domain of evil; like a funeral pall it covers the whole world. What sayest thou, O young and ardent Christian, to the possibility of this pall being lifted, and existence being made a better and a happier thing to some poor struggling human soul now in its awful deathfolds? It can be lifted; the Gospel can give men an impulse to leap from death to life; it can free them from the grave-clothes of sin and death, and adorn them with the wedding-garment of eternal purity. And God calls upon all those who have passed from death unto life, as messengers of Christ, to go and cry over the graves wherein souls are buried, "Dead souls! hear the word of the Lord and live; awake, ye that sleep, and rise from the dead, and Christ shall give you life!"

We are not unaware of the numerous difficulties which beset the path of the private labourer for Christ; his work, as we think, is at times more arduous than that of the public teacher of religion. It is a difficult and delicate task to take hold of a soul in private, and without the shadow of impertinence to hold sacred and most intimate talk with it upon its spiritual condition. Yet this, pre-eminently, is the work of the private Christian ; and, in answer to believing prayer, God will bestow grace to help him to discharge it effectively. Let us only be desirous of interesting souls in spiritual things, and God will teach us the right method. There is a vast amount of unused power in the church of Christ. Members do not know what they can do, because they have never, by pious activity, had the resources developed which are now locked up uselessly within them. Individual conscientiousness is what is now specially needed on the part of professing Christians; the eye doing the work of the eye; the hand doing the work of the hand. Each should ask, What spiritual work has the Divine Being fitted me to do? and then, in reliance upon his promised support, attempt practically to answer the question. We should then soon begin to see earnestness and Christian zeal taking the place of that listless, do-nothing mood which now possesses so many hearts; we should see thousands who are now living without purpose in quiet homes, awaking to the higher aims of existence, rousing themselves, and recognizing their obligations, and seeking to glorify their Redeemer, by feeding his lambs and his sheep. What

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noble works have been accomplished through each individual doing what he can, and doing it with all his might, in view of the great night in which it will be impossible for man to work.

Take the case of JOHN HOWARD, the philanthropist. Quietly and without show, he was leading the life of a country gentleman, in the village of Cardington, in Bedfordshire; and as you saw him studying farming, meteorology, astronomy, and medicine, you would have had little thought of the celebrity to which he was destined one day to attain. But on a certain day it occurred to him, that the cottages in which the peasantry lived were not quite so good as they should be, and he thought it would be better for the poor if their homes were ventilated, and made a little more comfortable. So he set himself to bring about a reformation in the dwellings of the villagers, and met with most encouraging success. But now, having accomplished one thing, see how the field in which he was destined to work widened and enlarged. Being made high sheriff, it was his duty to look inside prisons, and to know something of the condition of the inmates of those sad abodes; and it became his lot, moreover, not only to visit his own county prison, but to journey to several neighbouring counties-to Northampton, Leicester, Derby, Warwick, Worcester, Gloucester, Oxford, and Aylesbury. He found the prisons of England in a fearful state, and felt also that it was his mission to make their condition a very altered one. When he had done what he could in England, he took a more extensive field of labour still, and worked away at the Bastile and at the dungeons of St. Petersburg; and at last found life far too brief for him to accomplish that which he desired to do. He is now called by the noble name of philanthropist, who began his career of usefulness by improving the sanitary condition of a few cottages in the village of Cardington. So true is it, that if we will but perform our little duties well, Providence will open up a wide field for the exercise of our energies and powers.

Again, as you looked upon SARAH MARTIN, a poor dressmaker in Norfolk, with very little education, and no "standing in society," as it is called, you could not have imagined that she would be powerful enough to transform Yarmouth prison from an abode of vice into a home of

industry. And yet she, an unaided timorous woman, by asking what God intended her to do, and by preparing to obey what he commanded, received strength to enter within the gloomy prison walls, and so stimulated the minds of the prisoners, that from doing nothing they began diligently to employ themselves in works of industry, so that in a few years £400 was the sum that was received for articles made in the gaol. Thus God honours and strengthens those who give themselves up to labour in his vineyard. They may be very poor as regards outward circumstances, yet have they within them the true wealth--the treasure in heaven which faileth not.

