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ANECDOTES AND SELECTIONS.

do, for the sake of Christ and His cause, the very thing that Oken did for the sake of science, would there be any lack?

MEDDLING.-There are some persons who seem possessed with an insatiable desire to meddle with things that do not concern them. They pry into other people's affairs, they are busy bodies in other men's matters. Nothing within their reach escapes their meddlesome inspection. On one of our railways, as an immense train, divided into two or three sections, was moving rapidly along, suddenly the bellrope was pulled; the engineer at once stopped the train; the conductor went through to see what was the matter, but no one knew anything about it; the bell-rope had been slyly pulled by some meddlesome passenger. The train started again as quickly as possible, but before it was well under way, the section which followed it had overtaken it, crushed into the rear car, killing and wounding passengers, and clouding homes with life-long misery and sorrow, just because some one meddled with that which did not concern him. The passenger probably thought he had done a cunning thing; it was sport to himit was death to the victims of his folly. Continual troubles arise from this meddlesome disposition. Things are broken, damaged, destroyed, by meddlers who have no earthly reason for their conduct, but who simply meddle with that which does not concern them. One of the great commandments, which deserves a place in both law and gospel, is the command to mind our own business. The spirit of this commandment is found in more than one place in the Holy Scriptures. It will be well for us if we give heed to such instructions, and study to be quiet and do our own business, leaving alone things which do not concern us. We may thus avoid incalculable mischief, and spare ourselves the remorse which meddling brings.

A NOBLE THING.-It is a noble and great thing to cover the blemishes and excuse the failings of a friend; to draw a curtain before his stains, and to display his perfections; to bury his weaknesses in silence, but to proclaim his virtues on the house-tops. It is an imitation of the charities of heaven, which, when the creature lies prostrate in the weakness of sleep and weariness, spreads the covering of night and darkness over it, to conceal it in that condition; but as soon as our spirits are refreshed, and nature returns to its morning vigour, God then bids the sun to rise and the day shine upon us, both to advance and show that activity.-South.

CARLYLE'S REVERENCE.-Thomas Carlyle, though an iconoclast, is as reverent a man as lives. In a letter written in 1869 to the late Mr. Erskine, he says:-"I was agreeably surprised by the sight of your handwriting again, so kind, so welcome! The letters are as firm and honestly distinct as ever-the mind, too, in spite of its frail environments, as clear, plump-up, calmly expectant, as in the best days; right 80; so be it with us all, till we quit this dim sojourn, now grown so lonely to us, and our change come! 'Our Father which art in heaven; hallowed be Thy name, Thy will be done;' what else can we say? The other night, in my sleepless tossings about, which were growing more and more miserable, these words, that brief and grand prayer, came

THE FIRESIDE.

strangely into my mind, with an altogether new emphasis; as if written and shining for me in mild, pure splendour, on the black bosom of the night there; when I, as it were, read them word by wordwith a sudden check to my imperfect wanderings, with a sudden softness of composure which was much unexpected. Not for perhaps thirty or forty years had I once formally repeated that prayer; nay, I never felt before how intensely the voice of a man's soul it is; the inmost aspiration of all that is high and pious in poor human nature; right worthy to be recommended with an 'After this manner pray ye.'

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PRAYER AND TALK.-A good test of the spiritual temperature of a prayer-meeting is the number of prayers offered in comparison with the little speeches made. Where people value prayer, and feel its need, and want to pray-they pray. Where people think that prayer is a good thing, and that there ought to be more of it, and that it is a good thing to talk about-they talk. It is a hopeful sign when everybody in a prayer-meeting is ready to pray. It is not so hopeful when everybody is urging everybody else to pray. The week of prayer, or the week of talk-which was it?-has registered the spiritual temperature in many a prayer-meeting.-S. S. Times.

NO LONG PRAYERS.-We need no long prayers to bring us the sweet sense of God's Fatherhood, the hidden secret communion of Him who is ever with us. I walk with my friend through a bustling, crowded street, and though I speak no word to him, the close pressure of his hand upon my arm, from time to time, tells me all I want to know. The little child, too, holding my hand through a long summer walk; he looks up into my face now and then. Look down into his, and in that look how much is said; what compact of trust and love, what bright assurance that all is fair and calm and pleasant between us. So a good man walks with God.-R. W. Dale.

