to the soul, and health to the bones." "A word spoken in due season, how good is it!" Help those in your own circle as opportunity offers, and if Providence permits you so to do, carry the gospel message to the poor.

Many who find it difficult to say what they would have been frequently privileged to convey to others a word of Christian counsel or encouragement by means of letterwriting. How much good has been done in this way that "day" will "declare" when every man's work shall be "made manifest;" when "ten thousand times ten thousand" shall surround God's throne, many of whom, through His grace, will owe their conversion, or their establishment in the faith, their successful resistance of some pressing temptation, their deliverance from some overwhelming doubt or fear, or their renewed vigour in the work of Christ, to some "word" perhaps involuntarily uttered, or mourned over as feeble and imperfect, but which yet has proved to some grateful and exulting soul "a word in season."

There are, blessed be God, many ways of doing good, many means of advancing the cause of truth and holiness: the timely gift, be it great or small, that increases some fund for Christian labour, or that touches the poor man's heart and softens him to listen more willingly to the word of eternal life; the tract, dropped here and there by those who have no courage to offer it to another; and above all else, the prayer that has "power with God," and prevails. We do not undervalue other means of Christian usefulness, or deny that many may be powerfully instrumental in promoting the work of Christ who never spoke a word in His cause, but we do say that that Christian must be sadly "wanting" in some way whose heart does not smite him as one, and another, and another fleeting opportunity of speaking a word for the Saviour passes by unheeded, while with sure though stealthy steps that night draws on when the tongue which God gave him to be employed in His service shall lie "silent in the grave."

HEN earthly notes, howe'er so sweet the tone,
Discordant sound to me,

WE

My true, my tried old friend-my very own~
Thankful I turn to thee.

I want to hear thy well-known, cordial voice,
Look in thy gladsome face,

To feel I may, though sorrowing, rejoice,
And for my need find grace.

They say strange things of thee, old friend.
People who slightly know

Thy shoals, and reefs, and quicksands, may depend
Upon themselves to toil and row

Them through the dark perplexities they find

False balances and doubt, unequal ways;

Conflicting paths of thought;

Things, they say, tarnish the Almighty's praise-
Here all thy foes have sought.

But otherwise they seem to me, old friend.

'Tis no uncharted sea.

My pilot knows its soundings, and will lend
That knowledge free to me.

Come, Mem'ry, bear thy witness here! Speak true.
Did e'er this volume say

Aught of my God, I may not set my seal to
Even in my short day?

Experience, come! and also speak thy word.
Did e'er my Bible tell

Falsely of good to them who love the Lord?
Found I not all things well?

Come, Intellect! and let thy powers bear
Upon each questioned point;

Not one where evidence exist not-where
All incomplete, disjoint,

The circumstance half hid from sceptic eyes

May leave a scope for doubt;

But where deep thought may well reward the wise Who search truth fairly out;

And judge thou righteously.

Aught does this Book imply

Which fact and prophecy

May not well justify?

Bear witness, Grace! which shines within my heart

And verifies His love

Who called me to Him, and bestowed a part

In destinies above.

Nay, I will not "lie down again," old friend.
Prophet of God, now nay!

Trouble did call; so did my instinct send
Me to thy side. I pray

Thee speak the word-the very word thou know'st
Is for my need. To-night

Not Samuel's office mine, to tell thee most,

But Eli's thine, to light

The lamp of God which flick'ring burns

Yet in my soul's recess.

Speak, Lord! Thy servant hears, and anxious turns

To feel how Thou wilt bless.

Say it again, old friend; and yet again.

Can I too often hear

How God knows all my weakness and my pain,

Yet bids me not to fear?

Say it again-how, when my footsteps slip,
His hand will hold me up;

How, though unwilling I avert my lip,
He holds dark sorrow's cup,

And measures rightly all He bids me drink.
Tell me how Jesus felt

When His humanity, like mine, did shrink,

Till agonised, He knelt

To ask, "if possible the cup might pass.
Tell me, how when I doubt

And wonder, dark seeing as in a glass
Things I dare think about

Only with trembling-then, old friend, relate
How I need not fear,

But quietly, with confidence, may wait
Till He makes clear

Whose will in darkness these as yet doth shroud
Ere the eternal day;

Yet has revealed His promise

That the cloud

Shall some time pass away.

T. D.

Thus

E is the Rock of our salvation: with what firmness and stability did He stand amid all the pitiless storms which beat upon Him! Think of an ocean rock: behold how the stormy winds impel the rising waters, and how the dashing waves assail it all around till the rock appears covered with their foaming fury. They are broken, however, by being dashed against it. The rock survives their rage, and still lifts up its head; and, although the storm has beaten upon it, yet it has not enfeebled its strength, or weakened its stability. waves and storms raged around the Rock of our salvation; and He seemed covered and hid, but it was only whilst those storms were weakening their fury and spending their strength. He then emerged from amid the lashing fury of the tempestuous waves; and never had this Rock appeared stronger in its power, firmer in its stability, or more glorious in its majesty. From this Rock the streams of salvation flow through our guilty world, and "whoever will, may of those streams partake."

M

R. ALLEN, who had recently been appointed a town missionary in had one day completed a long round of visits, and was about to turn his steps homewards, when, passing a cottage, he heard from within a sound of reading; and one or two words which caught his ear made him feel quite sure that they were the words of Holy Scripture. The reader was a girl of seventeen or eighteen, and sitting in an arm-chair near the table on which she rested her Bible was an old grey-headed man, listening with reverent attention. They were both so completely absorbed that they had not noticed his approach till he gently knocked at the door.

"My

"I hope I am not interrupting you," he said. name is Allen, and I am a town missionary. My business