FACTS, HINTS, GEMS, AND POETRY.

UNNATURALNESS IN PREACHING.

SIDNEY SMITH tells us: "I went, for the first time in my life, some years ago, to stay at a very grand and beautiful palace in the country, where the grounds are said to be laid out with consummate taste. For the first two or three days I was perfectly enchanted; it seemed something so much better than nature that I really began to wish the earth had been laid out according to the latest principles of improvement.

In three days time I was tired to death; a thistle, a nettle, a heap of dead bushes, anything that wore the appearance of accident and want of attention, was quite a relief. I used to escape from the made grounds, and walk upon an adjacent goose common, where the cart ruts, gravel pits, humps, irregularities, coarse, ungentlemanlike grass, and all the varieties produced by neglect, were a thousand times more gratifying than the monotony of beauties the result of design, and crowded into unnatural confines."

Now, this is precisely the result produced upon most hearers by a too elaborate style of preaching. At first it astonishes, amazes, and delights; but in the long run it palls upon the mind, and even wearies the ear. The high art displayed in sentences polished into perfect smoothness, is certainly very wonderful, but it ere long becomes very wearisome. Men cannot forever look at fireworks, nor pass their days among artificial flowers. The preaching which maintains its attractiveness year after year, is after the order of nature, original, unaffected, and full of spontaneous bursts which the laws of rhetoric would scarcely justify. Homely illustrations, a touch of quaintness, a fulness of heart, thorough naturalness, and outspoken manliness, are among the elements which compose a ministry which will wear, and be as interesting at the end of twenty years as at first.

Of the refined politeness of a drawing-room, most people have enough in a single evening; to continue such a manner of intercourse for a week would be intolerable, but the familiar communion of the family never tires, home's genuine and spontaneous fellowship grows dearer every year. The parallel holds good between the deliverances of a grandiloquent elocution and the utterances of a warm heart. The Primitive Methodist being asked to return thanks after dinner with the squire, thanked God that he did not have such a good dinner every day, or he should be ill; and when we have occasionally listened to some great achievement of

LOVE FOR LOVE.

rhetoric, we have felt the same grateful sentiment rising to our lips. A whipped cream or a syllabub is an excellent thing occasionally, but it is easy to grow tired of both of them, while bread and cheese or some such homely fare can be eaten year after year with a relish.

If it be natural to a man to be very elegant and rhetorical, let him be so; flamingoes and giraffes are as God made them, and therefore their long legs are the correct thing; but let no man imitate the proficient in an elevated style, for geese and sheep would be monstrous if perched on high. To be sublime is one thing, to be ridiculous is only a step removed; but it is another matter. Many in labouring to escape rusticity have fallen into fastidiousness, and so into utter feebleness. It may be that to recover their strength they will have to breathe their native air, and return to that natural style from which they have so laboriously departed.-Spurgeon.

LOVE FOR LOVE.

RAGGED, dirty, ugly. He had fallen in the gutter; his hands and face were black, his mouth wide open, and sending forth sounds not the most musical. A rough hand lifted him against the wall. There he stood, his tears making little gutters down his begrimmed cheeks. Men as they passed laughed at him, not caring for a moment to stop and enquire if he were really hurt. Boys halted a minute to jeer and load him with their insults. Poor boy! he had not a friend in the world that he knew of, certainly he did not deserve one. Yet, if none but the deserving had friends, how many would be friendless!

A lady is passing. Her kindness of heart prompts her to stay and say a word to the boys who are joking their companion, and laughing at his sorrow. Then she looks fixedly at the dirty, crouching lad against the wall.

"Why, John, is it you?"

He removes one black fist from his eye, and looks up. recognizes her. She has taught him at the Sunday school. "O ma'am, I'm so bad!"

He

She has him examined, and then taken to the hospital. Afterward, she visits him kindly and frequently.

A year passes by.

There is a fire one night. A dwelling-house in flames. The engine has not yet arrived. The inmates cannot be rescued. A boy has looked on. Suddenly he shouts, "Oh! she lives here."

SAYINGS OF MARTIN LUTHER.

Then he climbs up the heated, fallen stairs. He fights against the suffocating smoke. He hunts about until he finds what he sought. She has fainted-is dying, perhaps. No! he will save her. Five minutes of agonizing suspense, and she is safe in the cool air.

The bystanders are struck with the intrepidity of the boy. He only walks away, muttering:

"She didn't turn away from me when I was hurt."

O friends, the stone looks very rough, but it may be a diamond!

SAYINGS OF MARTIN LUTHER.

"THERE is no sermon that can improve like a gospel sermon." "He who seeks a comfortable life should not be a teacher of religion."

"Do thou preach, and let God convert souls."

"The gain of souls must animate the preacher, or he is not a true preacher."

"Three things preserve the church: faithful teaching, diligent prayer, and patient suffering."

"The Word of God must be preached in its purity."

"In order that a man may lift up his head toward heaven, he must find nothing on earth whereon to lean it."

"Be not double-tongued and have not two hearts."

"A good preacher must be able to compress a sermon into two or three words, and also out of one flower to make a whole meadow."

"Form your judgment not from the opinion of the world, but from the Word."

"The life of a Christian must be a warfare, and ministers of the Word must lead the army."

"I earnestly entreat you to contemplate simple sayings, and narratives recorded in the Bible."

"Three properties belong to a good prayer: first, the laying hold upon the promise; second, an anxious feeling concerning what is asked for; third, thankfulness and confession. The prayer also should be diligent, increasing, untiring, ever withstanding suspicion, unbelief and despair."

"He is the best Christian who has most love, after that he who has most faith."

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Knowledge without works is like a tree without fruit." "To stand still is to go back."

A GOOD NEIGHBOUR.-THE RESCUE OF JOHN WESLEY.

"A preacher of the gospel is neither a servant of the court nor of the peasant, but a servant of God, and his message is for both lords and peasants."

“If a great damage is to be done to the devil, it must be done by young people growing in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." 66 To work is our business."

"Be ever the enemy of sin and yet the friend of sinners.”

A GOOD NEIGHBOUR.

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after a quarter "Here is what father, you are a

IN Germany, during the war, a captain of cavalry was ordered out upon a foraging expedition. He put himself at the head of his troops, and marched to the quarter assigned him. It was a solitary valley, in which hardly anything but woods could be seen. Finding in the midst of it a small cottage, he approached, and, knocking at the door, it was opened by an old and venerable man, with a beard silvered by age. Father," said the officer, "show me a field where I may set my troops to forage in." The old man complied, and, conducting them out of the valley, of an hour's march came to a fine field of barley. we are in search of," exclaimed the captain; true and faithful guide," "Wait yet a few minutes," replied the old man; "follow me patiently a little further.” The march was accordingly resumed, and at the distance of a mile they arrived at another field of barley. The troops immediately alighted, cut down the grain, trussed it, and remounted. The officer thereupon said to his conductor: "Father, you have given yourself and us unnecessary trouble; the first field was far better than this.” Very true, sir,” replied the good old man, "but it was not mine."

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THE RESCUE OF JOHN WESLEY.

WAKING in the dead of night, with the alarm of "Fire" ringing in his ears, Samuel Wesley, rector of Epworth from the days of William and Mary to those of George II., discovered that the cries which reached him from the street without bore reference to his own dwelling. The endangered clergyman roused his wife, and the pair hurried to effect the rescue of their children. So narrow was the deliverance of the family from the dreadful death that! threatened them that Mrs. Wesley had literally to rush through flames in order to gain the street. Scorched and breathless, the anxious parents set themselves to count their little ones, and found