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putting on a patch or cutting through the letters. She chose the lesser evil, thinking she could wash out the letters; but though she washed, and washed, and washed again, she could not wash out the remaining half of the word. I put my arms down the sleeves, and was stretching the front, when I saw the letters. My little spirit sank within me in bitter sorrow. I looked into my mother's face, but when I saw the tears in her eyes, I instantly said, "Never mind, mother,-never mind. It will do very well. It covers my patches; and when I get to school I will sit on the letters, and then no one will see them. Don't cry, mother; we shall be better off yet."

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Away I went to the Sunday-school, with bare feet and a packsheet pinafore, with half the letters WOOL down one side, to take my place in the third Bible-class, among boys who were much better dressed, and who did not like to sit beside me on that account.

This state of things was for the most part the result of that direst curse of our nation-intemperance; for, unhappily, John Ashworth's father was a drunkard, and the money which should have procured food and clothing for his eight children, was spent in the gratification of his own appetite: the consequence was, that his exemplary and God-fearing wife had to struggle against poverty and want. What a hideous vice is drunkenness! It is the foulest, blackest spot upon our country's otherwise bright escutcheon. "Its march of ruin is onward still! It reaches abroad to others -invades the family and social circle-and spreads woe and sorrow all around. It cuts down youth in its vigour-manhood in its strength-and age in its weakness. It breaks the father's heart -bereaves the doting mother-extinguishes natural affectionerases conjugal love blots out filial attachment-blights parental hope-and brings down mourning age in sorrow to the grave. It produces weakness, not strength; sickness, not health; death, not life. It makes wives widows-children orphaus-fathers fiendsand all of them paupers and beggars. It brings shame, not honour; terror, not safety; despair, not hope; misery, not happiness. And now, as with the malevolence of a fiend, it calmly surveys its frightful desolations.'

SECURITY IN CHRIST.

ORD Jesus! we, believing
In Thee, have peace with God;
Eternal life receiving

The purchase of Thy blood.
Our curse and condemnation
Thou barest in our stead;
Secure is our salvation

In Thee, our risen Head.

The Holy Ghost, revealing

Thy grace, hath given us rest;
Thy stripes have been our healing;
Thy love doth make us blest.
In Thee the Father sees us
Accepted and complete;

The blood from sin which frees us,
For glory makes us meet.

The late S. P. TREGELLES, D.D.

THE MINISTRY OF SONG.

NE day," wrote Herbert Bradford from a distant clime, "I was passing the rude home of one of the native mothers, when I heard her singing to her little dark baby a cradle song she had learned from a missionary's wife. My ear and my heart listened; for oh, it was the same tune and the same words that I heard my own mother sing when I was a happy child on her knee:

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'Soft and easy is thy cradle;

Hard and rough thy Saviour lay,
When His birthplace was a stable,
And His softest bed was hay.'

I stood transfixed to the spot. I was taken back to the home of my happy infancy and my sainted mother. Tears came from my hard heart. I knew I was living far from my mother's God. I had always avoided the missionaries, and everybody else who reminded me of my early teaching and broken resolutions; but the sound of that mother's song I could not resist, and from that moment my course has been changed. I have now a hope that I shall sing with my mother in heaven."

Say, mother, will you not sing? Oh, yes, sing to the little children; sing something you will like them to remember when you are with Jesus. Some young women who have the care of dear little children will read this page. Sing to your young charge; sing something about the love of Jesus, and how He cared for and blessed the dear little ones when He lived in our world; and how He loves now to hear their prayers and their songs. If they are fretful, sing to them; if they are tired, sing to them; if they are restless and tiresome, sing to them. Sing "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild;" or, "I think when I read," or, "Hush, my dear;" the child will be comforted and soothed, and you will be made to feel more happy yourself.

A loving mother was writing to us one day on this subject, and she gave us some lines that she found some of her young children understood. She had never seen them in print, nor have we; but as she sings them to her darlings, and would like other mothers to have them, we copy them for our readers :

"Dear Jesus, Thou hast kindly kept

The baby through the night;
She, by Thy care, has soundly slept
Until the morning light.

"How very good and kind Thou art

To such a little thing;

She wants a loving, thankful heart,
Thy praises, Lord, to sing.

"By nature baby's vain and proud,

And passionate and wild;
Lord, wash her in Thy precious blood,
And take her for Thy child."

Sing, sing, mothers, of the love of Jesus on earth, till you are called to sing of His glory in heaven.

