COMFORTERS.

heart, say what you have to say, and then go your way. It is not the number of words in which your sympathies are expressed. Sometimes it is just silence. Sometimes it is the grasp of the hand, and one word is more than fifty dictionaries.

Here is a man who has been wounded in the body. The doctor comes and binds up the wound very carefully, and says, "Now, let that be, and it will heal!" Here comes along some curious person, and says, "Let me see that wound." He tears off the bandage, and after a while the hand mortifies and the man loses it. Here is a man smitten with some terrible bereavement. Some one comes and says, "Let me see that wound." The divine Surgeon has bound it all up. The balm of divine grace is on the wound. Somebody comes and says, "Let me see that wound. You did not give me all the particulars. How do you feel?" Rip off the bondage! Open the wound! Oh! when the Lord Jesus Christ, the Physician of souls, has bound up a wound, let it heal. Don't talk the man to death.

Again: Those who belong to the stoical school say: "Take this matter coolly. Brace up. Don't give way to your emotions. Cultivate an iron temperament, as I do." An iceberg lecturing a hyacinth for having a drop of dew in its eye. Why do you not blame the violin for making sounds when the hand of the performer sweeps across it? Here is a soul that God has strung with ten thousand exquisite sensibilities-oh! how delicately strung!-don't you blame it when the hand of trouble sweeps across its strings. Some of the mightiest natures have been mightiest in their grief. One of the sweetest passages of English history is an account of the statesman who every day went out and wept on the neck of the pet horse of his dead son. Some people call that silly. I call it great. Was David silly when he wept for Absalom? Was Christ silly in weeping for Lazarus ? The last man I want to see when I have any trouble is a worldly philosopher.

Those who have nothing but religious cant are miserable comforters. Some people have an idea that they comfort the afflicted in proportion as they groan over them. There are times when such an one would give pounds to see a cheerful face. But everybody who comes looks so doleful. Do not whine over an afflicted soul. Better tell the promises of God's grace to him in a firm voice. Don't be ashamed to smile. Don't drive a hearse

POETRY.

through the man's soul. Don't tell him the thing was "foreordained." It was foreordained, but this is not the truth that is now to be presented to him. When you bind up a broken bone of the soul, and you want splints, don't make them out of cast iron. Don't tell the man it is the justice of God. Tell him it is the mercy. Don't give him aquafortis when he needs valerian.

ANECDOTES AND SELECTIONS.

Anecdotes and Selections.

LITTLE GIFTS.-The Rev. Samuel Cox, in the Sunday Magazine, eloquently points out how those possessing only little gifts and few opportunities may serve God and men. He says, "But some will say, 'How willingly would we serve men if we could! But we have no special gift, no great opportunities. We have nothing to give which our neighbours would accept. The little we can do is not worthy the name of service.' Is it not? In a forest or an orchard there must be trees of many kinds. All cannot be olives, nor all figs, nor all vines. But if every tree yield its fruit, and the best fruit it can, does not the orchard prosper? Under the larger trees there must be many briers, many brambles,-perhaps a score or a hundred of these for every tree that throws lofty branches into the air. And a few of these brambles might get together and say, 'We are of no use; the forest does not need us; men do not care for us. O that we could bear olives, or figs, or grapes! As it is, we are good for nothing but to be cut down and cast into the fire. Why should we wait for that? Let us catch fire and burn the forest down.' But need the brambles thus despair of themselves? Ask the birds who dine off the hips and haws of the thorns all the winter through! Ask the boys who pluck blackberries off the briars! Even the bramble, if, instead of catching fire, it will give itself to its proper work, is capable of bearing a fruit which many prize above the sour olive or the too luscious fig, a fruit as sweet but not so perilous as the grape. And just as the bramble may always either yield fruit, or store up the sweet juices which turn to fruit, so we, if we will use our few gifts, and the trivial opportunities which every day brings us, may be always either yielding our fruit, or making ready to yield fruit, which our neighbours will find both nutritious and sweet."

