ings of the society, and things went on as usual, except that some took occasion to remark that if they couldn't have said "Boo" they wouldn't have married a minister, and wonder what did possess Mr. Holly to choose that baby when there were plenty of smart, capable girls right in his own parish that he could have had for the asking.

just told me that she had a pair of continued to preside over the meetdiamond earrings, too. For my part, I think such extravagance is unbecoming and wicked, and I shan't uphold nor countenance it.' All through the lesson-which was about the handwriting on the wall that day-sister Hopson kept up a running comment after the fashion of the sample I have given. Tekel! Tekel! repeated itself over and over, and I felt that Mrs. Holly, no less than Belshazzar, was found wanting. Yet in my sorrow and indignation it comforted and calmed me to remember that not in her case, as in the other, was the weigher infallible.

to

"It was a week or two after this, when Mr. Holly had gone away a Sunday School Institute, and Clare (that is Mrs. Holly's name, and it wasn't long before I fell into the habit of calling her by it) was spending the day with me, that Mrs. Dr. Graves drove over from Beechwood, all on account of a woman's missionary meeting that was to be. We shall expect a paper from you, sister Holly,' said that model woman, in her cold, formal way. If you would take up the subject of the future state of the heathen who die without the gospel.' dis-into the sea,' she might as well have "If you would cast a mountain said to poor Clare, who could only flush and falter, and at last reply, 'Indeed, Mrs. Graves, but you must excuse me. I cannot do that.'

"On our way home Joel remarked, with a groan, 'It's just as I expected. Ten to one a man's a fool when he comes to marryin'. There's a danger of settin' the Creator aside for the creature.' Then into my thoughts stole this line from Bickersteth's grand 'Yesterday, To-day, and For ever:'

6

They sin who deem there can be

cord betwixt love and love:'

but I never argue with Joel. He is a dear, blessed man-if he does sometimes see through a glass, darkly and I am content to wait the good Lord's time for lifting the mist from before his eyes.

66

Previously to the arrival of Mr. Holly and his wife we had a sewing society and voted her in president, so the first one we had after they came somebody went to her and told her that she was the president and must preside. Such a frightened look as crept into her face, and turning to her husband, she said, 'Oh, Philip, I can't, I can't.' Mr. Holly laid his hand on her shoulder, and said a word or two low, that I couldn't quite catch, then quietly crossed the room and talked a few moments with Mrs. Huntley, the former president. The upshot was that Mrs. Huntley

66

Whereupon Mrs. Graves drew back in displeasure, and asked, 'Sister Holly, have you no care for the heathen?'

666

"Oh yes, ma'am,' hastily answered Clare. I want them to know and love Jesus. I'll give you money, or I'll sew for the missionaries. I'll do anything I can do, but you must excuse me from the paper.'

"Mrs. Graves saw that it was no use, and shortly withdrew with an I thank Thee that I am not as other women are' air, stopping in the hall to make some severe observation to me concerning those who wrap their one talent in a napkin, which I didn't pay attention enough to to remember.

felt greatly injured that its pastor's wife failed in her duty, notwithstanding the fact that it had never before manifested an interest even pocket-deep in the good cause of missions.

"Somehow the matter leaked into my lap, and sobbed out: 'Oh, out, and then, of course, the church Aunt Kezzy, what shall I do? They won't like me, and what shall I do ?' Now I had had my own ideas about ministers' wives and their duties; but I liked Clare, and her distress touched me, so I folded my arms around her and gently wiped away her fast-falling tears. Just then she raised her eyes, and there, through the window, beheld with a shudder sister Hopson stalking up the walk, grim as fate. Mr. Holly saw her also, and said gaily to Clare, I'll attend to the caller, little girl. Run upstairs, and bathe your eyes, and smooth your hair and don the hat with the pink feather, for Aunt Kezzy says we can have old Sorrel and the gig for a ride.'

