of a single blade of grass. Vast mounds there are, indeed, but not of turf or verdure. They are swollen dusty heaps of coal, and the offal of molten iron, and the whole prospect looks like a huge grave-yard, where some grim old giants of a bygone age lie buried beneath the blackened ashes of their own victims. There is a weird, funereal air about the place, which, to a quiet looker-on, is very striking and full of mystery. Away, a few hundred yards beyond these ebon hillocks, rises a hollow-looking building as black as themselves, with a tapering chimney, like some gaunt devil with his best hat on, standing sentinel over these sable graves. Protruding from a chasm in the gabled wall is a huge iron arm, which rises and falls in measured movement up and down, as though it were thrusting heaps of victims deeper into the abyss below. And all along the sooty roofs and tiles, there range great iron-throated funnels, which belch forth volumes of black smoke, as if the infernal spirits were sleeping ten or a dozen in a bed, with their mouths wide open, and gasping out their foul and loathsome breath. Scores upon scores of half naked men, as black as Cerberus himself, are hurrying to and fro, and look like imps attendant on the slumbering demons, and the whole scene cloys on an excitable imagination, and makes one feel as if he were in the genoral dispensary of hell itself, and that the infernal patients are all ill in bed, and waiting for a perspiration. Such is the aspect of the Black Country by day. But only see it in the night! The perspiration has set in, in awful force. The snoring demons pour from their seething throats and nostrils tongues of lurid flame. The attendant imps ply red-hot weapons busily, and warm the heated bed with glowing fuel. Potions of white-hot molten metal are poured down the yawning throats, and from the blackened hillocks streams of liquid fire run down. The swollen mounds are crested with bright flames, as though the buried giants had burst forth, and capered on their own tombs, with hair erect, and blazing with infuriate glee. There seems but one element supreme and regnant, and that element is Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire comes roaring up close round you as you sit in the train, itself impelled by fire. Fire around, and fire afar. The horizon wears a glowing belt of fire, and every object, from your own immediate neighbourhood, away to the farthest stretch of vision, is robed in the self-same fiery garb.

The Black Country! And is there no black country close about us here? Has Manchester no black country, even in her crowded streets and lanes? What makes this country that I speak of black by day and blazing red by night? What makes

the heavens look down upon it as if with a flushed and bloody scowl? Fire! Fire! Fire!

And if some pure and holy angel from above were to come and walk up Heyrod Street, and thread his way amongst the ins and outs of Ancoats, on some Saturday morning, would he not see something like this black country here? Suppose he rises with the early summer sun, and takes his round before the earliest riser is astir. The thief and libertine have sniffed the morning air, and, bashful of the light, have just skulked home to bed. Sleep is on all the town, and sits beside the pillow of the man who boasts a bed, and kisses into a brief forgetfulness the poor unfortunate who lies upon the cold damp floor of yonder cellar. How many a guilty conscience is asleep as well! Well, the angel hovers over all the scene, and as he looks upon the slumbering thousands, and reads the language of each throbbing heart, he thinks he sees in every seared and blighted conscience the blackened grave of virtue, and reads the epitaph of what the sleeper might have been. One by one the slumberers start up. The sodden drunkard, who sat late over his cups, begins to rub his leaden eyes as he leaps up awakened by some dream of terror. The pallid wife crawls forth to drag the dismal tenor of her blighted life through one more day of misery. But dulness, and despair, and care, are painted on almost every face; and as the angel looks in vain for his great master's image, he thinks, indeed, it is a black, black country! But why does he hover fondly over yonder hut? Is there a gleam of light or life in that dark dismal place? Yes, indeed, there is a modest flower blooming amidst all the gloom. For there, in that close chamber, is a child, and as her mild and gentle eyes greet the ascending light, she rises from her tattered bed; but ere she goes forth to her daily toil, she falls upon her knees and moves her lips, and though no sound is heard by mortal ears, the hovering angel can detect the words, "My Father, who art in Heaven." O, this is a spot to rest upon! Here is, indeed, a sunbeam breaking in even on this black country. But it is a solitary flower. It blooms alone. God keep it from the blighting influences amidst which it grows, and may it blush immortally in his own garden! Yes, it is a solitary flower, and all around is black and desolate. The night again comes round, and the angel once more flies across this black country. The streets are vocal with the noise of curses, and the cries of women bruised by the cruel blow. The gin-shop belches forth its lurid breath of revelry and riot, and the hot tongues of myriads of heedless and neglected men are blazing with oaths and roar

ing blasphemy. Glass after glass of liquid fire streams down the scalding throats of squalid myriads, and the dialect of hell sickens the echoes with its yell, as it is spewed forth from pothouse and from pawnshop; and the fumes of perdition stifle the air of earth, and make the stars of heaven grow dim. What is it has the mastery here? What element strides rampant through this sweltering hot-bed of neglect, and waves its flaming trident over every human heart and human passion? Fire! Fire! Fire! Hell-fire has clutched its hold around men's blasted hearts. The shouts of devilry have drowned the cries of love and conscience, and every sweet endearing word of home and happiness is banished, for home is hell, and hell is home.

I ask any honest man who has taken the trouble, to help me in his own mind in drawing for himself the parallel I have just tried to sketch, whether it is an overdrawn picture? Is not this the way in which this blessed Sabbath day has been ushered in by myriads round about us; and are not these fell sounds the only Sunday bells that have pealed the matin of God's holy day upon the ears of thousands of immortal spirits?

