the salutation from within was answered, remarked that he thought liker'n not they had'n heern tell of the preacher's comin' to Colonel Wheeler's.' And then the eager listener, generally the woman of the house, would cry out, 'Laws-a-massy! You don't say! A Methodis'? One of the shoutin' kind, that knocks folks down when he preaches! Well, I'm agoin', jist to see how redik'lus them Methodis' does do!'

The news was sent to the school, which had 'tuck up' for the winter, and from this centre also it soon spread throughout the neighbourhood. It reached Captain Lumsden's very early in the forenoon.

'Well!' said Lumsden, excitedly, but still with his little crowing chuckle; 'so Wheeler's took the Methodists in! We'll have to see about that. A man that brings such people to the settlement ought to be lynched. But I'll match the Methodists.'

Captain Lumsden accordingly got up a dance as a counterattraction to the preaching.

Despite the dance, however, there were present, from near and far, all the house would hold. For those who got no 'invite' to Lumsden's had a double motive for going to meeting; a disposition to resent the slight was added to their curiosity to hear the Methodist preacher. The dance had taken away those who were most likely to disturb the meeting; people left out did not feel under any obligation to gratify Captain Lumsden by raising a row. Both lower rooms of Wheeler's log house were crowded with people. A little open space was left at the doors between the rooms for the preacher, who presently came edging his way in through the crowd. He had been at prayer in that favourite oratory of the early Methodist preacher, the forest.

Magruder was a short, stout man, with wide shoulders, powerful arms, shaggy brows, and bristling black hair. He read the hymn, two lines at a time, and led the singing himself. He prayed with the utmost sincerity, but in a voice that shook the cabin windows, and gave the simple people a deeper reverence for the dreadfulness of the preacher's message. He prayed as a man talking face to face with the Almighty Judge of the generations of men; he prayed with an undoubting assurance of his own acceptance with God, and with the sincerest conviction of the infinite peril of his unforgiven

hearers. It is not argument that reaches men, but conviction; and for immediate, practical purposes, one Tishbite Elijah, that can thunder out of a heart that never doubts, is worth a thousand acute writers of ingenious apologies.

When Magruder read his text, which was, 'Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God,' he seemed to his hearers a prophet come to lay bare their hearts. Magruder had not been educated for his ministry by years of study of Hebrew and Greek, of Exegesis and Systematics; but he knew what was of vastly more consequence to him-how to read and expound the hearts and lives of the impulsive, simple, reckless race among whom he laboured. He was of their very fibre.

On this evening he seized upon the particular sins of the people as things by which they drove away the Spirit of God. The audience trembled as he moved on in his rude speech and solemn indignation. Every man found himself in turn called to the bar of his own conscience. There was excitement throughout the house. Some were angry, some sobbed aloud, as he alluded to 'promises made to dying friends,' 'vows offered to God by the new-made graves of their children,'-for pioneer people are very susceptible to all such appeals to sensibility.

When at last he came to speak of revenge, Kike Lumsden, who had listened intently from the first, found himself breathing hard. The preacher showed how the revengeful man was 'as much a murderer as if he had already killed his enemy and hid his mangled body in the leaves of the woods where none but the wolf could ever find him!'

At these words he turned to the part of the room where sat, white with feeling, Hezekiah Lumsden, or Kike Lumsden, as he was generally called. Magruder, looking always for the effect of his arrows, noted Kike's emotion and paused. The house was utterly still, save now and then a sob from some anguish-smitten soul. The people were sitting as if waiting their doom. Kike already saw in his imagination the mutilated form of his uncle Enoch (with whom he had had a deadly quarrel), hidden in the leaves and scented by hungry wolves. He waited to hear his own sentence. Hitherto the preacher had spoken with vehemence. Now, he stopped and began again with tears, and in a tone broken

with emotion, looking in a general way toward where Kike sat: '0, young man, there are stains of blood on your hands! How dare you hold them up before the Judge of all? You are another Cain, and God sends His messenger to you to-day to inquire after him whom you have already killed in your heart. You are a murderer! Nothing but God's mercy can snatch you from hell!'

No doubt all this is rude in refined ears. But is it nothing that by these rude words he laid bare Kike's sins to Kike's conscience? that in this moment Kike heard the voice of God denouncing his sins, and trembled? Can you do a man any higher service than to make him know himself, in the light of the highest sense of right that he is capable of? Kike, for his part, bowed to the rebuke of the preacher as to the rebuke of God. His frail frame shook with fear and penitence, as it had before shaken with wrath.

