Miss Lee knew that no easy task lay before her, but she did not shrink from it. The wistful look she had noticed in poor John's face one day had so impressed her, that she had set her heart upon doing him some good, and thus a few difficulties were not likely to divert her from her purpose.

Weeks passed, and the lad's progress was slow. Letters and words slipped through his mind as through a sieve; but when his teacher talked to him of God and heaven, when she told him Bible stories, or repeated to him simple hymns, his face assumed quite another expression, and it was evident that his interest was awakened in these better things.

"Don't weary yourself with this stupid lad," said Miss Lee's friends sometimes, when they saw her look tired after a lesson had been given; but she heeded not such advice, always answering, "It is worth a little trouble if I can make even poor John know and

"I have come to talk to you about John." love God." By-and-by the reading and writing were given up as impossible; but three evenings in every week were devoted to this boy, and there he heard stores of Scripture verses and stories, never seeming to be weary. Autumn came, a wild wet autumn, when the trees were tossed about in the rough wind, and the waves, which were visible from the village, dashed wildly on the shore for many a day and night.

One morning the cottagers were grouped in twos and threes about their doors, telling a sad story. A little boat had been discovered at sea the night before, and some of the men had put out to rescue it-"Simple John" being of the party.

They all came safely to land-all but one, and that the poor half-foolish boy. In leaping from the boat a wave struck him down, and in falling he received a blow which was fatal. "God! Christ!" he murmured, as they raised him. "Through Him, through His blood, pardon." That was all-he died after an hour's unconsciousness, leaving these words as a sort of testimony that Miss Lee had not laboured in vain, and that, foolish as to the wisdom of this world, poor John had heard of those who are "wise unto salvation."

NO ROOM IN THE BOAT. NE sunny day the ship Katherine left Liverpool docks for New York. The sky was blue and cloudless, the waters were smooth, and all seemed bright and hopeful. So thought two men who were going out to rejoin their wives and families.

These men were English, but had gone to America some years ago, and were employed in the railway works there. Being sent by their employers to England, they had done all the business entrusted

waves.

was full of men, pushed away from the ship, which now was almost hidden from them by the storm-tossed Through the twilight, even in the midst of the boiling sea, those in the boat saw two men making for the boat. It was overladen as it was, for they had not had time to man the last lifeboat, the dangerous position of the ship increasing every moment. These two men were named James Harly and John Vane, whom we saw and talked with as they left the shores of England. They had tried to swim for their lives, and now thought they might enter the lifeboat.

to them, and were now returning to the shores where was all that made home dear.

The voyage was a good one, and then came the day when the captain said that he hoped they would be in New York the next evening.

But suddenly a storm came on just as the evening approached. The waves dashed over the ship, the rigging was snapped by the wind as if it was so many threads, and finally came the awful news that there was no hope, the ship would soon be submerged. One lifeboat was launched on the angry sea, and the women and children were saved in it. Then the last, which

But, oh, the horrors of that moment when by main force they were pushed back, and even through the noise of the tempest they caught the words-there is no room! So they were left to perish, and the boatso laden that had they entered they would have swamped it-made its way towards the shore, which it gained after two perilous days on the waters. Reader! do you not know that you, if you have not sought the Lord Jesus Christ as your Saviour, are in the greatest possible peril? There in the stormy sea you are alone, likely at any moment to be hurled into eternity. You have not strength to swim to the shore

by the aid of your own good works; you could not do it if you tried. Round you is danger, but there is hope. A hope that you may cling to now-for now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation. He who loved you so that He died for you that you might be saved, He it is who is as the lifeboat for your soul. Will you not go to that lifeboat? All you have to do is to believe in Jesus, to be sure that He will save you, that He will pardon all your sins and give you the power to grow daily more like Himself. The effort of your will is needed. You must stretch out the arm of faith and lay hold of the lifeboat, and once there you are safe!

Safe, yes; and so sure as you go you will be received by your Saviour. No soul has He ever cast away, none has ever been spurned by Him. None who have gone to that lifeboat have ever been told there was no room for them!

There is room there. Room in the lifeboat for you, for all who will seek safety in it. No danger there, for the might of the Sacrifice is sufficient for all who come to Christ; there is room for all!

Will you not go there now? For the day will come when, if you have not sought Christ in the day of salvation, in the time of your earthly life, it will be too late. When before the judgment throne, when the fears of hell encompass you, and then you seek the lifeboat, the answer must and assuredly will be, "There is no room-too late!"

