Spirit, the "sweet gales of mercy," are blowing. God has done His part; it remains for the sinner to do his. He must spread his sails to the breeze. It will not do for him to sit still, saying, "If I am to be saved, I shall be saved; if I am to be lost, I shall be lost." The vessel would have gone over the Falls, if the crew had not spread the sails. The sinner will certainly be lost, if he does not avail himself of the offers of mercy.

But, on the other hand, he must not attribute his salvation to his own merits, his own doing. It was the wind that saved that hapless vessel. It is Christ's righteousness that saves the sinner: "Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost."

This then is the lesson. The merit is all Christ's. All would be vain without Christ. But, since Christ has provided the way of pardon, it is our duty and privilege, it is the only way of salvation, to avail ourselves of it, When the wind is blowing fair, we should hoist our sails, and stretch off on our course to the harbour of eternal peace.

THE RAINY NIGHT.

ANY years ago a missionary and his wife were trying to do good among the heathen women in India. Everything seemed against them. The women were living like degraded animals. It was a disgrace for them to know how to read even their own heathen books. They spent their time in carrying burdens, and doing all the dirty, hard, out-door work, while their husbands and sons and brothers, lived in idleness. A mother could not sit at the head of her own table, honoured and respected, but must cook the meals, and wait till her husband and sons had finished eating, before she could taste a mouthful.

The missionaries were full of pity for these poor women. They started a school to teach the little girls to read the Bible and learn to be Christians. They had some day-scholars; but what they taught them in the daytime they unlearned in their heathen homes. What they wanted was, to get one little girl to come and live with them to begin a school. None would consent, because if one should do this, she would lose caste, as they call it, after eating with the missionaries, and never again be allowed to live at home. Poor and miserable as their homes were, they loved them as well as you do yours.

The missionaries prayed and believed in God. At last He heard their prayer. One night there was a violent rain-storm, when the wind blew such a tempest that one little girl dared not go home, and so stayed at the missionaries' house, and ate her supper and breakfast with them. When she went home the next day, her ignorant parents would not let her stay, and turned her out of doors. They were angry and frightened because she had disobeyed their idol gods.

Not knowing what to do, she at length went back to the missionaries. They gladly took her in, and clothed her and fed her, and loved and comforted her, and taught her how to be a Christian. She grew up to read her Bible, and early began to serve God, married a Christian man, and is now the happy, honoured mother of Christian sons and daughters. She never has had to suffer any of the hardships that her poor heathen mother endured.

This was not all the blessing that came of that rainy night. When parents saw what a good home the little girl had, and that no harm came to her, they let their children go as boarding-scholars to the missionaries' school, and from that little beginning came a large school of one hundred and sixty scholars. Many of those heathen mothers have become Christians, and the fathers have learned to treat them kindly.

We shall never know in this world how many souls were saved, how many lives were made happy, how much joy and bliss in this world and the next came from that rainy night which forced the little girl against her will to stay with the missionaries. Let us learn to trust our heavenly Father, who can and will hear prayer. The good that came of that rainy night, that may have spoiled many plans, and seemed an inconvenience and a trial even to the missionaries themselves, will last throughout eternity.

THE CALL OF THE DISCIPLES.

READ LUKE V. 1-11.

HE Lake of Gennesaret is only about fourteen miles long, and is sometimes called the Sea of Galilee, and sometimes the Sea of Tiberias. By our Saviour's going there the ancient prophecy of Isaiah (ix. 2) was fulfilled. The people of those parts were, it seems, peculiarly dark and ignorant; He was the "great light" which they saw. He is "the true light" to every heart that receives Him. We are all dark without Him.

Now began our Lord's public ministry. John was in prison. He had done his work. Now a greater than John preached in the same words, "Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."

But now arose a need for other men to do the work of the Lord in preaching the Gospel; men who should first themselves become disciples, and learn of Jesus, and then teach others. Whom did our Lord choose?

