and love Him, and seek to be like Him, then in due time we shall be called to go and dwell with Him in His kingdom. And what a delightful thing it is to know that, every night, when we pitch our moving tent, we are

"A day's march nearer home."

"A little farther on, and you will see the green fields of Italy," said a general once to his soldiers, as they were climbing over the Alps. So let me say to you who believe in Jesus-A little farther on, and you will see your heavenly home. Your way may be rough; sharp stones may have cut your feet, and thorns may have pierced them. But press on. Soon you will enter the land that is on high, for now your salvation is nearer than when you believed; and if it should be yours to lie upon a bed of sickness and pain, and feel that death is drawing near, rejoice in this, that you are now so near home.

Tangled Skeins.

A. A..

ANNY!" cried a sharp voice,

(6 come here; I've a

job for you."

"What is it, aunt?" came back in slow and indifferent tones from a tall, stout girl of fourteen, who stood gazing out of the parlour window at the rain which came pattering down on the panes, and at the little drops which chased one another slowly down the glass, gradually quickening their pace, until they ran into one another at the bottom.

"Come and see, you lazy thing !" answered Aunt Sarah; and thus admonished, Fanny moved away from the window, and at last reached her aunt's chair.

"Wind that skein for me, and be quick."

"But who will hold it for me?" drawled Fanny, in her usual aggravating way, and without troubling herself to take the skein out of her aunt's hands.

"Your sister, to be sure," said Aunt Sarah, flinging the skein of wool across the girl's arm. "Call Annie, and don't take an hour about it!"

Fanny called her sister from the next room, and Annie at once stood up, holding the skein for her sister to wind. Fanny dawdled over her work for fully a quarter of an hour, and at last her aunt having left the room, declared she could get no farther with the troublesome thing; she gave it up, but if Annie would do the winding, she would not mind standing to hold it.

This Annie consented to, and in her usual impetuous manner, a strange contrast to her sister's, began winding the wool. Not being careful in her work, she soon got involved in difficulties; a series of knots appeared, and as Annie's way of disposing of knots was at once to break her thread and begin anew, Aunt Sarah's skein would have had but a poor prospect before it had not their mother come in, fortunately, just in time to overhear an exclamation of impatience from Annie, who had been stopped by a fifth knot in less than ten minutes.

"Annie!" she cried, but not in time to prevent the wool from being again hastily broken: then taking the ball from her daughter's hands, she bade her stand by, while with quiet patience she unravelled the intricacies of the skein, and neatly wound the wool.

Now it seemed to me while watching this little occurrence that Fanny, Annie and their mother were three representative people. In this great world of ours we are constantly coming across tangled skeins. Life is full of problems that are hard to solve. Everything around us that is worth doing, or knowing, presents untold difficulties.

God's Word, for example, requires patient and careful handling. In it are many things which are "hard to be understood." Some attempt the unravelling, but in a short time, through slothfulness or carelessness, throw it aside. "It is a book that we cannot understand," say they, and are content to believe what they say to be true.

Others, hasty and impatient, seek to cut the gordian knot of difficulties with their own sharp intellects. They explain, reduce, water down, or cut away, all that is not at once clear to them or to others. "This cannot be true; that must be so-and-so," is their constant cry. But the third class, who "with patience receive the Word," humbly seeking for God's light to shine upon the difficulties, and for His wisdom to unravel the intricacies, are the ones who get the blessing. These are they to whom God will reveal His secrets, and to whom He will make known His covenant.

Often God places in our hands the tangled skein of circumstances. In our folly we may sit down despairingly, like Jacob, and cry, "All these things are against me!" or like Saul, in our hurry and unguided self-will, take steps that will only involve us further; but then is the time for waiting upon God, for steady effort of our own, combined with earnest faith in God. "He that believeth shall not make haste."

Cares are often entangling us, and we worry over them as over a knotted skein; if you are a child of God, take all those cares to Him. Place that which you cannot undo or understand in your Father's hands. It is so easy for Him to put all straight, to decide your puzzles over right and wrong, your questions about lawful obedience, your difficulties of all kinds.

Put the thread into the hand of Jesus; do not throw it down in despair, or seek to break it in angry impatience, but patiently wait for the Lord's unfolding of His glorious will.

E. T. P.

"I am but a little child."

Ο

I Kings iii. 7.

NLY a child--but the rosy lips

Have learned to plead a Saviour's name,

And the trustful eyes look up to God,
His powers and promises to claim.

Only a child-yet the little hands
Are folded on my mother-knee,
And the lisping prayer of childish faith
Brings down God's benison on me.

Only a child-yet the tripping feet

Can run on errands of love and peace,
Carrying comfort to saddened hearts,

And bidding their life-long sorrows cease.

Only a child-and the harvest field

Needs strong-armed men to reap the spoil;
Yet little fingers may bind the sheaves,
And share the worker's earnest toil.

Only a child-yet the gentle words

Have turned the stream of wrath aside,
And peace is reigning where strife once stood,
And joy is smiling where sorrow sighed.

Only a child-yet the Lord is pleased

To welcome the little ones to His love,
To gather the lambs in His fond embrace,
And carry them to His home above.

E. T. P.

More than an Accident.

YOUNG man standing for a few minutes at the door of a village hostelry, before going to the last of a series of religious services, is accosted by an

entire stranger, who cordially invites him to his house. The young man, whose presence at the meetings of the week has evidently excited a kindly interest in this stranger's breast, accepts the invitation, promising to call in two or three days' time as he passes homeward through the town, not far away from where his would-be host resides. He keeps his promise, and is then urged to stay over the Sunday and preach. His inclination is strongly to take the London coach home forthwith, but a sense of duty arising from this new friend's importunity prevails, and he complies with the request. This visit speedily leads to other visits

in the district, and to a settlement in one of its larger towns. . . . Forty-five years pass by, and one day in September that town is stirred as it has not been stirred before within living memory. People have flocked in from all the country round as to some great occasion. A few days ago an old man died in the act of writing a letter, translated as it were in a moment by the hand of God to the better country, and this autumn afternoon his mortal remains are being carried to burial amidst tokens of profound grief and unusual tributes of respect and honour. The young man, wondering where God would have him do his life-work, found his field of laborious and successful Christian service by what seemed a chance meeting with a stranger in front of a country inn. On such slight things human destiny oftentimes appears to hang.

We see the railway servant press down a handle, and the direction of the passing train is altered in an instant. There is an unseen hand which turns the points in our life-course, and the whole of the following journey assumes from that moment a new character and value. It is well to mark the action of Divine Providence in these minute things. The instance just related shows an exceptionally active and useful career started by an apparently trivial incident.

But the little things which change the current of human lives are perhaps as often painful as they are pleasing. Accidents occur which at first bode only evil, yet the issue is far otherwise through the will of Him without whom not a sparrow falleth to the ground. He brings the great out of the little, and the gracious follows hard upon the grievous. For nine years I was accustomed to visit an aged Christian woman who, quite unable to leave her house, was of course deprived of the public means of grace which in her earlier days she had highly valued. Twenty-five years before her death she had accidentally set foot upon a slide on the pavement which a slight covering of snow concealed from view, and she fell. The effects of that fall never left her. For a long time she lay upon