"Well, mother, you know he is drinking himself to death."

Mrs. Burton said nothing, but hastily rose and went to the window. It was as she feared. Heart-sick, she turned away, and went up-stairs. She came down, looking calm as usual, but the children knew she had been weeping. The evening passed gloomily, except that as Beccy was carrying the empty tray off, she rolled over with it, and the tray described a circle round her. Mrs. Burton was going to scold, but Beccy, with a merry twinkle in her eye, made a courtesy to Kate, saying, "Please, miss, is that as how the world runs round the sun, as you tell't me in the gograffy?" Amidst the roar of laughter, in which Mrs. Burton could not help joining, Beccy made good her retreat to the wash-house.

-At ten o'clock all was still, and Mrs. Burton sat alone, looking into the fire. She fell into a reverie, and thought of the home of her childhood amid the Derbyshire hills, and the happy, happy rambles that she and John had there as lovers; then of the first peaceful years of their married life, of the first great sorrow, and the little moss-grown grave; then of John's first getting fond of drink, her agony and prayers, and sometimes, alas! anger and rebellion against God for permitting it-of the dreary watchings and forebodings, and the strange, nameless fears. The clock struck twelve. She rose, and looked out into the night. Masses of grey clouds were rushing across the moonlit sky, for the wind had risen, and was roaring amid the trees, and making a strange moaning in the ruined tower. Right opposite, the red windows of the Magpie gleamed like the fiery eyes of a demon, and ever and anon snatches of revelry rose above the blast. Putting her hand to her forehead, she returned to her seat. She felt weary and hopeless, and bitter thoughts were crowding into her mind, when suddenly the words of a well-known hymn came ringing in her ears,

Soon shall our doubts and fears

Subside at His control;

His loving kindness shall break through
The midnight of the soul.

Thus soothed, she fell asleep and dreamed. Once more she was a girl, and standing on a high hill near her father's house, watching the landscape below. Suddenly clouds gathered and folded her in darkness; it thundered and lightened, and in terror she clung to the rock and cried out for fear; but in a few moments the storm rolled away, the sun shone out, and a glorious rainbow spanned the west.

She was awakened by a loud knocking at the door, and heard voices without. Trembling, she undid the latch. A gust of wind blew out the candle, but by the light of the moon she saw three men-in their arms her husband apparently dead. She fainted.

(To be continued.)

MEMORABILIA.

BIBLE Religion is both the recognized title and the best description of English religion. It consists, not in rights and creeds, but mainly in having the Bible read in church, in the family, and in private. Now, I am far indeed from undervaluing that mere knowledge of Scripture which is imparted to the population thus promiscuously. At least in England it has, to a certain point, made up for great and grievous losses to its Christianity. The reiteration, again and again, in fixed course, in the public service, of the words of inspired teachers under both covenants, and that in grave majestic English, has, in matter of fact, been to our people a vast benefit. It has attuned their minds to religious thoughts; it has given them a high moral standard; it has served them in associating religion with compositions which, even humanly considered, are among the most sublime and beautiful ever written; especially it has impressed upon them the series of Divine providences in behalf of man from his creation to his end, and above all, the words, deeds, and sacred sufferings of Him in whom all the providences of God centre.

The Church is entered by neither the merit of Baptism nor Circumcision, but by Faith and Love. The day of externals is past. It is the heart that rules. Love opens the door of the Church, and no Church is of Christ's spirit that refuses communion to any one who has Christ's spirit. We are no longer in bondage to ordinance or ritual. We are Christ's freemen.

One of the noblest impulses of the soul is that which impels it to seek the truth. Knowledge, of things material or spiritual, is the great prize for which the highest strive. Christ is called "the Light of the World," and light is that which leads men into knowledge. One of the noblest spectacles that all human history shows, is the struggle of men for true knowledge. The spectacle is often a tragical one, where a man or a generation, leaving a low belief and unable to reach a higher one, falls into the gulf of blank scepticism. At other times the scene ends in the lustre of victory, as when we see Socrates meeting death in calm confidence, or Luther rising from agonized conflict to lead a vast host into the light. The alternation of defeat and victory, of progress and loss, lends the most thrilling interest to the story of the human mind.

To every earnest soul that in any degree shares in this agitation there must come times of deep depression at the seeming unattainableness of truth. The mind falls back discouraged and almost helpless from beating against its bars. Why, it asks, do the best guides differ? Why do the Bible and human feeling and natural science seem sometimes to contradict one another? What basis is there on which we can rest with utter security? Knowledge of the truth seems for ever to baffle us.

In direct contrast with this imperfection of all knowledge, Paul tells us that love never faileth! Love, which a child can understand-love, which a fool can practise love, whose opportunities lie all about us, nay, force themselves on our path-love is greater than knowledge! This opens itself to the weary, heart-sick thinker, and gives him better than he has sought. This envelops man, upholds him, feeds him, as the earth and air maintain his mortal frame.

Knowledge is less than love, for human knowledge, at its highest, is but ignorance, which heaven's teaching will displace; but love's essence is the same on earth and in heaven. Faith is less than love, for faith is but the means through

which we lay hold on God, and love is God's own nature. Hope is less than love, for hope looks forward to what is not yet, and love takes hold of the infinite present.

