"The

"I am not surprised at this," said Mr. Gresham. enemies of religion are ready enough to cast even the afflictions and distresses of Christians in their teeth, and to take up a reproach against the gospel on that account, as though it had never been written, Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth."

6

Mr. Jones looked round on his friends as Mr. Gresham was speaking, and a sort of consciousness of being caught might have been detected on the countenances of one or two of them. In short, Mr. Gresham had scarcely finished what he had begun to say, before Parsons said, in his open, honest manner,—

"Well, sir, I hope I am not the man to shirk from what I have said, nor to say I am not wrong when I am shown I am wrong; and so

"But surely, Parsons," interposed Mr. Gresham, quickly, "you have not been sneering in the way Mr. Jones describes at professors and methodists, have you?"

"No, sir, no-not so bad as that either; it was somewhere else Jones must have heard that; but the truth is, before you came in we had been talking about Mr. M-and his affairs, more than we had any call to do, perhaps, only that it is what everybody has got something to say about; and I had given it as my opinion, sir, that something must have been not quite right in Mr. M-, God-wards, you understand, sir; not man-wards, for an uprighter man never lived, I think, than Mr. M-. But I did say, sir, that I was afraid something must have been a little wrong, or the poor man would not have been let to come down to such trouble and distress."

"It is honest in you to say so, at any rate, Parsons," said Mr. Gresham, quietly; "and I fancy, from what fell from our friend Everest, a minute or two ago, that he agrees with you in your opinion ?"

"You may be pretty sure of that, sir," said Wicks the carpenter, with a half smile. "Where Parsons is, in point of opinion, you won't often find Mr. Everest far off."

Everest looked a little angry for a moment at this goodnatured banter; but he and Wicks were too good friends to quarrel about trifles. Besides, he did not mind acknowledging that he had generally found the blacksmith's opinions very good opinions to hold to.

"And not being unpopular opinions either, still better of them," said Mr. Gresham.

think

you may
"There were

three rather celebrated men in Scripture, you may remember, who thought very much after the same fashionEliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar I mean, and who made up their minds very decidedly about their poor friend Job, when he was in trouble. By the way," continued Mr. Gresham, practising one of those abrupt transitions by which his conversation with his parishioners was often marked, by the way, speaking of Job puts me in mind your little boy, Mr. Everest-Job was covered with sores, you know. How is your son getting on?"

of

"Thank you kindly for asking, sir; little Johnny is getting on nicely. It took uncommonly well; and he'll soon be all right again, the doctor says."

"You mean the vaccination was successful. I am glad to hear it. The child quite enjoyed it, did he not ?"

66

Enjoyed it, sir?""

"Enjoyed the operation, I mean-the cutting of his arm with the lancet, and the inflammation which ensued, and the soreness, and all that sort of thing."

"You must be joking, sir," said the tailor. "Of course he did not like it: it was painful, and has been all along; and we none of us enjoy pain, I take it, sir."

"True-what was I thinking of?-it was a punishment, no doubt. He must have been a sad child, your Johnny-a sad, disobedient, ungrateful, rebellious child, Mr. Everest." "Sir!" exclaimed Mr. Everest, opening his eyes very wide "my Johnny, sir?"

"Yes, your Johnny: we are speaking of your Johnny, of course. I say, he must have been a very disobedient child."

"My Johnny, sir? Why, you know he is only a baby, not twelve months old,-and a dear, patient, good-tempered baby as was ever born, sir," said Everest, not unreasonably surprised, and perhaps a little offended at the turn the conversation had taken, and the extraordinary charge so unkindly levelled at his child.

"What! so young, so dear, so patient, so good-tempered! -and yet you punished him, Mr. Everest!" said Mr. Gresham, almost sternly.

"But, sir, I don't call it punishment," said the annoyed

and bewildered tailor.

"What does it matter what you call it, sir?" continued Mr. Gresham. "You hurt the child, sir, or caused it to be hurt call it a trial, or an affliction, or distress, or pain, or

sorrow, or trouble,-call it what you please, it comes to the same thing. The child was very well, and you made it ill. You caused it to cry out with pain when the lancet pierced the skin. It has suffered pain from inflammation and soreness ever since. You have dosed it with nauseous medicines as well, I dare say. And yet you call yourself

a kind and tender father!"

