anything so very bad as to make you not speak

to me.'

'You say I only scold, so I had better not speak at all,' was Ethel's short, cold reply.

'I am sure I am very sorry for my unfortunate speech; I wish I had never said it; but I was put out, I suppose. But I am very sorry; won't you forgive me, Ethel?' and he held out his hand.

But Ethel was folding up her work, and affected not to see it. She was leaving the room, but Guy stopped her.

'Ethel, don't go until you have forgiven me; I am really very sorry.'

Do not hinder me, Guy; I am going to practise my music.'

And she went into the drawing-room and shut the door; but not before she had heard Guy's impatient answer

Ethel, you are most unforgiving! if you do not call that bearing malice, I don't know what is!' Guy took up his hat and went out. He was angry certainly, but his anger cooled down before he had gone half the length of the village street; and he thought to himself he should make no further attempt at reconciliation: Ethel might take her own time for him.

Just as he reached the turn up to the vicarage, Mr Linton overtook him: he was going, as he did occasionally, to take tea and spend the evening with Mr Fletcher, the clergyman.

Guy passed on through the village to a house a little way out of it. A pleasant-looking house it was. Though small, it stood in a gay, cheerful little garden, and was inhabited by one Mrs Gordon, a widow lady. Guy opened the door and went in. It was not the first visit by a great many that he had paid there, and none knew so well as himself how often he went, or for what purpose.

Mrs Gordon looked up as he entered, and her face brightened visibly.

'Oh, Guy, I am so pleased to see. You are just the very person I was wishing for.'

6

Then I am very glad I have come, Mrs Gordon. How are you going on? Here is the cold and frost come again after the rain.'

'Yes, and brought my rheumatism with it.' 'Be thankful it is not "rheumatics," Mrs Gordon,' replied Guy, with a grave face, but with a comical expression lurking in his eye corners; 'that is a great deal worse than rheu

matism; at least so Jenny Cartwright informed me the other day.'

Mrs Gordon smiled.

'I am sure this is bad enough; and the worst of it is, I have none of the lotion left that did me so much good last time; no one has been going to Middlebank lately.'

'Red flannel is the best thing, Jenny says. But you must not think about it now, for I am going to tell you a story;' and Guy launched out into some village gossip, told in his most ludicrous manner, until the old lady forgot her pain and laughed heartily. But she grew grave again after a while.

'You remind me more and more of my dear son Lawrence, Guy; he was just as you are at your age. I wonder if my old eyes will ever see him again !'

'To be sure they will. And in the meantime I mean to act the son to you, you know, unless I follow him to sea; which I fear is not very likely.'

'No, Guy, your father does not wish it; and I am sure you will not go without.'

'Well, I must be off now, Mrs Gordon.' 'But it is not late, and you have not been long; and you always cheer me, Guy.'

Do I? that's right. But you see I cannot stay any longer now, because I am going to Middlebank."

it

The old lady started.

'Not for me, Guy?'

'Yes, for you; why should not I?'

'But Middlebank is full four miles off, and is getting late.'

'You said just now it was not late, Mrs Gordon,' replied Guy, with a smile.

'Not for going home; but for going to Middlebank it most certainly is. Do not think of it, Guy; I am sure your parents would not like it.'

'I will take the risk of that. Besides I shall not walk; I will borrow a horse of some one. And I am sure you will be glad of the lotion, Mrs Gordon.'

'Yes, there is no doubt about that. But I would much rather you did not go for me, Guy; you are too good.'

'Lawrence would have done it, Mrs Gordon, so I shall. You shall have your lotion tonight; if it is to be had at Middlebank.' (To be continued.)

A

FRUITFUL source of uneasiness to the believer is the disposition to expect too much from the world and too little from the Lord Jesus Christ. We expect to receive from the world what we would have a right to look for, only if the world were what it would be had there never been any sin. We fail to raise our hopes to the full height of our privileges in the Lord Jesus, because we imagine Him too much on a level with our own nature. We over-estimate the world; we under-estimate the Lord Jesus Christ. The complaint so often made of earthly friendships has no just ground. Friends may be found few and unreliable. This is not, however, anything of which to complain. It is something for which to be thankful. No person needs more than one bosom friend on earth; and he who has found one such, proved true and reliable by the furnace of affliction, has got all that he needs, and all that he has a right to expect. Our Father in heaven may give us one confidential friend for the purpose of enabling us to realise therefrom the preciousness of Jesus as a confidential friend, 'the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.' He gives us but one such friend, that we may be kept from the snare of forgetting Jesus, among the entanglements of too many objects claiming our affections. For the same reason the dearest friends are often sundered by death, or so separated as to see each other seldom. Thus cut off from those we might love too well on earth, we are laid under a necessity of seeking deeper and more uninterrupted companionship with Jesus. The meetings of friends on earth are at best little more than the meetings of travellers on the desert, crossing each others path but for a moment, and then gone. Yet they are nevertheless precious, and more delightful to the memory than the vision that flitted across the patriarch's way when Jacob went on his way, and the angels of God met him.' Gen. xxxii. 1. In that meeting there was more to dazzle the view, but less to impart blessedness to the heart in the remembrance, than we are now often made to feel when, amid life's weary wilderness, those whom our hearts know and love better than we can know and love strangers, though angels, meet us with