Calmly and boldly Mr. Duncan rebukes them, and tells them that God is his Master, and he cannot possibly be moved by their threats. At last, to his wonder, Legaic and his followers depart, leaving him unharmed, and school is resumed with the few children remaining. Afterwards the missionary learned by what strange means God had defended him. Leaning against the wall behind him, apparently indifferent to what was passing, had stood an Indian named Clah, whom Mr. Duncan had employed to teach him the language of his tribe, and accompany him as interpreter in his visits among the natives of Metlah Katlah. Unknown to the missionary, Clah had declared that if any harm befel the white man he would avenge him. The interpreter's skill in fire-arms was well known in his tribe, and as he entered the school with the would-be murderers, and stood quietly beside the missionary, the bloodthirsty chief was aware that under the blanket in which Clah was wrapped a revolver was hidden, and that whoever might escape he himself would certainly pay with his life any attack on Mr. Duncan.

Even so in one way or another, and often by means we cannot see or imagine, does God ever stretch forth His arm to help and defend us in the way of His commandments; as surely now as when of old it needed but a moment's lifting of the veil which parts us from the world unseen, and there appeared "horses and chariots of fire round about " His servant Elisha.

IN THE SHADOW OF HIS HAND.

HE bell is ringing for afternoon school at the mission-station of Metlah Katlah in North-West America. A curious bell it is; a steel hung across the doorway, and usually struck by one of the scholars, mounted on a bench; but to-day it is Mr. Duncan himself, the missionary teacher, who sounds the call, for all his pupils are afraid.

Legaic, the Indian chief, has threatened to murder all those who attend the school during the "medicine mysteries," a heathen festival attended by nameless abominations, just taking place.

Nearly eighty scholars, encouraged by their pastor, have ventured, though with fear and trembling, to come to school. Hardly are they assembled when the furious chief, with seven of his followers, bursts in; they are decked with paint and feathers and hideous masks. Most of the children flee, and Legaic, brandishing a large knife, threatens to murder the missionary.

"I know how to kill people," he cries, and draws his hand across his own throat. "I am a murderer, and so is he and he," pointing to his companions.

THE CHRISTIAN'S VOYAGE. HE Christian navigates a sea

T

Where various forms of death appear; Nor skill, alas! nor power has he,

Aright his dangerous course to steer. Why does he venture then from shore,

And dare so many deaths to brave? Because the land affrights him more

Than all the perils of the wave.

Because he hopes a port to find,

Where all his toil will be repaid; And though unskilful, weak, and blind, Yet Jesus bids him nothing dread. But though His faithful word is given,

Who does not change, and cannot lie; Yet when his bark by storms is driven, He doubts, and fears destruction nigh. Though fear his heart should overwhelm, He'll reach the port for which he's bound; For Jesus holds and guides the helm, And safety is where He is found. Methinks I view him now at last

Safe anchored in the haven of joy; He thinks no more of conflicts past, Wonder and love his heart employ. He wonders much at all he sees;

He loves the Author of his bliss; And cries, while he the scene surveys, "Oh! what a glorious land is this!"

STRIKING CONTRASTS.

BOUT a hundred years before Howard's time there was a celebrated duke, full of talents and accomplishments as well as wealth. He was a wit and a courtier too, but utterly profligate. He was a perfect buffoon. "He was a man who studied the whole body of vice." He was deceitful no less than licentious; had a hard unfeeling heart; was a spendthrift, and, harsh as may sound the expression, a brute also. He killed in a duel the man whose wife he had dishonoured. He wasted his substance in riotous living. He died and left one of the blackest names on the page of English history. And his rank and riches now form the pedestal which lift him up on high, an image for posterity to look at and take warning from. This was George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham, of whom Pope says:

"In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half hung, The floors of plaister and the walls of dung, On once a flock bed, but repaired with straw, With tape-tied curtains never meant to draw; The George and Garter dangling from that bed, Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red, Great Villiers lies; alas! how changed from him, That life of pleasure and that soul of whim. No wit to flatter left of all his store, No fool to laugh at, which he valued more; There, victor of his health, of fortune, friends, And fame, this lord of useless thousands ends." Waste was not the only or the main feature of this spendthrift's history. His wastefulness was the source of vice and misery to others, while it ministered in himself to both. The germ of an upas tree was folded up in Buckingham's fortune. You see what capabilities of dishonour and misery a rich man carries in his lot. God gave him a cup full of blessing; he turned it all to poison, drank much of it himself, and gave the rest to others. Think of Howard and of him. Are there not very opposite and wonderful capabilities in the Divine endowments of property?

Yes, and in the Divine endowments of talent too. Lausanne, on the Lake of Geneva, is associated with two distinguished literary names; one not so well known as the other, but still growing into fame. Gibbon wrote some of his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire here. Here it was that he took his famous walk when he had completed his toils-the walk he has so affectingly described. That illustrious monument of learning and genius, his grand history, was built out of the powers which his Maker had bestowed. He did make a brilliant use of the portion of goods which fell to him; but it was an unhallowed use. The sceptic and the scorner comes out con

tinually from under the cloak of the philosopher and sage. He entertains, dazzles, and even instructs; yet how often has he fostered prejudice and generated infidelity!

