unexpected kindness, tears filled his / fairy fingers which were to make it eyes as he thought of the kind old homelike and comfortable. man and his gift so delicately Sunday seemed a very long day offered.

| to the young people of Glenwood, As Mr. Whitney walked home he but it ended at last, and Monday said to himself, “I am glad Robert morning found them early at the had the manliness to tell me what cottage. Each girl and boy brought occurred last night. It has enabled something to help in the houseme to make one poor fellow happier furnishing. Mr. Whitney's waggon to-day.”

| drove up with the large articles they And now we must turn again to had not been able to carry. As the the boys, as once more they are boys unloaded the waggon, they gathered at the cottage gate; this found a roll of new carpeting, a dotime Bob's father is with them. nation from Bob's father.

“ Well, boys, you don't feel as The days of the week flew, and big this morning as you did last as if by magic, the house became night,” said the old gentleman, cosy and pretty. The time of Mr. smiling. “This bad boy of mine Burton's return was near, and the told me all, and I hope you have boys could scarcely wait, so eager done the same to your fathers.” were they to see him.

“Yes, sir, we have," answered | He arrived at night; it was then the boys.

too dark for him to notice the alter“I hear," he continued, “ you ations about the place. He saw a have another and wiser plan, and I light shining through the window, am ready to help you with it. I and fearing the boys had found some have seen the trustees of the school, new way to torment him, he hasand have their permission to make tened up the steps. Glancing certain repairs about the house, pro- through the open shutters, he stopped vided we do not carry our enthu- in amazement. What had happened siasm into a large bill.”

during his absence ! A pretty carHis eyes twinkled as he said this. pet lay on the floor, and in the

“ You boys must do whatever re centre of the room was a table with mains to be finished, and get your a bright cover, on which stood & sisters to help you; for, bless me, student's lamp burning cheerfully; what would we do without the girls !” beside it was a low easy-chair, and

For about an hour they stood an open book lay temptingly within discussing what was to be done ; reach. White curtains hung at the they then separated, evidently well windows, and a good fire burned pleased with the arrangements. brightly on the hearth. These,

The next day a sound of hammer- with a few pictures and the simple ing inside the cottage drew a curi. ( little ornaments scattered around ous crowd around it. A man was the room, showed plainly that loving hanging the hingeless gate, another and tasty hands had been at work was putting on a coat of white paint during his absence. on the dingy house, and a few of With a hesitating step he entered the older boys were at work in the the house, and a feeling of gladness garden. At the end of the week the filled his heart, such as he had not carpenter and painter left, and the known for years. It was then the place was given up entirely to the boys, who had been waiting in girls and boys, who kept up a another room, met him, while Bob, vigorous scrubbing and cleaning. taking him by the hand, told him On Saturday night they locked up the story of their planned revenge, the house, clean and ready for the land how it had failed.

“I tell you what, Mr. Burton,” sible for the amount of the defalcahe said ; " when we heard that tion. He had sold everything he prayer of yours we felt mean enough. possessed in order to pay this debt, We liked you right off, sir, and we had given up his studies, and taken made up our minds to do something the comparatively humble situation to please you; so we just waited till he now held. He came to Glenyou started, then we pitched in, wood with a sad heart. Other didn't we, boys ? We got the bereavements had broken his spirit girls to help us, and we hope you beside the painful death of his like your home.

brother. This was his story, and "Like it, my boys !” said Mr. when he had told it his head sank Burton, “why, I cannot tell you upon his breast, while the tears how I like it, and how grateful I rolled down his face. The boys am to you all. Can you stay with were crying too. It was only after me awhile to-night, and I will tell a great effort he continued, “There you the story of my life? It is all is nothing more to tell you. How I I can do in return for your great came here, you all know. Broken kindness to me."

