MISSIONS.

"Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you, and ye shall be witnesses unto Me both in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and in Samaria and unto the uttermost part of the earth.-Jesus.

O Father, haste the promised hour,

When at His feet shall lie
All rule, authority and power

Beneath the ample sky;

When He shall reign from pole to pole,

The Lord of every human soul;

When all shall heed the words He said

Amid their daily cares,

And by the loving life He led

Shall seek to pattern theirs.

And He who conquered death shall win

The nobler conquest over sin.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

Every Christian a Missionary.

Christ gives life to men, and then says: "As the Father hath sent me, even so send I you." Every Christian is a missionary. He may have been nursed in the lap of Christendom and trained in a luxurious religious home, or he may have been born a pagan and suckled on a creed outworn." It matters not. If he has been "born again," and feels the throb of the Christ-life, he is a missionary sent by the living Christ to touch dead souls to the newness of life.-GEORGE L. MACKAY.

Christianity Inherently Missionary,

Christianity is inherently missionary. It embodies the bloody sweat. It is the Divine truth breaking into the

cross.

He is on an errand. He
He crowds himself upon

world. Christ is one sent. comes needed but uninvited. the race when nothing awaits Him but a manger and a He intrenches in a hostile world and undertakes its subjugation. He is seeking the lost. He has the alertness of a hunter. We are to have His Spirit. Thus the New Testament Church is the mightiest missionary society ever launched upon the sea of the centuries. If you can not keep step with this cause, beware. You will be left in the wilderness alone. Christ always marches at the head of His Church.-C. H. FOWLER.

MOTHERS.

Christian Motherhood.

Every child is a bundle of tremendous possibilities; and whether that child shall come forth to life, its heart attuned to the eternal harmonies, and after a life of usefulness on earth go to a life of joy in Heaven, or whether across it shall jar eternal discords, and after a life of wrong-doing on earth it shall go to a home of impenetrable darkness and an abyss of immeasurable plunge, is being decided by nursery song and Sabbath lesson, and evening prayer, and walk, and ride, and look, and frown and smile. Oh, how many children in glory, crowding all the battlements and lifting a million-voiced hosanna, were brought to God through Christian parentage!

A daughter came to a worldly mother and said she was anxious about her sins, and she had been praying all

night. The mother said: "Oh, stop praying. I don't believe in praying. Get over all these religious notions, and I'll give you a dress that will cost $500, and you may wear it next week to that party." The daughter took the dress, and she moved in the gay circle, the gayest of the gay, that night. Sure enough, all religious impressions were gone, and she stopped praying. A few months after this, when she came to die, she said in her closing moments: "Mother, I wish you would bring me that dress which cost $500." The mother thought it a very strange request, but she brought it to please the dying child. 66 Now," said the daughter, "mother, hang that dress on the foot of my bed." The dress was hung there -on the foot of the bed. Then the dying girl got up on one elbow and looked at her mother. Pointing to the dress, she said: Mother, that dress is the price of my soul." Oh, what a momentous thing it is to be a mother! -TALMAGE.

66

Seventy-Six.

Seventy-six and wondrous fair

My mother, with her silvery hair.

Upon her cheek, where bloomed the rose

In other days, the lily blows

In purity beyond compare.

I can but guess the weight of care
Her hands and heart have had to bear;
I know how calm her life stream flows

At seventy-six.