Those who are in the habit of sitting over a huge furnace become by degrees so used to it that they scarcely feel the heat at all. In the same manner, and in a far greater degree, does this apply to those whose custom it is to trifle with their violent and evil passions, and let unbridled and distempered appetites hold sway over their hearts and minds.

I feel persuaded that if I were to make a direct appeal to any individual here, who may be in the habit of thus indulging any particular disposition to transgress the rules of morality or decency, and ask him whether he was always as comfortable in the commission of sin as he seems to be now, he would tell me no-not till he got used to it. If I were to ask the man who takes God's holy name in vain, and spices up his beastly conversation with brutal jests, and foul, revolting blasphemy, whether the oath always slipped out so glibly and so oilily, before he was tutored in this hellish grammar, he could not answer yes; but if he was an honest man, he'd say that words and oaths which once stuck in his throat and almost choked him, have at last become so familiar with the passage, that they roll out without costing him a sigh, or even a regretful thought. The fact is, he has been tampering with the fire so long that it has ceased to burn him, but has only seared and hardened his conscience, and paralyzed its influence and power. And do you really think, my friend, that you will always have this easy life in sin? Do you suppose, you miscreant wife-beater, on whose case-hardened

heart the cry of pain falls powerless, and in whose hard-baked soul the look of tenderness awakes no chord of sympathy or fond forbearance do you suppose that God in heaven will look down on your fantastic tricks of idiotic outrage on His laws, and see the pride of your heart rise up against Him day by day, and hear the outcry of the children's blood for vengeance on your head, without treasuring against you a fearful retribution? I warn you that the day is coming when you and the Saviour, on whose blood you have trampled, will have a reckoning together. And if the fires of your own evil and unbridled passions have only served to sear and harden each source of tenderness and feeling in your heart, another, and a fiercer fire shall be kindled round about you, from amidst whose forked flame your relenting and unstifled wail of woe shall sound unheeded and unpitied -for it is a fire that is never quenched.

The

You, and I, and all of us, are sailing on a stormy voyage, and we need some wary pilot on board who knows the passage, not only to preserve us from the tempest of waters from without, but from the fire within. Each heart of man is like the furnace of the potent engine that impels us through the voyage of life. If only that fire is fed by sacred fuel, our passage will be safe, and the haven will be gained. But if it is fed with the fagots of iniquity and vice-if it is left untended and unguarded-if the waves of the sea are surmounted-still there is danger and ruin from within. Apply this figure to the household of a man who lives in open enmity to God, and never tells his children of a better world, or of good things at all. vessel may be taut and trim to look upon, the crew may be able-bodied and very decent people, and, in short, she seems bound for a prosperous voyage. The waves seem to dash with little effect upon her bulwarks; and as her sails fill to the wind, and her streamers and pennons float upon the breeze, she rides the waters like a stately bird. At length, one calm and tranquil night, when the waves are gently heaving and rocking the noble vessel on their lap; when all is still around, and those on board are calmly slumbering in their berths, a half-stifled sleeper suddenly springs up, and shrieks the alarm of "Fire! Fire! Fire!" and cre the crew have time to rush upon the deck, the glowing element has thrown its deadly arms around the ship, and is crushing her groaning timbers in its fearful clutch. The burning vessel casts its ghastly glare upon the smooth and dimpling water, which seems to mock the raging fire by its calm repose; but ere the life-boat can be launched, or succour found, the falling masts have crushed and beaten down the hapless crew,

and the last cry of wild despair rings forth across the deep as the last burning spar sinks down into the yawning gulph.

So founders every godless household in the sea of life. It may, indeed, escape the storms of trouble, and ride softly through the tempest of business or of care; but unless the heart is right within, and guarded by the grace of God, the fires shall anon burst forth and burn it up for ever.

Let me just say a simple word to some of you family men. I am not going to take upon myself the duty of telling you how you are to bring up your children, or how you are to regulate your families; much less shall I be so presumptuous as to offer any advice to mothers as to the best quietus for a child while cutting its teeth, or to enter on the comparative claims of Godfrey's Cordial, Daffy's Elixir, or Dalby's Carminative. These important questions may be safely left to your own discretion. But what I want to urge on those who have children, is to keep them from the fire. If we go into a well regulated nursery, we shall probably see a high iron guard put round the fire to fence it off and keep the sportive youngsters from falling into it. Well, it is a beautiful sight to see these signs of motherly care and love. But, mothers and fathers, if you are so careful to protect your children from this fire, O, do try and throw some guard around them to defend them from the everlasting flame! Now, while they are young, and while their warm affections are impressible and pliant, try to direct them to the Lamb of God, whose grace alone can guard them through the storms of life, and from the fires of sin and hell. And here it may not be amiss just to put in a passing plea for Sunday Schools. I wish I could persuade the parents of some of those brawling children' who congregate in our streets and courts all Sunday afternoons, doing nothing but revel in idle dissolute pastimes, which are degrading to themselves and disgraceful to their friends—I say I wish I could persuade the parents of these children just to try the experiment of sending them to the Sunday School. There are good devoted men and women there, who make it their business and their pleasure to labour and to pray for the souls of children, and who would feel encouraged in their work by having more children committed to their charge. They will teach them to read and love those things which will guard them from the ills of life, and from the snares of sin. If I address any parent who has not yet sent his child to a Sunday School, I beg him kindly to think the matter over with himself.

But let us return to our fiery theme once more. There are many fires through which you and I must pass in our journey