250 CHASTENING. can get any peace, or joy, or hope; scorching heat; to-day it seems as if they just need to be emptied entirely there would not be a winter chill again, of self-confidence, and to lie down at or blighting blast of frost to check. the feet of the Omnipotent God, Wait a little, and more of the blossoms crying, "Save me." They need to be will be lying on the ground than are left reminded often of this, and to be on the tree; and so it is in the spiritual taught to lie simply in the arms of life. There are many summer Christheir God and Father, just as the tians; there are few, few winter ChrisWell, what proves man weaned child does in its mother's arms; tians, who can stand out reproach for to resign all confidence but in the arm Jesus' name. of Jehovah, all wisdom but the wisdom to be a Christian is, that, in the hour of Emanuel, every source of enjoy-of trial, he is still the same; others ment sometimes but the one pure, may flee, others may mock, and others lasting, uncreated source of joy, even may fall; but the grace of his God is God himself, in whom they may rejoice with him still. Do not fear trials, continually. Oh, that his own might beloved friends, if you have got within become wearied of trusting in the you the grace of Emanuel; for, when creature! Oh, that we were contented grace is put into the fire, it never to drink deep, full draughts of the burns, never is consumed-it stands Divine consolations! This is what we the test. Put gold into the crucible, require trials to teach us. It is only it will take no harm; it may melt, but Fear not that trials will by trials that we can be enabled to it will come out the purer and more say, "All my well-springs are in Thee." precious. Ah, believer, this is what you must ever extinguish grace in your soul; Put into the crucible any seek after, this is what you must strive all that is of God will remain unafter, even to rejoice in God alone; to touched. withdraw yourselves much from every imitation of gold, it will not stand the Be Ah, no! Therefore, when your proother, and to get your comfort from fire merely because it resembled gold. him, and your joy from him. much alone with him, that intimate fession of Christ is put into the furcommunion, as well as union with him, nace, God's work in you will stand for may be enjoyed, that in all things your ever; man's part of it will be immewills may be subjected unto his. It is diately consumed, it will just drop into sad to think that the wills of his chosen the flame like tinsel, and fall into dross. should so often remain perverse and Fear not that God's furnace will mar rebellious. It is what they have no the work of his own hands. right to be. He doeth as he will among the armies of heaven and amidst the inhabitants of the earth; and, to a sincere and humbled believer, God's will is the best of all reasons, remembering that Jehovah giveth not account of any of his matters, but will perform all his pleasure, whatever his children may wish or desire to have; and they have only to say, in answer, "The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.' Look at Job. Few of you are likely to be tried as he was, yet he held his confidence firm to the end; if a believer could have fallen, it would have been Job. Afflicted by strange bereavements, by the loss of substance, forsaken by his religious friends, upbraided by them as one given up by God, pursued on the one hand by his partner-his wicked partner-to curse God and die, pressed by inward doubts and rebellion, and tempted by the great enemy to deny the Lord his Remark again the wonderful manner God, what could he do? Yet the Lord in which God's children are always supported him, healed his disease, resupported under trial and suffering, stored his substance, blessed him with whether of body or mind, or from out- children again, and gave him the vicwill ward causes; here, also, we discover tory over all his enemies; having enawho are, and who are not, his children. bled him throughout and at the worst There is many a summer Christian, to say, "Though he slay me, yet many a one who begins well and ends I trust in him." Notice in passing the in perdition; just as at present the peculiar manner in which he was blossom covers the trees, because the afflicted by the wickedness of his partdays are bright and the nights are ner; this is a state of severe trial in mild, and there is neither storm nor which God's children have often been He kindles, for my profit purely, Affliction's glowing fiery brand, placed, sometimes in the course of providences, or as it oftener happens by their own frowardness and selfwill, for which they are sooner or later punished. Very probably Job knew not the true character of his wife till affliction came upon him; but trials always bring out these secrets, and now she was to him as a broken reed in his darkest hour, calling on him to curse Jehovah and draw down perdition upon his own soul. And I doubt not that Lot only discovered the true For the following extracts from a Biblecharacter of his partner when they had woman's Journal we are indebted to the begun to flee from Sodom, or at least" Book and its Missions." May a perusal that he may never have known till of the touching narrative be sanctified to then the full extent of her wickedness and hypocrisy. GOD'S ANVIL. Tribulation means threshing, and Trench, in his excellent little treatise on the study of words, has carried out the figure, showing that it is only by threshing us that God separates the wheat from the chaff. Here is a precious little morsel which somebody has clipped from an old paper, and sent to us, credited "to the German of Julius Sturm," and which will speak