HAVE YOU FOUND YOUR

BROTHER?

"He first findeth his own brother Simon, and saith unto him, We have found the Messias ; which is, being interpreted, the Christ. And he brought him to Jesus."

"Philip findeth Nathaniel, and saith unto him, We have found him of whom Moses, in the law and the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth."

The

So it ever has been: so it is now. poor blind sinner is led to Jesus: the eyes of his understanding are enlightened with the light of life; and straightway, with gratitude and joy, he cries:

"Oh, that all the blind but knew him,

And would be advised by me;
Surely they would hasten to him,

He would cause them all to see."

The sinner, discovering the plague of his heart, is induced to try the balm in Gilead, and the physician there; and as spiritual health begins to rejoice his soul, he exclaims to his dying brother:

"There is a great Physician near,

Look up, O fainting soul, and live;
See in his heavenly smiles appear

Such ease as nature cannot give!" Some time since, a man and his wife, being tenderly admonished by a christian friend, were persuaded to visit the long neglected house of prayer. The spirit of Christ opened their eyes, and they were led to see their need of mercy, and sought and found a With God ready to forgive. thankfulness and love, in conjunction with the friend before alluded to, these new converts sought to bring other careless ones to the sanctuary; and the Lord has been pleased graciously to own and bless these

efforts, and two other couples have united themselves with the people of God.

That was a blessed Sabbath, when this christian friend, with these six souls, sat at the table of the Lord, to commemorate his dying love. Oh, who can tell the far reaching results of this simple christian effort? This friend did no more than every diɛciple can do. Who cannot say to his brother, "Come thou with us, and we will do thee good; for the Lord hath spoken good concerning Israel"?

"Would you win a soul to God?

Tell him of the Saviour's blood,
Once for dying sinners spilt,

To atone for all their guilt."

These converts are heads of families: all of them have little children to train up in the "nurture and admonition of the Lord." There are now three more family altars in the world; the world is richer, brighter, and purer for these; and when we can estimate the usefulness of a Doddridge, we may learn how to value pious parental example and instruction.

Dear reader! fellow-christian! follower of Jesus! where is thy brother? Are you earnestly, and prayerfully, and wisely seeking to win his soul? or are you sleeping over his immortal interests?

"Wake, thou that sleepest in enchanted bowers, Lest these lost years should haunt thee in the night,

When death is waiting for thy numbered hours
To take their swift and everlasting flight;
Wake, ere the earth-born charm unnerve thee

quite,

And be thy thoughts to work divine addressed;
Do something,-do it soon,-with all thy might ;-
An angel's wing would droop if long at rest,
And God himself inactive, were no longer blest."

THE DUTY OF CHRISTIANS TO HELP ONE ANOTHER IN THE WAY OF TRADE.

To the Editors of "The Church."

Dear Sirs,

I delayed forwarding a few observations on the paper in your number for June, on "The duty of christians to help one another," in the hope that what I felt might be expressed by others.

I think your correspondent is not justified in saying that "the subject is thought by

many of but little importance, or perhaps by most christians is not considered at all." I believe there is a general desire on the part of christians to deal with those of their own communion, and in other cases with christians belonging to other communions, where they can be supplied with as good an article and at as low a price as they can purchase of others; but I submit a tradesman has no right to expect persons to purchase of him at a disadvantage, either in article or in price. If this were conceded, it would go far to destroy the in

ducement, on the part of traders, to improve their mode of doing business, the progress in which is important to society at large.

I think it was the excellent John Newton who once said that a religious shoemaker ought to be the best shoemaker in the parish, and I do not know why a religious grocer or draper should not be the best grocer or draper, and he probably will be if he finds that he must not depend for custom on motives of friendship. To the majority of the heads of families, the provident and frugal laying out of their money is necessary to their comfort, and to their having anything left to aid in supporting the cause of Christ; but I feel the importance of this especially as it affects our ministers; there are many who are ready to say to those to whom they can say it in confidence, "I could make my £100 a year go further by £10, if I could lay out my money where I pleased. I need not go threadbare, nor my sons either, if I could have that £10 to spend." We know that in many cases one of the deacons is a grocer, and another a draper, and that there are some ministers who cannot relieve themselves from a running account against their

salaries, and see very little actual money. Now probably not even your correspondent would sanction this; but it is all part of the same system; and if the discussion in your pages should lead our friends who are in trade to take measures for supplying the best article at the same price as others do, it will be productive of great benefit ultimately to themselves as well as their friends, and will prevent a great many heartburnings.

