THE FIRESIDE. A POOR MAN'S WISH.-I asked a student what three things he most wished. He said, "Give me books, health, and quiet, and Ï care for nothing more. I asked a miser, and he cried, "Money-moneymoney." I asked a pauper, and he faintly said, "Bread-breadbread." I asked a drunkard, and he called loudly for strong drink. I asked the multitude around me, and they lifted up a confused cry, in which I heard the words, "wealth, fame, pleasure." I asked a poor man, who had long borne the character of an experienced Christian, He replied that all his wishes might be met in Christ. He spoke seriously, and I asked him to explain. He said, "I greatly desire three things: first, that I be found in Christ; secondly, that I may be like Christ; thirdly, that I may be with Christ." I have thought much of his answer, and the more I think of it, the wiser it seems. WHEN DEATH COMES we walk down in the valley of the shadows, knowing that we shall find there the shining footprints of the Saviour, and confident that in due time the morning light of the resurrection will break upon the spirit, and we shall be with God for ever. WHATEVER YOU WANT, go to God by faith and prayer, in the name of Christ, and never think His delays are denials. The Fireside. A DEACON THAT DOES NOT PRAY IN HIS FAMILY. I KNOW a deacon-an official member of the church of Christ-a distributer of the sacred emblem of a Saviour's body and of a Saviour's blood and yet he does not pray in his family. He is a useful and highly respected citizen; he has filled various offices of public trust, and though gray hairs are beginning to sprinkle his locks, he has ever been not only above reproach, but even above the shadow of suspicion: and yet he does not pray in his family. He has a large and liberal heart; he supports the gospel at home and abroad; the widow finds in him a protector and the fatherless a faithful guide: and yet he does not pray in his family. He is a noble church member; his brethren honour him, and his pastor loves him; his meek and blameless life is a standing recommendation of the religion of Jesus: and yet he does not pray in his family. He is the fast friend of prayer meetings and Sabbath schools; except providentially, his seat is never vacant when the saints meet together, and often his voice is heard in earnest and humble supplication at a Throne of Grace: and yet, strange to say, he does not pray in his family. What an anomaly in the history of Christianity is the case of our beloved brother! How it weakens the pastor's hands, and saddens and THE PENNY POST BOX. depresses the pastor's heart, that one, so unexceptionable in all things else, should be so remiss in this, and it so vastly important! Reader, does the above represent your case? If so, resolve, in God's strength, that it shall represent your case no longer. The Penny Post Box. WORK. Two men I honour, and no third. First, the toilworn Craftsman that with earth-made Implement labouriously conquers the Earth, and makes her man's. Venerable to me is the hard Hand; crooked, coarse; wherein notwithstanding lies a cunning virtue, indefeasibly royal, as of the Sceptre of this Planet. Venerable, too, is the rugged face, all weather-tanned, besoiled, with its rude intelligence; for it is the face of a Man living manlike. O, but the more venerable for thy rudeness, and even because we must pity as well as love thee! Hardly-entreated brother! For us was thy back so bent, for us were thy straight limbs and fingers so deformed: thou wert our Conscript, on whom the lot fell, and fighting our battles wert so marred. For in thee too lay a god-created Form, but it was not to be unfolded; encrusted must it stand with the thick adhesions and defacements of Labour; and thy body, like thy soul, was not to know freedom. Yet toil on, toil on: thou art in thy duty, be out of it who may; thou toilest for the altogether indispensable, for daily bread. A second man I honour, and still more highly: him who is seen toiling for the spiritually indispensable; not daily bread, but the Bread of Life. Is not he too in his duty; endeavouring towards inward Harmony; revealing this by act, or by word, through all his outward endeavours, be they high or low? Highest of all, when his outward and his inward endeavour are one: when we can name him Artist; not earthly Craftsman only, but inspired Thinker, who with heaven-made Implement conquers Heaven for us! If the poor and humble toil that we may have Food, must not the high and glorious toil for him in return, that he may have Light, have Guidance, Freedom, Immortality? -These two, in all their degrees, I honour: all else is chaff and dust, which let the wind blow whithersoever it listeth. Unspeakably touching is it, however, when I find both dignities united; and he that must toil outwardly for the lowest of man's wants, is also toiling inwardly for the highest. Sublimer in this world know I nothing than a Peasant Saint, could such now anywhere be met with. Such a one will take thee back to Nazareth itself; thou wilt see the splendour of heaven spring forth from the humblest depths of earth, like a light shining in great darkness.