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ID you ever see a placard that told a IT sadder tale? Look at it. Here it is in a shop window in our town, and printed in such large type that all can read it: "PERSONS WANTED, WHO HAVE DESERTED THEIR FAMILIES." Then follows a list of thirteen men from the town or neighbourhood who have gone off, nobody knows where, and whose wives and children are left to the care of the parish. One leaves a wife and two children, another five, another half-a-dozen motherless children, to do the best they can, with their natural protector far away. It is just one of a thousand proofs of the wickedness and depravity of man. A few years ago I suppose every one of these men promised to be faithful unto death to the woman he married. In God's house and in God's presence you might have heard the words, " I, -, take thee, to my wedded wife, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness, and in death, to love and to cherish till death us do part." But how is it now? The tie is broken, the home is forsakenno love, no cherishing, no tender affection left; but hard-hearted cruelty, and wife and children left to beg or to starve.

What an untold amount of misery, and sin, and evil must lie behind this fact! What must have been the homes of these men ere they forsook them? Could the story of each home be recorded, can we doubt that long ago all real affection and comfort had taken their flight? Can we question for a

parish, and in almost every street, to leave us in much doubt in the matter. The fault probably has not all been on one side. The wife has often no little to lay at her own door, whilst perhaps the husband seems to have been the greatest offender. Let me name three or four points.

A neglected home is one frequent occasion of such misery. Want of cleanli

ness and thrift, want of care in keeping the house tidy, in arranging the washing, in preparing the meals, in mending the children's clothes, these things drive all comfort away, prevent a man from finding pleasure in his children when work is over, and make his own fireside a prison to him rather than a palace of content.

Side by side with this comes a bad temper, or a sullen, murmuring, repining spirit. If a woman looks on the worst side of her husband, or of anything else, if you seldom you hear a kind word, and often a cross one, if she heaps blame and reproach upon him, instead of trying to win him to better

22

ways, no wonder he leaves his home, and,

if he has no fear of God before his eyes, seeks some one else to be to him what his wife might have been.

But the most fruitful cause of all is STRONG DRINK. Here is the enemy that works most of the mischief. If the wife has given way to it, of course everything goes to rack and ruin. And where the husband indulges in it, and spends much of his wages in this way, even the most faithful and devoted wife can scarcely keep things straight. Many a woman has nobly struggled on in spite of it. Many a one has saved her children from the pit into which the husband has fallen, and when left a widow has been rewarded by their loving care for her. But it is a hard battle. It is a sore and terrible trial. May God Himself comfort those who have to bear it! And may He prosper all temperance work till the drunkard's home and the drunkard's grave is no longer to be found in our land!

you

For all these ills there is one remedy. Let the fear of the Lord be your treasure. Set God always before you. Do nothing would not wish Him to see. Make His Word the guide of your life, keep His Sabbaths, and use them to get strength to overcome temptation. Bend the knee in humble prayer, and seek continually the aid of the Holy Spirit. Above all, make a friend of Jesus; trust Him to forgive you through His blood, and to keep you by His grace. Entreat Him to come and dwell in your home, and to make it a little

Heaven below.

"O help us, Lord! each hour of need
Thy Heavenly succour give;
Help us in thought, in word, and deed,
Each hour on earth we live !"

-Rev. G. Everard, M.A., Wolverhampton.

The Word.

JOHN i. 14.

OD had spoken in pealing thunders,
Till the trembling hearers quailed:
He had spoken in silent visions,

And the hidden world unveiled:
He had spoken by holy prophets;
But when all His voices failed,
There at last was heard

One tenderest word,

He spoke, and the word was "JESUS."

Would any one know the meaning Of God's precious word to man } "Tis a blessed interpretation,

The key of life's gracious plan; For the word of the Father tells us, As plainly as Godhead can,

That our ruined race

Has an inner place

In the heart that has given us Jesus. Go, spell the great truth in Jesus: Read-mercy, and pardon, and love— The character, tender and righteous, Of the merciful One above. God speaketh to thee. O listen! And let the soft whisperings move; For in yonder Heaven No music is given

So sweet as the name of Jesus.
And art thou fearful and silent,

Afraid of the Judge's eye?
A word in thy mouth He putteth,
His word be thine only reply:
Accused of a thousand treasons,
By justice condemned to die,
Thy one perfect plea
Must eternally be

That wonderful talisman, "JESUS."
WILLIAM LUFF.

IF you tell your troubles to God, you put them into the grave; they will never rise again when you have committed them to Him. If you roll your burden anywhere else, it will roll back again like the stone of Sisyphus.-Spurgeon.