touchingly to many a heart which has been put into the furnace of affliction.Rel. Mag. "I HOLD STILL." PAIN'S furnace heat within me quivers, He comes and lays my heart, all heated, He takes my softened heart and beats it; Why should I murmur? for the sorrow Thus only longer-lived would be; "PRISONERS OF HOPE." some of those who are tempted to think their afflictions "too heavy to bear": Let us cross Bedford Square, and pass by the Broadway, St. Giles's, penetrate down Drury Lane, and opposite the grand theatre fresh risen from its ashes, turn into one court out of Bow Street, and up another, where we shall find many a house once in the possession of wealthy tenants, but now let, in separate rooms, from top to bottom. At one door we notice five bells for the five floors; the stairs are clean, and the flights many. Ascending the highest we enter a room, in which a tent-bed has dark curtains drawn almost all round it. On that bed lies another great sufferer, Ann J. A short time since, the welcome hand of death seemed about to release her from her long life of sorrow. It is thirty-one years this May since, in hurrying to open the door to a doctor, she fell down stairs with a child in her arms; the babe was unhurt, but she suffered concussion of the brain, and has never since that period known a day of health. She had then a kind husband, a smith by trade, and a Christian man, who had everything done that could be done, within his power, to relieve and comfort her. When he died, sixteen years ago, she lost her all, and was left with three daughters, one of them deformed, and very weakly. Previously to this loss she herself attempted a little needle-work, lying on her back; but a large tumour formed round her neck, and she has now lain, for sixteen years, with her head in a plate, to preserve it from the heat of the pillow, a proof of how much and how long poor human nature may suffer and not die, and a proof that a soul inhabiting such an afflicted body may yet praise the Lord for his goodness and for his won 252 derful works among the children of men. We think we never heard a testimony to the goodness of God so fervent as from within those curtains. It is said of the Most High, in the 33rd Psalm, that "from the place of his habitation he looketh upon all the inhabitants of the earth;" that "his eye is upon them that hope in his mercy," and that their hearts shall rejoice in him, because they have trusted in his holy name. Then, surely, the eye of a loving Lord Let us is on this attic in D- Court. hear the witness that this text is true from its humble tenants, conveyed through a visitor, on whose truth we can rely. It is the record of the first visit, paid at the moment when Mrs. J was supposed to be so near her end :— "I asked if I might speak to the suf- "I asked her how long this struggle "And,' I added, 'quite willing to stay "I then told her of poor Sarah,' who "That poor woman, who has been so long confined to her bed, is,' I said, willing to stay or go, just as it shall please the Lord.' She made another expressive motion with her hand. "She had a blanket given her during "Oh! I also delight to meditate, as Thirty-one years,' I observed, 'is a "I quoted the text, 'In my Father's "Yes,' said she, with all the energy her feeble frame would allow, that's a reality.' "I felt as if I had been convicted of repeating the text without believing it, so clear were her convictions, as expressed in those few unexpected words. "On a second visit, she was unexpectedly found to be somewhat revived; but her feeble daughter, on whom their support mainly depends, and who suffers from spinal complaint and asthma, had been too ill to work at her business of A gentleman, dressmaking, and they had begun to feel the pressure of want. also, who for three years had kindly given them occasional help, had just gone away to reside in France. She, therefore, expressed her deep gratitude to God for a new friend, and the daughter's reply to the assistance afforded was, 'This is as if promise of half-a-crown a week was it came straight from the clouds.' The received as if it were, in their sight, unbounded riches. "I told her the benefit received by those who were allowed to minister to her was probably greater than to herself, for they This idea filled seeing her confidence in God, in her heavy affliction, would be encouraged afresh to trust in him. her pleasant brown eyes with joy. I do cast,' she said, 'all my care upon him; I but I feel dark at times. Yet what a mercy it is that during all these years have never had my bed taken from under me. I often thank God for that.' "She then told me how she had rejoiced to hear of the prayer-meetings | ing. Our home heathenism was growduring the first week in January, this ing. The Church began to see, as year; that she had sent requests that she she had never seen before, the gigantic might be remembered in the supplications, difficulties of the task in which she and also notices of the cases of some for was engaged. She felt her weakness whom she desired the prayers, of the ser--she cast herself in the dust before vants of God. Christian friends brought God-she began to besiege his throne accounts of the meetings to her, so she with strong cries. Then it was that had been continually present in spirit, the clouds gathered and that the rain and her fervent prayers had ascended began to fall. from that lone room, in unison with those world-wide supplications. A few weeks ago we were turning over, for another purpose, a file of "As she is obliged to be continually American newspapers. The papers were screened from the light, she cannot see of the date of 1856 and 1857, a year to read a small Bible