drank was also much less liable to recover from disease than the man who did not. Alcohol did not make one single particle of fibre of the whole human system, and when it went into the digestive organs it at once made a row. There it was looked upon as a dog in the manger. Popular opinion was, however, bringing about a great change in drinking habits. In Canada all their great gatherings were conducted chiefly on temperance principles. These who were exercising the greatest and the grandest influence in this particular were the ladies of the world. Wherever women went, invariably good followed.

Sir Frederick Treves, one of the greatest surgeons of the day, delivered an address a few weeks ago in London in which he stated positively and without any reservation that alcohol was undoubtedly a poison and ought to be treated as such. In England fifty years ago gout was looked upon as a blood disease, and many an individual was proud to have an attack of gout because he looked upon it as an evidence of blue blood. It was an evidence of too much wine under the belt. What had been the experience of Dr. Nansen and those other explorers who, in their exertions, almost touched the North Pole, although they did not exactly get there. They accomplished these perilous voyages in the midst of very severe cold and they came back in perfect health without taking one drop of alcoholic liquor. If the British Government in considering this question looked upon it seriously, they might take a different view than they did at present. The great revenue of the Empire came in large measure from the taxation resulting from the sale. of alcoholic beverages, but looked at from another point of view, how many thousands were in their asylums and

poorhouses that probably would not have found their way there had it not been for the excessive use of alcohol? He thought the one counteracted the other in a most marvellous manner. Sir James said that in conversation with two surgeons of the British Navy who had come from Hong Kong he learned that there was no alcohol to be obtained on board of any of the ships of Admiral Togo's squadronhence the men were able to do their duties with satisfaction to themselves and to the advantage of that great empire of which he was the maritime head. He was delighted that that country was their ally, because they were the most progressive people living as regards minute investigation and the examination, pathologically and microscopically, of the bacillus tuberculosis. On the Japanese ships of war an apartment is set apart and a bacteriologist is employed on each ship to weed out anything in the shape of bacillus germs, and thus keep up the vitality and endurance of these men who were known throughout the world for what they had accomplished. In Scotland it was absolutely necessary to have an examination of the young people, because they might have the incipient elements of the disease without a schoolmaster knowing anything about it, because he was not an educated medical man. Most people thought bacillus tuberculosis only finds its way into lung tissue, whereas they might have it in the brain, in the spine, in the hip joint, the knee joint, the foot, or some other portion of the body, and it is absolutely necessary, therefore, to make a thorough examination of the children in order to stamp out the disease in its incipient stages.

So far they had no medical Inspectors of Schools in Canada, but it was spoken of seriously, and he thought the day was not far distant when they

He goes with you wherever you go,
But He stays with me, too, where I stay;
Not one of His own He leaveth lone
For a single hour in the day.

He guides you, and guards, who are brave and strong,

And whose life in its full tide flows,
Yet on me, who am timid and frail and faint,
His care unremitting bestows.

Yes, always with all is the Friend Divine, -
No reason to fear have we

That beyond His hearing or out of His sight
We shall ever an instant be.

Is it nothing but joy to us to feel
Completely assured of this?

Or have we to grieve that He hath been grieved
By the word or the deed amiss?

Do you front the world with His colors unfurled?

In His name do you do and dare?

Toronto.

Do you stand in the breach for the right when

noue

Save Himself is beside you there?

Do I wait apart with a trust so firm
And a love so pure and true,
That all may see I would serve Him as well,
Were I strengthened for service, as you?

Is it always so? Ah! the answer is slow,
For shame which the lips doth seal;
Yet swift the resolve that the time still to come
Shall a worthier record reveal.

Lord, by Thy great grace, keep us faithful henceforth,

In action, in thought and in speech; May we each be with Thee to Thy glory and praise

As Thou for our help art with each.

So only rejoicing the thought shall bring-
That Thy presence with all doth stay
And leaves not alone e'en the least of Thine own
For a moment by night or day.

A NEW

HERE is great danger, in

T the enthusiasm of public

missionary gatherings with their encouraging reports, of patting ourselves upon the back, and going home with a profound self-complacency, when we ought to be humiliated before God in penitence and shame. The Christian Church, at its best, has never yet done its utmost to help on the cause of missions; and in the name of God, and with profoundest solemnity of conviction, I would press upon the readers the necessity of beginning at the foundations and building the structure of church cooperation with the missionary work. upon a very much more solid basis.

The

If the work of missions is ever to rise to its true level, and to be prosecuted with a true, aggressive spirit, we, in the Church at home, must make an entirely new beginning. ignorance that prevails, even among the more intelligent class of disciples, concerning the cause and progress of missions is a shame to them. Intelligence must awaken and nourish conviction, or there is no true startingpoint in any self-denying and aggressive service for God or men. How few, even in the more intelligent gatherings, are familiar with the history of missions, or even of their own denominational missions! There is not one in ten, perhaps, who could answer twenty primary and fundamental questions as to the history of missions.

