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MY SOLDIER-BOY.

HE snows of And next? Ah, hush! do not ask me; you say it is long ago,

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many a win-
ter lie white

on my fur-
rowed brow,
My home was
once full of
dear ones, all
scattered and
parted now;
But when I think
of the children

with sadness, or
fear, or joy,

Forty-nigh upon fifty years.-Yes, dearie, I know, I know;

But those winsome childish faces shine bright in my memory still,

Twin babies I buried side by side-Elsie and little Will.

Then came, when my heart seemed breaking, to nestle within my breast,

My beautiful, bonnie wee Donald, fairer than all the rest;

And he never gave me a heartache, but only the purest joy,

My heart with fondest
memory turns to Do-Till
nald, my soldier-boy.

There's Jenny, my eldest-born, my daughter so grave and wise, She always looked on the young ones with almost a mother's eyes.

One winter, when I was sick, she cared for them

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th' regiment came and marched away, taking my soldier-boy.

And dark was the house without him, and troubled my anxious heart,

Much as I loved, I scarcely guessed how hard it would be to part

To part, and to feel how slender a hope could the future yield,

For the safety of my dear laddie on the perilous

battle-field.

But on that fateful morning, when I read in the
list of "killed"
The name of my boy,
"shot dead" at the post
he so bravely filled,

They are both away in Australia, doing well, II am told,

And coming home rich to "mother"-they forget I am growing old.

And next there's steady old Malcolm, he'd never
a wish to roam,

But cares for his poor old mother up here in our
Highland home;

God bless my dutiful laddie! my heart would be
full of joy,

But for the sorrowful yearning for Donald, my soldier-boy.

was not alone in my sorrow; many a mother's

eye

Was tracing, with mine, beloved names, and bidding the last hope die.

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Hope die!" did I say? Ah! never; hope beckons me up on high,

Where no field is red with battle, and no breaking heart shall sigh;

Where bands of beloved ones gather, and part-
ings for ever cease,

In our Father's many mansions, the home of the
Prince of Peace.

LUCY TAYLOR.

FRAGMENTS.

A FRIEND quoted a saying of old Fuller's: "He that falls into sin is a man; he that grieves at sin is a saint; he that boasts of sin is a devil." My father replied, "Only one thing more-He that forgives sin is God."-Dr. Marsh's Life, by his Daughter.

Of two Christian friends, in a letter to his daughter, he said: "Both are seeking to hear their Saviour's voice, to know His love, and to do His

will. To hear His voice, then we have truth. To know His love, then we have peace. To do His will, then we have usefulness-and all leading to glory, honour, immortality, and eternal life.”— Ibid.

What a difficult thing, says one, when you . believe in a free gift of salvation, where to put good works. Why, the answer is, "Put them in your life."-Ibid.

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T

HOMAS the Providence of God's Spirit to awaken CHALMERS in him higher concern. The death of a is a name beloved sister, coming quickly after the deserved deaths of an uncle and brother, struck ly dear a panic into the whole family, while he to the himself was thrown into a protracted and Church of dangerous illness from which he did not Christ. expect to recover. Contemplated from For per- the confines of eternity, and as he was sonal lying under the shadow of death, all piety, for things assumed a different aspect. And power as a when the bodily crisis was past, a preacher, spiritual one supervened. And when at and for practical philanthropy he stands last, after months of severe struggle, he pre-eminent in his generation. His came forth from his sick chamber, it was nature, alike in gift and grace, was cast evident he had come under the power of in a large mould. Great in what he deep spiritual convictions. His life prespoke and wrote, greater still in what sented a painful retrospect:-God ache did, and greatest of all in what he knowledged in name yet practically diswas, he grew into a mighty spiritual and allowed, and His claims met with meagre evangelical force throughout the land. attention. thought!

Kilmany Church.

And yet to Chalmers, when ordained in early manhood over the parish of Kilmany, the Gospel was largely a sealed book. For years the ministry was but his profession; science and philosophy were his chosen pursuits. The responsibilities of pulpit and pastorate gave him small concern. The message of life he was commissioned to preach continued very much a dead letter. To himself it was an unsolved enigma, about which he even had no curiosity. Not that he was unfaithful to such lights as he had-there was always about him a noble sincerity and simplicity of character-but though never inculcating what he did not himself believe, nor withholding any part of his own religious notions, he laboured away at a morality void enough of "Jesus Christ and Him crucified."

But there came a momentous and an abiding change. And, as in the case of Manasseh and others, it was some startling experiences that were used in

Oh! the misery of the

So fares it with the sinner when he feels
A growing sense of judgment at his heels.
The law grown clamorous, though silent long,
Arraigns him, charges him with every wrong;
Asserts the rights of an offended Lord,
And death or restitution is the word.
The last impossible, he fears the first,
And having ill-deserved, expects the worst.

It was not, however, so much with the
terrors as with the demands of the law,
Chalmers had to deal. He had obtained
a lofty view of the Divine requirements;
and there glowed within him an ardent
desire to regulate his life under a high
presiding sense of responsibility to God.
He felt the overpowering necessity of
getting right in the sight of Heaven,
and of meeting the urgent calls of his
awakened conscience. His sense of sin
made him eagerly look to the Redeemer's
work for removal of guilt; but in order
to secure this forgiveness he thought he
must ingratiate himself with God, and