Dear young reader, have a life-purpose which is worthy of you as a child of immortality; let your aims be connected with that which is beyond the visible; and, whatever the pursuits of others may be, have as your motto the words of St. Paul," We fight for an incorruptible crown." Because you cannot accomplish all that you would, fail not to do what you can. There are many who require to be taught the lesson of faithfulness to the one talent. We are all too prone to believe that if we were called to do something great in the world-something that would make a stir and fasten upon us the admiring gaze of our fellow-men -then we could work; but we have no heart to engage in anything little or obscure. That is not little or obscure which God has put in our way to do. More faithfulness to the one talent is needed now-a-days, and greater individual earnestness. You may not be able to level a mountain, but perhaps you can pluck out the useless weeds that are growing in your path; you may not be able to turn the wilderness into a fruitful field, but perhaps you can water those tender flowers that stand parched and withered for want of rain; you may not be able to evangelize a world, but cannot you speak of Christ to one soul? Be true to your little opportunities of doing good; use them with an eye to the glory of God; and though other men may do a greater work than you, you will have done that for which you were fitted, and for which you were sent into the world.

Dr. Chalmers once said: "There are thousands of men who breathe, move, and live-pass off the stage of life, and are heard of no more. Why? They did not a particle of good in the world, and none were blessed by them; none could point to them as the instruments of their redemption;

not a word they spoke could be recalled, and so they perished; their light went out in darkness, and they were not remembered more than the insects of yesterday. Will you thus live and die, O man immortal? Live for something. Do good, and leave behind you a monument of virtue, that the storms of time can never destroy. Write your name in kindness, love, and mercy, on the hearts of the thousands you come in contact with year by year, and you will never be forgotten. No; your name, your deeds, will be as legible on the hearts of those you leave behind, as the stars are on the brow of evening. Good deeds will shine as brightly on the earth as the stars of heaven."

THE CROP OF ACORNS.

THERE came a man in days of old
To hire a piece of land for gold,
And urged his suit in accents meek :-
"One crop alone is all I seek;

That harvest o'er, my claim I'll yield,
And to its lord resign the field."

The owner some misgivings felt,
And coldly with the stranger dealt,
But found his last objection fail,
And honey'd eloquence prevail :
So took the proffer'd price in hand,
And for one crop leased out the land.

The wily tenant sneer'd with pride,
And sow'd the spot with acorns wide.
At first like tiny shoots they grew,

Then broad and wide their branches threw ;
But long before those oaks sublime,
Aspiring reach'd their forest prime,
The cheated landlord mouldering lay,
Forgotten, with his kindred clay.

O ye, whose years unfolding fair
Are fresh with youth and free from care,
Should vice or indolence desire
The garden of your souls to hire,
No parley hold-reject the suit,
Nor let one seed the soil pollute.

My child, their first approach beware;
With firmness break th' insidious snare,
Lest as the acorns grew and throve
Into a sun-excluding grove,

Thy sins, a dark o'ershadowing tree,
Shut out the light of heaven from thee.

MRS. SIGOURNEY.

MARVELLOUS ESCAPE OF A PASTOR OF
THE DESERT.

THE sufferings of the Protestants of France during the luxurious reigns of Louis the Fourteenth and Fifteenth, are well known to every student of the troubled history of those times. In no other age, perhaps, have true believers been exposed to a persecution more protracted, ruthless, and sanguinary. Not only were civil and social disabilities of the most degrading and ignominious kind inflicted by Nerolike laws, but liberty and life were in hourly jeopardy. Multitudes sought asylum from the blood-stained hand of arbitrary power in the wilds and forests of the south of France, from which circumstance they were called the Christians of the Desert. The entire life of these outlawed and hunted saints was one of alarms, surprises, stratagems, perils, fearful sacrifices, and hair-breadth escapes. Especially was it so with the devoted pastors who, at the momentary hazard of their own lives, ministered to their spiritual wants, and fostered their Christian heroism and almost superhuman fortitude. Among these transcendent worthies, Rabaut was pre-eminent, both for his usefulness and for the romantic incidents that marked his extraordinary career. He seemed, both to himself and others, to bear about with him a charmed life. He was, undoubtedly, under the special protection of Providence; and consequently, in spite of all the ambushes and machinations of his foes, as well as the treacheries of false friends, he proved himself, in the Poet's words, "immortal till his work was done." He closed his long life at the guillotine.

The following graphic narrative, from the pen of an eminent French writer-Bungener-affords a striking illustration of the imminent dangers that environed the