A CURIOUS LEGEND.-A writer in Lippincott's Magazine finds and reports this peculiar and suggestive legend. It suggests plenty of superstition, but there is a deep undercurrent of meaning in it :"When Adam was far advanced in years and at the point of death, he sent his son to the angel Michael, who kept the gate of Paradise, to pray for the oil of mercy, so that he could be healed. The angel answered that it could not be until fifty-five hundred years, but he gave Seth a branch of the tree of which Adam had eaten, bidding him plant it on Mount Lebanon, and that when it bore fruit his father should be healed. Seth planted the branch on his father's grave; it took root and grew, and from it were made Aaron's rod, and Moses' staff with which he struck the rock and sweetened the waters of Marah. It also formed the pole on which the brazen serpent was lifted up, and the ark of the testimony. At last it came into the hands

ANECDOTES AND SELECTIONS.

of Solomon, who used it in building his palace; but it continually resisted the efforts of the builders to adjust it. Now it was too long, and then again too short. The builders, being angry, then threw it into a marsh, so that it might serve as a bridge. The queen of Sheba would not walk upon it, but adored it, and told Solomon that upon it should be suspended the man through whose death the kingdom should be destroyed. Solomon then had it buried deep in the ground, where afterward the pool of Bethesda was dug, and from the virtues of this tree healing properties were imparted to the waters. After it had been buried three hundred years it rose to the surface of the water, and the Jews took it and made of it the cross of our Saviour."

EXTENDING CHRIST'S INVITATION.-Unless in the sense of guarding their peace of mind from being disturbed by temptation, and their purity from being stained by sin, those who find treasures in the gospel do not hide them. On the contrary, they seek to make the great discovery known, and to communicate its benefits to all. There is no temptation to do otherwise, to keep it to ourselves, since it has blessings in the pardon and peace of God, enough for us and for all others. It is as if one of a caravan that had sunk on a burning desert were, in making a last effort for life, to discover no muddy pool, but a vast fountain-cool as the snows that replenished its spring, and pure as the heavens that were reflected on its bosom. He revives at the blessed sight, and pushing on to the margin stoops and drinks; yet ere his thirst is fully quenched, see how he speeds away to pluck his friends from the arms of death, and hark! how he shouts, making the lone desert ring with the cry, "Ho! every one that thirsteth; come ye to the waters!" None ever found Christ but they wished that others also might find Him, were ever saved without a desire to save springing up in their hearts. Theirs is the spirit of Andrew, when he went to his brother Peter, saying, "We have found the Messias;" of those who said, "Come thou with us, we will do thee good,' ""Arise, for we have seen the land, and behold, it is very good."-Guthrie.

COUNT OVER THE MERCIES.-Count the mercies which have been quietly falling in your history. Down they come, every morning and every evening, as angel messengers from the Father of heaven. Have you lived these years, wasting mercies, renewing them every day, and never yet realized whence they came? If you have, heaven pity you. You have murmured under afflictions, but who heard you rejoice over blessings? Ask the sunbeam, the raindrop, the star, or the queen of night. What is life but mercy? What is strength, friendship, social life? Had each the power of speech, each would say, "I am a mercy." Perhaps you have never regarded them as such. If not, you have been a poor student of nature and revelation. What is the propriety of stopping to play with a thorn bush, when you may just as well pluck sweet flowers and eat pleasant fruits.

THE FIRESIDE.-THE PENNY POST BOX.

The Fireside.

SOUR WORDS.

1. They indicate a sour origin. They show that the heart is in an acid state. The hearer of such words cannot but have his own, and not a very complimentary opinion of the speaker.

2. They make the speaker himself more sour. Words react upon those who utter them. As kind words beget kindness, and increase the power of it in the soul, so sour words increase the bad temper of him who uses them. They add fuel to the fire and augment the beat. 3. Sour words dangerously tend to make the hearer sour. They create an atmosphere which he breathes, and the virus is likely to penetrate his soul and make him sour too. Vinegar gives its own character to anything it can reach. So it is not the fault of the sour in heart and speech that they do not spoil all the sweetness there is about them.

4. Sour words are all but certain to give sourness to the countenance. The face is a tell-tale of the heart, and the heart's sourness, rising to the lips in bitter words, has wonderful power over all the features. Look on the countenance, as its owner is using sharp and bitter words. Do you see a smiling June, or a scowling November?

5. Sour words are not soon forgotten. Sharp and piercing, they enter like iron into the soul. As with hooks of steel, they hang on to memory. All that you can recollect of some people is the sour words you have heard them use.

Now, my young friends, if sour words indicate a sour heart, and make the speaker more sour, and make hearers sour, and give a sour countenance, and make one's sourness long and painfully remembered, -there are five reasons why such words should never be found upon your lips. Let the last ones you have used be the last.

The Penny Post Box.

SECRET OF SUCCESS.

DON'T hang a dismal picture on the wall, and do not daub with sables and glooms in your conversation. Don't be a cynic and disconsolate preacher. Don't bewail and bemoan. Omit the negative propositions. Nerve us with incessant affirmatives. Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good. When that is spoken which has a right to be spoken, the chatter and the criticism will stop. Set down nothing that will not help somebody, "For every gift of noble origin

Is breathed upon by Hope's perpetual breath."