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Catholic, turning to God with all sin- doings that come first, the Divine mercy, cerity, but whose theory of salvation is this We must do the best we can in the way of pleasing God, and what we are deficient in, we hope God will make up

or the Saviour's work being brought in as only supplementary, to "give weight to our own penitent endeavours. This is that going about to establish our own

do without it." The passage in Wilber-
force to which he refers, is this, "There
are, it is to be apprehended, not a few
who, having thought little or at all about
religion, have become at length sensible.
as they look into themselves, that they
must have offended God. They resolve
accordingly to set about the work of
reformation. . . . But all their endea-
vours are foiled . . . They are pursuing
the right object, but not in the right way.
Holiness is not to precede thorough re-
conciliation to God and to its cause, but
to follow it and be its effect. When a
sinner with an awakened conscience
begins to realise that sin is a viola-
tion of Divine law, he adopts strenuous
measures to bring himself up to his new
standard, mortifying sinful propensities,
attending to neglected though unplea-
sant duties, and working himself up into
religious feeling.
But the more he
struggles, the less comfort he gets. Like
the undischarged bankrupt, whose whole
earnings are needed for interest, without
even touching the old debt, he feels a
growing drag on all his activities. When,
however, he sees how the demands of the

. .

righteousness, which is incompatible with submission to the righteousness of God. By this snare was Chalmers entangled for more than a year. During all this time, he strove with all his might to keep pace with his new and high views of Heaven's requirements; but conscience and law seemed to "keep far ahead of him with a kind of overmatching superiority to all his efforts." He then had recourse to Christ's work and merits to patch up his deficiencies; but without any comfort. His was inappeasable disquietude of heart, till at last he felt he was putting himself in a false position. The law requires perfect righteousness. To see this is to shut the sinner up into Christ as the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth. Enlightenment and enlargement came to Chalmers when the sense of his own utter insufficiency drove him to the all-sufficiency of Christ's righteousness. "The effect of a long confinement upon myself," he says, "was to inspire me with a set of very strenuous resolutions, under which I wrote a journal and made many a laborious effort to elevate my practice to the standard of the Divine requirements. During this course, how-law are all met, and adjusted by virtue ever, I got little satisfaction and felt no repose. I remember that somewhere about the year 1811, I had Wilberforce's 'View' put into hands, and as I got on in reading it, felt myself on the eve of a great revolution in all my opinions about Christianity. I am now most thoroughly of opinion, and it is an opinion founded on experience, that on the system 'Do this and live,' no peace and no true and worthy obedience can ever be attained. . . . The righteousness we try to work out for ourselves eludes our impotent grasp, and never can a soul arrive at true and permanent rest in the pursuit of this object. The righteousness of Christ which is of God by faith, secures our acceptance with God, and gives us a part in and a hold upon those sanctifying influences by which we are enabled to do with aid from on high what we can never

of Christ's perfect and available righteousness, what a change in his relations and in his spirit! Christ has redeemed him from being under the law. He no longer underlies its condemning sentence. He no longer works under the trammels of legal servitude. Like the Lord's freedman, he has within himself a loyal attachment to that law which now protects him, and no longer dogs his weary footsteps. With a restored and filial heart he delights in the law of the Lord after the inward man. He serves no longer in the oldness of the letter, but in newness of the Spirit, with gracious resources now within his reach. He has found the true point of departure. He is no more a mercenary drudge, but a free-born son. This

'Changes a slave into a child, and duty into choice.""

LESSONS FROM THE STREETS.

By the Rev. W. PARK, M.A.

SOMETIMES, as we pass through a busy thoroughfare, we see the centre of the street broken up, and looking down into the opening that has been made, curious secrets are disclosed to view. Pipes, great and small, lie side by side, or one above another, sending forth frequent branches to the right hand and the left. These are the arteries and veins of the great city, which bring to the houses a supply of water and of light, and carry away again what is useless or impure. A man may walk for years along that street, and know nothing of all that lies under his feet. But there is someone who knows where every pipe lies, and can point out the very spot at which the workmen are to break up the soil to find it.

That city street—it is the human heart. There are many secrets there of which our neighbours know little. I pass men -day by day for years, and I never catch a glimpse of those streams of joy or sorrow, of hope or fear, of faith or doubt, which are pulsating to and fro within them. Some day these secret things are brought forth suddenly, it may be by some calamity which breaks up the life. My surprise is great; still greater my sorrow, that I did not know of it sooner, so as to offer sympathy and help. I will try to remember how little I know of my neighbour's inner life, so as to judge him cautiously and kindly. But I rejoice to think--though to some men perhaps it is a thought of terror-that there is One to whom the secrets of every life lie open. He can lay his finger on every secret thing. He can mend what is broken. He can suit His grace to every special need. O, that my inner life may be lived continually beneath His eye! "O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me... Search me, O God, and know my heart and lead me in the way everlasting."

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There is a well-known public building in the centre of my own town which is surrounded by trees. The warm air which a thousand chimneys breathe out on every side of them stimulates their growth. They are always the first to waken at the voice of spring, and break out in leaf; while in the fields and hedges, the shrubs and trees are only sending out little buds to see if the time has come to rise from their winter sleep, these trees are already clad in green, and refresh the eye by their early verdure. But the very heat which stimulates exhausts them. dust of the busy streets soon darkens their fresh beauty, and before a leaf almost has fallen from their brethren who inhabit the open country, these trees are bare. Early blooming, early fading such is their story year by year.

The

There are some people who are very attractive at first, but they do not improve on long acquaintance, their sympathy and kindness, soon fade away beneath the burning sun of trial. There are quick and clever children who can easily distance all their fellows; but they want diligence and perseverance, and soon fall behind. It is not always the man who begins business with the greatest flourish of trumpets who comes in first in the race for riches. Many seem to enter on the work of the Christian life with great enthusiasm and energy, and are ready to condemn others who move more slowly; but their first love grows cold, their self denial slackens, and their influence seems somehow to melt away. On the whole, I like best those who begin modestly, advance steadily-even though it be slowly

-making sure of every step, as they proceed, and who grow more pure, unselfish, and useful every day. Such is the history of a true Christian. He is a tree planted in the garden of the Lord; his leaf does

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