sang, and how an old father taught them to continue with the true God.

"The more this little remnant is oppressed, and its enemies and adversities multiply, the more firmly it is established, and the more does it increase in the knowledge and confession of divine truth. For it is the nature of the

godly heart to flourish in persecution, grow in carnage, advance in trials, rejoice in contempt, to be cheerful in tears, and to increase in troubles. It conquers when injured, understands when corrected, and maintains its ground when it is thought to be vanquished."

THE BROWN FAMILY.

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Ir was a dark afternoon, and my heart was heavy cares without and sin within made me well nigh ready to halt." I was walking moodily along, full of unbelieving and depressing thoughts. The Christian's way seemed very narrow, and my progress in it very slow. I scarcely knew what hope meant, at that period of my history, and was at once a burden to myself and a source of great anxiety to Christian friends.

There was one among the latter with enlarged experience of the human heart, who knew that "work was what my morbid disposition needed to make it healthy. "Go to work for others," was her constant counsel. "Tell them of Jesus, and wait the results. Just try it, will you?" And I was trying it, hitherto, without much enjoyment.

I took a Bible district, and on the afternoon in question was finishing a preparatory canvass of its houses. Turning a sharp corner leading to the last few cottages assigned to me, I saw a man cruelly beating a half-starved horse, attached to a potato cart. Fearful oaths mingled with his strokes, and at a cottage door stood a slovenly woman encouraging his brutality. "That's right, Joe: don't spare him he is as lazy as a pig." : It was a degrading exhibition, and most senseless in its depravity: really at the moment I could not help thinking the patient beast the more dignified creature of the three. I besought the man to have mercy.

Mercy!" he answered, "what for? He deserves no mercy."

"What has he done?" I asked.

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Nothing," was the short answer.

"Then why beat him in that cruel way?" "Just to make 'un do something. He don't go along at the rate of two miles an hour, and them potatoes must be miles off afore night."

I ventured to doubt the success of his method for ensuring speed, and suggested an extra meal before starting as a more probable incentive; but he shook his head, as if he knew his own business best, though he ceased the cruel blows. By this time I had forgotten my low spirits, and had ceased to think of myself. Oh! if these people were Christians, I thought: so, turning to the man again, I said, gently, "Have you a Bible?"

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No; what good would it be? I can't read." "Does your wife read?"

"No, we don't care about it: we have done very well without it, why should not they?"

"But would you not like your children to do better than yourselves ?"

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He hesitated, seemed pleased with the argument, and replied with a faint kind of smile, Perhaps I should; but go in and talk to the missis, and see what you can make out of her, if you want to get the little ones.

وو

Taking no notice of his mistake as to my mission, I said, apologizing for keeping him, "Will you subscribe for a Bible?"

"What: when I can't read ?”

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Yes, even although you cannot read."

"What is the price of one?"

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Many prices; but I think an eighteenpenny one would do well for your child, if that little girl is yours now standing by her mother."

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Yes, that is our eldest. added, fumbling in his pocket.

Well, I don't mind," he

I explained how payments were made, received his first penny, entered the name of " Joseph Brown" upon my book, and then wished him good day, and a successful errand with his potatoes.

Stepping up to the cottage, I asked permission to enter. "Come in, Miss," said the woman. Here was a field for

the "work" to which my good friend was ever urging me. Disorder, dirt, and manifest ignorance prevailed every where. The fire-place had no fender; squalid children were raking the ashes half over the floor; on the dingy walls hung several tawdry pictures, grotesquely unlike what they were meant to represent. At a glance one saw how ill regulated was the housewife's mind. The eldest girl, however, took my heart by storm. She dusted the only sound chair in the room, and, with the genuine refinement of á kind heart, she politely bade me be seated. Her mother sat balancing herself upon a ricketty stool, surveying me with a kind of vulgar curiosity, while I put some questions to her daughter.

"How old are you, my dear?"

“Eleven, teacher.”

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Teacher, I repeated; then, do you go to school ?" "Not now," she answered, in a sorrowful tone. "May I ask why not?"

She looked at her mother, glanced at her shabby clothes, and finally ventured a sly inspection of my face. I understood her, and pressed the question no further then. She was ashamed to go in rags, and had nothing better. "More work," thought I; and my heart grew lighter.

"Would you like to go again?" I asked.

"Oh, yes! so much. I was beginning to read in the Testament, and now I am forgetting what I knew."

