Mrs. H―, an old woman upwards of eighty, had kept her Hbed for many months from infirmity and dropsy. Her daughter, of forty-five years, lives with her, but she has been paralyzed for twelve years, and unable to move herself. As you seat her on the chair, there she remains, one leg being quite drawn up and resting on the other knee, her hands are also so drawn that she cannot take hold of anything, or even open a bag she always kept by her. She keeps what is called a "Wardrobe," and while the old mother was able to get about they managed pretty well, but now a little girl of fourteen is usually there to do what is necessary, and the business is falling off sadly. They are both so thankful for Nurse's attentions, especially the old woman, She says, "It is so kind of you to come in and attend to me; I can't think how you can do it." Sometimes I sing her a hymn, with which she is delighted, and so grateful. She had a son who was in a good way of business, and used to help her a little, but he was seized with a fit about three years ago, and fell on the fire and died. Since that time they have had no help but from us.

Another kind Nurse tells us of a patient, Mrs. C suffering from cancer in the legs and dropsy :-"I visited her from the beginning of January, 1877, to the middle of December, when she died. The first time I went I found her in a small, miserable room on her hands and knees sweeping up the hearth. She was an old woman of seventy-two, but very clean in her habits, though the house and room were dilapidated and unhealthy. Having heard she was suffering from bad legs, and the smell in the room being very offensive, I asked her to let me look at them, and found them one mass of wounds from the knee to the ankle. The smell of a bad drain also in the house tended to make them worse. It was some time before I could get the stiffened dressings that were on the legs away, only by constantly softening them with warm water, and then applied lint saturated with lotion.

"She had for months crept about on her hands and knees untended. Now she often says to me, 'Dear Nurse, everything you do seems to succeed. I kept getting worse before you took me in hand, and I have been getting better ever since.'

"I said, 'Well, we asked the Lord to bless their means to you, and He has done so. It is HE who blesses the means

used.'

"A kind lady used to visit her frequently, to whom she had made the same remark, and she said, 'The blessing of the Lord that maketh rich.' All this seemed new to her. She was very ignorant, and could read but little, but from this time always liked us to read to her. Psalm xci. and xxxvii. seemed

both to come home to her in her different states of mind, and she was never tired of hearing them, and always seemed thankful for us to pray with her. This was after I had visited her full six months, and the change seemed to have been gradually coming upon her. The lady mentioned above used to go and see her every Sunday afternoon, and always took her a little bunch of flowers out of her own garden, which were a great delight to her."

THE HIDDEN RILLS.

In a tiny and charming little booklet, issued merely for private circulation among subscribers by Mrs. Spurgeon, who has been long known to the outside world only as a sufferer hopeless of cure, we find the following remarks, which happen to chime in so thoroughly with our own personal convictions that we venture to transcribe them for our readers. This lady says:

"Into this dear home of mine, as one may easily imagine, the tide of periodical literature flows pretty freely. Dailies, weeklies, monthlies, quarterlies, papers and pamphlets of all sorts and descriptions pour in like a flood, and for a season overwhelm the pastor's study table. From thence at ebb-tide they drift lazily into my sanctum, and cast up upon my coast they yield me pleasant spoils of amusement and information. From their pages I have lately realized, with some surprise and much pleasure, how very large a number of God's people are seeking to accomplish by individual effort those works of benevolence and Christian love which in days gone by were only attempted by fully constituted agencies and societies with vast resources.

"A special form of need seems to strike some particular heart with pity, and forthwith the hand is stretched forth to relieve it; not with fitful or capricious charity, but with an even tenderness and determined constancy which lead at last to an entire consecration to the chosen service. Some of the religious periodicals above alluded to contain long lists of such works of faith and labours of love, and in many I note that while they confide in a human head for management they lean wholly on the Lord for maintenance. A fellow feeling for these workers prompts me to watch their course with loving interest, and often leads me to breathe a prayer for their prosperity and

This pleasant writer then mentions that it comes home to her conviction that she herself might add a rill of comfort and gratification to the pastors of small churches whose limited incomes bar the possibility of their buying books and periodicals if she made it her business to dispense the above serial literature; and from small beginnings, this has now become quite a life work, with the correspondence ensuing; and by the aid of sympathising friends, it is very widely extended. Such a record may prove stimulative to many another Christian invalid to do the like.

