Or is He one who loves you, who fills you with His grace?
A Friend, an Elder Brother, who meets you face to face?
A Saviour who has rescued, a Shepherd who doth lead,
A living present Jesus who satisfies your need?

E. G.

Stray Thoughts on Affliction.

HETHER God comes to His children with a rod or with a crown, if He comes Himself with it, it is well. Welcome, welcome, Jesus! what way soever Thou come, if we get a sight of Thee. And sure I am, it is better to be sick, providing Christ come to the bedside, and say, "Courage! I am thy salvation," than to enjoy health, and never be visited by God.-Rutherford.

It is sweet to weep over sin, when we know it is pardoned, and it is sweet to weep in suffering, if we realise that Jesus has a fellow-feeling with us. He who never wept on earth, cannot know the blessedness intended by the Lord wiping away all tears from His people's eyes.-Bogatzky.

Blessed are the common trials that bring the Physician to the door, for He gladly takes every occasion of going in. A weary, longing heart on earth will draw the Lord from heaven. In your extremities, the desires of your soul will go right to Jesus. He feels the touch about His heart, and He needs no other call.-Arnot.

Afflictions are blessings to us when we can bless God for afflictions. God had one Son without sin, but He never had without sorrow.-Dyer. any

To me there is something sacred and sweet in all suffering: it is so much akin to the Man of Sorrows.-M'Cheyne.

The Church is God's jewelry-His working-house, where His jewels are polished for His palace; and those He especially esteems and means to make most resplendent, He hath oftenest His tools upon them.-Leighton.

Tribulation cannot separate you from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord; but the love of God will in the end separate you from tribulation, bring you out of it, and give you fulness of joy.-Hewitson.

We hesitate to call pain and sorrow evils, when we remember what bright characters they have made, and when we recollect that almost all who came to Christ came impelled by suffering of some kind or other. . . . Possibly want and woe will be seen hereafter, when this world of appearance shall have passed away, to have been, not evils, but God's blessed angels, and ministers of His most paternal love.-Robertson.

HEN I was a boy at school, there lived at a quiet corner not far from the quay a cobbler, known among his neighbours and by us boys as old Andrew Proverbs. I need hardly say that Proverbs was not his real name, but as it was singularly descrip

tive of the man, his real name of Geddes was seldom heard, except when any one, instead of using the more familiar name of Andrew, addressed him as Mr. Geddes. With us boys he was Old Andrew, and with the less reverent among us Old Proverbs, though no one ventured to address him so.

Old Andrew was a Scotchman. He had enlisted in his youth, preferring rather to carry the musket abroad than to ply the awl at home, and after a long service, in which he had reached the rank of sergeant, he had retired with a small pension, his income from which he supplemented by resuming the humbler department of his old occupation; for Andrew never aspired to make any shoes except his own, which, truth to say, were more useful than elegant. There were, however, few families in the neighbourhood who were not glad to avail themselves of Andrew's well-known skill in cobbling.

He was in the habit of working during the day, when the weather was at all favourable, in a kind of half-open shed, whence he could get a glimpse, when he looked up, of the busy street that led down to the harbour, and in a sidelong way a view of the harbour itself, with such shipping as happened to come within the line of vision.

Andrew was a notable man among his neighbours; shrewd and sagacious and observant, it was not for nothing that he had followed the British banner half over the world. He had gained much practical wisdom in his wanderings, and was noways averse to give his neighbours the benefit of his experience. His shed was a favourite place of resort with us. boys of the Grammar School; and, looking back, I can see now that the lessons we learnt from Old Andrew were to the full as valuable as those we learned elsewhere. His favourite text-book was the Proverbs of Solomon, from which in his childhood he had been taught to read, and he had a kind of grudge against modern schools and schoolmasters, because the Book of Proverbs was not included among their classbooks. He would take the spelling-book from the hand of some little fellow that stood by, and after carefully putting

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on his spectacles, would read very deliberately some such sentence as A cat saw a rat." "Poor food for a growing boy that is, lads!" Andrew would say. "Look there !—there is

the kind of thing was taught when I was a boy." And he would point to several boards constituting part of the wall of the shed, which he had carefully painted, and on which he used to write with coloured chalk every morning some wise maxim from the Book of Proverbs, to direct his thoughts. and conversation into a profitable channel for the day. We seldom passed his shed without peeping in to see what was the proverb for the day, and on such occasions Andrew almost always said something to us by way of explanation, often illustrating the proverb by incidents that had come within his own observation or experience.

Nor were the boys Andrew's only audience; his shed was a favourite resort of his neighbours after their day's work was done. They found it both pleasant and profitable to have a talk with Andrew; and occasionally a housewife passing on her way to market, or bringing a pair of little boots to be mended, would steal a minute or two from her busy day to listen to some of Andrew's healthful sayings. His audience was thus a very mixed one, which gave him very varied opportunity of illustrating his proverbs and imparting his wisdom; but on the whole I fancy that, though we sometimes annoyed him a little, he liked his youthful audience best.

I remember well the first time that I found my way to Andrew's shed. I had lately come from the country to attend the Grammar School, when passing one morning near his shed I heard a youthful voice spelling out a word, and turning round saw some boys standing beside the cobbler's stool, and looking at the black-painted boards. on which was written in large printed letters

"THE PROSPERITY OF FOOLS SHALL DESTROY THEM."

"Prosperity," I heard Andrew say; "yes, that's a big word-a very big word for a little boy to make out, but I