Not the great and wise, but the humble and unlearned. The first two were Simon Peter and Andrew, brothers, and both fishermen. The next two were James and John, brothers, and fishermen also. They were called from their fishing to work of another kind. They were to be fishers still, but "fishers of men," seeking to draw men into the net of the Gospel, and to win souls to Christ: the highest work that man can be employed in.

Our Lord is pleased to employ men of all kinds in His service: the high and the low, the wise and the simple. Learning and wisdom are most useful in the ministry. But at the beginning of the Gospel, as if to show that this was a work depending not on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God, it pleased Him to call unlearned men to it. They obeyed the call at once. No sooner did He say, "Follow Me," than they left their nets and followed Him. How was this? We learn from the first chapter of St. John, that Andrew at least had been a. disciple of John the Baptist, and that he and Simon had learnt through him to know Jesus, though it was not till now that they were thus called to follow Him. But doubtless, when Jesus called them and the other two, their hearts were led by a power within to obey the call. Jesus said, "Follow Me," and by the power of the Spirit the words. reached their hearts and influenced their will. The outward call to follow Jesus is heard by us continually; may the inward voice of the Spirit speak to our hearts, and lead us

IGNATIUS OF ANTIOCH.

HE disciples were called Christians first at Antioch (Acts xi. 26). In the beginning of the second century this part of Asia Minor was active in work for Christ. The Lord Jesus had been proclaimed so boldly, that "a great number believed;" and when "tidings of these things came unto the ears of the Church which was in Jerusalem . . . they sent forth Barnabas, that he should go as far as Antioch" (Acts xi. 22).

Ignatius, the Bishop of Antioch, was a true disciple of the despised Nazarene, so true that he was condemned to die for Him. He was sentenced to be carried to Rome, where he was to be thrown to the wild beasts. He was weighted with chains, and guarded by ten soldiers, whom he calls " so many leopards." He suffered martyrdom at Rome A.D. 108.

to leave all and follow Him, and that immediately, without delay! He calls us all, if not to be "fishers of men," at least to give ourselves up to Him, and to serve Him as He appoints.

Then Jesus, accompanied by His disciples, went about all the country, teaching, preaching, healing the sick, and casting out devils. No wonder that a great stir was made, and that multitudes came to Him from all parts. They brought their sick to Him, whatever the sickness might be, "and He healed them all." No sickness could withstand almighty power, and His kindness and compassion were infinite too. He has power also to heal our souls. He came to do so. If we had been living then in that country, we too should have gone to Him for the healing of our diseases, and taken our sick friends to Him: shall we not now go to Him for the pardon of our sins, and the healing of our souls? Shall we not in prayer lay before Him both our own wants, and the wants of those we love?

The fear of the cruel death which lay before the good bishop did not daunt him. He was a brave soldier of the cross, and was able to write thus to the Church at Ephesus :"And now, in my chains, I learn that I have nothing more to desire. I have already begun to fight with wild beasts. From Syria to Rome, across sea and land, I was chained to ten leopards, whom kindness only rendered more cruel. Their outrages make me only the more the disciple of Him who was crucified."

"Watch like a good soldier of God," he wrote to a friend. "The prize is an incorruptible crown of life; be like iron under the anvil. It is the part of a good soldier to win, even though wounded. We must be ready to bear all for God, that He Himself may bear us up."

The last writings of Ignatius speak of what took place on that journey to Rome, and tell how the soldiers hurried their victim on, so that he might reach the city before the public games were over.

Here the curtain drops. "But the Christians would remember," writes one, "with what joy Ignatius had entered the arena, the dust of which was to lick up the blood of so many martyrs; and above the roaring of the lions and the imprecations of the crowd, they would hear the joyous tones of the triumphal hymn, 'Welcome, nails and cross; welcome, broken bones, violence of fierce beasts, wounded limbs and bruised body; welcome, all torture, if I may but win Jesus Christ!""

Sundayschools before Robert Raikes, just as there were "Reformers before the Reformation." Almost every great discovery has been made repeatedly, and let go again, before it has finally laid hold upon the world. As early as the sixteenth century, Charles Borromeo, nephew of Pope Pius V., founded in the parishes of his diocese of Milan a number of Sundayschools, of which many continue to the present day. He died in 1584, at the age of forty-six.