Let us all, then, ask ourselves the question, "What do I know about the

great campaign of God throughout the world for its evangelization?" Most of us, I venture to affirm, know more about the late South African war, or the present Russo-Japanese contest, than we know about the history of God's world-wide war against the tremendous foes that are massed in front of the Christian Church. Those who carefully study the whole history of modern missions find it to be God's great "Milky Way," which floats its starry banner across the firmament of history. There is no land where Christianity has gone, where the Gospel has had a fair chance. where it has had a fair fight in the field, where missionary operations have been properly supported by the Church at home; where Christianity has planted the truth, and the native Church, and the Word of God in the vernacular language; where God also has not wrought, over and over again. the miracles and wonders of the apostolic days! Let any devout disciple read the story of William Johnson in

his "Seven Years in Sierra Leone," or of the Neronian persecution in Madagascar for a quarter of a century; or of William Carey's forty-three years of grand and glorious work in India, giving to two hundred millions of people the Bible in forty languages and dialects; or of Titus Coan's three years' camp-meeting in Hilo and Puna, or of William Duncan's Metlakahtla among, the North American Indians, or of Robert W. McAll's work among the French, or Joseph Neesima's Doshisha, the "SingleEyed" Institution, in Japan, or of Judson's great career in Burma, or the history of the Lone Star Mission among the Telugus. The largest church of the world is not in the metropolis of the world, or in the great city of New York, but in that same Lone Star Mission; for, belonging to that church to-day, there are from forty thousand to fifty thousand Christians! Let any child of God go systematically through the great fields of missions; read the story of James Chalmers in New Guinea, or that remarkable book of Amy Carmichael Wilson, "Things as They Are in India," or Mrs. Howard Taylor's "Pastor Hsi," or "The Wonderful Story of Uganda"-books which are more fascinating than any fiction-and, when the readers have got intelligence and conviction, both as to the need of these peoples and as to the willingness of God to bless the work of missions when prosecuted in His name, then they will be prepared to respond with their whole heart to the call of God.

And how about the giving of which we have all heard? We are doing comparatively nothing! It is only, relatively, a mere pittance that we bestow upon this grand world-wide. work for God and humanity.

George Muller estimated that there were perhaps fifty millions of Protestant Christians-or communicants

in America, Great Britain, and the continent of Europe. By this time there may be, perhaps, sixty millions of actual communicants. Now what were the average contributions of the last year towards the direct work of foreign missions? About three mi!lions of pounds sterling, or about sixty millions of shillings sterling, an average of only one shilling per year for every one of those sixty millions of Protestant Christians-a shilling a year, or a penny a month (2 cents)! I think they could afford that! they might even double it; they might, under great self-denial, even treble it.

Of course, we all know that comparatively few of these sixty millions are habitual givers; but if only ten millions of them are contributors, it is still a yearly average of but six shillings, or sixpence a month (twelve cents)! This is contemptible dealing with God! I do not myself believe in the "healthiness of a debt"; at any rate, I have preserved my own health. best without any. But while I deprecate debt, I can understand that where there is a growing work for God there may often be a temporary deficit. When I was a boy I grew so fast that it was all my mother could do to keep me in clothes! But that was the fault not of weakness but of vigor. It was the penalty of growth and health. Let us not, then, be surprised or find fault if there is a temporary deficiency. Only let the temporary deficiency not become an embarrassing debt, but at once let it be met, and give the growing work a new suit!

If any are inclined to find occasion for fault-finding in the fact that the work of our missionary societies expands so as to exceed their income, I could take such to see a mother, whose boy, though twenty years old, is still an infant, and can wear the same garments as ten years since! But what mother would not gladly exchange.

such a poor cripple, half-idiotic, for a healthy, roystering boy that it is impossible to keep in trousers and shoes! Never let us complain because God's work perpetually demands larger supplies; that is the grand evidence of its Divine progress and success. We must read the newspapers less, and the literature of Christ more; we must interest ourselves in the biographies of heroic men and women that have gone to the field in the name of Jesus Christ, and in the whole history of this great world-wide campaign. Then our intelligence and conviction, stimulating sympathy and affection, will reach. down to the conscience and awaken a new sense of obligation and duty, unloosing our purse-strings and stimulating greater self-sacrifice and far larger gifts-gifts that cost us something, and are the expression of selfdenial, before Almighty God.

We must do, also, mighty praying as well as self-denying giving, and thus keep up the line of communication between our friends who go abroad and the Church that stays at home. Let us not forget that that same great work, among the Telugus, owed its grand impulse to the prayers of five disciples a missionary and his wife and three natives, who, on January 1, 1865, ascended the hill overlooking Ongole, and earnestly prayed God to make it the centre of a great light to

the whole country-a prayer so gloriously fulfilled twelve years later.

What would be thought of a nation. that should let a general lead an army into the heart of an enemy's territory and lose his line of communication with the people that sent him forth, so as to prevent his having supplies of men and the material of war! and what would become of such a general and his army, when he was thus in the heart of an enemy's country, if those at home should fail to keep up his line of communication upon which depend all these new supplies of men and money? So must we who stay by the stuff share the work with those at the front; and when the Church, intelligent in her conviction, warm in her sympathetic affection, generous and self-denying in her giving, mighty and prevailing in her praying, shall thus keep in true and constant communication with God's missionaries in the field, we shall find there is no lack of response of men or of means to carry the Gospel to the ends of the earth! Let us all seek to inform ourselves of the whole history and progress of God's mission campaign; then intelligent information will incite us to sympathetic praying and selfdenying giving; and, when God calls, to the surrender of ourselves, going as well as giving and praying, or sending those who can go!-The Missionary Review of the World.

Through aisles of long-drawn centuries
My spirit walks in thought,
And to that symbol lifts its eyes

Which God's own pity wrought;
From Calvary shines the altar's gleam,
The Church's East is there,
The Ages one great minster seem,

That throbs with praise and prayer.

And all the way from Calvary down
The carven pavement shows
Their graves who won the martyr's crown
And safe in God repose;

The saints of many a warring creed
Who now in heaven have learned
That all paths to the Father lead

Where self the feet have spurned.