down in health, and longing to die, Very willingly they stayed, and still I must live to pay that debt. Mr. Burton, drawing his chair nearer So I came to the country, where the fire, the boys gathered around God's light seems brighter and him. His story was a long one, but heaven nearer among these beautihere it must be told briefly. He fnl hills than in the city. And here was one of two brothers who had I must work and wait till the debt been left in poverty after the death is paid, and I am called to meet my of their father. By the aid of rela- loved ones in a land where there tives, however, he had obtained an will be no more night, and God education with a view to a profes- Himself shall wipe away all tears." sion, while his brother was entrusted As Mr. Burton stopped again, the with a confidential situation in a boys thanked him for his story, mercantile house. One day his shook hands with him, and passed brother had come home at the close quietly out of the room. Bob was of the day, had retired early under the last to go, and as he held the the plea of headache, and had been teacher's hand in his, he said, " I found the next morning dead in his think, sir, God is going to let you bed. He had committed suicide. have a happier life now; any way, He left a memorandum on his table we are all going to try and make it telling that he had robbed his em- so." ployers of a large sum, and could "Thank you, Bob, thank you all, not survive the disgrace of discovery. my boys; you have inade me hapTo save the credit of the family, and pier to-night than I have been for the good name of his brother, Mr. many a year. Good-night to you, Burton had made himself respon- and God bless you all !”

THE SPIDER AND THE HYPOCRITE.

JOB viii. 14,

BY THE REV. W. JONES, In the realm of reality, the wand of the magician, the castle-building of the imagination, the sun-hued visions of fancy, fail, collapse, vanish. At the slightest jostle of a fact they are gone. In the

moral realm men think reality less certain and severe. They hope to sip the sensual sweet and escape the sensual bitter. They will steal the golden apples, and evade the guardian dragon. They will pluck the forbidden fruit, and still remain in paradise. They rarely think " it shall not be as it comes into their mind." Reality might seem sure of her sway in religion, the field of revealed duty for the activities of mind and heart. Here is no theatre for actors, but a battle-ground for Christian soldiers, where the struggle with spiritual wickedness is more serious than sham fights or a holiday review. Yet bere are found actors, players, their professed object the honour of God, their real object the service of self. Their hope is that Satan will pat his own honest friends to shame. They trust that God will not expose them this side the grave; but their hope shall be cut off ; their trust shall be as a spider's web, which while beautiful as to its structure, is very fragile as to its texture, and though adequate to the weaver's purposes, yet being self-spun is destined to be swept away. : 1. Beautiful as to its structure. Admirable is the delicate architecture of the spider's web. Its filaments fine as sunbeams shooting through the haze, issuing in radial lines from a central ring, through many growing ones, to the outermost, are made secure to branch and spray from all the winds that blow. This tracery of insect art, hung on bawthorn or holly fence in the green lanes at home, seen decked before the sun grows bot, with sparkling dew, asks for no one's eulogy. Beautiful also is the apparent trost of the hypocrite. Trust! Faith ! A principle which when real starts through Divine power, Phænix-like, out of the smouldering ashes into which false hopes, false faith, and fancied righteousness have been reduced—& principle that urges the return of the desolate and wing-wearied dove to the hospitable arkthat speeds the trembling homicide to the gates that close only between him and the avenger—that implies an escape from tormenting thoughts, a joyful issue to the soul's most earnest search, a sense of rest at the Saviour's feet, with feelings of unutterable love-a principle that puts the helm of life into the pilot hands of Christ, that subjects the once rebellious but now submissive man to the Spirit's plastic power, to be fashioned into a Christian of truth, sincerity, and love. Such trust is beautiful, and beauty belongs to the false trust that resembles it. The lifeless statue that sculptured poetry of the human form--pleases. The picture—when the brow has thought, the eyes love, the lips language-pleases. Likeness satisfies the eye, sweet sounds the ear. Only when deceit appears does indignation come. But one cannot always taste and try the fruit we see. Every yellow ornament one cannot scrape or weigh, to prove it is bat gilt, not solid gold. The bypocrite's religion satisfies the eye. It is the bright cloud, which for a moment passes for the sun itself. To human sight it is like the spider's web, very beautiful, but when tried is found to be· 2. Very fragile as to its texture. The gold thread of vain-glory, the silver thread of respectability, the brass thread of pious imposition, not visible to men, form the web in whose centre, watching and working, he endeavours to secure his aims. God hangs great weights on small wires ; the hypocrite suspends character before men and his soul before God on a lie. His trust, like a mathematical line, has length without breadth. His religion has bulk but not worth, a mere cipher without a numeral. His glory is a rainbow that fades away on the cloud. It is the sun in the water, the perishing image of the enduring orb in heaven. Like the locusts of St. John, that had but, as it were, the faces of men and the hair of women, the hypocrite's devotion is, as it were, the rapture of the saint; whereas in his highest soarings, he has, like the vulture, beak and talons in readiness for what he observes on the earth. There is nothing so true in him as bis scheming, nothing so real as his wickedness.