6

'I was

"Then Clare didn't take part in the social meetings, and that was a grievance to some of the brethren and sisters. True, she sang the songs of Zion with the spirit and with the understanding; and once, after all had spoken, and Mr. Holly asked if any one present wished to stand as a silent witness for Christ, she rose and stood a moment. But Deacon Hopson said: 'Pears 's if, when she presented her letter an' was taken into fellership, she'd told "Sister Hopson entered. her experience an' the exercises of going to speak to your wife, brother her mind, 'twould ha' been better. Holly,' she began, but I can say it My wife said she thought she orter.' to you, all the same, I suppose. For Clare's liveliness, too, was another my part I think her course of action reason for complaint. Deacon is hindering your usefulness and Stetson-one of the Presbyterian bringing reproach on the cause, and deacons was shocked to see her I felt it my Christian duty to mensitting on Widow Brown's garden tion some things;' and then she wall with Mr. Holly's hat on her went on with all I have told of and head, and hear her whistling-ac- more. Mr. Holly heard her through tually whistling-a rollicking tune in silence. Then his eyes flashed that savoured more of the street and he got red in the face, and I than of the sanctuary; and Mrs. knew it would have been a relief to Leavens called her a giggling him to have blurted out a piece of schoolgirl, full of childish pranks.' his mind to sister Hopson; but "Bitter, bitter sweet,' goes this his grace and patience were wonderlife of ours, you know. Amidst all ful, for he only got up and opened the fault-finding, every child in the a window and banged the blind, parish was Clare's devoted friend then came and sat down again, and and follower; Aunt Mercy Parker said, as polite and softly as you named her Sunbeam, and Deacon please, but still in a fashion that Maynard declared he had as soon you wouldn't doubt he meant it :

take

our little minister's wife's

"Sister Hopson, I married for chance (that is the deacon's way of myself, not for the church. Mrs. saying our minister's little wife's Holly is under no greater obligation chance) as anybody's he knew of. to sewing societies and missionary "Yet in two parts of bitter to one meetings than any other Christian of sweet one tastes the bitter mostly, woman. She is young, timid in and those first six weeks at Clayton public, and her feet are newly set were a hard time for Clare. One in the upward way; but if she morning, when I stepped in to see doesn't talk her religion very much her, she dropped her pretty head I am satisfied that she lives it, and

THE source of a river, the root of a word, and the origin of a nation what a whet to the curious inquirer! Whence, and how came, the first inhabitants to this British Isle? How, and by what processes, did the National Constitution grow up? What were the mental, moral, and social characteristics of those who built up that Constitution? The answers to these and many other questions, at best, can be but fragmentary.

At what time after the confounding of tongues at Babel, and the dispersion from the plains of Shinar, any human beings found their way to this "sea-girt isle," no historian can tell us. Legend says that, about the time when Samuel governed Israel, a Trojan, Brutus by name, with some of his countrymen, set out to seek a new home; that, passing through Greece, Italy, and Gaul, they found their way hither; and that they found a race of giants living on the island. There may be much sand about the story, and perhaps a grain of gold.

The Welsh, in their Triads, say, "There were three names given to the Island of Britain from the beginning." Before it was inhabited it was called "the sea-girt green spot." After it was inhabited it was called "the honey island." And after the people became a commonwealth, under Prydain, the son of Aedd the Great, it was called "Britain," and was full of bears, wolves, and bisons.

It is not my object to cite more of the curious stories respecting the early time of our home, but to mention another Book of history, which perhaps may include this island. About 1050 B.C., Tyre, so often mentioned in the Bible, flourished in great wealth and glory. Of this city the prophet Ezekiel says, "Tarshish was thy merchant by reason of all kinds of riches; with silver, iron, tin, and lead they traded in thy fairs." The Phoenicians were then an enterprising folk, navigating the seas, and doubtless visited this British coast for that tin which they sold to the nations through the Tyrean markets. Now we may fairly suppose that, among the metals which David pro

vided for the future temple, there would be British tin, bought from these Tyrean merchants. An ingenious writer in the Daily News says, "The tin alloy in the bronze tools with which Cleopatra's Needle was hewn and carved may have come from the bronze islands." This is at least a fair conjectural ray of light; but it tells nothing of the people who were here then. It is like a torch which lights us into the chambers of a dark cavern, and then, just as we hope to examine the objects around us, goes out.

