I

"GOD KNEW THE BEST."

F we push ajar the gates of life,

And stand within, and all God's workings see, We could interpret all this doubt and strife,

And for each mystery could find a key. But not to-day. Then be content poor heart! God's plans, like lilies pure and white, unfold. We must not tear the close-shut leaves apart,

Time will reveal the calyxes of gold, And if, through patient toil we reach the land Where tired feet, with saudals loose, may rest, When we shall clearly know and understand, I think that we will say, "God knew the best." -M. R. Smith.

So many little faults we find.
We see them; for not blind

Is love. We see them; but if you and I
Perhaps remember them some by and by
They will not be

Faults then-grave faults-to you and me,
But just odd ways, mistakes, or even less,
Remembrances to bless.

Days change so many things,-yes, hours,We see so differently in sun and showers. Mistaken words to night

May be so cheri hed by to-morrow's light,

We may be patient for we know

There's such a little way to go.

The clouds have a silver lining,

Don't forget;

And though he's hidden, still the sun is shining; Courage! instead of tears and vain repining,

Just bide a wee, and dinna fret.

-From "The Beautiful Gate."

ST. PAUL AT THE TOMB OF VIRGIL.

BY THE REV. TRYON EDWARDs, d. d.

UTEOLI, now Pozzuoli, was the most sheltered

PUTEOL

part of the Bay of Naples, and the principal port of Southern Italy. It was once a place of great resort on account of its mineral springs, and noted also as the landing-place of the Egyptian grain-ships which brought to Rome their cargoes of wheat, the arrival of which was always an occasion of great interest, as described by Seneca and Suetonius.

From one of these grain ships, in the year A. D. 61, there disembarked a troop of prisoners whom the Procurator of Judea had sent to Rome under the charge of a centurion of the Augustan cohort or band. Among them, under guard and in chains, was the Apostle Paul, who, in his right as a Roman citizen, had appealed from Festus to the Emperor at Rome, whither he was now going, attended by Luke and Aristarchus, his loving disciples and friends. Allowed as he was by the centurion, he remained for seven days at Puteoli, where he was

warmly received by the Christians of the place, as afterwards he was met at the "Market of Appius and the "Three Taverns" by the delegation of disciples from the imperial city.

While delayed at Puteoli, if we may believe an exceedingly touching and beautiful tradition, Paul went up to the tomb of Virgil, who was buried there, and wept at the thought that the great poet had died without the knowledge of Christ. Dean Stanley, in his wellknown sermon on "Christian Missions," after showing how Christianity seeks to make men purer and nobler and better, alludes to Paul's deep sympathy with this aim, and then remarks: "It was a fine touch in the ancient Latin hymn which described how, when the Apostle landed at Puteoli, he turned aside to the hill Pausilipo, to shed a tear over the tomb of Virgil, and thought how much he might have made of that noble soul if he had found him still on earth." He then quotes the hymn, which is as follows:

"Ad Maronis mausoleum Ductus, fudit, super eum

Piæ vocem lacrymæ; Quantum, dixit, te fecissem, Si te vivum invenissem,

Poetarum maxime!"

The condensed phraseology of the lines, which reminds one of some of the most concise and strik. ing of the odes of Horace, scarce admits of a literal translation of its impressive and touching thought. But a free paraphase may, to the English reader, give some idea of the original:—

"On his way to Nero's court,
When delayed a time in port,
At the tomb where Virgil slept,
Paul in thoughtful sadness wept;
Wept, that he of world-wide fame,
Should have died ere Jesus came!
In his musings unexpressed,

This the thought that swelled his breast:
'Oh! that I had found thee living,
In the light the Cross is giving;
Could have seen thee, from above
Taught to know a Saviour's love;
Then, with love to Christ supreme,
Thine had been a nobler theme,
And thy harp, in loftiest lays,
Down the ages rolled His praise!'

Thoughtful and sad, Paul from the hill went down, To Rome, to prison, to a heavenly crown!"

-Christian Age.

