why won't you make one with us there to night instead of going to your

It is not worth repeating every word he said; my readers can guess what was likely to follow from the lips of one who made sport of godliness, and made a mock at sin. But what he said gave me a stab of self-reproach. "Here is one," thought I, "who is a willing servant of Satan; and he is not ashamed to invite others to go with him, while I am dumb in the service of my great, good Lord and Master. It shall not be so any longer; I will say a word for him. now." And I did.

"I cannot go with you, James," I said; "but I wish you would go with me. Come with us, and we will do you good,'" I added.

James burst into a loud, insulting laugh. "When I do that," said he, “you may call me anything you like. Come along, Tom, and leave the methodist alone."

They turned away, and I passed on, more sorrowful than before. "I knew how it would be," I thought.

But I did not know. I did not guess that, two minutes afterwards, I should have a hand laid upon my arm, and that, on turning round, I should see Tom May.

" I'll go with you for once, Stephen," said Tom. "Jem was too hard upon you, and I have told him so. He has no right to abuse you for being religious, as we all ought to be. I'll go with you. I have had a dozen minds to go with you before now; but you never asked me till tonight, and I reckoned that you did not want my company. And, Stephen," he continued, "I have been in this place three years; and this is the first time anybody has ever asked me to go to any place of worship, church or chapel."

So we walked on together; and though it was the first time with Tom May it was not the last. The gospel was made the power of God unto salvation to him, even as it had been to me. The Lord's name be praised for his great mercy to us both.

FAIR-WEATHER FAITH.

"WHAT did you mean, mother, by telling me to beware of fair-weather faith?"

"That question is best answered by another, my son: Do you find it always easy to believe in God and sal

vation ?"

"Not always equally so?"

"Then what makes it ever difficult?"

"Sometimes one thing, sometimes another. Now it is a sense of sin that chokes my faith; and then I doubt without being able to tell why. Sometimes I pray and seem to get no answer; and again things go cross somehow; and so in these and other ways my faith is tried, and alas! how often found wanting!"

Your

"You have given me a text, Silas, and your own experience justifies my warning, to beware of fair-weather faith. When things go cross as you say, when clouds lower, and health, comfort, and, above all, loved ones are taken, then the weather is neither fair nor faith easy. But I can best illustrate what I mean by telling some facts in my own history. Your father and I were married young, and I came full of hope and joy to my neat and pretty home. I had never known a care much greater than the loss of a domestic pet-a kitten or a bird-and few crosses heavier than the pain of passing parental displeasure for some youthful indiscretion. Brought up in ease, I was also nurtured in love. If my girlish home had been happy, my new abode was delightful. Instructive and pleasant books, tasteful rooms, in which I failed to find a want, a bright garden fragrant with summer flowers, agreeable neighbours, and more than all, my kind husband, made my new sphere indeed hopeful and bright. father and I were of one mind. We loved God and each other. In leisure hours we went together to visit the sick and needy. We were not rich, but by economy and self-denial we had always something to spare for the poor; and if I was first drawn to your father by the honest manliness of his piety (which I thank God I had been taught to value before all other excellence), I was the more satisfied with my choice the longer I lived with him and the more closely I observed him. So years passed, and our children grew around us. We were still blessed with competence; for with our needs our means steadily increased, so that enough and to spare' was still our thankful experience. Had we then expressed our feelings, no words for them would have been so appropriate as those of the psalmist, when he says, Lord, by thy favour thou hast made my mountain to stand strong;' and I shall never be moved.' Alas! how little do we know the deceit of our hearts!

"But to proceed. Our spiritual education was not complete, and there were heights and depths of experience we had not reached; and cur Father loved us too well to take us to heaven by a path over which no cloud had ever hung. Sickness entered our home. My children, your twin brothers, were seized with scarlet fever. It was of malignant type, and from the first we had little hope. In ten days all was over, and both were taken."

"Oh! mother, how did you bear it?"

"With keen anguish and despair, almost speechless. Faith, the faith we had believed so strong, staggered and reeled, like a frail vessel before a storm. We were unaccustomed to the yoke, and at first we could not see the love that imposed it. The storm drove the waves into the boat, and our faith forsook us, while we thought the Saviour asleep and heedless. But who teacheth like him?

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A few weeks more, and my girl, my only girl, was lying ill and senseless in the fever's ruthless grasp. Oh! those nights of weary watching, when the dumb heart could only utter its appeal in sighs and pour out its oppression in tears. At last another little golden head was laid low, and our daughter was gone into the Father's house. You, my baby, and you only were spared; and, like Rachael, I could not be comforted because my children were not."

