no cross, so Thou, O Lord, art mine!

H. F. Lyte.

DUNCAN MATHESON.

UNCAN MATHESON was a labourer whom the Lord of the harvest sent forth into His harvest. He lies buried in the churchyard of Scone, near the palace where the old kings of Scotland used to be crowned, waiting the resurrection morning, and the crown which the righteous Judge will give to him at that day; and not to him only, but unto all them also who love the Lord's appearing. On his tombstone is written,

"BORN AT HUNTLY, Nov. 22, 1824.

BORN AGAIN, Oct. 26, 1846.

DIED, Sept. 16, 1869.

6 THEY THAT BE WISE SHALL SHINE AS THE BRIGHTNESS OF THE FIRMAMENT; AND THEY THAT TURN MANY TO RIGHTEOUSNESS AS THE STARS FOR EVER AND EVER. (Dan. xii. 3).

,,,

Early in life he was by trade a mason, and he used often to refer to that period. Though at that time unconverted, he was ever mindful of his mother, bringing her his wages weekly. In afteryears, one day when in Glasgow addressing a gathering of working men, his filial affection as well as shrewd observation, led him to exclaim, "Lads, do you know any one of your number who is not kind to his mother? Have nothing to do with such a selfish fellow. He is never to be trusted." Broadfaced, and somewhat rough in exterior, he was full of heart; and he had, besides, a pleasant look and a kindly eye that opened his way among strangers.

Before conversion, he was often under alarm. Once, looking in at a chink in the door of a cottage from which he heard the voice of praise, the sight of happy faces, and the song,

"O greatly bless'd the people are

The joyful sound that know,"

touched his heart, and he wished he were among them. At another time, a funeral awoke awful thoughts of a judgment to come; and again, one of his mother's simple illustrations lodged in his soul; and when, soon after, he stood by the opened grave of his gentle sister Ann, the dull sound of the clods dropping on the coffin-lid seemed to him to ring into his conscience that one word, "Eternity."

The preaching of the truth was not without effect upon him. Arrow after arrow was thus sent in; and he sought everywhere for relief. It was one day while standing at the end of his father's house, musing on John iii. 16, that the burden of sin rolled from his back. "I could not," he says, "contain myself for joy. I sang the new song,-Salvation through the blood of the Lamb. The very heavens appeared as if covered with glory. I felt the calm of a pardoned sinner. Yet I had no thought about my

safety; I saw only the Person of Jesus, and wept for my sin that had nailed Him to the cross; and they were tears of true repentance. Formerly I set up repentance as a toll between me and the cross; now, it came freely, as the tear that faith wept. I felt that I had passed from death into life,-that old things had passed away, and all things had become new." He wondered that he had stumbled at the very simplicity of the way. He now saw everything so plain, that he longed to go and tell all the world. He felt as if he could convince the most sceptical and the most hardened, and that if he met a thousand Manassehs, he could say to them, "Yet there is room." "I went everywhere telling my glad story. Some, even of the saints, looked incredulous. Others, like the elder brother in the parable, did not like the music and dancing.' They warned me against enthusiasm, and exhorted me to be soberminded. One old man said, that I was on the mount, but would soon be down.' Another said, that I needed great humility.' But I went on singing my song. Prayer had given place to praise, and night and day, for more than three days, I continued to thank God for His unspeakable gift.' I longed to die, that I might sin no more, and that I might discover more fully the height and depth, and length and breadth, of that love which (I now knew) passeth knowledge."

6

The good and noble Duchess of Gordon now found in him the kind of man she wished to employ as an evangelist. To this work he gladly set himself with all his heart, often spending in it sixteen hours a day; for his bodily strength was great. Some of his sorest encounters were with men who had 66 on a thick coat of evangelical varnish," having the knowledge and the form, but not the life nor the power of godliness. Discovering that an old printing-press was for sale, he obtained it, and writing on it, "For God and eternity," at once set himself to learn printing, and was soon able to send out tracts. This gave a turn to his efforts, and led afterwards to the publication of the "Herald of Mercy," the issue of which, from month to month, was owned of God by many remarkable conversions.

In 1854, having been asked to go to the Crimea to work as colporteur and evangelist among the soldiers, he at once threw himself into that work. Many a wounded and many a sick soldier did he relieve, pouring into his soul at the same time the truth about "Eternity" and "The Blood of the Lamb;" and cheerfully he submitted to very great privations for their sake. With the few godly whom he found, he met for prayer. One day when he and a Christian sergeant had retired to a quiet spot for prayer and reading of the word of God, a shell dropped at their feet. They rose, and went a little farther off. But again their exercises were disturbed by another shell that fell close by, shaking the very ground beneath them. "Never mind," said the soldier, "it is only the devil trying to spoil our enjoyment; let us go on." They

had just resumed, when, with a loud fall, a thirty-two pound shot lay beside them. The missionary started up; but the soldier calmed his alarm by quietly quoting the lines,

"Not a single shaft can hit,

Till the God of love sees fit."

Nor did he confine his labours to our own soldiers. Meeting with officers and men of the Sardinian army, he became deeply interested in them; and believing that God can use one text as well as a thousand, he committed to memory, from the Italian New Testament, that Gospel in miniature, John iii. 16, "God so loved the world," etc., and then passed from group to group with his brief gospel message. His frank, genial disposition, and his intense sympathy, opened a door everywhere for himself and for his message.

Returning home, he laboured without ceasing. His "Herald of Mercy" had reached a circulation of 32,000 a month; and often did he get intelligence of the blessing carried to souls by its pages. An English lady in Constantinople, a tradesman in Berwickshire, a stranger in Crieff, a herdboy on the way side,—each of these spoke of salvation brought to them by the instrumentality of that paper.

Throughout Banffshire, and in towns such as Dundee, his labours were marked with success. He seemed never more at home than when speaking in the open air. A favourite text with him was, "This Man receiveth sinners ;" and very feelingly would he then set forth the love and pity and tenderness of the Lord Jesus, stating clearly the sinner's guilt and wickedness, the evil conscience, and the depraved heart. Nor did he fail at the same time to set forth the twofold remedy for such a case, namely, the blood of Christ, and the all-powerful working of the Holy Ghost. He would say, "Here is the sinner, and there is the blood. The great question is, How are they to be brought together? The answer is, By the Holy Ghost; He only can do it."

On one occasion, when shown a calumnious statement against himself in a local newspaper, he said joyfully, "Man, I do like a little dirt cast upon me for the dear Master's sake. I think Gabriel would shake hands with me, and say, 'I never had such an honour.' Suffering for righteousness' sake is far better than a hundred dying testimonies of those who never did or bore anything for Jesus."

His dying hours were full of the consolation of the Holy Ghost. On one of his last nights on earth, he would not let his chamber be darkened. "Light all the lights, and let not the room be like a charnel-house;" for it was to him a time of life, not death; of joy and victory, not sorrow or distress.