a good-morning that was tranquil, though not gay, "I wish you a Merry Christmas. Do you think we'll get on in an hour or two ?"

There is no telling," he answered. "I fear we'll have to spend our Christmas where we are."

66 There are children aboard ?"

Lots of 'em, and their mothers are as blue as they are. We've hardly rations to go round them all, you see, and their lunch baskets are pretty nigh used up. After awhile, if we're stalled all day, the farmers from yonder will get in with their sleds, and bring us bread and meat. But it's a blue Christmas for the children."

"Mr. Saunders," said Miss Reynolds, "don't you feel as if this is an opportunity to do a little missionary work?"

'Whatever you propose," was the ready reply. "Where you lead I'll follow."

"Well, here we are, and we can't help ourselves. Providence has placed us here on Christmas Day. And close by us are enough little people for a small Sundayschool, and they are going to miss their Christmas altogether; to have no presents, no dinner, and no fun. Now I propose to brighten the day for them, if I can."

"May we help ?" diffidently came from one of the young fellows across the aisle. "I've my banjo with me."

66 And I can sing," added his companion.

66

Four of us," Miss Reynolds cheerily said, "ought to be able to entertain the little wayfarers. Do you suppose the conductor will let us have them in here ?"

"I don't fancy he'll object very strenuously, but I'll ask him," said Mr. Saunders. "I'll propitiate the porter first. He'll be the one to object if any one does. Now, shall we make a tour of the train ?"

The tired mothers and fathers, and the cross and fretful children on the train were lounging in every sort of uncomfortable posture in the seats of the daycoaches. Children were crying and quarrelling.

One wee bit of a girlie, golden-haired, with eyes hidden by long-fringed lashes, lay curled up in a corner of the seat nearest the door. She was sound asleep. On her frock was a tag. She was travelling all by herself.

"Poor baby!" said the conductor. "She has gotten into life's hurly-burly too soon. That little one was shipped from New York to San Francisco, by somebody who wanted to get rid of her. At 'Frisco there was nobody to receive her, and the Express people are sending her back."

Miss Reynolds bent over the little sleeper. Five years old, perhaps, her name on the tag, Elsie Dane, prettily dressed, yet a waif that some one had thrust out on the cold charity of the world. The lady, with a tender hand, adjusted the shawl that covered the child, and took a look over the car. Then she signaled to one of the gentlemen who had entered it with her, and immediately he struck up a merry jig on his banjo. The tumpa-tumpta-tum of the banjo may not be the heart-stirring beat of the drum, nor the sweet, thrilling note of the fife, but it has a rollicking melody that goes straight to the souls of children and common folk who like a tune. Everybody understands the banjo; this performer played it blithely.

At times the car felt the bracing effect of the ringing melody. The children quit their fretting, their crossness quelled by the music, the mothers brightened up, the fathers and big boys threw back their heads, straightened their neckties and looked more cheerful. Then the little procession of men went through the train, and presently returned, bringing with them all the children they could gather. They followed the banjo player as the children in Browning's ballad followed the pied piper of Hamelin, but to no such calamitous end. For when they were all assembled in the same car, a young lady with a voice as sweet as an angel's, said: "Children, this is Christmas! Merry Christmas to you, one and all! We're going to have some fun in our car, and we invite you in. Eat what breakfast you can, and then come. I've got candy and popcorn!"

So she had. Not very much. but enough to go round the little crowd.

Mr. Saunders picked up golden-haired Elsie, and carried her into the parlor car in his arms.

The Christmas music never sounded sweeter than when Mary Reynolds sang Martin Luther's hymn:

Give heed, my heart; lift up thine eyes;
Who is it in yon manger lies?
Who is this Child, so young and fair?
The blessed Christ-Child lieth there.

Ah, dearest Jesus, Holy Child,
Make Thee a bed, soft, undefiled,
Within my heart, that it may be
A quiet chamber, kept for Thee.

My heart for very joy doth leap,
My lips no more can silence keep;
I too must sing with joyful tongue
That sweetest, ancient cradle song.

When she stopped the children clamored for more, but she asked her friend to play again on the banjo, and then Mr. Saunders came to the front and taught them a carol. By this time the whole train had caught the spirit of Christmas, and far out over the new-fallen snow rang the triumphant chorals.

The conductor came in after awhile with a bag of peanuts, which were received with acclamation. Then, as the children ate them, he drew Miss Reynolds aside.

"I do not think it would be wrong for you to read the letter that was sent, as it happened, with this little girl, whom I am carrying back to go into an asylum. The man to whom it was addressed handed it back to me. He said there was some mistake; he had children enough of his own, and knew nothing about this party.

Mary Reynolds opened the letter. The child was now awake, an exquisite little being with great brown eyes, and a skin like satin. As he saw the writing, she suppressed an exclamation. The hand was familiar though weak and scrawling.

DEAR BROTHER: This letter will not be sent you till I am dead. I am now in the hospital, and the doctors say that I cannot last more than another day. Take care of my Elsie. She is alone in the world.

heard that Mr. Dane died somewhere abroad. I suppose the poor mother was penniless. She was an orphan herself. I am sure she would like me to have Elsie."

"But the Express Company?"

"Their duty ended when they delivered the parcel, said the conductor. "I am carrying her back. You can make inquiries at the other end when you reach Blenheim. I'll take the responsibility of giving her to you for the present."

There was some demur about the propriety of this, but Mr. Saunders added his word, and Mary Reynolds, drawing the little one close, said: 'Now, baby, for awhile you shall belong to me-my little Christmas child!"

