have it. Is not this, in part at least, what our Saviour meant when He said to the young man, whom He loved: "Go, sell what thou hast"?

Be straightforward and direct. Apply the truth to the times that now are, and to every-day life. Young men have their besetting sins, and there are those temptations that are peculiar to cloister life, and the desk, and the shop, and the street. Let the Word search out the hidden faults and draw them forth-and slay them. Be simple and natural about it. No cant; no form. Be your own manly self and speak out in the familiar terms of ordinary speech or conversation. It is a bit of straight talk that the boys wish, and it is yours and mine to give it to them, if we willand with a will.

Be fraternal and friendly, and do not shrink from letting the glow of conviction beam in your face or the tone of enthusiasm ring in your voice.

Ours is a glad, blessed Gospel message, and men like to have it heartily expressed, but always with sincerity and truth.

And, to sum it all up, it is Jesus that the young man wants to hear about. Jesus is life and Jesus is the sum and substance of persuasion. "I, if I be lifted up, draw," He said, and the world itself says: "Sir, we would see Jesus."

It is a happy theme, a mighty theme, a great theme, every way. Preach Jesus and you have done the best you can do. You have done all that you can do. Now let God do the rest. "And he brought him to Jesus." That was enough, we know the sequel. With the urgence of life and lip together bring men to Jesus, and leave them there. So go your way, and “as ye go, preach”—preach Jesus, the young man's friend.-Baptist Union.

The

Be patient toward all men. cold hammer fashions the hot iron. He who would govern others, must first learn to govern himself. Passion is blind. Cool, deliberate and at the same time energetic action, makes itself felt in every department of life.

Be patient toward your brethren. Some men are slow to see into good things. They want to do right, but it takes them a good while to determine what is required of them. Every member of the body of Christ is not an eye. To get out of patience with these dull ones will not help either

The Footpath to Peace.

To be glad of life, because it gives you the chance to love and to work and to play and to look up at the stars; to be satisfied with your possessions, but not contented with yourself until you have made the best of them; to despise nothing in the world except falsehood and meanness, and to fear nothing except cowardice; to be governed by your admirations rather than by your disgusts; to covet nothing that is your neighbor's except his kindness of heart and gentleness of manners; to think seldom of your enemies, often of your friends, and every day of Christ; and to spend as much time as you can, with body and spirit, in God's out-of-door-these are little guide-posts on the footpath to peace.-Dr. Henry van Dyke.

There was a vessel that had been tossed on the seas for a great many weeks, and been disabled, and the supply of water gave out, and the crew were dying of thirst. After many days they saw a sail against the sky. They signalled it. When the vessel came nearer, the people on the suffering ship cried to the captain of the other vessel: "Send us some water. We are dying for lack of water." And the captain on the vessel that was hailed responded: "Dip your buckets where you are. You are in the mouth of the Amazon, and there are scores of miles of fresh water all around about you, and hundreds of feet deep." And then they dropped their buckets over the side of the vessel, and brought up the clear, bright, fresh water, and put out the fire of their thirst. So I hail you to-day, after a long and perilous voyage, thirsting as you are for pardon, and thirsting for comfort, and thirsting for eternal life; and I ask you what is the use of your going to that death-struck state, while all around you is the deep, clear, wide, sparkling flood of God's sympa

thetic mercy. Oh, dip your buckets and drink and live forever! "Whosoever will, let him come and take of the water of life freely."-Talmage.

The trivial round makes up the larger part of every life. If Jesus Christ is not to help us in the monotonous stretches, what is His help worth? Unless the trivial is His field, His field is restricted indeed. We all know the deadening influence of habit, the sense of weariness, and almost of disgust, at the repetition day after day of the same tasks. The only way of preventing the common from becoming commonplace, and the small from becoming trivial, and the familiar from becoming contemptible, is to link all to Jesus Christ, and to do all for Him and in company with Him. Then the rough places will be made plain, the mountains of difficulty be brought low, and the valleys of the commonplace be exalted. "He maketh my feet like hinds' feet," sang Habakkuk, the very embodiment of buoyant, graceful, swift movement. If we will walk with Christ toward Christ, we may have such ease of light motion, instead of a dull plodding along the dull road of uneventful life.-Alexander Maclaren, D.D.

