WAYSIDE CHIMES. Let all books and papers that have to do with work and the world be put out of sight. Never let a newspaper be seen in your house on a Sunday. Never let your Sunday be a day for writing letters, or looking over accounts, or discussing politics, or buying and selling, or talking about business and markets, and profits and prices. Never use it as a day for pleasuring trips abroad, or baking cakes at home. Try to let Sunday be a consecrated day. "Turn away thy foot from (trampling on) the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on My holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable; and honour Him, not doing thine own ways, or finding thine own pleasure, or speaking thine own words: then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord." Can you devote an hour on Sunday to do some work for God beyond your own house? Perhaps help is wanted in your Sunday-school. Or you might take a tract district, or visit two or three sick or aged people to read the Word and to pray. Or a few tracts given, or kind words spoken to those who give no heed to the Lord of the Day, might by God's blessing be use 229 ful. But never sacrifice real home duties for this. We do most good by being good. Hold fast your Sundays. Resist by all lawful means the efforts which are made to secularize the Lord's Day. "The Lord blessed the Sabbath Day and hallowed it." If museums and exhibitions were opened, places of amusement would soon follow. In Paris, shops and theatres are open everywhere, and the day is a day of vain amusement to the rich, and of hard toil and weariness to the poor. God forbid that it should ever be so in this land. Our English Sunday is one of our greatest blessings. Hold it fast. It is said that drunkenness is our great national vice. I believe that the strong current of intemperance which hurries its victims to destruction, most frequently takes its rise in broken Sabbaths. Parents, if you would guard your children from this moral pestilence, make Sunday in your house, and in your heart also, a holy day, and a happy day. Remember Sir Matthew Hale's golden maxim : : A Sabbath well spent brings a week of content, Wayside Chimes. BY THE REV. E. H. BICKERSTETH, M.A., VICAR OF CHRIST CHURCH, HAMPSTEAD. X. ETERNAL LIFE. "That Eternal Life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us."-1 John i. 2. IFE, life, eternal life; My spirit craves to know Its calm amid the feverish strife The world with all its bloom, Its laughter and its song, Life, life, it is not found In depths of human lore, And science with fresh laurels crowned Is faint with thirst for more. "For ever"-who shall climb The height that scans that sea ? Or gaze, unblenched, from passing time On dread eternity? O Jesus, Thou alone The living Fountain art, ОСТОЕ THE STORY OF THE MONTH. N October the year seems to begin to fade away; but there is beauty still in Nature. " "Autumn hath winning power to please, When in clear sun and gentle breeze The leaves look golden on the trees." And another poet sings of "Beauty still in all the landscape blendingThe beauty born of faith, and hope, and rest: As in a saintly life when near the ending, When all its strife and labour has been blest." October, the eighth month in the Roman calendar, is in old pictures represented as a man sowing corn; also as a person clothed in a mantle, coloured like decaying leaves, and bearing a basket of chestnuts. The ripened berries-the hip or fruit of the wild rose; the haw, that of the hawthorn; the blackberry, that of the bramble; the sloe, that of the blackthorn-enrich the hedgerows, affording a plentiful supply of food to the now departing feathered tribes; and by the remarkable care of Providence, they appear to be most abundant when the season is of greatest severity. The farmer sows winter corn in October; or if the weather be too wet, he ploughs the stubblefields for winter fallows. Acorns are also sown at this time, and forest and fruit trees are planted. There is thus a looking forward in the season of decay to fresh vegetation, and ever new tokens of Divine wisdom and love. The dispersion of seeds especially is a wonderful provision of the Creator. Plants have gone through the stages of flowering and seeding; and now the seeds, by various means -sometimes by the autumnal gales, sometimes by attaching themselves to passing animals, sometimes in berries on which the birds feed, discharging the seeds without injury-are scattered widely to produce in due season a more abundant harvest. Nature thus speaks to the humble Christian of better and brighter things in store, in the Paradise above: "Where everlasting spring abides, Seasons of darkness and distress may overtake him; yet, waiting on the Lord, he shall " renew his strength," and to the winter of this world shall succeed the ever-blooming spirit of immortality. "The harvest time is past. But there