INDUSTRY.-An hour's industry will do more to beget cheerfulness, suppress evil humor, and retrieve your affairs, than a month's moaning.

FRIENDSHIP.

T had been hard for him that spake it, to have put more truth and untruth in a few words, than in that speech: "Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god." For it is most true that a natural and secret hatred and aversion towards society in any man hath somewhat of the savage beast; but it is most untrue, that it should have any character at all of the divine nature, except it proceed not out of a pleasure in solitude, but out of a love and desire to sequester a man's self for a higher conversation. But little do men perceive what solitude is, and how far it extendeth. For a crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love. But we may go further, and affirm most truly that it is a mere and miserable solitude to want true friends, without which the world is but a wilderness. And even in this sense also of solitude, whosoever in the frame of his nature and affections is unfit for friendship he taketh it of the beast and not from humanity.

A principal fruit of friendship is the ease and discharge of the fulness and swellings of the heart, which passions of all kinds do cause and induce. No receipt openeth the heart but a true friend, to whom you may impart griefs, joys, fears, hopes, suspicions, counsels, and whatsoever lieth upon the heart, to oppress it in a kind of civil shrift or confession.

The second fruit of friendship is healthful and sovereign for the understanding, as the first is for the affections. For friendship maketh indeed a fair day in the affections, from storm and tempests; but it maketh daylight in the understanding out of darkness and confusion of thoughts.

After these two noble fruits of friendship followeth the last fruit, which is like the pomegranate, full of many kernels; I mean aid and bearing a part in all actions and occasions.

INFLUENCE.

FRANCIS BACON.

How noble should be our action, how faithful our thought, how restrained and true our speech! When we think of how many characters we shall form a part, how strongly should we build our own! When we think of our immortality in men, how eagerly should we labor to be worthy of that immortality! Being dead, you will speak-what sort will be your speech? Your works will follow you; ask yourself what kind of works will follow you. To die, and know that men, when they think of you, will be gayer, truer, more loving, more pitiful, more God's

WH

WHY DO WE WAIT?

HY do we wait, and coldly stint our praises,
And leave our reverent homage unexpressed
Till brave hearts lie beneath a roof of daises,

Then heap with flowers each hallowed place of rest?

For every year the veteran ranks are broken

And every year new graves await our flowers.
Ah! Why not give to living hearts, some token

Of half the love and pride that throb through ours?
Bring blooms to crown the dead. But in your giving,
Forget not hearts that still can strive and ache!
Oh! Give your richest garlands to the living
Who offered all, in youth, for Honor's sake!
-Youth's Companion.

GİRL CHRISTIANS AND GRANDMOTHER

A

CHRISTIANS.

GREAT deal of the Bible is to be obtained from other books, and is contained in other people. Everything good we read in books, and the beautiful sayings we hear, all have their foundation in the Bible. I had an egg for breakfast, and I ate it from out of its shell. I also had an egg for dinner, but I did not know it, or I could not see it; it was mixed up with, and hidden in, the other ingredients of a pudding. But the egg at breakfast did me no more good than the egg at dinner. So it is with the words of the Bible. They are mixed up with everything beautiful. They are present always in a beautiful sunset, a beautiful picture, beautiful books, beautiful music, and we get a great deal of good if we like all that is good and beautiful. Love for goodness is a Christian thing, and does as much good as if we had it in Bible language-that is, in the shell.

Then again, a girl thinks she must be very wicked because she can only make short prayers, and finds that after kneeling a minute or so her thoughts go wandering off to other things. This troubles her, and she wonders why she cannot pray like her grandmother, whose prayer, perhaps, lasts for more than half an hour. She does not like to rise after a minute and a half, and feels herself a dreadful heathen. But she need not do more than say what she has to say, and let that be the end. What the Bible says will explain my meaning: "We bring forth fruit in due season." She may remember that she is yet a girl, and that there are girl Christians and boy Christians, grandmother Christians and minister Christians. When I ask you girls, are you Christians? you will hardly know what to answer. In answering for you, then, first I will make you feel you are in this thing, if you are not in the forms of it."-Prof. Drummond.