Cultivate a Spirit of Prayer. WHEN we rise in the morning with our bodies invigorated by rest and sleep, and our spirits refreshed and gladdened by the cheerful return of another day, what more becoming in the child of God than to bow down in lowly adoration before His throne, and pour forth our humble acknowledgments for His watchful care over us during the silent hours of the night? To begin the day in this way will be safe; to act otherwise, would be dangerous in the extreme. No tongue can tell what disappointments, or temptations, or losses, may be awaiting us during the day, or the difficulties which we are to meet, it may be, in every path. We can neither see nor provide against them; but if God, who is acquainted with all our ways, and who knows what is to befall us, be on our side we shall have no cause for fear-all shall be well. For this, as well as for other reasons, our Lord delivered the parable that men "should always pray, and not faint." Let our ignorance of the future inspire zeal and encourage us to the habitual discharge of this most important duty. Who is so regardless of the interests of his own soul and the concerns of eternity, as not to find an idle hour, one spare moment, a few odds and ends, to devote to religious purposes? As we know not what a day may bring day may bring forth, as we cannot, in the present state, and during the present moment, foresee what may happen to us the next, how desirable-how very necessary-—that we be always bringing our case before God! If we so act, He will be close at hand as a present help in the trying hour, nor permit our hope to be lost.-Rer. Thomas Parr.

"Turn Ye!"

VERY few persons, even the most de

praved, would be willing to admit, if the question were put to them, that they were permanent travellers on the road to ruin. They might acknowledge that their habits were bad, and their moral purposes iniquitous; that they drank, or swore, or stole, or lied, or were ill-tempered, or idle, or impure, or even admit that they were growing worse all the time. But they would, nevertheless, if really compelled to consider the question, believe, or at any rate say that they believed, that somehow or other, at some time or other,

things would take an upward turn. But just here lies one of the most fatal fallacies of sin. Things do not take a turn, unless the individual makes them do so; and reform is quite sure to grow harder, rather than easier, as the hours and days and years hurry on. There is no slipping up hill again, and no standing still, when once you have begun to slip down. And yet the sole hope which many a man and woman has of escaping earthly woe and future penalty, is the hope of slipping up hill on some lucky day which a more propitious future shall bring. The sooner a soul finds out that DELIBERATE SINNING is not to be followed by ACCIDENTAL SALVATION, the sooner will it be ready to respond to the call of the Holy Spirit.

THE mind of man is like a mill, which will grind whatever you put into it, whether it be husk or wheat. The devil is very eager to have his turn at this mill, and to employ it for grinding the husk of vain thoughts. Keep the wheat of the Word in the mind: "keep thy heart with all diligence."

24

W

Infidel Wives and Mothers.

E have all heard of the excellencies of Christian wives, and the blessed influence exercised by Christian mothers over persons during their young and tender years. Thousands of men to-day attribute whatever of success and prosperity may have attended them, to the influence of their praying, pious mothers. But who ever heard a man, with tearful eyes and trembling voice, recall the profitable counsels and excellent example of an infidel mother? Who ever heard a man attribute his goodness or his greatness to the doctrines which had been instilled into his mind by one who disbelieved God and rejected His Word? Where are the infidel mothers whose children rise up and call them blessed? And where are the infidel wives of to-day whose power for good is felt and acknowledged by their husbands? If infidelity is a good thing in a man, why not in a woman? If it is a good thing in a husband, why not in a wife? If it is a good thing in a father, why is it not good in a mother?

Curiously enough, infidels seem peculiarly anxious to marry Christian women. A man himself may be a dissolute blasphemer, but in looking for a wife, he selects a person of a different character. Where are the infidel schools that are established to train up wives for sceptics ?-young women who shall neither know nor care for God or His words? We have never heard of such institutions; in fact we doubt whether sceptics would take kindly to them.

A sceptical, scoffing, scorning, blasphemous wife would be a poor ornament to a respectable home. And a child whose early memories would be of a mother who rejected

the Bible, scorned religion, and never taught her child to pray, would find little in them to anchor the soul amid the storms of youthful passion, or the scenes of earthly temptation. Blessed are those whose earliest remembrances go back to a mother's pious counsels and a mother's fervent prayers!—The Armoury.

WHERE Christ brings His cross, He brings His presence; and where He is, none are desolate, and there is no room for despair. As He knows His own, so He knows how to comfort them, using sometimes the very grief itself, and straining it to a sweetness of peace unattainable by those ignorant of sorrow.-E. B. Browning.

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