I am old enough to remember the Rev. Thomas Towle, an Independent minister in London, some fifty years ago. He was a very cheerful man, and sometimes rather facetious. A friend, dining with him one day, desired the servant to give him table beer. Mr. Towle interposed, begging him to take porter, for that he could not get good table beer. The friend replied, "Oh, Sir, permit me to recommend you to deal with Mr. So-and-so, he is a gracious good man." "Oh, my dear Sir," said Mr. Towle, "my present brewer is a gracious good man, but I want a gracious good brewer." I am, dear Sirs,

BY THE REV. JAMES MURSELL.

"Thou shalt come to thy grave in a full age, even as a shock of corn cometh in in his season." Thus does Eliphaz the Temanite describe the death of an aged servant of God. And among the figures which sparkle like thick-set gems upon the page of Scripture, there is, perhaps, none more luminously illustrative, or more largely suggestive than this. The scene it depicts might arrest the gaze of angels ! The threescore years and ten which have passed over the head of that venerable saint, sprinkling his locks with frost, and writing their traces in furrows on his brow, have served, by the varied experience they have brought, sanctified to that high end by the Spirit of all grace, to develop the stature, and mature the strength, of the inner man. And at length, when his discipline is complete, like a shock ripe for the harvest, he

bows before the sickle of the great Reaper, and is gathered home.

But rich as such a scene assuredly is in interest and instruction, there is a sight to our thinking more impressive still, and yielding a yet brighter evidence of the power and value of religion-the death of a christian child. To the old man the life of earth is a memory-a retrospect of spent joy, quenched light, and vanished beauty. To the only joy which remains to stir his hope, death must introduce him. It is far otherwise with the child. His life lies all before him; and hope, as yet unchilled by the sadness of remembered disappointment, draws out that life to almost indefinite duration, and invests it with a bright and mystic charm. The cup of joy in his hand is scarcely tasted. The light of his day is the light of dawn, every ray prophetic of brighter hours to come. He has thus more of life to part with in dying than the old man, and the victory of faith over death

is, in his case, so much the more marked and splendid. Here, indeed, "death is swallowed up of victory." To present to your readers, for their study and profit, a few brief notices of one such scene, occurring within the circle of the writer's own observation, is the purpose of the following lines.

Mary Anne Page was born in Leicester, February 16, 1840. From her infancy she was weakly, and the accidental dropping of a stone upon her foot when she was about seven years old induced a lameness, which, by depriving her of the power of taking exercise to any sufficient extent, served to perpetuate and increase her debility. She was thus, in great measure, denied participation in those active enjoyments which usually engage the thoughts and energies of children. But she was not without compensation. Her mind had much of that precocity, which is found, with a proverbial and by no means unaccountable frequency, in association with bodily weakness. And that weakness itself, by driving her to other sources of amusement, especially to books, had the effect, in its turn, of quickening and developing her natural intelligence. With her, reading was no mere pastime. The pleasure she derived from it was no negative or listless feeling-it was lively and deep. Yet it was, at the same time, of a very different kind from that which is with too many the sole result of readingan excitement which fades with the closing of the volume, leaving on the mind no trace of its presence save the enervation and confusion it has wrought. She read to higher and more permanent purpose than this. Books were for her a mine in which she sought for gems which memory might treasure, a garden from which she plucked, not only flowers that should wither, but fruit that should remain. Hence, as might be inferred, her choice of books, from an early age, was not that which we are accustomed to find made by a child. The instructive were, for the most part, preferred to the merely amusing, while such as were trifling and unprofitable she regarded with indifference and dislike. Even in reading the lighter style of books, her spirit and aim were more lofty than is generally found associated with the perusal of such works. Tales were valued, not alone or chiefly for the amusement they brought, but for the instruction they conveyed. Those designed and adapted to impress the lessons

of truth held a higher place in her esteem than those which found their only purpose in the entertainment of the passing hour. It was her characteristic remark, when disappointed by finding less of these solid qualities than she had hoped for in the volume she was reading, "This is a very childish book, but I'll try and learn something from it." Books which, to most of her age, would appear dry and repulsivethose, for example, intended to enforce the claims of religion-she ranked amongst her chief favourites. The intelligence which characterised her love of reading was evinced by her fondness for reading aloud to her companions. To the listless reader this is too great and too consecutive an effort he chooses rather to yawn over his book alone. The person who resorts to books for excitement merely, prefers to "devour" his precious volume undisturbed by the presence of a companion, and unhindered by the slow drudgery of pronouncing every word he reads. But the true and intelligent lover of reading finds his own pleasure in, and appreciation of, his book enhanced, as well by the closer attention necessarily involved in reading aloud, as by the sharing of his enjoyment with others. It was thus with this little girl. Where her diffidence permitted her to feel sufficiently at ease, she loved to read to her friends, that so they might participate in the pleasure and profit she herself received.

