LET the bent of thy thoughts be to mend the sanctuary, while far above him rose the thyself rather than the world.

tall spire, with the sunbeams coiling like a heaven-halo around it, pointing to the golden Ir is a shame if any person poorer than you battlements of the far off city, within whose is more contented than you. blessed precincts nothing "which defilet shall He who commences many things, finishes ever enter." The massive church doors swung only a few. slowly open as one and another entered, and

the child looked eagerly up the long, mysteri-be, he would keep straight on the way, until ous mid-aisle, but the silken garments rustled he reached Him, and then he would go right past-there was no band out-stretched to lead the ragged and wretched little one within its walls, and no one paused to tell him of the Great Father, within whose sight the rich and the poor are alike. But while he stood the e, an angel with golden hair and gleaming wings bent over him, holding precious heart-seed, gathered from the white plains of the spirit-land, and as the child drew nearer the church steps, the angel followed.

Suddenly the little dapper sexton, with his broad smile and bustling gate, came out of the church. His eyes rested a moment upon the young wistful face and on the ragged garments, and then he beckoned to the child.

"Shall I take you in here my boy?" asked a voice kinder and pleasanter than any which the child had ever heard; and as he timidly bowed his head, the sexton took the little soiled hand in his own, and they pa sed in, and the angel followed them.

in and say, "Father, 1 am cold and hungry, and very wretched. There is no one to love me, noue to care for me. May I be your child, Father?" And perhaps He would look kindly upon him, and whisper softly, as no human being had ever whispered him, "My child!" and stronger and wilder from his heart came up that cry, "Oh, if I could only find Him!"

Again the tones of the deep-toned organ and the sweet-voiced choir floated on the Sabbath air, and there crept, a strange, soft tide, into the silent places of the boy's heart, softening and subduing it; while during the long sermon, of which he heard little, and comprehended less, that spirit cry rolled continually up from the depths of his soul-" Where is the Father?"

The benediction had been pronounced, and the house was disgorged of most of its vast crowd of worshippers, and yet the boy lingered | -he could not bear to return to his dark and

Seated in one corner of the church, the dismal dwelling, to the harsh words and harshchild's eyes wandered over the frescoed walls, er usage of those who loved him not, without with the sunshine flitting like the fringe of a having that question, which his soul was so spirit's robe across it, and up the dim aisle to eagerly asking, answered. But that little timthe great marble pulpit, with a kind of bewil-id heart lacked courage, and he knew the words dered awe, for he had seen nothing of the like before, unless it might be in some dim, halfforgotten dream; but when the heavy doors swung together and the Sabbath hush gathered over the church, and the hallelujahs of the organ filled the house of the Lord and thrilled the heart of the child; he bowed his head and wept sweet tears-he could not tell whence was their coming. Then the solemn prayer from the pulpit-" O, Thou who lovest all men, who art the Father of the old and the young, the rich and the poor, and in whose sight they are alike precious, grant us Thy blessing," came to the ears of the child, and a new cry awoke in his soul. "Where was this Father?" It did not seem true that He could love him, a poor little, hungry, ragged beggar; that such an one could be His child. But, oh! it was just what his heart longed for, and if all others were precious to this Great Father, he did not believe He would leave him out. If he could find Him-no matter how long the road was, nor how cold or hungry he might

would die in his throat if he attempted to speak them, and so he must go away without knowing the way to the Father-but his feet dragged unwillingly along, and his eyes! searched earnestly the figures that, unwitting of his want, passed swiftly before him.

"What is it you want to know, little boy?" The voice was very musical, and the smile on the lips of the child-questioner very winning. The chesnut-brown curls floated over her silken robe, and the soft blue eyes that looked into the boy's, wore that unearthly purity of expression which is not the portion of the children of this world.

The boy looked into that fair, childish face, and his heart took courage, while very eagerly from his lips came the words, "Where is the Great Father?"

"God is in Heaven!" answered the little girl in solemn tones, while a sudden gravity gathered over her features.

From lips that burned with blasphemies, amid oaths from the vile, and revilings from

the scoffer, had the boy first learned that Name, and never before had it possessed aught of import for him. But now he knew it was the name of the Great Father that loved him, and again he asked very earnestly, "Where is the way to God in Heaven? I am going to Him now."

The child shook her head as she looked on the boy with a sort of pitying wonder at his ignorance, and again she answered, "You cannot go to Him, but He will come to you if you will call upon him, and He will hear, though you whisper very low, for God is everywhere."

"Come, come, Miss Ellen, you must not stay here any longer," called the servant, who had been very intent at arranging the cushions in the pew, and who now hurried her little charge through the aisle, apprehensive that some evil might accrue from her contiguity with a "street-beggar."

door of two young human hearts, in the great city.

The tide of golden hair flowed over the white pillows of a crimson-draperied couch. Shaded lamps poured their dim, silvery glances upon bright flowers and circling vines, the cunning workmanship of fingers in far off lands, which lay among the soft groundwork of the rich carpet, while small white fingers glided caressingly among the golden hair; and white faces, wild with sorrow, bent over the rigid features of the dying child, and tears, such only as flow from the heart's deepest and bitterest fountains, fell upon the cold forehead and paling lips, as the lids swept back for a moment from her blue eyes, and the light from her spirit broke for the last time into them; the lips, upon which the death-seal was ready to be laid, opened; and clear and joyous thro' the hushed room rang the words, "I am coming! 1 am coming!" and the next moment the cold, beautiful clay was all which was left to the

mourners.

