The frontispiece is made from the photograph he sent, and the following sentences from his letter help us to understand the picture :

'SUEZ, February 18, 1881.-While waiting for the Brindisi mail we crossed yesterday to the Arabian side, and after a donkey ride of an hour and a half reached the "Wells of Moses," regarded by many as Elim.

'Its appearance now quite corresponds with the description in Exodus. Its distance from the Red Sea by a straight line is two or three miles. It is an oasis amid a vast desert of sand stretching eastward to the Sinaitic range. There are four or five enclosures, within each of which there is at least one well, and in several two or three. In the largest you see the water bubbling up and running over, irrigating the garden enclosed. These gardens are full of palms and tamarisks, and another kind of tree which seemed to me to be the pomegranate. The palms are more numerous than the threescore and ten, and afford a pleasant shade from the hot sun, growing up through the sand, having their roots "watered" beneath the land. One cannot help believing that this is Elim,

nothing in all the wide desert seems so well to answer the description given in Scripture.'

If the sight of Elim brings joy to travellers now, and is the chosen residence of some, while the Bedouins make it their camping-station on their · route from Sinai to Suez, what joy must the first glimpse of it have brought to the children of Israel! They were full of the memory of Marah. Just after Marah came Elim. Under the palm trees the pilgrims would sit and rest and sing, as they lay down in the cooling shade. The bricks of Egypt, fears of the Red Sea, the bitter waters of Marah, were all behind. What could they do but praise?

God gives us Elims still, but always half-way between seasons of trial. When we come to them, we must be careful in the cooling shade not to lose our roll like Christian in the arbour, but brace ourselves up for the hot march again.

We little thought, when we heard from our friend from Suez, what sorrow was in store for him. Only a few short months was the bride, true yoke-fellow in the mission field of China, to which they were then going, allowed to remain at his side. Whilst yet her wedding presents were undimmed, and before the loving missionary circle had time to realize what

added strength had come into their midst, she was called to find her Elim in the skies. But comfort has been sent to the lonely worker by Him who was Himself the Man of Sorrows.

"Not always at Elim, my children, my children!"
He said, as He parted our footsteps awhile;
"The Marah, the desert, the Bochim hide treasures
That never were found in joy's long-lasting smile.

"There be palms in my gardens, and fountains of waters
To spread all the journey with love's tropic flowers;
But how could I then lead my sons and my daughters
To where the mown grass drinks the heavenly showers?"

"Enough, O our Father, but wilt Thou still give us
To reap Thy one harvest till life shall be done?
Enough, O our Master, but wilt Thou not leave us
To slacken our pace till the race shall be run?"

CHAPTER III.

Little Water-Carriers.

'The fountain in its source

No drought of summer fears;
The farther it pursues its course,
The nobler it appears.

'But shallow cisterns yield

A scanty, short supply;

The morning sees them amply filled,

At evening they are dry.'

'Their nobles have sent their little ones to the waters: they came to the pits, and found no water; they returned with their vessels empty; they were ashamed and confounded and covered their heads.'-JER. XIV. 3.

OMETIMES children get tired of their own

SOM

books, and lift up one belonging to the older people, especially if it has a bright cover. If these pages are turned by little fingers, we wish them to find something quite their own. We fancy we

hear a little voice asking, as Matthew questioned Prudence about springs, 'Are there no stories for us about wells?' Come and we shall see.

You all have your favourite story-books, and the very little ones have their pet picture-book, or rather the pet picture which makes them love the book. Here is an old favourite of mine. In one of the empty wells or pits, a lion was hiding in time of snow. There were all varieties of climate in Palestine, and it was on a very cold day that one of David's mighty men, Benaiah, found a strange visitor in the well, a lion driven in by the cold. He slew it. Perhaps this gave him courage to go with his staff to the giant Egyptian, and taking his huge spear out of his own hand, kill him with it. Any way, the two stories are told in the same connection in Samuel and Chronicles.

In the East, water is much more scarce, and thus much more precious, than with us. In Egypt, alongside of the royal processions, when a journey was taken, little maidens ran with pitchers on their heads, ready at a signal to give the princess in her litter a drink, or to supply some passer-by. But the verse which heads this chapter gives us a sad picture of the little Eastern water-carriers. The pit is just