MARTIN LUTHER'S CONVERSION.

MAN was once climbing, upon his knees, a stone staircase of many steps, which was said to have been carried through the air from its former to its present place.

What a crowd runs together to see a foot-race, a hopping-match, a prize-walk; but this man going up the staircase on his knees did not draw many people to see him.

Was he doing it for money, for a wager, for a prize, or for a joke? Let us go near and look closely at him. He wears a monk's frock and girdle; his face, though youthful, is overcast by sorrow and anxiety; he is thoroughly in earnest; it is no joke with him, poor young man.

Then, perhaps, he is not quite sane. Yes, so far as human nature born of Adam can be so, he is sane; but he is conscious of a deep-seated, ruinous disease which is consuming him; he is sinsick, and is trying to help God to save his soul and purify his heart.

He has said prayers by hundreds, day and night; he has nearly starved himself to death, but sin would not be starved out! and after having done all he could to reach the seat of the disease, he still feels as loathsome as Naaman, as possessed as Mary Magdalene. There was just this penance left to try. The Pope had decreed an indulgence to any who would climb to the top of Pilate's staircase at Rome on their knees; and the poor monk, as a last effort of despair, would not omit this degrading act which he fondly hoped would obtain for him the forgiveness and holiness he sought.

Suddenly he starts and pauses in his mean labour. A voice seems to sound through him-"THE JUST SHALL LIVE BY FAITH.” It shakes his soul, chasing before it the dark thoughts of superstition and falsehood. With a blush of shame he sprang to his feet, conscious of a mighty change of principle wrought in him that cast him once and for ever on the finished work of Christ.

"The just shall live by faith ;"--the faith that finds all the merit, acceptance, and strength in another, which man seeks in himself and does not find; the faith that works by love, sees its title to forgiveness in the blood of the Lamb of God, and obtains " grace to help" against sin and sorrow. Martin Luther happily failed in his efforts to get a false and unholy peace. It was the voice of Mercy which reached him at that moment of his history, and sent him a new man from Rome, to proclaim to the world that great truth of God,-that a sinner is pardoned and justified only by believing in Jesus Christ.

"But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God," it is evident; for, "The just shall live by faith" (Gal. iii. 11).

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THE WRITING ON THE SHORE.

READ one morning on the sand,
And written by a childish hand,
A truth the billows cannot
teach-
A truth past human wisdom's reach-
God is Love.

It seemed a very angel's trace,
God's footprint in that lonely place;
It brightened up the sea and sky,
And glad I was I could reply-
God is Love.
And much I thanked my little friend.
Who thus her joyous creed had
penned ;

And may she know for evermore
The truth she wrote upon the shore-
God is Love.
The tide will come again to-day,
And wash that lovely print away;

But death and hell cannot erase
The charter of the child of grace-
God is Love.

What though an absent darling sleeps,
Gulfed in the sea's remorseless deeps;
Yet "all is well." He took away
But what He gave; still I can say-
God is Love.

What though I bear an evil name,
And wrongly suffer bonds and shame;
I'll write upon my prison floor,
As saints and martyrs have before-
God is Love.

And when that wondrous love has
brought

Bliss to my soul past human thought;
And when I don my raiment fair,
I'll sing as loud as any there-

THE WISE CHOICE.

A WORD TO YOUNG MEN BEFORE MARRIAGE.

HRISTIAN young men, if you marry,

God is Love!

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marry in the Lord." The pious wife will be a blessing and a help to you; the ungodly wife will be a curse and a hindrance, a thorn in your side. Think. not that she will become pious by living with you and seeing your holy life; far far more likely is it that you will become like her; that your salt will lose its saltness, your light die out, and your piety depart. Remember what St. Paul says: "Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers." Marriage is a state of life which has the greatest effect on the souls of those who enter into it. It helps them upward or downward. "Marry in the Lord," and then your home will be the home of peace, your children the seed of the righteous, and as such be blessed of God. Give not yourself a godless companion; give not your servants an ungodly mistress; give not your children an ungodly mother. It has been beautifully said, "The wife is the heart of the family." How important, then, that she should be one who is influenced by pious principles. "Marry in the Lord;" marry one who will read the Bible with you, pray with you, go to God's house with you, and aid you in your spiritual as well as in your temporal affairs. Choose the good daughter, the virtuous sister, the pious woman, one who is rich in grace, and rules herself after God's Word.

Rev. Edmund Lester.

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