"HILE I sat in my chair reading the other night, I heard a curious rustling and murmuring going on somewhere across the road.

When I read at night, I do not always choose to shut the great world out from my little room, however cosy that may be, with its rows of books looking down on me like old and very dear friends. No matter if some chance passer-by should look in when I am sitting by my lamp. Let him look, if he will, and then pass on-and peace be with him. Not for his sake will I refuse to see the moonlight when it falls softly like a snowy coverlet over the fields, and over the great hills breathing gently in their sleep like weary giant children. I like, too, not only to hear the wind and rain on wild nights, but also to see them busy with their work of sweeping foul airs and foul things away from the floor of their Master's house.

Have you ever seen the wind, children? I have sometimes fancied that I did, just for a moment, as he turned the corner of the road. But he has always been in such a hurry that I could only catch a glimpse of a tall, grey figure, in some kind of a long, loose robe, and with his long beard flying over his shoulders.

Thus it was, then, that when I lifted my head up on that night I could see that the moon was shining brightly from a cloudless sky, upon the road and upon the low wall on the opposite side of it, but that no one was to be seen. The wind was away-perhaps busy fetching rain from the

sea, or else resting after his fight with the clouds and thunder the week before-but the strange murmuring went on, now louder and now softer. I listened to it for a little while, but could make nothing of it; so at last, getting weary of the sound, I got up, put on my hat, and strode across the roadway to find out what it was.

When I looked over the wall, I saw something so extraordinary that it made me rub my eyes to be sure that I was awake. What had been a ploughed field a few hours before, was now full of grass-blades packed close together, now and then undulating just like a crowd of men, and making the curious sound I had heard. A large stone had lately been thrown down into the field from the coping of the wall, and on this a single grass-blade was standing upright. It was some time before I could make out what was going on, and even then it was some while longer before I could understand all that was being said.

I made out at length that the mania for holding meetings to assert " rights," or to protest against "wrongs," had spread even to the patient grasses, and that after being trampled upon so long they had at last risen up. Grass flowers seemed distributed pretty evenly over the field, as I have seen the banners at a great workmen's meeting, and altogether it was not a bad imitation of a "demonstration."

The grass-blade on the stone was absolutely shaking itself with indignation, which I found,

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to my astonishment, was against us! They hardly even know that we are green; or, worse, they make our colour a word of contempt. They have never, from the very earliest days, treated us with any respect. I have heard that of old, when a tribe of men was conquered, its chiefs sent a handful of our blades to the victors as a sign that they were under the victorious feet. When this country, of which they are so proud, was conquered, many winters ago, a handful of our dried stalks was given to the conqueror, when he landed, as a promise of success. Every opportunity has been used to insult in this way our patience. Nay, more, if these men wish to express the sense they sometimes have of their own wretchedness, they must needs quote from their sacred books and say, 'All flesh is grass.' Yet I have heard that even from those books they might learn other things-such as that, while God made men, we too are the work of His hands. 'He maketh grass to grow upon the mountains.' What have we done to be thus used? Have we ever broken one of the laws which have been given to us? Never. What man can say this? Have we not grown soft for lawns, and tall and lush for meadows, as he wished us? What fault, then, have we? Have we complained when we were cropped by the silly sheep, and trampled by every clouted shoe? No, we have only grown the thicker. When men have cut us down, we have only sent up sweet odours, and they have said, 'How sweet the hay smells!' All through the winter, when other things have abandoned man, we have remained to cover the ground for him. Is it not time we wrung from him the recognition he will not give us of his own free will? What ought we, then, to do?”

There was such a noise after this that I wonder it did not wake the people all around. There was a regular scramble to get on to the stone, and, when one got up, others were busy with their blades to bring him down again. At last order was restored, and the speech-making went on.

The first speaker was for war. He boasted of the 2,000 varieties of grasses, each one numbering its millions. The very city would send out its armies. The poppies he knew would bear the standard for them. The bees would no doubt remember their wrongs at the hands of the common tyrant, and blow their clarions to lead on their countless myriads to the battle, in which man would be smothered by their multitudes.