Secret of Happy Life

A damp, dreary February day had been followed by a night of extreme cold, and in the morning the trees and shrubs, the railings of the iron fence, all outdoor objects indeed, were incased in an icy armor which sparkled in the sunshine with diamondlike brilliancy. "Very beautiful, but it will all be gone before noon," sighed one near us, casting a glance at the dazzling outside world, and then turning away. A little maiden, flattening her nose against the frosty pane to get as much of the wonderful sight as possible, looked up in surprise at the melancholy speech. "Never mind," she said, reassuringly. "There'll be something else beautiful for to-mor

row." The secret of a happy life lies hidden in that childish speech. It is the Father's wish that we should look for some new joy in each to-morrow, and that the better things should always lie ahead.-Selected.

There are two kinds of magnets, steel magnets and soft iron magnets. The steel magnet receives its magnetism from the loadstone, and has it permanently; it can get along very well alone in a small way; it can pick up needles and do many other little things to amuse children. There is another kind of magnet which is made of soft iron, with a coil of copWhen the battery

per wire round it. is all ready, and the cups are filled with the mercury, and the connection is made with the wires, this magnet is twenty times as strong as the steel magnet. Break the circuit, and its power is all gone instantly. We are soft iron magnets; our whole power must come from the Lord Jesus Christ; but faith makes the connection, and while it holds we are safe.Bishop Foss.

In every furnace there is One like the Son of Man. In every flood of high waters He stands beside usstaying the heart with promises, instilling words of faith and hope, recalling the blessed past, pointing to the radiant future, hushing fear, as once He stilled the dismay of His disciples on the lake.-Rev. F. B. Meyer.

We don't get really inside ourselves, even, into the closet of us, where the Lord tells us to go in and shut the door, and to speak to Him. We act in a hurry, on the outside, according to the way things touch us, and people seem. We even say our prayers outside. It's the reason of all the wickedness and the pain and the trouble.Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney.

Oh, break my heart; but break it as a field

Is by a plough up-broken for the

corn;

Oh, break it as the buds, by green leaf sealed,

Are, to unloose the golden blossom,

torn;

Love would I offer unto Love's great Master,

Set free the odor, break the alabaster.

Oh, break my heart; break it, victorious God,

That life's eternal well may flash abroad;

Oh, let it break as when the captive trees,

Breaking cold bonds, regain their liberties;

And as thought's sacred grove to life is springing,

Be joys, like birds, their hope Thy victory singing.

-T. T. Lynch.

The most useful employee is not the one who simply obeys orders-admirable as that quality is-but the one who has the capacity of understanding his superior's plans and intentions so that he can intelligently promote them. The Christian has not only the obligation of obedience to his Master, but he has the privilege of fellowship with Him. "Henceforth I call you not servants," Jesus said to His disciples, "but friends, for the servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth." The Christian is not a mere machine to obey a command; he has the capacity of knowing the mind of Christ, and of co-operating intelligently with His purposes.-Watch

man.

Word and work-the' two W's. You will soon get spiritually gorged if it is all Word and no work, and you will soon be without power if it is all work and no Word. If you want to be healthy Christians, there must be both Word and work.-Moody.

I have read all the boys' papers sent to me answering the question, "What are a boy's chief temptations, and what is the best way to meet them?"

I do not know that I ever examined documents of deeper or more pathetic interest. One or two are lengthy and careful summaries of the advice of older people, and in almost all the reader catches inevitable echoes of teachers and books. But with these exceptions the papers are real boys' letters, and the mass of them present an extraordinarily fresh and vivid. picture of the experience of boys between twelve and seventeen, the most of whom have to work for their living, and do not find life either easy or sheltered.

The temptations most frequently mentioned or described are those to bad temper; jealousy and envy; cheating at school; lying and stealing; swearing; smoking, betting, and gambling; playing truant, laziness, carelessness, cruelty; disrespect to the old; disobedience to parents and teachers; reading bad books; and, among the older boys, drinking and impurity.

The jealousy or envy, which so many mention, is not felt toward boys who win high places or prizes at school-none of that kind is confessed -but toward comrades promoted in the Boys' Brigade.