O, God! - what a wretch I am!' cried he, hiding his face in his hands. 'Thank God for showing it to you, my young friend,' responded the preacher. 'What a wonder that your sins did not drive away the Holy Ghost, leaving you with your day of grace sinned away, as good as damned already!' And with this he turned and appealed yet more powerfully to the rest, already excited by the fresh contagion of Kike's penitence, until there were cries and sobs in all parts of the house. Some left in haste to avoid yielding to their feeling, while many fell upon their knees and prayed.

The preacher now thought it time to change, and offer some consolation. Some might say that his view of the Atonement was crude, conventional, and commercial; that he mistook figures of speech in Scripture for general and formulated postulates. But he succeeded in making known to his hearers the mercy of God in Christ. And surely this is the main thing. The preacher's whole manner changed. Many weeping and sobbing people were swept now to the other extreme, and cried aloud with joy. Perhaps Magruder, in some instances, exaggerated the change that had taken place in them. But is it nothing that a man has bowed his soul in penitence before God's justice, and then lifted his face in childlike trust to God's mercy? Can any one who has once passed through this experience not date from it a revolution? There were many who had not much root in themselves, doubtless, but among Magruder's hearers this day were those who, living half a century

afterwards, counted their better living from the hour of his forceful presentation of God's antagonism to sin, and God's tender mercy to the sinner.

It was not in Kike to change quickly. Smitten with a sense of his guilt, he rose from his seat and slowly knelt, quivering with feeling. When the preacher had finished preaching, amid cries of sorrow and joy, he began to sing, to an exquisitely pathetic tune, the hymn:

'Show pity, Lord; O Lord, forgive!
Let a repenting rebel live:

Are not Thy mercies large and free?

May not a sinner trust in Thee?'

Kike remained quietly

The meeting was held until late. kneeling, the tears trickling through his fingers. He did not utter a word or cry. In all the confusion he was still. What deliberate recounting of his own misdoings took place then, no one can know. Thoughtless readers may scoff at the poor backwoods boy in his trouble; but who of us would not be better if we could be brought thus face to face with our own souls? But his simple faith did more for him than all their philosophy has done for us.

At last the meeting was dismissed. But Kike stayed immovable upon his knees. His sense of guilt had become an agony. All those allowances which we make for the defects of education, Kike knew nothing about. He had a feeling that unless he found some assurance of God's mercy he could not live till morning. So the minister and Mrs. Wheeler, and two or three brethren that had come from adjoining settlements, stayed, and prayed and talked with the distressed youth until after midnight. The early Methodists regarded this persistence as a sure sign of a 'sound awakening.'

At last the preacher knelt again by Kike, and asked 'Sister Wheeler' to pray. There was nothing in the old Methodist meetings so excellent as the audible prayers of women. Women oftener than men have the gift of social prayer. Mrs. Wheeler began tenderly, penitently to confess, not Kike's sins, but the sins of all of them; her penitence fell in with Kike's; she confessed the very sins that he was grieving over. Then slowly-slowly, as one who waits for another to follow-she began to turn toward trustfulness. Like a little child she spoke to God; under the influence of her

praying Kike sobbed audibly. Then he seemed to feel the contagion of her faith; he, too, looked to God as a Father reconciled in Christ; he, too, felt the peace of a trustful child.

The great struggle was over. Kike was revengeful no longer. He was distrustful and terrified no longer. He had 'crept into the heart of God' and found rest. Such an experience separates, by a great gulf, the life that is passed from the life that follows.

Kike, the new Kike, forgiving and forgiven, rose up at the close of the prayer, and with a peaceful face shook hands with the preacher and the brethren, rejoicing in this new fellowship. He said nothing; but when Magruder sang—

'How happy are they

Who the Saviour obey,

And have laid up their treasure above!

Tongue cannot express

The sweet comfort and peace

Of a soul in its earliest love,'

Kike shook hands with them all again, bade them good-night, and went home and laid himself down to rest.

THE WISH FULFILLED IN A WAY NOT WISHED:

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY, WITH A POSTSCRIPT.

'He shall choose our inheritance for us.'-PSALM XLVII. 4.

'He answered me in such a way.

As almost drove me to despair.'-JOHN NEWTON.

N my childhood I had but one ambition; and God gratified it. Years later, I sat, one cold winter's night, by the dying embers of a low fire, watching the feeble flickerings of the flames; I drew my shawl tighter around my shoulders, and asked myself if it would have been otherwise had I been willing for God to direct my path and choose my inheritance for me; but no answer seemed to come to my weary soul, so I still sat looking at the remaining spark of fire as it blazed up fitfully and then died out. I drew nearer the empty grate, and with the poker stirred out the dust between the bricks that backed it.

I was cold, supperless, and sad; a single tallow candle shed a misty yellow light, that served but to show the dark shadows that gloomed across the dismal room. At last that sole remaining light burned to the socket, set on fire the encircling paper, flamed brightly for a moment, and then went low.