Vinet, too, lived at Lausanne, and died there-a man of genius and eloquence-the Chalmers of Switzerland. "He brought all the spoils of reason to the cross, and kneeling there as a humble suppliant, looked up into the face of the dying Saviour, and exclaimed, 'Lord, remember me when Thou comest into Thy kingdom.' His mighty soul was laid, all throbbing with thought and feeling, on the bosom of the Son of God. Renouncing his own righteousness, relying upon Christ alone, and consecrating his attainments on the altar of Christian love, he rejoiced in the abounding grace of God, and lay down to die in the calm and blessed hope of a glorious immortality. It was the death of a Christian, calm and beautiful as the last rays of sunset upon the mountains of his native land." How interesting the contrast between Gibbon's use of his portion of goods and Vinet's; the one employed against the Cross, the other hallowed by it; the one thrown into the service of error, the other into the service of truth; the one to the dishonour, the other to the glory of Jesus.

These different capabilities lie in all intellectual gifts, great and small. Whether we have one talent, or ten, or a thousand, we may bury the whole, or waste it, or pervert it, or use it for God's service and glory. And with these different capabilities before us, it is for us to make our election. God has constituted man a spiritual being, a being with a will; and when His service no longer appears freedom, and man promises himself liberty elsewhere, he is allowed to make the trial, and to discover, if needs be, by saddest proof, that the only condition of his freedom is his cleaving unto God; that departing from Him he inevitably falls under the bondage of his own desires and of the world, and under the slavery of the devil.

The coming to oneself in this life is very different. There is in it much of painfulness, but there is in it more of mercy. How opposite the judicial inflictions of another life and the reformatory discipline of this; the iron chain there eating into the substance of the soul, and the gentle cord here drawing the soul from its falsehoods, sins, and sorrows, to truth and God!

The prodigal had forsaken God, but he has not been forsaken by Him; no, not even in that far land; for all the misery which has fallen on him there was indeed an expression of God's anger against sin, but at the same time of His love to the sinner. He hedges up his way with thorns, that he may not find his paths. He makes his sin bitter to him, that he may forsake it. In this way God pursues His fugitives, summoning them back to Himself in that only language which now they will understand. He allows the world to make its bondage hard to them, that they may know the difference between His service and the service of "the kings of the countries," that those whom He is about to deliver may at last cry to Him by reason of their bitter and unbearable bondage.

It was when Israel felt the tyranny of the taskmaster that the people sighed under the burden of their bondage, and the Lord heard and pitied. So Manasseh also, when in captivity, came to his senses, and far away from his own throne and his country's temple, thought of his King and his God. What an infinite mercy and gain it is, at whatever temporal cost it may be, for man to come to himself, after losing himself, and to recover the favour of the Almighty.

To take a modern instance. John Newton was a sad profligate an African blasphemer, as he used to say, referring to his profanity when a trader in slaves on the Guinea coast. If any man was mad with wickedness, it was he. His career of folly, vice, and impiety shows that he was utterly beside himself.

One night, at sea, he went to bed, and was suddenly waked up by the billows breaking on board. The waves tore away the timbers; some of the sailors set to baling out the water, while others worked at the pumps. In the midst of the terror, he laughed at it, and told his companions that it would serve afterwards for a subject over a glass of wine.

"No, it is too late now!" said one, with tears. The madness was at its height, just as it was about to take a turn. Newton was at the pump from three in the morning till near noon.

At last he said, "If this will not do, the Lord have mercy upon us!" and then, struck with his

Aftor a little rest he returned to steer the ship. "I had here leisure and convenient opportunity for reflection. I began to think of my former religious profession, the extraordinary turns of my life, the calls, warnings, and deliverances I had met with, the licentious course of my conversation, particularly my unparalleled effrontery in making the Gospel history the constant subject of profane ridicule. I thought there never was or could be such a sinner as myself; and then, comparing the advantages I had broken through, I concluded at first my sins were too great to be forgiven."

water.

He was coming to himself. Blessed storm! precious danger! to have awakened in him such serious thoughts. There arose a gleam of hope; the ship was freed from "I thought I saw the hand of God displayed. in our favour, and I began to pray. I could not utter the prayer of faith. I could not draw near to a reconciled God, and call Him Father. My prayer was like the raven's cry, which yet the Lord did not disdain to hear." It was the beginning of a complete change-the dawn of salvation's day upon the soul of the weatherbeaten mariner. Moral sanity was returning; he was coming to his reason by degrees. The dreadful tempest, the danger, the gaping gulf, and the opening hell, had brought him to his senses.