remaineth Ada Cambridge. C. A. H. B. First Steps. O you've found your feet at last, "Tis a long and weary path Now the gold of morning shines And the blossoms wait your tread Now a father's guiding hand you on your way, When the morning gold is dim And the roses dead. Will you battle for the right, None can tell what life may bring, But the Father's tender love We can trust His sleepless eye ANON. "They Say;" or, The Tongue of Calumny. "'Tis slander whose tongue outvenoms all the worms of the Nile; HERE is a Latin saying, and untraceable personages in the world who A certain poor man had a bitter enemy, who, to gratify his malice and hatred, set about a variety of calumnious reports concerning the said poor man, who took them so much to heart that he fell into a severe illness and was in danger of his life. The calumniator heard of this, and was struck with remorse. He, therefore, determined to visit him and ask his forgiveness. He found him, as had been represented, dangerously ill. After having expressed his sorrow and repentance he earnestly begged for forgive ness. "Well," said the sick man, "as a Christian, I cannot refuse to forgive you; but as a proof of the sincerity of your repentance, I require that you shall fulfil two tasks which I will prescribe to you." "What are they?" asked the calumniator; "if it be at all possible to accomplish them I will not fail to do so." "Well, then," replied the sick man, "the first is, that you shall take this pillow with you to the top of the church tower, and there open it and shake out all the feathers it contains to the winds." "That," replied the other, "is very easy; I will at once fulfil the request." Accordingly, he proceeded to the church tower, and * That is, carries its lies into all corners of the earth. GLIMPSES OF CHINA. having shaken out all the feathers, soon returned with the empty pillow-case. 66 "Now," said the sick man, go and gather up again all the feathers that were in the pillow." "That," replied the calumniator, "is impossible. The wind has carried most of them far away, and has dispersed them in every direction. No man living can accomplish such a task." "Well," said the sick man, "you see what you have done by your calumnious reports concerning me. You set a machine in motion which you had no power to stop. Your calum 233 Glimpses of China. BY THE REV. A. E. MOULE, B.D., MISSIONARY OF THE C.M.S. AT NINGPO AND HANGCHOW; AUTHOR OF SONGS OF HEAVEN AND HOME." V. A CHINESE CHRISTIAN. T the close of a long day spent in wayside preaching, I proposed to my Chinese assistants to press on into a large market town in front of us, for one more proclamation of the Gospel before nightfall. "Why not preach here?" the catechists replied, pointing to a small hamlet of about one hundred souls, which we were passing; "is not every creature to hear the good news ?" "Be it so," I said; and we entered the courtyard. Bamboo chairs were placed at once for us to sit upon; and the women ran indoors to prepare tea for our refreshment. I began to converse, and as I spoke an old deaf man brought a chair, and placing it close in front of me, with his hand up to his ear, he listened eagerly to the strange message. Presently a hand was laid on my shoulder, and looking up I saw an old woman standing behind me. "Give it to him well," she said; "that's my brother, and a bad brother he is to me, swearing, and shouting, and quarrelling all day long; his tongue is the plague of our village.' The old man looked up, and his eye twinkled as he saw his sister, knowing well what she was saying. The blessed دو story of the Cross was related to the old man, and as point after point struck him, conviction of sin followed, and then the glad news of free salvation made him clap his hands in astonishment and delight. He accepted the invitation to attend Divine service, and came regularly for many Sundays, walking about six miles to and from the Mission station. Then he asked for baptism, and we asked in our turn about his tongue. "Oh!" the old man replied, "that is incurable. It has grown old with me; and it is too late to change that." "But it must be changed," I replied, or at any rate you must give proof of your earnest desire to change." "I will try," he said; but for a while it was all in vain. His sister reported no improvement; and so, though he continued a regular and earnest Christian worshipper, he could not be accepted as a catechumen. 66 One day, however, the old man appeared radiant with smiles. "I have done it," he exclaimed. "Will you not baptize me now?" He had a younger son, an undutiful lad, and one who had taken a strong prejudice against foreigners, and who was therefore enraged at the idea of his father joining the foreigners' religion. This son had set a hen on twelve eggs, and had placed hen nest and all out of doors under the deep eaves of his father's house. It came on to rain and |