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impossible to discern whither they tended. Rolling close by, but no longer visible, was the treacherous sea, and one misstep would have plunged us into its fatal depths. This circumstance brought very vividly before my mind the position into which Christian people are sometimes brought on their way to heaven. They go on for months, perhaps for years, and the road is plain before them; nothing occurs to perplex their minds or to harass their hearts. Then, quite unexpectedly, there comes a change in their experience; darkness settles down upon their prospects; they find themselves at a spot where many paths branch out to the right and to the left, and they fear to move a step lest the path they choose should quickly bring them to the verge of some terrible abyss, into which they may fall and be lost. This picture is not overdrawn. It is true to the heart and life of thousands. We cannot tell how soon it may be true to the heart and life of some of us. Truly, in such circumstances, there is, on our part, the deepest need of wisdom.

8. The Use of Affliction and Adversity.

Affliction and adversity are not, as we are sometimes apt to suppose, the mere random strokes of a blind Fate. They are rather the wisely chosen means whereby the Father of our spirits seeks to find His way into our hearts, and to bless us with His love. Here is a pool in the depth of a forest. It might be very lovely, very beautiful; but it is closed in with high trees and thick brushwood, so that the beams of the sun cannot pierce through to its surface, and it is dull and stagnant, and what vegetation there is around its margin is weak and sickly. But a storm arises, and some of the trees that girdle the pool fall with a crash. And now what a change! Through the gaps which the storm has made the sun shines in upon the pool, and its waters become bright, and the drooping flowers and grasses around it lift themselves up to greet the light, and, by-and-by, the pool becomes a gem of beauty, fringed with the greenest vegetation,. scented with the sweetest odours, and, like a perfect mirror, reflecting all the exquisite loveliness that surrounds it. Even so affliction and adversity are often sent as storms to clear away the dense growths of selfishness and worldliness which are hemming in our souls, and to let into our souls the light of the Sun of Righteousness that we may become spiritually bright and beautiful, covered over with all sweet, and fair, and comely graces. This, I say, is the purpose of

God in ordaining for us affliction and adversity. He pulls down our dearest projects, He takes from us our fondest loves, He crushes into the dust our loftiest hopes, that He may make a way for Himself to get to our hearts with life, with blessedness, and with peace. But how often do we fail to perceive this! We think that all these things, these disappointments, losses, troubles, are against us; and so we blind ourselves to the good they are designed to do us; we miss the benign and blessed issues they are meant to work out for us.

9. Doing Good Unconsciously.

A great deal of the good we do is done unconsciously, without any intention on our part. We are in this respect like the bees that come to our gardens in summer, seeking honey for their own behoof, and yet all the while unconsciously gathering pollen about their bodies and carrying it from blossom to blossom, and in this way really fertilising the sensitive carpels of the flowers they visit. We often go to our fellow-men with no purpose whatever of imparting to them any spiritual good; but if we carry about with us the pure and gracious influences of a Christlike character we shall, without knowing it or meaning it, become the instruments of blessing to them. By the undesigned effects of our spiritual goodness we shall impregnate their hearts with good; through contact with us they will, by-and-by, bring forth beauty and fruit.

10. The Advantages of Early Piety.

The young should bear in mind, not only that it is easier to become pious in early life, but also that the piety itself will have in it more of strength and stability than that which may be of later growth. There are some trees that send out in their youth a deep-descending root, and are called in consequence tap-rooted. These trees have a much firmer, stronger grip of the soil than others, and hence, in the time of storm, when others are torn out of their places by the wind and flung down upon the ground, they stand erect with comparatively little loss. If you would have in after-life a piety which shall be stable enough to withstand the fierce gusts of temptation that will come sweeping around you, then it is essential that now, in the season of youth, when growth is swift and decided, you strike deep down into the rich soil of God's truth the strong roots of a living, healthful faith.

11. The Way in which Kindness should be Done.

The very method of imparting a blessing is often itself a blessing. The very manner in which a kindness is shown is frequently of more value than the kindness itself. And yet how many are the instances in which we seek to give help to others and never think of the way in which our help can be most fittingly rendered! The consequence is that not unfrequently we discourage where we meant to inspirit, and wound where we meant to heal. Like Cowper's rose, the objects of our compassion and attention are worse instead of being better for our aid.

"I hastily seized it, unfit as it was,

For a nosegay all dripping and drowned,
And swinging it rudely, too rudely, alas!

I snapped it-it fell to the ground.
Just such, I exclaimed, is the pitiless part
Some act by the delicate mind."

12. The Peril of Lofty Spiritual Experiences.

Every sublime
Some months

Every spiritual feeling carries with it a great peril. height indicates the possibility of a tremendous fall. ago I was visiting the ruins of an English castle. I ascended to the highest point that was accessible, and there revelled in the sight of the beautiful landscape that stretched for miles around. When I came down I was told that a few weeks before a young gentleman, then on his wedding tour, while standing on the same height, became so entranced with the spectacle before him that he forgot the narrow strip of stone on which he was standing, and, by one false step, lost his balance, and fell headlong to the ground, and was taken up in an insensible and dying state. When the story was related to me I thought :-"Ah! what a lesson is there in that mournful incident for the Christian in his highest moods and his loftiest ranges of experience." How is it with you, my readers? Is your spiritual life high and bounding? Are you living on a lofty plane of spiritual prosperity and enjoyment? If so, be watchful; take heed to your ways; rely not on your supposed security; your feet are still snared with perils, and one wrong step, taken in a moment of thoughtlessness, may bring you down, and, because great is your height, great will be your fall. B. WILKINSON, F.G.S.