The Fireside.

WATER FOR THE EYES.-A writer in Fraser's Magazine thinks that, whatever hesitation there may be justly called for in recommending one or another of the various lotions now so popular, there need be no such doubt in respect to cold water or pure water. He says in cases of much inflammation or difficulty of opening the eyelids in the morning, experienced by so many, the water should be warm, and it may be mixed with warm milk, but in nearly all other cases it should be cold. All those who have been engaged in reading or writing during several hours at a stretch, and especially at night, should carefully bathe the eyes with cold water before going to bed

and the first thing in the morning's ablutions. All artisans too, who work at a blazing fire, ought often to wash their eyes with cold, pure water; and so should all those who work in wool, particularly carders and spinners, and those likewise who are employed in woollen and cotton manufactures, the fine dust which such works disperse often producing cataracts, obstinate inflammation, swelled eyelids, etc.

FOR ROUGH HANDS.-Take three drams of powdered borax, three-eighths ounce of glycerine, six ounces of rosewater; mix well together and apply frequently. It will make the skin smooth and white.

NOTES AND QUERIES-FACTS, HINTS, GEMS, AND POETRY.

Notes and Queries.

G.-Your question is curious rather than practical. The Bible deals with men as men. What stronger indictment against any people was ever penned than that of the Hebrew Prophets against the Jews?

S. L.-No. The book is fictitious. It is an attempt to present the writer's views of devout Jews at the Advent. But, like all such books, it shows how much superior are the Gospels. PhiloChristus means, Friend of Christ.

W. B.-Probably: but look again. You will see that Hezekiah had the help, and that was an immense advantage, of the greatest of the prophets. We mean, Isaiah.

F. B. It is said by Jews: but the fact still remains, that the greater part of the Talmud was written after the birth of Christ.

M. A. C. Always compare the three accounts of the same event in the first

three Gospels. They are called Synoptical Gospels, because these three, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, "see together," or have one common view.

C. M.-The headings of the chapters are not inspired, and are not always accurate. Of course the italics in Scripture are only meant to show that, in the opinion of the translators, the italicised words are needed in English to eke out the sense. In many cases they are better left out altogether. This is notably the case in Matt. xx. 23; and the corresponding passage in Mark x. 40.

D. H.-Use your own judgment upon it. If the explanations you have heard require so much ingenuity to get at them, they are evidently not the correct interpretations. The Bible is not a puzzle-book for ingenious men, but a guide to the open-hearted and simpleminded.

Facts, Hints, Gems, and Poetry.

Facts.

Silver and gold mines abound in Japan.

Some of the finest engravers in Switzerland are women.

They are training carrier pigeons in Germany for military purposes.

The Chinese feed more largely on pork than on any other kind of animal food.

Fish are peddled in portable tanks in Japan, the law requiring them to be sold alive.

At Glasgow, Scotland, one iodine factory uses up 6,000 tons of sea-weed every year to produce this chemical.

A full blown pond lily has been discovered under the ice in a Massachusetts pond.

Thousands of peasants in the Hartz Mountains, Germany, realize all the ready money they get by raising singing birds for the American market.

Hints.

Every path hath a puddle.-George Herbert.

Hearken to reason, or she will be heard.-George Herbert.

A stubborn man gets into trouble: a peaceable man is imposed on.—African Proverb.

Happiness is neither with us nor without us; it is the union of ourselves with God.-Pascal.

Merciful is the fate that hides from any soul the prophecy of its still-born aspirations.-Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.

FACTS, HINTS, GEMS, AND POETRY.

It doesn't pay to prophesy; if you get it right, nobody remembers it; if you get it wrong, nobody forgets it.

This is what it is to be happy; to believe that our thought is shared before it can be spared.-Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.

A great step is gained when a child has learned that there is no necessary connection between liking a thing and doing it.-Guesses at Truth.

Some people have a way of thinking that what they are about must be pleasing to God, if only it is unpleasant enough to themselves.-Jean Ingelow. You know that is a right heart that, in the end, makes a safe head; and the ancients used to say that the punishment of a knave is that he loses good judgment. Joseph Cook.

Gems.

An injudicious friend is often a powerful enemy.-Alliance.

He who lives without folly is not so wise as he thinks.-Rouchefoucauld.

