tunity, gently bear our witness to that which they have not received. Let us join hands with the earnest Wesleyan in his love of the Free Grace of God, and then tell him of the blessing of the Church's discipline and order. Let us honour the Holy Ghost with the member of the Society of Friends, while we bear our testimony to the truth that God's promises are given to a visible, and not to an invisible, body— His Church—and that the sacraments are present realities, not past symbols.

Sometimes we may be conscious that we have spoken more emphatically than love might warrant, and then it is well to ask them to kneel with us in prayer for a few moments, to testify what spirit we desire to be of.

The ice being broken, a beginning made, and friendly feeling established, how shall we get to the heart of the subject for after all our talk of schools, and sanitary matters, of parish helps and machinery, the real longing of an earnest faithful visitor is to win souls, to witness for the power and love of Jesus, to gain an entrance for His Word and knowledge, into sinful, weary hearts. How shall we do that? How shall we, at any rate, begin to try? The power to do it can be gained by no mental effort, or profiting by the experience of other workers. We must get it on our knees, and draw it from the living source of our own spiritual life. Make it a strict rule never to go into your district without prayer before setting out, and asking God for special help and wisdom in all you may do or say there. But, given the power, it is worth any amount of careful anxious thought and study how to make that grand Gospel message attractive to those, who-having never tasted of its sweetness, or been kindled by its fire-turn listlessly away from its invitation. Now in going forth to this work we may fall into one of two errors, both of which we must strive to avoid. On the one hand, keenly feeling the importance of the spiritual over the material truths, we may force ourselves into religious talk on every occasion, without any intelligent effort to ascertain how far those to whom we speak are fitted to receive the jewels we cast at their feet. The Gospel is not to be hurled at people's heads. On the other hand-and I fear this is by far the most frequent snare-we may be so timid of not treating so noble a theme in the best way, that we leave it altogether, and never bear witness for God at all. Both are great evils; the last certainly the worst.

In the London Mission, a young man who had undertaken to visit a row of houses, called on a person who was known to be an infidel, and a discourteous one. His wife, a Churchwoman, welcomed the visitor gladly, and wisely left him alone with her husband. The young man was so afraid of awakening the anger and opposition of which he had been warned, that, seeing a tool on the table, he led the conversation to some matters of mechanics,

into which the other entered with keen and intelligent interest. Absorbed in secular subjects, the mission visitor found no opportunity of speaking a word for his Master, and at last took leave, salving his conscience with the thought that at least he had made a favourable impression. When the wife returned, her husband scornfully asked, 'Is that one of your Churchmen? Why, from his talk, I shouldn't have known him from one of my own mates!'

Opportunities must not only be sought, but seized. Do not fear, words that come straight from the heart of the speaker must strike on the heart of the hearer. Never be content to go from house to house, and from room to room, without speaking a word of Jesus and His mighty love.

There are a thousand ways, if you seek them, in which to speak of Him will come simply and naturally to your lips. As you stoop over the babe in the cradle, how the thought of His Incarnation swells up in a full tide of wonder and adoration, sanctifying for ever all the joys and sorrows of maternity. How the Scripture print upon the wall, or the dusty Bible on the shelf, will give you a theme, or suggest a question to lead away from the power of the present to the heavenly realities of the unseen.

It

All parents are proud of their children's attainments, however poor and limited they may be. Take a child on your knee, and ask for its last learnt hymn, or offer to teach it one verse to be remembered when you come again-there is a text ready to your hand! may be you are a mother, if so, tell your poor sister, tenderly and gently, how you are trying, by God's grace, to train your own children, not for Time, but for Eternity, and invite her to the same aim. If you have no such ties, go back to your own mother's training, and recall how by it you were first marked for God; or on the other hand, perhaps, how, in spite of its worldliness, the Holy Spirit has sought and found you. Such touches of sympathy and reality will never be forgotten by your listener.

Do you feel you are too nervous and timid for such effort? Two of the most practised of our political orators, the late Lord Derby and Sir Robert Peel, acknowledged that they never succeeded in conquering the nervous timidity which they felt on having to speak on any great occasion; and one of the first of living missioners declared that he never began to plead with any one about his soul, without having to break through a certain crust of shyness and reserve that restrained him. So that it is possible to be nervous, and yet to do what we attempt, very well.

Now, lastly, as to what should always follow faithful speakingPrayer. After one or two visits have established a little friendly sympathy, we ought by all means to make an effort to get some prayer with our new acquaintance. A few minutes spent in a simple, earnest, warm outpouring of real wants to God, will do more to help a soul

than many half hours of mere exhortation. Prayer shows to the ignorant and unconverted that the way to God's throne is open. It helps the realisation of His presence and nearness. It gives courage and boldness to ourselves to bear witness to our Master. We should strive after great simplicity in prayer, and intense reality. We should pray for those with whom we kneel, to help them to know their own needs. We should pray for ourselves, that those whom we are striving to lead to God may see that we are looking only to Him for wisdom and direction, and that our message is not ours but His. Do not let yourself off by thinking that a simple invitation to people to 'come to church,' is doing all you ought to do for their souls. I believe many persons think district visitors a kind of ecclesiastical 'whip,' employed to swell the numbers of a congregation. As a fact, the very ignorant, and hardened, and sinful, are not likely to receive benefit from coming to church at all, unless it is when a 'mission' is being preached.