3. Yet the web is adequate to the owner's purposes, and successful in securing them. He wins a religious name. He finds his way through all the wards of the human heart. He puts on the hairy garment, and the false prophet is not discerned through the disguise. He stamps the base metal of his actions with the image of the King, and it circulates as genuine coin. The " gowned Rabbis" did win the salatations in the market. For who suspects a thief in a Levite ? Who apprehends Jacob when both voice and hands seem Esau's ? Hardly those who cannot see the spots for the brightness of the sun, who forget the blanks in the sky in their admiration of the stars that adorn it. The hypocrite succeeds because charity hopes that under the leaves there is fruit, that behind the smile there is the sincere and loving heart.

4. But his trust being fulse shall, with all that is secured by it, be swept, like the spider's web, utterly away. The truth and holiness of God require it. Hypocrisy !-it is a sepulcbre with the lettered porch and golden dome of a temple. It is a play, where religion is the farce, spectators the dapes, and the bypocrite the knave. Sach an outrage against heaven will no! God avenge? It is deception sublimed to a science, wherein the cheating actor assumes the brow of innocence, the eye of pity, or the fire of zeal, and in the name of God promotes his own base interests and builds up the kingdom of the Evil One. He takes the precious name of Christ as an angler does a worm, and thrusting it on the book of his crooked purposes, angles for praise or filthy lucre. He spreads his Christian profession over the field his hypocrisy ploughs, hoping to reverse the law, that what a man soweth that shall be also reap. He forges the name of God to a cheque of a sanctified deportment, careless if it passes here that it will condemn him hereafter. The anger of the Lord will smoke against such an one. Ordinary indignation will not be his lot. “I the Lord will answer him by myself, and I will set my face against that man, and I will make him a sign and a proverb.” Sincerity does not bare, but no one can be saved without it. Our safety will not endure

if we cannot say, “Lord, thou knowest all things, thou knowest that I love thee.” This decides the matter. “Blessed is the man anto whom the Lord imputeth no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no quile.'

Terowie, South Australia.

THE FIRST SHEAF. A SPRING evening, but dark and the Lamb. Therefore are they dreary, was that in which John before the throne of God, and serve Ross left the bookseller's shop in him day and night in his temple; which he had been employed all and he that sitteth on the throne day, and turned his face towards shall dwell among them. They the unattractive region known to shall hunger no more, neither thirst the people of H- as Wade's any more ; neither shall the sun Court, or Alley. He was tired, but light on them, nor any heat. For he could not go home without look- the Lamb who is in the midst of the ing in upon his Sunday scholar, throne shall feed them, and shall Joseph Wills, who was dying of lead them unto living fountains of consumption in an upper room at waters; and God shall wipe away the end of the court. Joseph's all tears from their eyes." father was dead, and his mother, “ Would you read it twice over, a thriftless charwoman, was not sir ? ” asked the dying child. “You always sober; what wonder if the will soon be there, little Joe!” he boy's eyes sparkled when his teacher added, softly. “ Soon there, soon came to see him, and to read from there!" the Word of God how Christ Jesus His voice sank as he said this, came into the world to save sinners! and a smile of indescribable sweetHappy Joseph! Happy even in ness flitted over his pain-worn face. poverty and pain, because he had With a feeling of awe, the teacher learned to trust in One who can again turned to his Bible, going make even the poorest room to be back, this time, to the ninth verse, a palace of beauty and joy to them “ After this I beheld, and, lo, a that love Him.

great multitude" : “I have had such a beautiful "I saw that in my dream,” said dream, sir, said the boy, as his the boy, interrupting him, "and the teacher sat beside him. “It was minister, and you, and the lady, all about what you read to me last were all in it, clothed in white evening : “ Washed their robes and robes, and palms in their hands!"" made them white,'sir ; you remem- Mr. Ross went on, “And the ber?"

angels stood round about;” and as Mr. Ross answered with a bright he read, he thought how, perhaps, smile as he took out his Bible and that humble room, that lowly bed, turned quickly to the seventh had its bright spirits, even now, chapter of the Revelation. How standing “ round about." The idea sublimely in such a place—nay, in possessed him so entirely that, as all places — sound those words of he afterwards knelt in prayer, he truth and power! “ These are they could do nothing but give thanks to which came out of great tribulation, God for his mercy in Christ to his and have washed their robes and dear little friend and scholar. Pity made them white in the blood of Joe he could not. Had not God