"Would you object to her going again?" I inquired of the mother.

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“No, miss, certainly not, if her father is willing." Well, we shall see," I continued. 66 Meanwhile I must say good-bye for to-day; but I shall be here every Monday to take Mr. Brown's subscription, as he has begun to subscribe for a Bible."

"Thank you, ma'am," said the child, opening the door with a look of gratified animation that made me happy whenever I remembered it on my way home. I was not long putting the little girl in decent clothes; after which I found out her former teacher, and saw her once more in the way of regular sabbath instruction.

My district was a large one, I found plenty to do in it; and found, as my friend had predicted, that in watering others my own soul was watered: morbid depression has no remedy like earnest work.

In due time Joseph Brown's Bible was paid for; and

from increased and pressing duty in other directions, I was less frequently in the neighbourhood of his cottage. Many months had passed since first I went there; when one summer afternoon I heard my name called hastily as I passed the corner of the lane in which the Browns lived. I looked back and saw-could it be? Yes, verily—it was Mrs. Brown herself, so neat and clean, so respectful and self-respecting-in short, so transformed, that I scarcely knew her for the same person whose portrait I had taken so differently some months before.

"Will you step in a few minutes, if not in a hurry?" she asked, respectfully.

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Willingly, Mrs. Brown." If I had been surprised at the appearance of the mistress, how much more so was I with that of the home! The walls were clean; the furniture comfortable and in good repair; a tidy fender protected the polished hearth-stone; and busy placing the teatray on a blossom-white table stood my pleasant-faced little favourite Mary Ellen. She sprang forward when she recognised me, took my bag out of my very tired hand, ran for a little wooden footstool from an inner room, put me' in an arm-chair, placed the footstool under the weary feet, and then stood perfectly silent, and covered with blushes, looking into my face.

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Well, Mary," I said. What ailed her? She could not speak, but taking my hand in one of her own she pointed with the other to the Bible, which lay on the side table.

"Ah! Miss," said her mother; "I know all about it, and all she is thinking. That Bible has been the making of us all and who under God have we to thank for it?" My heart was full now, and it was my turn to be silent.

:

She went on: "The child went to school, got on with, her reading; and her father was very proud of her, pleased to hear her read. By-and-by he would stay at home on evenings to listen while she read the glad tidings,' as the gospel is well called. At last he got very low at heart, and I used to hear him groaning in his spirit when he thought I was asleep at night. One day he said to me, Wife, this won't do; we must go to some place of worship on the sabbath day, and not live like heathens any longer. That Bible will rise up in the judgment if we don't, and our children will be entering the kingdom before us.' I saw he meant it, so I said, Very well,

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Joseph;' but I could not then understand what was working it all, for you see, Miss, he was called before I was. However we took to go to a place of worship, and by degrees we have learned to know inwardly what the Bible had told us outwardly long before. Blessed book," she said, taking it reverently into her hands, "what do we not owe to it! It taught us the way to Jesus, and to salvation, and to peace. Our home is heaven begun; and as to Joseph, I scarcely know him for the same man. Thank God for ever sending you, and through you the Bible, into this once dark house."

"Amen!" I ejaculated, solemnly; and "Amen” responded my gentle little Ellen. Oh, how humbled and grateful did all this make me! What a new call was there here to work while there is day!

Repeated visits to this interesting family only confirmed my hope concerning them; and when ever my backward spirit needed a healthy impetus to active labour for Christ, a quiet talk with the earnest man whom the gospel found little better than a heathen, generally sent me forth refreshed and strengthened on my heavenly way. As to Mary Ellen, she taught her parents to read the good book for themselves, and has long been an efficient teacher in a sabbath school. I believe many will rise up in the last day to call her blessed, who, but for the instrumentality of her gentle influence, might have lived and died without any knowledge of the "way of peace."

EARLY RISING.

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Early to bed and early to rise,

Makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise."

EARLY rising is undoubtedly a good habit, and one which it is well worth while to cultivate; but from all that I have read and heard on the subject, I think some of its advantages have been over-stated, or stated without sufficient regard to possible limitations and exceptions, and its main advantage comparatively overlooked.

I do think decidedly, as a general rule, that early rising is conducive both to health and wealth; but I am not convinced that mental labour is not by some persons, under some circumstances, carried on with advantage in the night-time. Of course, a sufficient amount of sleep must