The next speaker was not for direct attack, but would resist trampling upon. "Let us grow flint instead of these absurd soft blades. Some of the largest amongst us already have hard skeletons of flint. Let us grow all flint. Men will no longer dare to trample on us, or, if they do, they will wound themselves sorely. Our

shape is already that of swords with keen edges. We lack only hardness. Having that, men shall no longer cut us for fodder, or find us pleasant for the feet." He

The third was for a different method. would have the grasses go away from man, and let him see how little he could do without them. "It will be very simple," he said. "We have only to grow downwards instead of upwards as we do now, and the thing is done. The daisies and the field flowers must do the same, for they cannot do without our shelter. Man will be helpless. No food for his cattle, no rest for his eye in the cool, green pastures, the barrenness of rocks no longer softened by the delicate tufts of grass in every chink; the ruin bald, and showing every ugly rent in its sides; the hills no longer wearing their green mantles, but naked, and soon scorched hard and hideous; the fields no longer a joy, but brown mould soon burnt into blinding dust, and divided by unsightly cracks. This, then, is my counsel. Follow it, and our tyrants must yield right speedily."

Other plans were suggested by yet other speakers, and the assemblage seemed to get every moment more excited and tumultuous. I began to feel a good deal alarmed. Should grass, indeed, cease to grow over the earth as it now does, the calamity would be awful-we can hardly guess how awful. Life, if we still kept it, would be immensely harder to live, and its pleasures far fewer. Yet in the present state of the grasses it seemed very likely that some such resolution would be come to, and it would be far more important than the resolution of any congress, however great, and of any meeting, however representative and influential.

When I turned my attention again to the stone, I found a grass-flower standing on it, while from the stillness all seemed to be listening very carefully. When, after some trouble, I was once more able to follow the words, I found that he was just ending his speech. "Why should we wage war with man? If we destroyed him, should we not also destroy ourselves? Would not the ancient forest return, and leave but a remnant of us in these cheerful pastures? If man in his weakness despises us, what does it matter? He often treats his own Best in the same way. we not point up to the sky, as certainly as the proud spire of any church that he can build? Does not God still give each blade of us its own peculiar drop of dew; and is there not above us all the same blue heaven as above man?"

Can

TOME time since, I was urging upon my female Bible-class the importance and necessity of prayer. This I illustrated by one or two interesting facts. A girl eleven years of age paid very marked attention. What was she thinking about? The sequel will show that she was planning a method by which to introduce the daily worship of God into her own home. On the evening of that Sabbath, when the family was about to retire to rest, Elizabeth said to her father, "May we sing a hymn before we go to bed, father?"

Yes, if you like," said he.

Having sung it, she said again, "If you please, father, I'll read a chapter in the Bible."

"Well," said the father, "I have no objection." The chapter was read. Elizabeth made one more effort; her heart was full; her courage almost failed her; her voice faltered; deep emotion was seen in her looks, when she turned again to her father, and beseechingly said, "May I pray, father?"

"Oh," replied the father in an angry tone, "it's of no use talking, you can't pray." Elizabeth modestly rejoined, "I'll try, father, if you'll let me."

The request was granted. For the first time this family bent the knee at the domestic altar, while Elizabeth, a pious Sunday-school child, poured forth earnest and artless supplications for her father, mother, and two sisters. The father and mother are now decidedly pious, adorning their Christian profession in all things. Elizabeth continues to officiate at the domestic altar, along with her father, who in return offers his daily prayers for that dear child, who has been made so great a blessing to her home through Sunday-school instruction rightly applied. Go, dear reader, and try to do likewise. S. S. GILCHRIST,

St. Peter's S.S., Newcastle-on-Tyne.