ROBERT RAIKES'S HOUSE.

About a hundred years later, the Rev. Joseph years later, the Rev. Joseph Alleine, an eminent Nonconformist of Taunton, and author of the " Alarm to the Unconverted," adopted the plan of gathering the young together for instruction on the Lord's day.

In the county of Gloucester, years before Raikes was born, Mrs. Catherine Boevey, of Flaxley Abbey, had one of the earliest, and certainly one of the pleasantest, Sunday-schools on record. Her monument in Flaxley Church, erected after her death in 1726, records her "clothing and feeding her indigent neighbours and teaching their children, some of whom every Sunday by turns she entertained at her house and condescended to examine them herself." "Six of the poor children," it is elsewhere stated, "by turns dined at her residence on Sundays, and were afterwards heard say the catechism."

In America a Sunday-school was founded between 1740 and 1747 by one Ludwig Hacker, at Ephratah, Pennsylvania, among the German Baptists settled there. After the battle of Brandywine, fought between the American colonists and the British troops in 1777, the school-room was used as a hospital, and this event occasioned the breaking up of the school.

In 1763-4 a Sunday-school was established at Catterick, Yorkshire, by the Rev. Theophilus Lindsey, conjointly with a benevolent lady named Cappe.

Miss Hannah Ball, a young Methodist lady, living at High Wycombe, started a Sunday-school in her native town in 1769. Writing to John Wesley in 1770 she said, "The children meet twice a week,every Sunday and Monday. They are a wild little company, but seem willing to be instructed. I labour among them earnestly, desiring to promote the interest. of the Church of Christ."

Another school, on a somewhat humble scale, was

established at Little Lever, a village four miles from Bolton, Lancashire, by a poor man named James Hey, or, as he was more generally termed, "Old Jemmy o' th' Hey." "Old Jemmy" employed the working days of the week in winding bobbins for weavers, and on Sundays he taught the boys and girls of the neighbourhood reading. His school assembled twice each Sunday in the cottage of a neighbour, and the time of commencing was announced by the ringing, not of a bell, but of an excellent substitute-an old brass pestle and mortar ! After a while, Mr. Adam Compton, a paper manufacturer in the neighbourhood, began to supply Jemmy with books, and subscriptions in money were given him. He was thus enabled to form three branch establishments, the teachers of which were paid one shilling each per Sunday for

their services.

In 1778, a Sunday-school was commenced in Macclesfield by the Rev. David Simpson. And in the same year it is said that the Rev. Thomas Stockafterwards Raikes's co-worker in Gloucester-had a Sunday-school at Ashbury, in Berkshire.

There can be no doubt that Robert Raikes's labours in the establishment of Sunday-schools were the direct outcome of his philanthropic work in the Gloucester gaols.

The streets of that city were full of noise and disturbance every Sunday, the churches were totally unfrequented by the poorer sort of children, and very ill-attended by their parents: they were nowhere to be seen employed as they ought to be. Had they been disposed to learn or attend to anything that was good, their parents were neither willing nor able to teach or to direct them; they were therefore a perpetual nuisance to the sober part of the community. They were riotous, impudent, and regardless of all authority whatsoever in their mode of behaviour, disrespectful in the extreme, and frequently detected in such petty offences as plainly indicated that they were on the high road to ruin, unless something could be done to rescue them.

It occurred to him, and to a worthy clergyman (the Rev. Thomas Stock), to whom he complained of the dissolute state of these poor children, that infinite would be the benefit, as well to the community as themselves, if any method could be contrived of laying them under some proper restraint and instilling some good principles into their minds.

Mr. Raikes soon began to make known his intentions to the parents, and without much difficulty obtained their consent that their children should meet him at the early service performed in the cathedral on a Sunday morning. The numbers at first were small, but their increase was rapid.

The interest which they soon discovered him to have in their welfare, which appeared in his minute inquiries into their conduct, their attainments, their situation, and every particular of their lives-all these circumstances soon induced them to fly with eagerness to receive the commands and be edified by the instruction of their best friend.