HEART AND HAND.

I have followed the plough, I have scattered the seed, And reaped the reward of the land;

And though labour has hardened my hand, it is well That my heart is not hard as my hand.

Oh then, while I toil

As the lord of the soil,

Let the love light still beam in my eye:

The sweat of my face

Sure can be no disgrace,

While my heart is not withered and dry.

When autumn laughs out, 'mid her fruitage and grain,
And plenty smiles over the land,
Perhaps we can ease some poor bosom of pain,
If our heart is not hard as our hand.

Oh then, when the poor

Pleader stands at the door,

And

gazes with suppliant eye,

Let our charity prove,

By an action of love,

That our hearts are not withered and dry.

A small deed of kindness will never be missed,
And the heart will in kindness expand,
Until the whole earth in its love is embraced,
If it is not as hard as the hand.

Let sympathy cheer,

With a generous tear,

The heart that may sorrow and sigh;

And rest quite secure

Of reward, for be sure

That its record is written on high.

THE SABBATH A DELIGHT.

THE mistakes of its friends, as well as the hatred of its enemies, have represented it as a day of gloom and austerity. A true Sabbath is just as gloomy as is true piety ; just as gloomy as a heart can be, that is at peace with God and assured of heaven, that bears the voice of a loving Father in every mercy, and sees his hand in all his works. It is true, that with all this experience of faith and joy, the Sabbath will mingle confessions of sin and tears of repentance, wailings of grief and prayers for deliverance. But the Sabbath does not make the sins or the sorrows; it only takes them to a compassionate Saviour for relief; and the highest pitch of all its ecstasy is just at that "point where the sorrow is turned into joy." Would that all those who hate or dread the day, could have a fair experience of its spiritual delights. What unknown refreshment, what expansion, what satisfaction, it should bring them! It should lie across their rough and shaded pathway like a gleam of sunshine upon green pastures and still waters, Men would find themselves in a new world, if every week should roll it into this belt of heavenly light.-Rev. H. D. Ganse.

SAYING ONE THING AND DOING ANOTHER,

PEOPLE say that they shell peas, when they un-shell them; that they husk corn, when they un-husk it; that they dust the furniture, when they un-dust it, or take the dust from it; that they skin a calf, when they unskin it; that they scale fishes, when they un-scale them.

Though times were hard and work was scant

When Bessy's parents died,

The worthy couple willingly

Her infant wants supplied.

They fed and nursed her as their own,

And deemed their humble hearth

Made happier far in all their care
By Bessy's humble mirth.

The neighbours sometimes wondered much
That folks that fared so ill

When times were hard, should take the child,
To make them poorer still.

But David's good and hopeful wife

Oft truly prophesied,

That little Bessy Green some day
Would be their joy and pride.

And so she is-and, more than that,
The comfort and the stay

Of their declining years, whose strength
Is marked with slow decay.

And diligently Bessy works
To make a little store,

That she may have to give to them

When they can toil no more.

There's not a home so humble,
But may, in its degree,

Serve the best purpose of the text,
"Use hospitality."

And he who with a needy one

His pittance freely shares,
May find that he has entertained

An angel unawares,

From "Adventures of a Sunbeam," &c. (Dean & Son.)

POWER OF A WORD IN SEASON. SOME sixty years since "a boy overheard his mother say that she had dedicated him to the service of God as a missionary."

That was a simple remark, accidentally, as it seemed, dropped into the ear of a happy but thoughtless boy. Had the reader heard it, would he have considered it the seed of a majestic tree? Let us trace its fruits.

When that boy-Samuel J. Mills was his namegrown to young manhood, gave his heart to Christ, his mother's remark grew into a thought of power within him. Driven for shelter from a grove prayer-meeting one day, by a thunder-storm, to the shelter of a haystack with four other youths, he uttered his thought by proposing to send the Gospel to Asia, and asserting, "We could do it if we would!" His holy enthusiasm was caught by the others, and the five young men founded a society, "to effect in the persons of its members a mission to the heathen."

This was the beginning of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions!

Fifty years have passed since that memorable meeting beneath the haystack. Behold the fruits of that little assembly, in the thirty-nine missions, with their two hundred and sixty-nine stations and out-stations, the one thousand two hundred and fifty-eight missionaries sent out, the one hundred and forty-nine churches, with their fifty-five thousand communicants, formed, the three hundred and sixty-nine schools, and the thousand Sunday school children, and the thousand million pages of Gospel truth printed, through the labours of that noble Board! To this grand fruitage has that mother's remark grown in sixty years.

DR. LOCKHART AT PEKIN.

DR. LOCKHART is a medical missionary connected with the London Missionary Society, and has laboured in