But though thus finding her highest and most keenly relished enjoyment in pursuits to which most of her age are little prone, it must not be imagined that she felt no sympathy with the mirth, and no interest in the amusements, of childhood. She was no young ascetic, standing disdainfully aloof from the innocent gaieties of early life. It is true that continued ill-health had wrought its natural effect upon her spirits, tinging them with a sobriety not common to her years. It is true, also, that her tastes would never permit her to make these lighter pursuits the main occupation of her life. Yet her disposition was as far removed from moping melancholy on the one hand, as from idle and vapid frivolity on the other. While her strength was sufficient, she was ready to mingle with sprightliness in the more active sports of her companions; and, when weakness forbade this, those quieter amusements which that weakness allowed, were shared and enjoyed with real zest and

appreciation. These recreations, however, held their appropriate place in her esteem. They were not with her, as they are with too many even of her seniors, the chief objects of life and thought. They were made secondary and subservient to higher and more profitable pursuits. She showed, in her character and deportment, that it is possible, even in childhood, for cheerfulness to be the companion of sobriety, and for a lively and gladsome interest in the lighter pleasures of youth to be found in association with a constant and hearty regard to loftier and more serious claims. Those, indeed, who take other views of life-with whom joy means frivolity, and seriousness is the synonyme of sorrow-will, probably, deem that such a life as hers must be most melancholy. Such persons may congratulate themselves that they have never tasted sadness, we pity them, for they know not the meaning of joy.

Music was a recreation of which she was devotedly fond; and no one could listen to her playing without perceiving indications of a true native genius for the art. There was, indeed, no brilliant mechanical display, whose only effect is to show the efficacy of practice to enable the fingers to execute with precision evolutions whose rapidity the eye can scarcely follow; but there was that which no practice can give, and no art can simulate-the power of expressing feeling with delicacy and intensity, by the strains she played. Indeed, this seemed to be her chosen medium for the expression of emotions for which she had no words; and he must have been most dull of ear and heart who could listen to the deep pathos with which she would play the simplest melody, and be conscious of no thrill of responsive feeling.

Her love of nature was so intense as to

amount almost to a passion. Nor was it the vague, undiscriminating feeling usual with children. It was not only the broader and more obvious features of grandeur and magnificence which called forth her wonder and delight; her eye was quick to detect those minuter and more hidden beauties which crowd about the path of every day's travel, but which coyly veil themselves from all but those who are earnest in the search for them, and delicate of sight to appreciate them when found. Not only the sea, the sky, the mountain, but the flower, the shell, the insect, had for her a deep and enchaining charm; and often when too weak or

weary to walk, she would surround herself with such treasures, gathered in her rambles, to be gazed at again and again with untiring admiration, and almost affection, when feebleness forbade her to quit her couch. One who was with her, when about eleven years old, in the midst of the beauties of the Isle of Wight, tells of the profound emotions of awe and rapture which that scenery stirred in her young heart. Walking one day in Shanklin Chine, she said, "This place makes me wish to be still. I cannot think how people can just walk through such a place, as if they were on a turnpike road; one would think they had no souls!"

But warm and true as was her love of Nature, she never suffered the effect to take the place in her esteem which belonged to the Cause, the machine, exquisitely perfect, yet unintelligent, to usurp the adoration due to the all-wise and omnipotent Designer. There are in this, as there were in former days, "fools" who say there is no God, men who, in the name of philosophy, would dethrone the Monarch of the universe, and then call upon us to admire the absurdities of order without government, laws without a lawgiver, works without a creator, who would banish from the great temple of creation every ray of the glory of Jehovah, and then solemnly summon us to burn incense before a darkened and dishonoured shrine! Not thus, in her safer simplicity, thought this child: "I wonder," were her words while at the Isle of Wight, "how any one can be here and not love to think of God!" With a truer vision than that of these self-styled seers, she beheld in every mountain and in every flower, in the rolling ocean and in the twinkling dewdrop, the traces of His power and skill who is "wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working." When will the wise learn wisdom, and the philosopher prove his claim to the title he assumes, by becoming "as a little child"?