The astounding gravity of these charges, the rapidity with which they were uttered, and the reproving tone of the speaker, almost took away Mr. Everest's breath, and bewildered him more than ever. He looked round on his friends, as much as to say, "Cannot you speak a word for me?" and was vexed to see that they were all smiling. Unkindest cut of all, the friend in whom he most trusted, and whose word was to him something like law, had a broader smile on his countenance than any of the others. Positively the poor tailor's eyes filled with tears. At last he said,

66

Why, sir, it is because I hope I am a kind and tender father that I had it done. Isn't it for his good, sir? Won't he be the safer for it all his life afterwards, sir? And if it had been to do any good to him, wouldn't I have borne ten times or a hundred times as much to save the poor little thing any part of his punishment, as you called it,

sir ?"

"Don't say any more, my friend," said Mr. Gresham, with a kindly smile, and extending his hand in amity; " and pardon me, Mr. Everest, for trifling with your feelings for a moment or two. Now let us turn to what we started from, Mr. M- and his-his what you called his misfortunes, Mr. Jones."

"Sir," said the hearty blacksmith, extending his hand for a friendly shake, “I don't want to cut short a word you wish to say; but I'll say first of all, before you begin, that you have beat me again, out and out. I see now, sir-I see what you mean, and how true it is, and must be. God deals with us, if we are his children, in the same way as Everest here has been dealing with his little Johnny,-only wiser and better, sir-wiser and better, sir."

"And I see it now, too," added Everest, with a look of relief. "I might have seen it before, only I was thinking so much

"Of your little Johnny," added Wicks, "that you lost sight of Mr. M-"

"Ay," said Mr. Roberts, "and if I hear anybody run down Mr. M- again, as I have done, because he has happened to lose his property, I'll just give a bit of my mind. I only wish I had thought of this sort of argument before."

"Better say too little than too much, my friend," resumed Mr. Gresham, "especially if spoken in anger, though the anger be just; for the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.' And now, my friends," he added, "there's no need for me to say more; for those are the best sermons, whether preached in the pulpit or out of it, to which the hearers are able to make their own application; and all I shall add is a verse or two of that beautiful hymn which we sometimes sing in public worship:

'Trials must and will befall;
But, with humble faith, to see
Love inscribed upon them all,—
This is happiness to me.
Did I meet no trials here,
No chastisement by the way,
Might I not with reason fear
I should prove a castaway?
Strangers may escape the rod,
Sunk in earthly, vain delight;
But the true-born child of God
Must not, would not, if he might.'"

-

ONE morning, as Mr. Hall, a minister resident in a large town in one of the midland counties, sat with his family at breakfast in a watering-place on the Welsh coast, whither they had gone for change of air, a daily newspaper, published in the town where he resided, was handed in along with the letters.

First he opened and read his letters, none of which happened to be of special interest; then, taking up the newspaper and tearing off the cover, he said, "Now let us see what is going on in B-."

No sooner had he opened the newspaper than he was startled by seeing the announcement, in large capitals, "FAILURE OF THE BANKING COMPANY." The article so headed stated that the bank, which had enjoyed the reputation of being one of the safest and most prosperous in the country, had, to the surprise and consternation of everybody

in the district, suspended payment. It was added that the wreck was total, and that the shareholders would not only lose the handsome dividends they had hitherto received, but that they would doubtless be called upon to contribute largely to make up the deficiency.

"My dear," said Mr. Hall to his wife, "the bank has gone down. Is not that the bank in which Mrs. Blanshard has so many shares ?"

"She told me only the last time I called upon her," replied Mrs. Hall, "that ever since her husband's death it had been the chief source of her income; and that, finding the investment such a good one, she had recently purchased additional shares."

"I fear, then," said Mr. Hall, "that she is utterly ruined. I will write to her immediately."

Accordingly he wrote a kind letter to Mrs. Blanshard, expressing his sorrow that he had heard such things, assuring her of his deep sympathy with her in her trouble, and at the same time venturing to hope that matters would not prove so disastrous as was feared. He concluded by briefly pointing her to the great source of consolation and strength. Mrs. Blanshard was the widow of one of the chief founders and directors of the bank. At the time of Mr. Blanshard's death the bank was in a thoroughly sound condition, and he would almost as soon have thought of the Bank of England going down as of its suspending payment. He was fully persuaded that he had left his wife well provided for when he bequeathed her, along with some other property, a hundred shares in the bank. Some months before the crash a relative, without any idea of the insecurity of the bank, had advised her to sell out a portion of her shares, partly for the sake of making another investment, which he thought would prove both lucrative and safe, and partly because he thought it scarcely advisable that she should have so much at stake in one concern. Influenced, however, partly by a feeling of loyalty to her husband's memory, and partly by her strong conviction that the bank was perfectly secure, she declined to follow his

advice.

As soon as Mr. Hall reached home he hastened to call on Mrs. Blanshard.

"Oh dear sir," she said, as soon as he entered the room, "it was so kind of you to write to me, and come to see me; but I have lost my all, and I am quite ruined."