The class of boys from whom the letters come have little or no pocketmoney, and are tempted to steal cash or stamps, or (it is singular how many notice this) to give a wrong account of the cost of articles that they have been sent to buy. Some mention companionship with boys better off than themselves as a motive to dishonesty.

But the chief temptations to this sin are apparently gambling and betting. Fow of the letters fail to mention these.

Among the sources of temptation, bad books and papers play a smaller part than I had expected; they appear to have less influence than they used to have.

The principal tempters mentioned are older boys and men. I find the evidence of this bitterly sad. As I read it, I wish that it were laid before all the trades' unions of the country. A boy of sixteen writes that apprentices and message boys are "sent out by older men in the workshop with papers and money to give to the betting-men on the street. If they refuse, the men take a spite at them, and make it hot for them. If they do so, they learn to bet themselves." "I don't know," continues the writer, "any remedy for this. I wish there was; that some of our friends who have the power, would try to get a law passed to prevent it being in these men's power to send the boys on such errands." Another letter speaks of the "low class of people who frequent football matches for the purpose of enticing young people to bet."

Ice-cream shops are very much in evidence, not because of parents and teachers' warnings against them. The boys apparently know their evils at first hand; many boys, they say, will spend whole Sunday afternoons about them, with "the low company that are found in them."

More than one boy mentions a source of temptation known to me by reports from other quarters. It is the practice of publicans in the neighborhood of playing fields to invite the

smaller and poorer clubs, who have no shelter of their own, to use premises within the public houses for dressing and washing. As one of the papers expresses it, we begin by ordering "a lemon, i.e., lemonade, and soon learn to take whiskey with it.”

More than one shop-boy asserts that he has been told by those who are over him that "to tell lies is the best way to get on in business."

I turn now to the more pleasant subject of what the boys find most helpful in resisting temptations. I remember hearing Prof. Drummond say that in examining a similar set of boys' papers several years ago, he was struck by the fact that extremely few mentioned the Church or ministers as having been a help to them. That is not the case with this set of papers. Many of the boys speak gratefully— not of the ordinary services on Sunday, to which they feel it their duty to go, but which they find a dull and heavy strain upon them-but of classes in preparation for confirmation in England, and for first communion in Scotland; of Bible-classes; of helpful words and kindness by ministers and the like.

There is hardly one of the most real and frank of the papers which does not speak gratefully of the practical results of prayer spoken or unspoken. This is described naturally, and, as it seems to me, out of real experience. Some join with prayer the daily reading of the Bible; those who go into particulars on this subject say that a chapter wearies them. But two or three verses, carefully read twice or thrice in the morning, appear to have been of great practical help to many boys. They all have a conscience of duty to the Bible; I can see that most of them are a little puzzled by their duty to it, and would welcome sympathetic instruction. How many boys in such a case are put off with the bare and formal order to read regularly!

Boys have a sense-I have always felt that it was greater in them than in men-that God sees them. The thought of this is a help to very many of these young strugglers. But I see signs of the still better faith, that God their Father trusts them with their work and with their posts of danger in temptation itself. They feel that this. puts them on their honor. One cannot be too thankful for the religious teaching which has produced this impression. I have also been struck with the frequent declaration that a firm refusal, in the strength of loyalty to Christ, of invitation to evil, almost at once effects the stoppage of the latter. "Bad companions drop you if you will not do what they ask." "I have found that it only needs No said two or three times."

Next to such supreme helps against temptation, come all the host of social auxiliaries, on which a number of our good religious people are apt to look with indifference. Most of the boys who write these papers have their evenings free, and nothing in their homes to keep them at home. Naturally they drift upon the streets —where reading, athletics, and every honest game is impossible. My heart has been deeply moved to read the frequent confession that it was the long, dark evenings which made it difficult or impossible for the writers to keep out of vicious habits. And my heart has leaped to hear how they appreciate the moral and religious effects of the reading-rooms, the gymnasium, the drills, the games, and the social evenings which the Boys' Brigade has furnished for them.

In conclusion, I have risen from the perusal of these papers, tremendously impressed with the moral results of the Boys' Brigade, effected both through its discipline and provisions of amusement, and through the character of its officers.-The Boys' Brigade Gazette,