for herself, and her or two before the commencement of poor daughter is often too ill to read aloud. the revival on the other side of the Her little granddaughter now reads to her Atlantic. Our eye was caught by the her in a very large print copy of the Psalms numerous paragraphs in the columns with which we have supplied her. The of these papers, under such headings word of God is very precious to her, even as "Prayer-Meetings," "Union Prayeras conveyed through the broken spelling Meeting.' These prayer - meetings, and hesitating utterance of the simple we found, were announced specially child. Its mother was the babe in arms for "the outpouring of the Holy when Ann J- met with her accident. Spirit." We had accidentally lighted This little one is a great comfort to her, upon curious and most interesting and she hopes a good work of God is evidence of what had gone before the going on in her heart. They would not revival. We could look, as it were, know what to do without the child, who into the towns and villages of Canada fetches them everything, and runs up and and the United States, and we saw downstairs for them. men assembled to pray for the Spirit. We heard the inhabitants of one city saying to the inhabitants of another city, "Come, and let us pray before the Lord." We had previously been told, as doubtless our readers also had been told, that a season of prayer, of earnest and united prayer, had preceded the movement; but to read the evidence of the fact, to read the record of these prayers, as published in the journals of the day by men who were POWER OF PRAYER ILLUS- all unwitting of the glorious results TRATED IN THE REVIVAL. that were about to follow, deeply impressed us, and enabled us to realise THERE is one lesson of great signifi- the connection between the revival cance which has been specially and and prayer more vividly than we had pre-eminently taught by the revival. ever realised it before. We felt as if That lesson is the efficacy of prayer. we looked into the deep and secret In former eras it has been usual with springs of the movement. We felt God to employ the gifts of his ser- as if the power by which the world vants, the courage of one, the elo- was to be converted was laid bare to quence of another, in reviving his us. We saw what instrumentality it work. It has not been so on this was that brought down this blessed occasion. After a half-century's labour, rain. "The visits of the Bible-woman will here be very welcome, and needful both to soul and body in this distressing case. Her mission among the most lawless and the lowest of the people deserves, now and then, to be varied by entrance on scenes such as are to be found by the bedsides of our three thankful cripples." the Church came to take a review of The great lesson, then, as it appears what had been accomplished. She to us, which God is teaching by this saw that all that had been done was revival, is the efficacy of prayer. And as nothing compared with the efforts the lesson was needed-much needed. which had been expended. The great The world had grown sceptical of the systems of idolatry were still stand- power of prayer. Proud of the in 254 In 'I sight it had obtained into the laws of ferring individual blessings. nature, the world laughed to scorn the looked for no such movement as would idea that prayer could control or affect the world, and be "a time of modify the course of these laws. It refreshing from the presence of the knew but of two forces at the service Lord." How signally has her unbelief of man; mechanical force, by which been rebuked! She has been emphatiman triumphs over the elements, and caily taught that God hears prayer, and moral force, by which he sways the that it is indeed a fact that prayer minds of his fellows. But of a force moves the arm that moves the universe. dwelling in the heavens, which comes Let her not forget the lesson. Let her in answer to prayer, and works a continue to pray, and God will continue sudden change on the views, the feel- to answer. We shall see greater things The Church has been taught, too, ings, and the characters of vast mul- than these. titudes, the world knew not. It did not believe in such a thing. It placed the efficacy of united prayer. this belief in the class of exploded prayer, as in other matters, union is The pro- strength. If the fervent prayer of one fallacies and superstitions. gress of philosophy and science had righteous man availeth much, how utterly dispelled all such delusions; much more that of two or of many? and if prayer now possessed an atom So have we been specially told. of power, or could accomplish the slightest good, it was a good confined entirely to the mind of the man offering it-it soothed and tranquilised him, but it had no prevalency with Him to whom it was offered. Prayer could not alter his purpose, or bring down from above special help, in the way of actual manifestation and deliverance. But these atheistical notions have been awfully rebuked. A supernatural influence has fallen upon the world. Effects have been produced utterly beyond the power of man to accomplish, and that in quarters where the slightest suspicion of collusion cannot And further, it is be entertained. undeniable that the descent of this mysterious and superhuman influence has been closely consequent on repeated and earnest prayer that such an Philoinfluence might be shed down. sophy is nonplussed, as was the science of Egypt of old before the miracles of Moses. And if the world does not yet confess itself convinced, it is unable to conceal that it is confounded and awed by this dispensation. say unto you," says Christ, "that if The lesson was scarce less needed by |