Through reading this little book, Richard Baxter, afterward the great preacher of Kidderminster, received a real change of heart. Baxter wrote "The Saint's Everlasting Rest," which was blessed to the conversion of Doddridge. He wrote "The Rise and Progress," which was the means of the conversion of Leigh Richmond, and he wrote his "Dairyman's Daughter," which has been translated into more than fifty languages, and has led to the conversion of thousands of souls. How many

of these converted ones have in their turn written books and tracts which have charmed others to Jesus, eternity alone will reveal. We can never see the issues of our acts. We may strike a match, and from that little flame a street may be lighted.

Give a light to your next-door neighbor, and you may be taking the nearest way to instruct the twentieth century, or to send the Gospel to Chinese Tartary, or to overthrow the popular science fetish of the hour. A spark from your kitchen candle may, in its natural progression from one to another, light the last generation of men. So the word of the hour may be the light of the age, by which men may come in multitudes to see their Savior and Lord. Let thy light shine, and what will come of it thou shalt see hereafter.-SPURGEON.

The Power of Influence.

The stone flung from my careless hand into the lake splashed down into the depths of the flowing water; and that was all. No-it was not all. Look at those concentric rings, rolling their tiny ripples among the sedgy

reeds, dipping the overhanging boughs of yonder willow and producing an influence, slight but conscious, to the very shore of the lake itself. That hasty word, that word of pride or scorn, flung from my lips in casual company, produces a momentary depression; and that is all. No-it is not all. It deepened that man's disgust at godliness; it sharpened the edge of that man's sarcasm; it shamed that half-converted one out of his penitent misgivings; and it produced an influence, slight but eternal, on the destiny of an immortal life. Oh, it is a terrible power that I have-this power of influence; and it clings to me. I can not shake it off. It is born within me; it has grown with my growth, and strengthened with my strength. It speaks; it walks; it moves. It is powerful in every look of my eye, in every word of my lips, in every act of my life. I can not live to myself.. I must either be a light to illumine, or a tempest to destroy. I must either be an Abel, who by his immortal righteousness, being dead, yet speaketh; or an Achan, the saddest continuance of whose otherwise forgotten name is the fact that man perishes not alone in his iniquity. O brethren, this necessary element of power belongs to you all! Your sphere may be contracted; your influence may be small; but a sphere and influence you have.-W. M. PUNSHON.

Condensed Comments.

Simply to be in this world is to exert an influencean influence, too, compared to which mere language and persuasion are feeble.-HORACE BUSHNELL.

The righteous is a guide to his neighbor; but the way of the wicked causeth them to err.-SOLOMON.

No man is what he would have been if Luther had not lived.-FROUDE.

INTEMPERANCE.

A Graphic Picture.

The depopulating pestilence that walketh at noonday, the carnage of cruel and devastating war, can scarcely exhibit their victims in a more terrible array than exterminating drunkenness. I have seen a promising family spring from a parent trunk, and stretch abroad its populous limbs, like a flowering tree, covered with green and healthy foliage. I have seen the unnatural decay beginning upon the yet tender leaf, and gnawing like a worm. in an unopened bud, while they dropped off, one by one, and the scathed and ruined shaft stood desolate and alone, until the winds and rains of many a sorrow laid that, too, in the dust.-WASHINGTON IRVING.

The Price of a Drink.

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Give me a drink!

I will give you my hard earnings for it. Give me drink! I will pay for it. I will give you more than that. I married a wife; I took her from her girlhood's home, and promised to love her and cherish her, and protect her. Ah! Ah! And I have driven her out to work for me, and I have stolen her wages, and