Indeed, from very early life the thought of God was to her a habitual and a practical one. "I never," declares her mother, "remember the time when she had not a great love and reverence for all that was sacred, and a fear of offending God." Her conscience was quick and tender. When about six years old she had been sent on an errand. On her way she lost a half-penny from the money entrusted to her, and, to avoid the displeasure of her parents, repre

sented the price of the article she had been commissioned to purchase as greater by that sum than it really was. The thought of the sin she had committed, she subsequently declared, haunted and distressed her for many days and nights afterwards; and the circumstance was one on which, to the close of her life, she looked back with real pain. The incident is trifling, but it is characteristic. Comparatively few, it is to be feared, of that age, would have felt, in the uttering of such an untruth, more than a momentary pang of shame. They would

have measured the magnitude of the fault by the smallness of the sum which constituted the difference between her statement and the truth. And to not many, even of those older than she was, would such a "sin of their youth "be still a subject of distressful thought, though years had passed since the time of its commission.

She was glad when it was said unto her, Let us go into the house of the Lord." And this "gladness " was not a fitful feeling, roused by novelty and sustained by mere curiosity or custom, but a warm and steady attachment to the ordinances of God's house, having its root in principle, and nourished by her appreciation of the great ends which those ordinances are designed to subserve. Even when her lameness rendered walking a most difficult and painful effort, she allowed no obstacle not absolutely insurmountable to detain her from the services of the sanctuary. And when there she was no listless or indis

criminating hearer. Her quick discernment, and high estimation of the more sterling qualities of preaching, clearness in expounding, and earnestness in recommending, the "glorious gospel of the blessed God,"

,"-might shame many listeners of riper years. When these were absent, no profundity of thought, no grace of eloquence, could compensate her for their loss; while, if they were present, their value in her eyes was not diminished by the homeliness of the garb in which they might appear. During the sojourn in the Isle of Wight to which reference has been more than once made, she had heard a sermon from an evidently devoted, but plain and unlettered preacher of the truth. The text was 1 Kings xviii. 43. On leaving the chapel she expressed with warmth to the friend who had accompanied her, the great enjoyment she had felt in the service. "It was a great effort to come, but I am so glad I

did! I often find, when I have had a struggle over anything of this kind and have overcome, that I have had my reward. So you see God does not treat us as we should those who were unwilling to obey and please us." "I love," she continued after a pause, "to hear these men preach and pray; they seem to wish to do good, not to make a show. You see he had not learned grammar; and yet he could pray, and preach about prayer; and how earnestly he seemed to wish us all to come boldly to Christ."

Indeed, an utter hatred of all hypocrisy and display was one of the most stronglymarked features of her character. She was

a close and keen observer of actions. Profession was nothing to her unless its sincerity were attested by deeds. The affection, or the religion, which is loudly declared with the lip, but without witness in the life, she reckoned valueless. Even counsel, good in itself, seemed to have no weight with her, if it came from one whose conduct she had reason to suspect was inconsistent with his advice. "What is the use," she would say, "of people talking when they do not practise? it does me no good."

This feeling, as it appeared at least to the writer, was in her case exemplified somewhat excessively. There was danger of its becoming an unamiable trait (almost the only one) in her disposition. It was the result of a jealous conscientiousness and transparent sincerity, which rendered anything like untruthfulness and inconsistency almost incomprehensible by her; but it needed watching, lest it should degenerate into the exhibition of a spirit foreign from the love which "thinketh no evil." A longer experience, had she been spared for it, of the difficulties and temptations of the christian's course, would, doubtless, have gone far to rectify this tendency; and, while it served to foster rather than to impair her own tenderness of conscience, would have modified the somewhat undue sternness of her judgment of others.

Nothing would be further from the truth, however, than the inference which might, not unnaturally, be drawn from the remarks just made, that this unsparing dislike of inconsistency in others was associated with lofty thoughts of herself before God. Often, indeed, these two manifestations of character are found together. Very frequently the whine, "How bad the world is !" is but another and more decent style of uttering the self-plaudit, "How good I am!" But