I

You

All

WANT to show you that abstinence is no new thing, but that it is clearly taught in the Word of God; and that on this ground it should be accepted and acted upon. Even if it were not taught in the Bible there are sufficient reasons why all Christians should be total abstainers, and before I finish my brief paper I shall give you several of these reasons. all know how difficult it is to eradicate deeplyrooted principles-principles which are formed upon sound conviction of their truth. systems must have the granite principles of truth, fairness, and right, before they can be successfully presented for the criticism and acceptance of mankind. Nothing that is of a flimsy texture will bear the probing process to which critical skill will submit it; and true principles, like the great mountains of God, have a good foundation. They have been established by Almighty hands, and must endure. young readers who are members of the Band of Hope are being taught the principle of abstinence. Almost every form of illustration has been employed to make clear the truths of temperance, and yet the reproduction of illustrative examples is never without good influence. Water is the beautiful emblem of our teetotalism. It is God's gift, by which we are enabled to quench our thirst. It should be the primal and primary

My

beverage of the human race. When Hagar and her son were dying in the wilderness, God showed the mother the stream; and when Israel in the wilderness cried for something to drink, God opened the fissures of the rock, and caused the sparkling waters to flow. The Bible abounds with illustrations of our teetotalism; and I hope the boys and girls who read this paper will always go to God's Word for arguments and illustrations by which to defend their pledge.

Now, let us gather a few crumbs of Bible history, which I want you to eat-that is, to treasure in your memory what you read. You have all either heard or read of Daniel. He is what we may call an old-fashioned model for new-fashioned people. A model, as some of you will know, is a pattern or example to write or paint by. If any of my young readers attend an art school, you will find scattered all over the building sculptured images, most of them representing men whose names are well known to students of classical history. Well, those busts and images are models from which the student in drawing or painting gathers his material, and then transfers it to the paper before him. But there are other models whose roseate hues of character and life cannot be transferred to paper, they have to be imprinted upon the tablets of the memory. I should like every feature of the

lovely model to be presented to you to be engraven as with the point of a diamond upon your memories and hearts.

Daniel was a Jew of a very significant type; and as such he loved his nation with an enthusiastic devotion. The temple services of Jerusalem were his delight, for he loved the God of his fathers with an unswerving diligence and an ever-glowing earnestness. The fire was ever kept burning upon the altar of his heart; it never went out. He must have been, when quite a lad, very seriously inclined towards religion, for, according to chronological record, he was only about seventeen or eighteen years of age when he was carried captive, along with the whole of his nation, into Babylon. When in the land of captivity, he did not manifest a fickle and fearful disposition, for he was as devoted as ever to the God whom in early life he had been taught to worship. Like the father and mother of his great ancestor Moses, "he was not afraid of the king's commandment." He had all the unswerving fearlessness, the iron energy, the marvellous power which constitute a hero. There was nothing fanciful or superstitious in his nature; his religion was real and earnest, and he was not afraid of refusing a king's behest when it came into conflict with his conscientious ideas and opinions. He was a true Hebrew Nonconformist, and, like many another Nonconformist, he would not violate his conscience in any way. He would not defile himself with the king's meat or drink. In one word, he was an abstainer-what we should call in these days an

old-fashioned abstainer.

He was ahead of the times in which he lived. When we say a child is old-fashioned, we mean he does things which we expect from older and wiser heads. One of the great sins of the Jews in Old Testament times was that they went astray through strong drink. The prophecies are full of references to the prevailing sin. Take one, Isaiah xxviii. 7: "But they have erred through wine, and through strong drink are out of the way; the priest and the prophet have erred through strong drink; they are swallowed up of wine, they are out of the way through strong drink; they err in vision they stumble in judgment." In the midst of all this debauchery, Daniel stood a noble defender of truth. Let every boy and girl note two or three things in Daniel's abstinence. (a) He dared to say "No." (b) He feared no opposition.

(c) He could disobey an earthly command, even though it came from a king.

(d) He was finally honoured for his fearlessness.

Before I close, let me give one or two reasons why we should all be abstainers.

I. The whole tenor of the Saviour's life is in favour of abstinence, on account of the principle of self-denial involved.

II. The present state of men calls for it. III. Juvenile abstinence is a safeguard against national intemperance.

Let all my young readers follow the example of our old-fashioned model abstainer, and they will be safe. G. COATES.