A MOTHER'S HEART.

We ought to watch closely the character of the memories we leave in our homes. One person has left this testimony: "Many a night, as I remember lying quietly in the little upper chamber, before sleep came on, there would be a gentle footstep on the stair, the door would noiselessly open, and in a moment the well-known form, softly gliding through the darkness, would appear at my bedside. First, there would be a few pleasant inquiries of affection, which gradually deepened into words of counsel. Then, kneeling, her head close to mine, her most earnest hopes and desires would flow forth in prayer. Her tears bespoke the earnestness of her desire. I seem to feel them yet when sometimes they fell on my face. The prayers often passed out of thought in slumber, and came not to mind again for years, but they were not lost. I willingly believe they were an invisible bond with heaven that secretly preserved me while I moved carelessly amid numberless temptations and walked the brink of crime. not worth while for every mother to try to weave such memories into the early years of her children's lives?"

ALL RIGHT.

Is it

Little Mabel's mother was dead. While papa was away she had no companion but her governess and the servants. Her father often told her not to admit to the house any person with whom she was not acquainted.

One wintry day a poor, ill-dressed woman stopped at the door and asked permission to warm herself by the kitchen fire. "But my papa doesn't know you." The woman was shivering with cold, and the rain, and sleet dropped from her thin wraps. A bright idea soon entered the child's head. "Do you know Jesus?" Tears started to the poor woman's eyes, and she began to tell how kind the Saviour had been to her. "Well, if you know Jesus, you may come in ; for papa knows Him, and I'm sure he won't care."Selected.

THE custom of lifting the hat had its origin when it was customary for knights never to appear in public except in full armor. It became the custom, however, for a knight, upon entering an assembly of friends, to remove his helmet, signifying, "I am safe in the presence of my friends."

Our daily life should be sanctified by doing common things in a religious way. There is no action so slight or so humble but it may be done to a great purpose and ennobled thereby.-Geo. MacDonald.

FROM CHARACTER TO CHARACTER.

“W"

HAT is it to be a Christian?" The answer is simple being like Christ, following Christ. Just as a Darwinian is a follower of Darwin, one who advances and promulgates the ideas and principles of Darwin, so is a Christian, a disciple or follower of Christ; and to follow Christ is to grow like Him. Make Christ your companion. We invariably become like those with whom we habitually live, and especially if we habitually live with those we admire and love. And very often we really love those of whom we only hear and read. We need not see people to love them. It is the spirit, therefore, of a friend that you love that influences you, and it is the spirit of Christ that influences us now."

"To make Christ our most constant companion is the one sure way, for we are thus made good, and the whole process may be told us in the words of the Bible taken from the 2 Corinthians 3: 18, provided we read them in the New Version, where their meaning is clearer and simpler than in the rough phrasing of the early translation from the Greek. These are words of the later text: 'We all, with unveiled face, reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory.' Now change the word glory to the word character, which I think conveys a clearer and fuller meaning than any other word, and the whole problem must be contained in this text: 'We all with unveiled face, reflecting as in a mirror the character of Christ, are changed in the same character from character to character; or are changed in Christ's character from our character to His character. The point is this: that we are changed-we don't change ourselves. We can understand perfectly well how accents change. We hear daily of a growing Australian accent, and yet the change goes on quite steadily without our being conscious of it to any marked degree. And so if we abide in Christ,' make Christ our friend, our characters will change.

J

Then you

will say the answer to our question reduces itself to a common friendship. This a common friendship? No friendship is common. We read in the Bible that love is the basis of friendship, and this is a translation of Christ's own idea. If you will be Christians, struggle to keep friends with Christ. This is an infallible method. It is how we must, not how we may."-Professor Drummond.

The hiding-places of man are discovered by affliction. As one has aptly said: "Our refuges are like the nests of birds; in summer they are hidden away among the green leaves, but in winter they are seen among the naked branches.-J. W. Alexander,