A Few Hints from a Lover of Souls.

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only one penny-or else, as you have good collections at your anniversaries, you might ask the school authorities to supply you with them, and then having this magazine with lessons for the day printed in it; you should study them for yourselves, and afterwards respectfully ask your teacher to teach you the lesson. If you, children, would do this, you would soon have better teachers; and better school teachers in other Sunday-schools study the lessons together beforehand; and why should not ours? Don't your children deserve to be as well and as carefully taught as other chileren? Why, even the negroes in Jamaica will get before you if you don't look sharp. But if you do diligently study your lessons, and get your teachers to teach you properly, in a short time many of you, by God's blessing, will be prepared to go out as missionaries to foreign parts, for by the time you will have grown to be young men, Primitive Methodism will raise a cry for many missionaries.

A LADY who had been a missionary collector and local distributor most of her life, thought it beneficial to combine them, as it was a saving of time; and in some instances she found, when handing the tract, after a refusal of the penny, that she got double what she asked.

On one of these missionary rambles, an old gentleman came to the lobby, and ordered the servant to shut the door, for he had nothing to give. The lady, handing the tract to the servant, said she hoped she would read it, and that God would bless it to her soul. When turning to go she was called back by the gentleman, who begged pardon for being so hasty, and asked liberty to put a trifle in the box.

On another occasion, when the servant opened the door of a genteel house, the lady said, 'I have brought good news for you this morning; read the heading of this tract, 'A Saviour for You.' The girl burst into a flood of tears, but as soon as able, said, 'I have long desired to talk to some one about my soul, for I feel I am a great sinner, and need pardon.' 'Is your mistress not a religious person ?' asked the lady. 'O yes, mam, she is a Methodist, but too high and distant to talk with her servant.

At another time, she called at a house with a well-kept garden in

front, and as the lady herself opened the door, the collector said, 'I have been admiring your pretty garden, and hoping that the owner, if a lover of flowers, would also be a lover of the God who made them. Tears choked her utterance, but taking the collector by the hand, led her to the parlour, where the plan of salvation was pointed out to the inquiring mind, which was cheered by a recital of the Saviour's love. And both the collector and the box benefited by the visit. They parted with a hearty invitation for another call.

On ascending the steps of a highly genteel house, the collector felt rather faint-hearted, but knocked. The door was opened by an elderly lady, dressed for walking, who cheerfully gave a trifle. After the collector's thanks and a few words on the importance of doing something for the advancement of God's kingdom while time and opportunity were given us, as the night of death would assuredly come, the lady replied she had never been spoken to in this way, or on such subjects, before; but as the collector looked tired, she was invited to tea, that the old lady might have a religious conversation with her.

THE FIRST GLASS.

BY R. A. HAMILTON CARROLL.

Go, tempter, go! hand not the wine,
Nor press the innocent and gay
To taste one drop; ah, yes! one sup
Might be his ruin from that day.
Be careful how you handle wine,

It sparkles to the youthful eye;
But ah! how little doth he know
What poisons in its beauty lie.

'Twas the first glass that sealed the doom
Of many a young and bloming youth,
And sent him to an early grave;

Tempter, beware and heed the truth.
Oh! think how deep the serpent lurks
Within the wine-cup's ruddy glow,

And do not hold that to his lips

Which brings but sorrow, death and woe.

"I Can't Afford It."

Oft have I viewed with pitying eye
The drunkard, as he staggered past,
And turned away with heaving sigh

To see what wine had done at last.
He strives to find his wretched home,
Where light nor warmth nor bread is found;
With bitter curses he doth come-
He falls upon the frozen ground!

His children, frightened at his voice,
Are crouching on the naked floor;
And pallid as the chiseled stone,

His wife stands trembling at the door,
Then, tempter, do not hold the wine,
Nor hand the poison to the youth;
But dash it instant to the ground,
And quickly heed the solemn truth.

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"I CAN'T AFFORD IT."

'Just come and give me a hand's turn at my garden, Jem, of a Sunday morning, will you?' said a working man, with a pickaxe over his shoulder, to an old hedger, who was trimming a quick-set hedge.

Jem took off his hat and scratched his head a bit, in his own country way, and then said in reply: 'No, master; I can't afford it.' 'Oh! I don't want you to do it for nothing. I'm willing to pay you.'

'I can't afford it.'