HOME FOR DESERTED MOTHERS.

We have been very sorry to hear from Mrs. Main, of "the Home for Deserted Mothers," named in some of our former numbers, that by the failure of "Willis, Percival, and Co.," she has lost all her ready momey for her Mission, deposited at their bank-between 2001. and 3007.-and she is consequently in considerable present difficulties.

WATCHING

FOR SOULS.

THE BURMESE BIBLE-WOMAN.

(Extract of a Letter from Mrs. Ingalls.)

HERE comes your Burmese Bible-woman, and I write for her. She wishes to talk with you; and she says, "Perhaps my last day

will be my best days. Many years ago I laboured very much for La Bao and his household, but they never said they believed in Christ. None of them were saved, as far as I know. I have wept when I have remembered how very near some of them had seemed to Jesus, but they did not try to touch the hem of His garment, and other persons passed on and were healed. The grand-daughter married, and her husband has been the cause of light to her branch of the family. He was converted, and sought the salvation of his wife and children, and now his wife has been converted. Their little daughter, of three years old, points up to heaven, and says God is there.' I have asked the eldest boy of five. He pointed up to heaven, and then pointed east and west, and all round, and said, 'He is here and there, up there and down here.' When the pastor handed the wife, as the candidate for baptism, to me, I thought it was the best moment of my year, if God would save one from the family of La Bao; and now I hope others will come in. We have waited for them sixteen years, and see the seed has come up at last. The wife of one of our teachers, too, has been converted; her husband was brought in four years ago, and during all that time she has been at enmity. She now has begged to be baptized."

Again she continues:

6

"One of my relations is a priest, and has the place of a big priest who died a few months ago. He took a book when I laid it down, and he asked me to come and tell him about the book. He gave me a present of some fruit, which made the people think he was intending to learn our religion.

"Many hundred people will assemble in that place when they bury the Big Priest, and I shall go and give books.

"They have made a pagoda for his bones, and some will worship it. They have sealed up his corpse, and will burn it four or five months from this. I have given away many books during the last two months. I have travelled on the cars several times. We give books, and talk with the people as we go. I have a wicked son, who eats opium, though he was once

a professed Christian. This is a great trouble to me, your Burmese sister, Ghee Durv.

"In the cold season, and in the month of December, I speak this to you, my dear English friends."

THE PRIVILEGE OF PRAYER.

PRAYER is not a consultation with the highest wisdom which this world can supply. It is not intercourse with an angel or spirit made perfect. But it is an approach to the living God. It is access to the High and Holy One who inhabiteth eternity. It is detailing in the ear of Divine sympathy every sorrow. It is consulting with Divine Wisdom on every difficulty. It is asking from Divine resources the supply of every want. And this not once in a lifetime, or for a few moments in a stated day in each year, but at any moment, at every time of need.

Whatever be the day of your distress, it is a day when prayer is allowable. Whatever be the time of your calamity, it is a time when prayer is available. However early in the morning you may seek the gate of access, you find it already open; and however deep the midnight moment when you find yourself in the sudden arms of death, the winged prayer can bring an instant Saviour near. And this wherever you are. It needs not that you should ascend some special Pisgah or Moriah. It needs not that you should enter some awful shrine, or put off your shoes on some holy ground. Could a memento be reared on every spot from which an acceptable prayer has passed away, and on which a prompt answer has come down, we should find Jehovah-shammah-" the Lord hath been here ". inscribed on how many cottage hearths, and how many dungeon floors. We should find it not only in Jerusalem's proud temple and David's cedar galleries, but in the fisherman's cottage by the brink of Gennesaret, and in the upper chamber where Pentecost began. DR. HAMILTON,