"Did your faith quite fail you, mother?"

"This made our trial so terrible. We believed that God had smitten, but we could not trust his love in smiting. We wrote bitter things against ourselves, and murmured too against our Father. The years in which we had received good things at his hands weighed as nothing against these crushing sorrows. Your father first awoke from our error; but the cause of his awaking was a new anguish to my still restive heart: he was ill. I had long feared that dry short cough and the bright hectic of his cheek at night; and now I saw that grief was doing its work with painful haste. Oh how I cried to God to spare this blow!-but no: He knew what I needed and he could not throw away the rod.' My husband, the choice of my youth and the friend and support of more mature age, must waste in disease and sink into the grave before I could cease from myself or yield my stubborn will. Over that closed coffin and open tomb I learned at last to say

from my heart, Not my will, but thine be done. Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.'”

"And my father. Was he resigned ?"

"Oh yes, my boy, he was always better than I. For a time he could not submit to the loss of his children; but long before his death he saw the goodness and wisdom that had taken them before him. 'Oh! Ellen,' he often said to me, we are short-sighted mortals. We forget whom we distrust when we murmur against God. As if he could mistake or be wanting in tenderness. We want grace to look through what he sometimes does, to what he always is, and so to trust his doings for his own sake. Above all, we want grace to read his discipline by the light of Calvary. He that spared not his own Son, how shall he not with him freely give us all things?' So he tried to comfort me as he saw the wild distress of my soul. But I nursed my sorrow. To me the discipline of the covenant showed no love, and though I often pleaded with the good George Herbert

Throw away the rod,

Though man frailties hath,
Thou art God,

Throw away thy wrath.'

Yet, when I looked at my husband's wasted form and pallid cheek-when I saw death once more striding to my hearth to pluck away its chief joy, I could not add

For my heart's desire

Unto thine is bent:
I aspire

To a full consent.'

And as rebellion rose, my faith was well nigh shipwrecked altogether. In fair weather, you see, Silas, I had trusted cheerfully; but when the wind was contrary,' and my soul toiled in rowing' against the storm, then I forgot the loving eyes that were watching me from the hill-side, and did not know the voice that cried above the tempest, 'It is I, be not afraid.' By and by the night came, whose dawning found me a solitary widow. No one can paint that time; let it rest, hushed in memory. My God pitied and did not forsake me; and at last his love broke my fetters, and subdued my will, till I mourned over the ingratitude that rebelled against the Father who had given me Jesus. Then I began to understand that the Christian's

feeling must be reliance upon love, though every earthly light goes out, and hope in a promise when reason sees no way for its fulfilment.

"Still my lesson was not yet fully learned, and I was to pass into experience likely to deepen my knowledge, to try my faith, and exercise my obedience. Ah! my son, much that we call faith is not sterling. I soon discovered that I was poor as well as bereft and widowed. Your father's income died with him, and I was left to bring up my child by my own efforts."

"But did my father make no provision for you ?"

"He thought he had, but failure and loss occurred. But as long as I had reserved means and the prospect of suitable employment I did not despair amid all my sorrow and fear. Yet disappointment followed my steps: unexpected claims diminished my means; and the time came when I was literally without money, or the means of getting it. I began to be in want."

Is that true, dear mother," asked Silas, tenderly?

"Quite true, my son. Then I learned that faith falls short when it rests in anything below God and his word; and we often think we are resting in him when we are trusting in means. So long as my money lasted I was comparatively easy: that gone, and I was fearful, because faith was weak, and because, too, it was partly misplaced. But at length this error was corrected; and I will tell you how. I was alone one dark night: you were sleeping in your poor bed, far away from the pretty home of my married life. I had no fire; my last candle was nearly spent. I was without food or money: my heart was bleeding, and my eyes so red and swollen with weeping, that I was obliged to lay aside the needle and put by some plain work I had taken in to procure us bread. I took my well-worn Bible, and laying it on my solitary chair, I knelt and prayed as I think I never did before for power to honour God in this extremity. Presently I opened the book, and turning over the leaves, my eyes fell on many gracious promises, and especially on these words, • Call upon me and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things which thou knowest not.' Again I knelt and called upon the Lord and him only. He did answer; for thenceforth I felt able to trust him as a child does a father-sure that he would supply all my need, though I was all unworthy, and though I could not see how. Tired