What an old, old story it is-dating back to Adam, we suppose - every day the call to work! Few are the sons of men who do not hear it-at least outside of the South Sea Islands, where one's house is all outdoors, and clothing is superfluous, and breakfast and dinner grow ready cooked on the trees. To most of us, work is so the rule of life that we take it mostly without thinking, except when some such contrast as this between stormy day and bright fireside takes hold of us. What an unceasing drill it is! what a daily lesson! How little any one of us understands the secret ways by which God trains and shapes him! And since this great necessity of daily work is laid so widely upon men, and takes hold of most of them throughout all their lives, we may be sure there lies in it some great beneficent power, whose full reach we do not guess. Let us hope that out of it there comes to us unconsciously a growth in fidelity, in self-renunciation, in patience, that is far beyond what we see. In the seeming drudgery of this daily toil there may be roots whose celestial flower and fruitage we shall see when we reach the higher life.

It is a great comfort to me, that have looked with so much sympathy upon the whole long requiem of time past, and upon the groaning and travailing in pain until now that is in the world, to believe, as I do heartily believe, that the future of Christianity is to be far brighter, and that the day of struggle is com. paratively past.

I say that though the days of the world's winter are not over, yet I believe that the Sun of Righteousness has gone as far away as it ever will, and has turned, and is coming back; and there is to be a future summer of joy and rejoicing in things spiritual as well as in things temporal.

There has been a long line of joyful witnesses in the world. First was Christ Himself, who is not misinterpreted in any other point more, I think, than in the supposition that His life was one of sorrow. There can be no question that there were moods of profound sorrow in the life of Christ, and that toward the last month of his life He was in a travail of spirit. And that He suffered at the end of it, there can be no doubt. But the earliest period of Christ's life I suppose to have been a transcendently joyful one; I believe that as a child, and as a young man, in His father's family, and under the nourishing care of His mother, there is no hint, or sign, or token that His life was not tranquil and sweet and pleasant to Him. And there is unequivocal evidence that during the first years of His ministration the life that He led was peaceful and happy. All Judea was one scene of wild uproar and ecstasy. Here were villages without a sick man in them; the blind were made to see; the deaf were made to hear; the very dead were brought to life; and households were re-illumined that had sat in darkness and in the shadow of death. And from day to day there could be no place large enough to contain the immense throngs that came around about this Divine Personage. And He says:-"It is more blessed to give than to receive." See the mother going ecstatic from Him! Is it more blessed to give than receive? How happy He was then! See the lepers going away from Him, rejoicing and chanting God's goodness! But he was happier than the lepers. He enjoyed more than the blind did that He made to see; and more than the deaf did that He made to hear; and more than the dumb did that He made to speak; and more than separated friends did who received from the gulf of death to their arms, by the Divine Power, their own again.

A PASTOR'S NOTE-BOOK.

"I have culled a garland of flowers, and the only thing that I can call my own is the string that binds them." MONTESQUIEU.

Men have made an obscure Bible, but which is going on there, just as the God never did.

No man is prepared for to-morrow, but the morrow prepares itself for every man. Never be troubled with trifles, and soon all troubles will appear trifling.

stormy waves of the ocean shut out from the sight and mind of the voyager all those wondrous and glorious things "which the deep unfathomed depths of ocean bear." It is only when the mind is truly opened to understand the infinite

Do what is right, let others do what value of a human soul and the solemn they please.

Be good-and let who will be clever;

Do noble things, not dream them all day long;

importance of eternal things, that we are able to see the great thus underlying and ennobling the little. . . . It is, indeed, remarkable how man, left to himself,

And so make life, death, and that vast often drags down the great to the level of

"for ever,"

One grand, sweet song. SABBATH-SCHOOL DIFFICULTIES. The little hindrances and annoyances and trials of temper with which the school-room abounds, are apt to hide from our view the moral greatness of the work

The Manse, Mold.

the little; but Christianity lifts up the little to the level of the great, including in the Heavenly Kingdom the little child equally with the aged saint, bestowing upon the use of the two talents and upon that of the five the same commendation, and rewarding the labour of the hour with the wages of the full day.

D. B. H.

Two things there are which, the oftener and the more steadily we consider, fill the mind with ever new and ever rising admiration and reverence the STARRY HEAVENS above, the MORAL LAW within. Of neither am I compelled to seek out the reality, as veiled in darkness, or only to conjecture the possibility, as beyond the hemisphere of my knowledge. Both I contemplate lying clear before me, and connect both with my consciousness of existence. The one departs from the place I occupy in the outward world of sense, expands beyond the bounds of imagination this connexion of my body with worlds and systems blending into systems; and portends it also into the illimitable times of their periodic movement-to its commencement and perpetuity. The other departs from my invisible self, from my personality, and represents me in a world, truly infinite indeed, but whose infinity can be tracked out only by intellect, with which also my connexion, unlike the fortuitous relation to all worlds of sense, I am compelled to recognize as universal and necessary. In the former, the first view of a countless number of worlds annihilates, as it were, my importance as an animal product, which, after and that incomprehensible, endowment of life, is compelled to refund its constituent matter to the planet—itself an atom in the universe—on which it grew. The other, on the contrary, elevates my worth as an intelligence even without limit; and this through my personality, in which the moral law reveals a faculty of life independent of the animal nature, nay, of the whole material world; at least, if it be permitted to infer as much from the regulation of my being, which conformity with that law exacts; proposing, as it does, my moral worth for the absolute end of my activity, conceding no compromise of it, imperative to a necessitation of nature, and spurning, in its infinity, the conditions and boundaries of my transitory life.