About the year 57 B.C. Julius Cæsar led his Roman legions to the very ground on the Rhine, the Moselle, and the Seine, which, in 1870, was the theatre of the Franco-German war. Not less singular is it that he skilfully cut through the Belgic hosts opposed to him, and then defeated them in detail, as was the case in the recent war. Two years later he was called to confront his rebel vassals on French ground; and, having settled accounts with them, and the summer being yet young, he wished for some new glory before returning home. Having seen the white cliffs of this island, he determined "to come, and see, and conquer." Every schoolboy knows that on the 26th of August, fifty-five years before Jesus was born, he landed on our coast. I am not going to tell the history of his landing, and of his second visit, with that of the many invasions, conquests, revolts, and successive conquests which occurred during about four hundred years from that time, but to point some lessons which I think worth marking.

In all human history the careful observer may see the hand of God. In the working of Divine Providence, God prepares nations, as He does individuals, for His own great purposes, and uses them as earthen vessels in which to treasure up His benevolent designs for the world. In early times He wanted a nation which should reflect Himself before all peoples, and He chose Abraham, and sent him forth to found such an one. He intended that that nation should be the depository of His sacred oracles, the home of the Messiah, and the benefactor of the world; but while He left it to work out its mission according to its own moral conceptions and responsibilities, He foresaw its moral unfitness and delinquencies. The nation murdered the Prince of peace, and cast Him out. It overlaid and obscured the commandments of the Lord, and made them of none effect by its own traditions. It became so exclusive in religious intolerance, that the light which it extinguished from itself it refused to the nations. It failed of its great end, and God would cast it out, and utterly break it up.

All this was foreseen; but God's intentions of world-wide blessing must not, shall not, cannot be frustrated. He is never in a hurry, but He is always in time: Many centuries were spent in schooling and proving that nation; but when Julius Cæsar invaded this island, fifty-five years before Christ, its ruinous consummation began to loom in sight, The crucifixion of the Messiah, and the rejection of

Him as the Saviour after His resurrection, would fill up the cup of her iniquity; and He who had chosen her to be the alabaster box for His most precious ointment was about to break her to pieces like a potter's vessel, and to transfer His treasure to another trustee.

But that new trustee has yet to be prepared. If a human adviser had been called into council as to what other nation should be selected, he would doubtless have turned his eye to Greece, ith her philosophies and intellectual light, or to Rome, with her force of law and arms. On the plane of the human reason this might have been natural; but God's thoughts and ways are not as ours. His choice fell on this "sea-girt spot," rude, savage, barbarous, and idolatrous though its people were. He would prepare it for His purpose, and, of all the nations likely to give it its first lessons for His use, He chose the Roman Power. That Power, as represented by Julius Cæsar and his successors for about four hundred years, gave Britain the first lessons in civil, political, and in some measure religious training. That training, carried on through various processes during many centuries, helped to make England what she is the diadem of all the seas, the home of every wandering fugitive, the secure and inviolable repository of the Bible, and the dispenser of that word of life to all the nations; the ark of safety for His persecuted church, where, amid all storms, she can outlive the threatened destruction; from whence she can stretch forth a helping hand to all the helpless, and where she can open wide her portals, and welcome to her heart all who love the Lord Jesus, from east and west, north and south. Aye, and God foresaw the slavery and oppression which guilty man would inflict upon his fellow-man, and, nineteen hundred years ago, began to train this England by Roman, then by Saxon, then by Dane, and then by Norman, to become socially, morally, spiritually, by her commerce, her laws, and her Christian life, the eye of the world, the refuge of the slave, and the home of the free.

The question has been often asked, and variously answered, What is the cause of England's greatness? Some would say her navy, her hearts of iron and walls of oak. Some would say her army, with its daring heroism and steady discipline. Some would say her coal measures, and steam powers; and Mr. Gladstone is not alone in thinking that the exhaustion of coal may be one of the elements of her declining. But the Queen gave the right answer when, sending a Bible to an African chief, she bade the ambassador tell him, "That is the secret of England's greatness." Doubtless the Romans inflicted great wrongs upon their conquered vassals in Britain, but they also taught them many good things, and among the good was Christianity. There is no evidence that the Apostle Paul ever preached here; but it is pretty certain that he would meet British prisoners and hostages at Rome. Probably he would meet the British chieftain Caradoc and his beautiful daughter, and perhaps from his lips she learnt the love of Christ. There is a very pretty story, which perhaps