Noon was drawing near. The weather was cold, but growing milder. Over the snow came farmers with eggs, butter, bread, meat, cold chicken, pumpkin and mince pies, and the hungry passengers bought out all they offered. It was a rather jolly Christmas after all. Everybody talked to everybody else. One man performed some sleight-of-hand tricks. Another told stories. The people visited back and forth in the cars, and the children frolicked in the deep snow. In the late afternoon they had a regular singing service, and just as their voices trailed off into silence the snow-plough came, and there was a shout that the way was clear.

Late on Christmas night Mary Reynolds reached her father's house, carrying with her little Elsie. The stalled Christmas lives in the memory of both, for Elsie's uncle was never found, and Elsie Dane, blossoming into rare loveliness, is still to Mary Reynolds her Christmas child.Christian Herald.

The tender and beautiful story of the Holy Family has been for many centuries the chief subject of Christian art and song, and especially of Christian literature. The influence of this sweet story on human life and happiness who can estimate? In an age of rapine and unruth and wrong the presentation of that sweetest idyl, the love of mother and the babe, has touched to tenderness even hard and cruel natures, and has been a gleam of hope in darkest lands. Professor Drummond traces much of the evolution of our civilization, and even much of our religion, to this sacred relation. The naivete of the picture in which an angel is playing on his lute to the listening Babe is one of exquisite beauty.

"A little child shall lead them."

Christmas is, above all, the children's day. God's greatest gift to man was a little Child. But there is still, in spite of nineteen centuries of Christianity, many a little child not properly cared for to-day. There are homes yet where the face of a child would crown the Christmas feast, and there are little ones, homeless, growing up in institutions without the sweet memories of a childhood home. Let us look reverently into the face of His little ones this day for His sake, and it will be to Him a gift of sweetest savor.

IN THE HEART OF THE HOME.

It was night-time, and the sheep were folded fast on Bethlehem's hills when He came, bringing to the world the picture that has ever since been the inspiration of art. A common enough picture, it is

there are weightier reasons than these for accepting Jesus as the Saviour of the world, and that if we had only the gospels of Mark and John with the rest of the New Testament we should still see in Jesus the Word made flesh, God incarnated in a human life.

So far as the records show, Jesus did not seek to win disciples by claiming that His birth and infancy were different from theirs. He did not tell them that He had no human father, or that angels announced His coming, or that wise men from the East came to worship Him as a babe. He persuaded men to follow Him because of His mission, His message, and His deeds.

The Acts and the Epistles contain no reference to His birth or His infancy as reasons why men should accept Him as Saviour and Lord. The early disciples presented His life and His teaching and His deeds, attested by His death and resurrection, as sufficient to bring men into His kingdom and to prove that He was the Son of God. Paul said that Jesus "was born of the seed of David according to the flesh, who was declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead; even Jesus Christ our Lord."

What, then, is the value of the stories of the infancy, and how ought we to regard them? The first chapters of Matthew and Luke tell us in substance that Jesus "was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary." They also trace His ancestry back through Joseph as His father to David, thus proving Him to be the Messiah, King of the Jews. Luke tells us that Mary spoke to her son of Joseph as His father. These writers apparently saw no contradiction in these statements, for they attempt no explanation of them.

Luke says that an angel foretold to the aged priest Zacharias that he should be the father of a son, the forerunner of the Messiah; that an angel announced to Mary that through the power of the Holy Ghost she would bring forth a child who should be called the Son of God; and that when the wife of Zacharias met Mary she declared that her unborn child recognized the child of Mary as his Lord. Luke also says that on the night of the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem an angel declared to shepherds in the field that the child was to be Saviour, Messiah, Lord, and that a choir of angels sang a hymn of praise. Luke further says that an aged prophet and prophetess greeted the

child in the temple as the coming ReIdeemer of Israel.

Matthew tells us that an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream and revealed to him that the child of Mary was conceived by the Holy Ghost; that wise men from the East came, guided by a star, to worship the young child; and that both they and Joseph were warned in dreams to protect Him from the cruelty of Herod.

What do these things mean to us? First, we do not know enough of those times and those environments to deny that these things happened, even if we are sometimes moved to question them. They are appropriate to the greatest event in the world's history. They are in harmony with the mission of the Christ to reveal God to man through a human life. Next, that visions of angels, dreams, portents in the sky and signs among the stars would not impress us if we were told of them as happening now as they did the simple people of the first Christian century. They fit the time and the occasion, and we love to dwell on them and tell them to our children.

But we see far greater things than these to convince us that Jesus was the Christ-the world being transformed by the child who was born in Palestine. Records of supernatural events connected with His infancy which may have impressed deeply those who first heard of Him as an unknown man are relatively far less important than the signs of His presence and power written large across the pages of the world's history now being made. Few heard the angel's message concerning His coming or saw the wise men on their journey. But what do we see this Christmas season? Says Dr. Fairbairn of Jesus Christ: "By means of His very suffering and His cross He enters upon a throne such as no monarch ever filled and no Caesar ever exercised. He leads captive the civilized peoples; they accept His words as law, though they confess it higher than human nature likes to obey; they build Him houses, they worship Him; they praise Him in song, interpret Him in philosophies and theologies; they deeply love, they madly hate, for His sake."

Jesus is His own witness now; with the crown of suffering on the cross, the glory of the resurrection, and the triumph over sin and death.-Rev. A. E. Dunning, in Congregationalist and Christian World.