He gave every He had a deep

to know Him, trust Him, and love Him. sign of being truly taught of the Spirit. sense of sin, a genuine sorrow before God for his past life, a humble, simple, and grateful faith in the Saviour of sinners. If he had lived, I think he would have adorned the doctrine; but that was not to be.

His young wife-a mere girl-who had come with him eighteen months before from Germany, seemed much attached to him, and he to her. She said little, but often wept. One day I turned to her, and spoke gently of her own spiritual state, and of the happy meeting in store for those who loved the same Lord; and the dying man echoed my words very earnestly. I hope the Holy Spirit spoke home to her heart. The husband was not anxious about her temporal concerns. As soon as he was gone, she was to go back to her friends, and provision had already been made by them for her journey.

One day his face was brighter than usual. The bandmaster, he said, had been that morning, and brought him a small sum of money which had been subscribed for him from their earnings by his old fellow-bandsmen. Their gains were but small, but they had all willingly contributed, so their leader said; and his visit, and the kind words which he had spoken, had cheered the sick man greatly. He could hardly find words to express his gratitude. "I'm so glad you came to-day, sir," he said, in his simple way; "I wanted so to tell you."

"Is the bandmaster one who loves God ?" I asked.

66 Alas, no, sir," he said, and his countenance fell; "he believes nothing. He says there is nothing after death." "Should you not like to make him some return for his kindness ?"

"Yes, that I should indeed. I wish I could do anything for him and the others."

"Well, I think you can.

Will he come again ?" Oh, yes, sir; he is sure to come again; he said he would."

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"Then pray for him; and next time he comes say a word to him, as a dying man, about God and his soul. I you ask God's help, you may do him more good than he has done to you. This will be real kindness." "I will, sir, I will," said the pray to God for him every day. I will try and speak to him; perhaps he will listen to a dying man. What shall I say to him, sir ?"

sick man eagerly; "I will And when he comes again,

I told him, as well as I could, what to say; and, in particular, I begged him to repeat the text, "God so loved the world,” etc., and one or two other such texts, and advised him to say what a comfort those words had been to himself. Some days passed before I saw him again.

66

Well," said I, "has the bandmaster been again?"

Oh, yes, sir, and I spoke to him; and every day I pray for him."

"What did you say?"

He repeated what he had said; and it was almost word for word what I had advised him to say.

"Did he say anything?"

"No, sir, he said nothing; but he pressed my hand, and the water stood in his eyes."

That was all. Who can tell what followed? A few days after, the bandsman died; two or three days after that, he was buried, and the very same day the poor young widow put together her little possessions, and set out on her journey home; and new lodgers came into the room, and soon it was as if the foreign couple had never been there. But he had gone home, as well as she-to a better home; and were his prayers and his dying words lost?

Let us care for these poor foreigners among us; and not for them only, but for all who cross our path in this occasional way. They all have souls; they are all to live for ever; they have their thoughts and feelings, their troubles and hardships; each one of them has his own character and history. Let us care for them, and try to do them good. Some say, "Oh, but I have tried to do good to such

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people, and they are so ungrateful, and deceitful, and generally they are so bad." I cannot say I have found them ungrateful. The young German's smile of welcome used to make me quite glad to visit him. He at least was not ungrateful, either to the lady who was his first friend, or to me, or to his brother bandsmen. And as for deceit and badness-are we to leave people so? The fear of being "taken in" is a very poor excuse for not trying to do good. I am afraid it will not pass "when the Son of Man shall come in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him.”1

God's ways are wonderful. This young man, as it turned out, came to die in a foreign land. But, through grace, he found something here before he was taken. He left Germany a godless man, to make more money than he could have earned at home, expecting to go back after a few years with something in his purse that would help him to settle for life. He never went back; but he found in this country a treasure indeed, and then he went to an eternal home.

F. B.

"How are you Steering?"

T is some few years now, mates, since I was down at the old home in Dorsetshire, but I shall never forget that visit, because of a wreck I saw on the Chesil bank then.

Early one morning I was on the beach, looking out on the sea, which was running very high-and well it might be, for there had been a gale from the sou'-west blowing for two or three days, and you know what that means on that coast.

Well, I hadn't been there many minutes before I saw a brig standing in dead before the wind, and directly towards the shore.

At first I thought there must be something wrong with her, and her captain was going to run her aground on pur

1 Matt. xxv. 31-46.

pose, but I soon saw that wasn't the case; she rose easy enough, and was steered as steady as could be.

"Whatever can they be thinking of?" I said to a coastguard chap that was standing by.

"That's more than I can say," he answered; and off he went and reported to his officer, who soon saw the danger the brig was in, and had a rocket fired to warn her off.

The captain seemed to understand this signal, for he put down the helm, braced up the yards, and brought the ship to the wind. But it was no good then; she had come too far to escape like that; she was making leeway, and every moment was nearer the beach.

I had seen wrecks before then, and have seen others since, but never one that made me feel so queer as that one did. There was the brig, as tight and trim a craft as you need wish to see, everything about her neat and ship-shape; she was well-found, well-manned; not a spar was sprung, not a sail split; she looked just as sound as when she sailed from port, and yet she was coming on to certain destruction. It turned out that the captain was a stranger to the coast; a German he was, and had mistaken the Bill of Portland for the west end of the Isle of Wight, and till he saw the signal from the shore, had fancied he was steering a course which would lead him up through the Needle passage, instead of into the bank. It was a queer mistake to fall into, and he had to pay for it with the loss of his vessel.

Ah, mates! we want to look well after our landmarks in going through life. I reckon we are all hoping to reach the right harbour at last; but if we want to do so, we must keep a good look-out that we don't take a wrong course, or we may make shipwreck of our souls, like this poor fellow did of the brig.

You see, mates, he went on confidently enough, making sure he was right, when all the time he was in a wrong course altogether. We have only got two courses to choose between, and we can't make a mistake if we study our chart well; we may know whether we are in the right or wrong

one, and we know where each course ends-one in safety, and happiness and life, and the other in destruction, misery, and eternal death. If you have accepted the salvation offered to you in the gospel; if you are washed in the all-atoning blood of Jesus Christ, and seeking strength from God each day to become more holy, then you may sail away confidently, for you are in the right course, and nothing can wreck you. But if you are clinging to your sins, and rejecting Christ's offer of pardon and help; or if you are trying to save yourselves by any righteousness of your own, then you are altogether wrong, and unless you go about you must certainly perish.

Well, to go back to the brig. The captain soon found out that he had no chance of saving the vessel, and the only means for the crew to escape was to run the vessel stem on to the beach: this he accordingly attempted to do, and the men on shore waved a flag to show him the best place to steer to.

On she came, still riding proudly and buoyantly on the top of the waves. The crew were in great peril, however, for a sea might at any moment strike her and clear her decks, and carry the men into the ocean.

At length the brig rose on the summit of a huge roller, and with a tremendous crash was thrown upon the bank. Even now there was a difficulty in getting the crew on shore, for round the vessel the water was rushing with tremendous force, so strongly that it was impossible to gain the shore from it.

Two poor fellows tried to reach dry ground from the bowsprit end, but were caught by a receding wave, and, notwithstanding the efforts made to save them, perished in the waters. They were too eager to be safe, and although we shouted to them, and made signs that help was coming, they would not listen, or did not understand what we meant.

There was only one way for them to be saved, and that was to wait patiently till a rope could be passed from the shore to the ship, or from her to shore, and then come down