'Why, man, I will put something in your pocket; and I'm sure you're not too well off.'

'That's it; I can't afford it.'

'Can't afford it? What do you mean? You don't understand me ?'

Howsomever,

'Yes I do, but bain't quick of speech, do you see. don't you snap me up, and I'll tell ye. I bain't too well off-that's as true a word as ever you spoke. Times be mostly hard wi' me, but if I ain't well off, d'ye see, in this world, I've a hope-a blessed hope, my missus calls it-of being better off in the next. My Lord and Saviour said these words with his own lips: 'I go to prepare a

place for you, that where I am there ye may be also.' I learned that text twenty years ago, and I've said it over hundreds of times when things went cross, and me and my wife wanted comfort.'

'Well, well! What's all that got to do with your saying, in answer to my offer, I can't afford it?'

'Why, no offence to you, but it's got all to do with it. I can't afford to lose all my hope of a better lot in a better land. If my Lord be gone to prepare a place for me, the best I can do is to ask Him to prepare me for the place. And, you see, Sunday is the only day that I can give all my thoughts to these holy things. I go to God's house, and hear about heaven, and I seems to be waiting at one of the stations on the way there. No! no! man's work for man's day; but on God's day I can't afford it.'

Reader, poor unlettered Jem had counted the cost of disobeying God's command by breaking the Sabbath. 'What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?'-British Workman.

THIS AND THAT.

BY AUGUSTA MOORE.

GRACE sufficient is promised for to-day, none for to-morrow.

Don't look too far ahead. Make all plans for the future, like rafts for riding the rapids, very limber-jointed.

Knowledge is not wisdom. One may have stores of knowledge without the wisdom to make any of it useful.

By neglecting personal cleanliness you wrong your family more than by neglecting to feed them.

'Tis never safe to be long without some sort of humbling or Scourging. Prosperity, long continued, begets wind on the soul.

Have a home of your own, if you starve in it. Our home, though but an attic or a cellar, is the best place in the wide world.

'Do you think a real Christian can ever fall from grace ?' asked one of an elder. 'I should think it a very dangerous thing to try. The effort to make your calling and election sure is the only safe one.'

'Was he prepared to die?' asked one, on hearing of a sudden death.

'Prepared?' echoed a member, in good and regular standing in an Evangelical Church. Why, he never committed a sin in his life.'

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Did you ever, in hot, sticky dog-days, try to eject a fly whose mind was irrevocably made up to remain in your company? How did you succeed? How did you feel about it?

Keep clean and sweep-house, if you can-body, whether you can or not. Those who neglect cleanliness wrong their families more than do those who neglect to provide them with clothes.

The faults of rough, violent natures, though more disagreeable, perhaps, to others than those of the gentle and tender, are no more fatal to spiritual welfare, nor to the soul's union with God.

Mothers, bring up your sons to wait upon themselves, and upon you, and upon their sisters; and then you will not raise men who will ask, in an injured tone, when obliged to do the milking, 'Where's the milk-pail ?' when 'tis directly before their eyes. Look often and long at the sky. Study it; it will do you good.

Like the sea, it is ever changing. Never are two sunsets nor two sunrises exactly alike. God loves variety as well as we do.

The red-headed woodpecker makes his wife feed him. He sits idle, while she works with all her might collecting food for him. If one is not quick enough, he calls, "Make haste! Do you want to starve me?' This is a parable.

'Do not speak of my daughter as needing to repent; she is as good as an angel now,' said a doating mother to her pastor. 'Madam, your daughter needs but to die to become a devil,' was the blunt and true reply: All who wilfully reject Christ are, as He assures us, children of the devil. Is this enough insisted on at the present time?

Only after long To be glad to tuck winking at the mild

Ah! the blessedness of going to bed in the cool! sweltering can we understand the fulness of it. in and cuddle up to each other; and then to lie moon, as she looks in at your windows, and glorifies your floor-what in life can be more comfortable to the weary body? And it is pure satisfaction to the heart. Let no heart fail at such times to give thanks where thanks are due.

'She's a liar,' said Mrs. Judgment; 'yes, a real liar. She never can be depended on. She told me, when she went out, she wasn't going to the minister's, and yet there she has been forty minutes, by the clock. And she said she could live on sweet corn; yet before we'd had it three days she went to eating bread and meat. I do like to see people have some conscience.' The merciful may expect

mercy.