-Carlyle. FACTS, HINTS, GEMS, AND POETRY. Facts, Hints, Gems, and Poetry. Facts. Be silent, or say something that is Geography and chronology are the better than silence. eyes of history. To remember dates, fix upon some famous one, and reckon from it, backwards or forwards. For example: here are two-the Spanish Armada, 1588; the English Revolution, 1688. The reign of Queen Elizabeth began thirty years before the destruction of the Spanish Armada, and continued fifteen years after. During Queen Elizabeth's reign the following great men died, Roger Ascham, John Calvin, John Knox, Paul Veronese, Torquato Tasso, Edmund Spenser. Between the reign of Elizabeth and the accession of William and Mary the Stuarts sat on the English throne. The Great Puritan party flourished midway between the two epochs. The age of Elizabeth was conspicuous for its literature; of James the First, for its pedantry; of Charles the First, for its civil war, issuing in the Commonwealth; Charles the Second, for its Act of Uniformity and licentiousness; and James the Second, for its preparing the way for the Revolution. Hints. Where bad is, nought must be the choice. Hang not all upon one nail. He that will not hear must feel. He who builds according to another man's advice will have a crooked house. It is only at the tree laden with fruit that the people throw stones. Towers are measured by their shadows, and great men by their calumniators. It takes a good many shovelfuls of earth to bury the truth. It is always the worst wheel that creaks. He that threatens wastes his anger. Eggs are close things, but the chicks come out at last. Poverty is the sixth sense. Gems. Child of God, pray on. By prayer thy hand can touch the stars, thy arm stretches up to heaven. The holier the child of God becomes, the more he pants for the perfect image and blissful presence of Jesus. We are saved by grace, but we shall be tried by works. Love weaves chains that are tougher than iron, and yet softer than silk. They who would live like Jesus must look to Jesus. Conversion, while it restores God to the heart, restores reason to her throne. The Gospel is indigenous to no country, and yet belongs to all. Would you be holy? learn to be humble. If Christ died for all, then he died for you. Poetic Selections. THE TRUE SERVICE. OUR Friend, our Brother, and our Lord, He serves Thee best who loveth most In vain shall waves of incense drift THE CHILDREN'S CORNER. In vain the minster turret lift The heart must ring the Christmas bells, -Whittier. A SABBATH HYMN. O THOU whose courts of hallowed light No zephyrs from Thy royal plains Or waft to earth the wondrous strains We hear no sound of waters free No rustle of the goodly tree Yet even in this pilgrim land, Thine the young morn, that up the sky Thine the calm noontide reigning high, Thine is the music of the sea, The melody of bird; But when from out the twilight shade No brighter beams the eye of day, But to our hearts they seem to say Ah! is it not Thy blessings dew That all beneath it wears the hue Thus, on the peace Thy Sabbath flings -Sabbath at Home. The Children's Corner. A BEAUTIFUL LESSON. SOME time ago a boy was discovered in the street, evidently intelligent, but sick. A man who had the feeling of kindness strongly developed, went to ask him what he was doing there. "Waiting for God to come to me." "What do you mean?" said the gentleman, touched by the pathetic tone of the answer of the boy, in whose eyes and flushed face he saw the evidence of fever. "God sent for mother and father and little brother," said he, "and took them away to his home up in the sky; and mother told me when she was sick that God would take care of me. I have no home, nobody to give me anything; and so I came here, and have been looking so long up in the sky for God to come and take care of me, as mother said he would. He will come, won't he? Mother never told me a lie." "Yes, my lad," said the man, overcome with emotion, “he has sent me to take care of you." You should have seen his eyes flash, and the smile of triumph break over his face as he said: "Mother never told me a lie, sir; but you have been so long on the way." What a lesson of truth! and how this incident shows the effect of never deceiving children with senseless tales. HOW THEY MAKE SAINTS AT ROME. It is said that the Papists have a "saint" for every day in the year. The Pope has just been making a fresh batch; and an Englishman who was present, gives the following account of the strange performance. As an illustration of the manner in which Papist "saints" are made, it will be read with curiosity :— 66 It being a rule of the Roman Catholic Church not to canonise anybody who has been dead less than a couple of hundred years -there are exceptions, I know, but this is the rule-the twentyfive notabilities-twenty-three gentlemen and two ladies-who will be promoted on Saturday lived and flourished in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. All save one, Ste. MarieFrançoise, alias Gallo, a Neapolitan damsel born in 1715 she died in 1791, at the age of seventy-five, after a series of long and violent struggles with the devil, in the shape of an enormous dog! Another of the new members of the heavenly hierarchy is St. Joshaphat Kuncewitz, formerly (1614) Archimandrite of Vilna, in Russian Poland. Having burnt a good many people who did not share his religious opinions, retribution overtook him in the shape of drowning. Some agents of the schismatic Patriarch of Constantinople put him in the Dwina with a stone round his neck, and on this account-and to vex the Russians, against whom Pius IX. is very angry just now-he has been put first on the list. St. Peter d'Arbues, another of the chosen, was Inquisitor-General of Aragon in 1484, and was specially active in that capacity; accordingly a saint he will be after Saturday next. But this appointment has given great offence to the Roman Catholic clergy of Germany, who say that they don't think this is quite the age in which to canonise wholesale murderers like a Spanish Grand Inquisitor. The rest of the shortly-to-be-glorified company appear to have been insignificant people enough an ordinary Frenchman or two-I somehow can't fancy a Frenchman's being made a saint-and a clump of nineteen Dutchmen executed in Goskom, anno 1572. I cannot do justice to the costly, elaborate, piled up magnificence of the accessories to the ceremonies performed within the walls of St. Peter's, in honour of two celebrated martyrs, one of whom was crucified upside down, and the other decapitated with such violence, that his head, acquiring an artificial impetus from |