the warm sympathies and affections of loving ones-if not shining ones-allied to us by the ties of our common nature as men. Talk about meeting with angels! Why, there is far more blessedness in meeting with tried and cherished friends, who are bound to us by human hearts, by human sympathies, by sanctified sorrows, by conflicts, struggles, and triumphs, in our pathway of tears, onward to glory. Were I to meet an angel, I could but hail him, however glorious, as a stranger, at best. But when I meet a friend who has known me in trial and sorrow, who has had no earthly happiness greater than that of praying for me, day by day, when we were pursuing our different paths afar from each other on the dusty thoroughfares of life-in such a friend I meet what is to me more than angel; and the fact that the friend, instead of being robed in the garments of glittering white, around the angels of old, comes to me veiled with the dark mantle of our common toil-worn humanity, only makes me feel more tenderly how closely he is allied to me by human sympathies, sorrows, and hopes.

And such a friend is Jesus. He is not an angel; He is a man. He is touched with the feeling of our infirmities.' 'He can have compassion on the ignorant, and on them that are out of the way; for that He himself also is compassed with infirmity.' The sympathy of Jesus is as exquisitely tender as His wisdom is infinite and His power almighty. The best, truest, most cherished friend should be treasured and studied as a living gem, on which the Holy Spirit has cut these lineaments of love, for enabling us to learn therefrom something of the features so attractive in the friendship of Jesus. When, even amid earthly frailty, so much that is precious is found in the earthly friend the type-what must we be able to find in Him whom earthly loves do very dimly shadow; in whom are hid all treasures, not only of wisdom and knowledge, but also of sympathy and love! While the earthly image, in the bosom of a friend, is so priceless and attractive, what must be the glorious reality in Him who is God-who is love! No expectations can be extravagant, however great, that may be formed of the loveliness, the friendship, and the sympathy of Jesus. -Presbyterian.

said he, I am nothing, as I told you, but a poor cobbler, but I feel when I sit here and work at my stool, that the good Master is looking at me; and when I take a stitch, it is a stitch; and when I put on a heel tap, it is not paper, but good leather.' It is not the work we do upon earth that makes the upshot of life, but it is the way in which we do that work—it is the motive-Thou God seest me.'

-Sunday School Journal.

cres.

[July 1, 1869.

Surely, if such a thing could be,
Noon kept its gentlest rays for thee;
The lightest of the winds of morn
Across thy weary brow was borne.

The freshest dew that eve ere shed
Fell in its coolness on thy head;
The fairest of the flowers that bloom
Reserved for thee their rich perfume.

Yet though this earth which thou hast made
Its best for thee might hourly spread,
And though, if such a thing might be,
The best of sunlight fell on thee;

Man had no love to give thee here,
No words of peace, no look of cheer;
No tenderness his heart could move,
He gave thee hatred for thy love.

Thy best of love to him was given,
The freest, truest grace of heaven;
His worst of hatred fell on thee,
His worst of scorn and enmity.

Life, as its gift for him, thy love
Brought in its fulness from above;
Death, of all deaths the sharpest, he
In his deep hate prepared for thee,
O love and hate! thus face to face
Ye meet in this strange meeting-place!
O sin and grace, O death and life,
Who, who shall conquer in this strife?

"Father, forgive," is love's lone cry,
While hatred's crowd shouts "Crucify!"
How deeply man his God doth hate,
God's love to man how true and great!

Love bows the head in dying woe,
And hatred seems to triumph now;
Life into death is fading fast,
And death seems conqueror at last.

But night is herald of the day,

And hate's dark triumph but makes way For love's eternal victory,

When life shall live, and death shali die.