The church is the place for worship, and we must know something of God before we can worship Him. It has often aroused persons to think and to ponder what the strange request could mean, by emphatically asking them not to come to church, at least not in their then state of soul. But when there is a service of an evangelising character, specially provided for the awakening of the careless and the ungodly, we should of course do all we can to induce them to attend it.

Do not be ashamed of the grand invitation of infinite love you are commissioned to carry. Do not be unbelieving as to its mighty

power.

There are many worn and weary mothers plodding through their daily drive of work and worry. What a burst of sunlight into their lives it would be, if they realised His love, Who dwelt in a poor home, and knows its toil and its care. There are many hearts heavy with the weight of unrepented sin, how often has one word, spoken in the power of the Holy Ghost, broken through the chilling frost that bound them, and led them for pardon to the feet of the Crucified. If once you have realised the sweetness of speaking to souls; if once you have shared the blessedness of him who found his own brother, and brought him to Jesus, you cannot satisfy yourself with a lower aim in your work. It is said There is no royal road to learning.' Thank God, there is a royal road to grace; for the King Himself is 'the way, the truth, and the life.' When we have yielded our own hearts to Himwhen His forgiveness has lighted the flame of love and gratitude in our own souls, then there flows forth the power of awakening the latent spark in others. But in this way, and in no other, can this work be done.

It is not cleverness, nor clearness of doctrine, nor natural gifts, but the fire of a personal love to a personal Saviour, burning in our own hearts, that becomes a source of light and heat, radiating into the souls

of others. Do you remember that passage in one of the conferences of the Père Lacordaire ?

We meet Jesus Christ here below as we meet another man; one day, at a corner of the street, in a solitary path we halt, we listen, and a voice in our conscience says to us-" Behold Jesus Christ." A heavenly moment, when after so many beauties which it has tasted and which have deceived it, the soul steadfastly sees the beauty which never deceives. This may be accused of being a dream by those who have not seen it, but those who have seen it can never more forget it.'

Now, finally, are we to expect success? Undoubtedly we are, while the Lord's promise to every believer stands as it does-a promise, remember, not confined to saints or apostles merely, but pledged to every one that believeth.

'And these signs shall follow them that believe; in My name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.'

THE WAITING NATIONS.

BY SELINA GAYE, AUTHOR OF SKETCHES FROM HUNGARIAN HISTORY,'
AND DIAMONDS,' &c.

Another man there was, a Swabian priest,
Who knew the maladies of man and beast,
And strove to gain the precious draught whereby
Men live midst mortal men, yet never die ;
Tales of the Kaiser Redbeard could he tell,
Who neither went to heaven nor yet to hell,
When from that flight upon the Asian plain
He vanished, but still lives to come again,
Men know not how or when; but I, listening
Unto this tale, thought it a certain thing
That in some hidden vale of Swithiod
Across the golden pavement still he trod.'

The Earthly Paradise.

SMUTS

ANY ONE who has thoughtfully considered the records of the past must be ready to admit that, from the day when the gates of Paradise closed against him till the present hour, man has ever been waiting, longing, yearning for, and expecting a reversal of his sentence of banishment. That he has been banished, or that some part of his original birthright has been withdrawn from him, he has never doubted; and there is probably no race, however low it may have sunk in the scale of humanity, but has some tradition more or less dim of a better past, if even it have not energy enough left to hope anything from the future.

Everywhere there are traditions of a golden age, when sin and death were not, and no curse had as yet fallen upon the happy earth. The Tibetan and Mongolian, for example, believe in a time when the inhabitants of the earth were as gods, and the Pârsî looks fondly back to the rule of King Yima, when men and cattle were immortal, when the streams never dried up and the trees never withered, when food was plentiful and the temperature never too hot nor too cold, and when there was no such thing as envy or old age. Nor is this all; for through all the religion of the ancient Persians runs the liveliest expectation that this happy state of things should one day return; that a time should come, sooner or later, when every poison and every poisonous weed should be expelled from the earth, when there should be no more ravening beast or fiery simoon, when streams should break forth in every desert, when the bodies of men should cast no shadows, when food should be no longer necessary to sustain life, and poverty, sickness, old age, and death should for ever be abolished.

*

Nor was this expectation by any means confined to ancient times or the Persian nation-far from it; one meets with it continually, now in Hulsean Lectures for the year 1846. Richard Chenevix Trench, B.D. VOL. 31. 6

PART 181.