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Missionary Intelligence.

E greatly regret that the pressure on our space during last year precluded the possibility of our devoting even a single page to missionary work not connected with the denomination to which we belong. Our own society chronicles its history monthly in the Herald, which we are proud to associate with our own magazine. Other societies are busy in various parts of the missionary field. We watch their progress with sympathetic interest, and unfeignedly rejoice in the measure of Divine blessing which is vouchsafed to them. We will endeavour this year to supply the information concerning their operations which we were last year compelled to omit-much, we are sure, to the regret of many of our readers.

The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions have recently held their seventy-second anniversary in the city of St. Louis. The reports testified to steady prosperity. The Board has seventeen missions under its supervision. The chief of these are in Africa, Turkey, Japan, China, and India. The Zulu Mission has been reinforced, and a new work has been successfully started at Bihé. Of the work in Japan the account was most encouraging. "There has never been anything like it in the history of modern missions. No meetings are so largely attended and so full of interest as those where the new religion is discussed. In the matter of selfsupport and aggressive work on their own part, among students and churches, the Japanese lead all others. Of ninety young men in the Kioto Training School, eighty-one are meeting their own expenses, a thing quite without precedent in the missions of the Board." In the Turkish empire the Board has ninety-four churches, with 6,726 members, and thirty-nine seminaries, colleges, and high-schools for the Christian education of youth. We rejoice to read that 1,000 young men are enjoying the advantages of higher education, and that "the one small school for girls at Constantinople twenty years ago is represented to-day by eighteen seminaries, with nearly 700 pupils, and very many common schools in all parts of the country." During the past year, the circulation of the Scriptures in that benighted empire has been "three-fold greater than ever before." The Board has added forty missionaries to its staff, and nineteen others are "under appointment, soon to go forth."

The Church Missionary Intelligencer for December contains a large amount of deeply-interesting information. We can only very briefly summarise the principal facts. From a valuable paper, entitled "Religious and other Statistics of Sierra Leone," where missionary work has been carried on, with varying success, for about eighty years, we learn that, according the census of last April, "the popu

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lation on the peninsula of Sierra Leone, including British Quiah, is now returned at 56,862, which, when the adjacent islands and British Sherbro are included, is raised to a total of 60,546. Of this population, the Church of England claims 18,860; the Wesleyans of all denominations, 17,098; Lady Huntingdon's connexion, 2,717; the Baptists, about 400; the Roman Catholics, 369-total 39,444. There are 5,178 Mohammedans. The remainder of the population (amounting to nearly 16,000) is pagan-about one-half of which is in Quiah and Sherbrorecently added to our British possessions, to be regarded "as missionary fields, in which the energies of the native Church should develop themselves." In reviewing the history of the Sierra Leone Mission, the writer says: "With all its imperfections, the colony is a witness for Christ; it is a triumph over flagrant and most abominable evils. There have been in it noble instances of Christian faith and practice, the more remarkable from the deplorable surroundings in which they have shone forth." He admits that there are "shortcomings in Sierra Leone Christianity," but asks for " a reasonable allowance for human infirmity, for the evil example of Europeans as well as pagans, for the manifold temptations from within and without assailing those who may in some sense be considered as neophytes in the midst of heathenism." "Upon a retrospect of the past there is good hope for the future." A new station of the Church Missionary Society has been established by the Rev. S. Trivett, near Fort Macleod, among the Blood Indians, a branch of the famous Black feet. The Bishop of Saskatchewan has given an interesting account of his first visit to this people, of the reception he met with, of the heathenism in which they are living, and of the prospects of the work newly undertaken. "There never was," he says, "in the history of Indian Missions in British North America so fair an opening for winning the souls of so many thousand heathens to the Lord Jesus Christ." The Society has now, after four or five years of over-supply of men, relatively to means, to put forth an earnest appeal for additional missionaries-some to fill vacancies, and others to enter upon new fields of labour.

The December number of the Chronicle of the London Missionary Society opens with a valuable paper on Educational Work in the Society's Calcutta Mission. A noble building, of which an engraving is given, was erected some years ago, in which 750 youths and young men are daily instructed in the Gospel. These pupils are not separated from their homes, into which they undoubtedly introduce not a little of the leavening influence of Christian truth. The primary objects of the institution are "the conversion of the senior students to Christ, and the raising up of a thoroughly trained native ministry. To these may be added, as indirect results, the opening of branch schools and rural missions by native missionaries trained in the institution, special services for English-speaking Hindoos in the large lecture-room, and also the advancement of female education." The import-. ance of these objects is seen at a glance; and the last two are certainly not less important than the others. The lecture-room services have only recently been

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