A cold head and a colder heart make many things easy.-Charles Kingsley.

Poetic Selections.

ONLY GOD AND MAN.

FOLLY and Fear are spectres twain;
One closing her eyes,
The other peopling the dark inane
With spectral lies.

Know well, my soul, God's hand controls
Whate'er thou fearest;
Round Him in calmest music rolls

Whate'er thou hearest.

What to thee is shadow, to Him is day,
And the end He knoweth;
And not on a blind and aimless way
The spirit goeth.

Nothing before, nothing behind;
The steps of faith
Fall on the seeming void, and find

The rock beneath.

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There is nothing in heaven, or earth beneath,
Save God and man.

Peopling the shadows, we turn from Him
And from one another;

All is spectral, and vague, and dim,
Save God and our brother.

O restless spirit! wherefore strain
Beyond thy sphere!

Vanity keeps persons in favour with Heaven and hell, with their joy and pain, themselves, who are out of favour with all others.

Think not of faults committed in the past, when one has reformed his conduct.-Confucius.

True charity is often met with in the person of a fault-finder, but it is rarely met with in the person of a flatterer.

When Death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.George Eliot.

Are now and here.

All which is real now remaineth,
And fadeth never;

The hand which upholds it now, sustaineth

The soul forever.

Then of what is to be and of what is done
Why queriest thou?
The past and the time to be are one,

And both are now.

HOME.

-Whittier.

STAY, stay at home, my heart, and rest;
Home-keeping hearts are happiest;
For those that wander they know not where
Are full of trouble and full of care;
To stay at home is best.

I feel I am growing old for want of somebody to tell me that I am looking as young as ever. Charming false-Weary and homesick and distressed hood! There is a vast deal of vital They wander east, they wander west, And are baffled and beaten and blown about air in loving words.-Landor.

Love virtue, and the people will be virtuous; the virtue of a great man is like the wind; the virtue of the humble is like the grass; when the wind passes over it the grass inclines its head.-Confucius.

By the winds of the wilderness of doubt;

To stay at home is best.
Then stay at home, my heart, and rest;
The bird is safest in its nest;
O'er all that flutter their wings and fly
A hawk is hovering in the sky;

To stay at home is best.
-H. W. Longfellow.

A TYROLESE CATASTROPHE.

IN 1771 a terrible calamity befell the little village of Alleghe, on the banks of the river Cordevole, in the Tyrol. The district was a fertile and beautiful one, with several scattered villages, surrounded by orchards and corn fields, and protected from the fierce blasts of winter by the range of high mountains which were at once its safeguard and its peril.

At the base of one of the loftiest of this great range, called Monte Pezza, stood the village of Alleghe. In the month of January, when the mountains around were all covered with heavy snow, a charcoal burner was at his work in the woods of Monte Pezza, when his attention was suddenly arrested by a distinctly tremulous movement of the ground, and by the frequent rattling down of stones and debris from the rocky precipices behind him. These were sufficient indications of danger to the practiced ear of the mountaineer. He knew too well the portents of those overwhelming catastrophes that are continually to be dreaded; and on listening more attentively, he became convinced that serious peril was impending. Even as he watched, several large boulders became detached from the face of the mountain, and rolled down to a considerable distance; while at times the trembling motion of the ground was too evident to be mistaken.

It was growing late in the afternoon, and darkness would soon fall on the valley; so, hastily quitting his work, he made the best of his way down to the nearest village, and with the excitement naturally caused by anxiety and fear, he told the inhabitants of the alarming indications he had just witnessed, and urged them to make their escape, without loss of time, from the threatened danger. Strangely enough, they seem to have attached no value to the signs of approaching mischief which the man described to them; and it would appear that they considered the falling debris to be attributable to some accidental snow-slip, caused possibly by the warm rays of the noonday sun.

Whatever they may have thought, they paid no heed to the warning; and the charcoal burner having done all he could to save them from the threatened calamity, went on as fast as possible to carry his terrible news to three other villages, which were all directly exposed to the like danger. But they also utterly disbelieved in it, and laughed at the fears of the poor man, whose breathless and agitated condition clearly testified to the truth of his conviction that a very great peril was close at hand. One and all, they refused to quit their dwellings; and the charcoal burner,

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