But the words of the little girl had brought a new and precious light in the boy's heart. That" cardinal explication of the reason,” the wondrous idea of the Deity, had found a voice in his soul, and the child went forth from the church, while the golden winged angel follow-hand wandered caressingly among his dark ed him to the dark alley, and the darker home; and that night, before he laid himself on his miserable pallet in the corner, he bowed his head, an clasped his hands, and whispered so that none might har him, " My Father, will You take care of me, and come and take me to Yourself? 1or I love You." And the angel folded his bright wings above that scanty pallet, and bent in the silent watches of the night over the boy, and filled his heart with peace, and his dreams with brightness.

The other, at whose heart the death-angel knocked, lay in one corner of an old, and dilapidated room, on a pallet of straw. No soft

locks, or cooled with its cold touch the fever of his forehead. The dim, flickering rays of the tallow candle wandered over the features now grown stark and rigid with the death-chill.

No grief-printed face bent in anguish above him; no eye watched for the latest breath; no ear for the dying word; but through the half

open door, came to the ear of the dying boy, the vile, and the frightful blasphemies of those the coarse laugh of the inebriate-the jest of whose way is the

of death.

Six months had rolled their mighty burden way of life-records into the pulseless ocean of the None saw the last life-light, as it broke into past. The pale stars of mid-winter were look- the dark, spiritual eyes of the boy. None saw ing down with meek, seraph glances, over the the smile that played like the lips of a seraph, mighty metropolis along whose thousand thor- about his blue and cold lips, as they spoke exoughfares lay the white carpet of the snow-ceeding joyfully: "Father! Father, I have king; and Boreas, loosed from his ice-caverns called, and You have heard me; I am coming on the frozen floor of the Arctic, was hold ng to You, coming now; for the angels beckon mad revels, and howling with demoniac glee me;" and the pale clay on that sunken pallet along the streets, wrapped in the pall shadows was all that remained of the boy. of night.

Twelve o'clock pealed from the mighty tongue of the time-recorder; and then the white-robed angel of death knocked at the

Together they met, those two children who had stood together in the earthly courts of the Most High, and whom the angel had simultaneously called from the earth, beneath the shi

ning battlements of "the City of God." The tainment of moral excellences. But so it is. white wings of the warden-angels, who stood Time a d sensible objects engross our attention on its watch-towers, were slowly folded to- and push out of view the vast concerns of that gether, and back rolled the massive gates eternity to which all are hastening. But must from the walls of jaspar; and with the great it not be a wouder to angels to see us mortals "Godlight" streaming outward, and amid the amusing ourselves with the "straw-like trifles sound of archangel's harp and seraph's lyre, on life's common stream," while the richest the ministering angels came forth. They did jewelry of heaven is challenging our attention. not ask the child-spirits there, if their earthly This singular phenomenon may be owing to homes had been among the high and the hon- two circumstances. 1. Our natural enmity to orable; they did not ask them if broad lands God and holiness. 2. Our familiarity with had been their heritage, and sparkling coffers the outer world and the long-cherished habit of their portion; if their paths had lain by pleas- relying exclusively on our senses for enjoyant waters and animals followed their biddings; ment. This moral stupidity is as true of combut alike they led them-she, the daughter of munities as of individuals, because it is not wealth and earthly splendor, whose forehead more true that all the parts of a thing are equal the breezes might not visit too roughly, and to the whole, than that a community will be whose pathway had been bordered with flow-in character what the individuals are of which ers and gilded with sunshine,-and he, the it is composed. Hence that divinely appointed heir of poverty, whose portion had been want, system of enlightenment and reform contained and his inalienable heritage, suffering; whose in the Bible, comprehends appliances adapted path had known no pleasant places; whose to reach and arouse the social as well as the life had had no brightness within that glorious individual heart. It is a leaven which seeks to city. They placed bright crowns, alike woven diffuse itself through the whole lump. The from the fragant branches of the far-spreading written word which all are require i to search, "Tree of Life," around their spirit-brows; the spirit which searched all, and the living they decked them alike in white robes, whose ministry who are commissioned to "go into all lustre many ages shall not dim; alike they the world and preach the Gospel to every creaplaced in their hands the harps whose music ture. The judgments of God are also abroad shall roll forever over the hills of jaspar; and in the earth, seeking to arouse men from their alike they pointed them to the gleaming bat- torpidity by calling their attention from this to tlements, to the still skies over whose surface the place of their future residence. Somethe shadow of a cloud floated; to the "many times he enters a community of moral sleepers mansions" which throw the shadow of their and by some startling act of his providence shining portals on the rippling waters of the tempered with mercy, succeeds in making "River of Life," and to far more of glory manifest the savor of his knowledge. Such "which it hath never entered into the heart of an instance it was our privilege to witness a man to conceive of," and told them they should short time since at Shelby Academy. The go no more out for ever." people were intelligent, moral, and church-going; but instances of spiritual regeneration were uncommon. They were satisfied with the cool abstractions of the intellect and with the pursuits of wealth to the neglect of the right cultivation of the heart, and laying up treasure in heaven. But a change has come over them! Unlike those mentioned by the poet, " rarely for the better or the best," but one in which many will rejoice in the "day of the Lord Jesus."

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FROM THE CORRESPONDING EDITOR

How forcibly true is the inspired declaration that we are "dead in trespasses and sins." Yet how pathetically does the living God cry "awake thou that sleepest and arise from the dead," and how compassionate is the subjoined promise" and Christ shall give thee light." Rational immortals as we are, capacitated to contemplate and enjoy "all that makes archangels smile" is it not passingly strange that we should evince such a reluctance to the at

A youth of twenty years was in this case both the victim and the gainer. JOHN KEEL