"Yes, indeed, Walter, joyfully, if he will let me; but I am afraid he will miss you too much to stay quietly here."

Walter thought it would be strange indeed if David would not let her.

But he was enlightened on the point by finding that David had packed up his extra suit, and intended to work his passage "home," as he expressed it.

66

David," remonstrated Walter gravely, "you daily ask 'Our Father' to keep you from temptation. Can you expect Him to do so when you wilfully put yourself into it? You know what you left behind in your former life, you know that there is comparative safety here--no bad companions, no familiar haunts of vice to attract you, but all that is good and true and holy to fill up time and thoughts. Oh, don't distress us all by refusing to stay."

"Why, ain't He there as well as here ?" asked David, pointing upward to the sky.

"That is true; but if we would feel His protecting arms around us, we must shun everything that might dispute His influence. The path of duty is the path of safety, and, knowing all you know, is it your duty to go where former companions would have opportunity to entice you back to sin and ruin? Oh, David, I could not bear to see it."

"I don't mean you should see it, but I want to keep by you; and if the ship got wrecked, I'd give my life for you, Walter."

Deeply touched, Walter grasped his poor friend's hand.

"Dear old fellow, I like to have you with me, but I want you to do what is best for yourself; and I truly believe that if we could hear our Lord's mind about it, He would say, 'David, keep out of danger, be patient, and try to please and serve Me where you are awhile.'”

"Think so? Then I will, as much as if we did hear Him say it. But ain't there nothing I can do for you?" "Yes, learn to write-my sister will teach you-and send me plenty of letters."

what he needs. He has not to work for it, as you have to work for money. God's gifts are free, 'without money and without price.' Prayer is only asking God for what we need, and was never intended, as every sane man knows, to supersede work. God's Word distinctly states, that if a man will not work, neither shall he eat.1 You speak of 'dying in a ditch,' if left to prayer to save you from it. How can prayer help a man who disbelieves in its use? Misbelief in the duty of prayer puts a man beyond the help which prayer is known to afford. 'Without faith it is impossible to please Him (God): for he that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.'” 2

I left William Bexson that day not very well pleased with our conversation, because he felt, I believe, that prayer to God, after all he had said, was but a natural and reasonable thing, and he had no desire to feel this; but it was just what I wished him to feel.

Many years have passed away since that day. I have had many talks with him since, and I may truly say, that his views of prayer are now very different to what they were then. He shows this change by the whole course of his conduct, both in God's house and in his family. He looks upon the prayerless past of his life as so much of a short life wasted, nay, worse than wasted, because a prayerless life must injure the moral character of other people, especially a parent's own children.

Once, when speaking of his past life, he said: "I would have given anything to have known you, sir, twenty years ago. It would have saved me a good deal of trouble in many ways, and other men from a bad influence, which my prayerless life and busy, unholy tongue have exerted upon them. I have often had talks with religious men before I saw you, but whether what I said irritated them, I don't

know; most likely it did, for I was not particularly nice in what I said; but this I know, they often got out of temper, and this I put down to the weakness of their cause, and, of course, to the strength of my own."

From feeling that prayer was both natural and reasonable, William Bexson came to feel it to be a blessed thing-the way not only of acknowledging God's existence and His relationship to His creatures, but an appointed means of reconciliation with God. Prayer is the expression of our faith. We believe in our lost condition as sinners, in the Lord Jesus as our only Saviour; and because we so believe, we come to God in prayer confessing our sins, and seeking forgiveness in Christ. A prayerless man is, and while so must remain, an unpardoned man. True prayer is faith stretching out its hand for God's blessing. Where there is no faith, there can be no acceptable prayer, and where there is no earnest prayer, there can be no saving faith.

William Bexson's experience taught him that prayer was a reality; that God as really answers prayer as He hears it. Not, however, always just when the prayer is offered, neither always just as the prayer seeks, but when and as God sees fit. When, at times, answers seemed to linger in their way from God to William Bexson's soul, he would say, "Patience, patience. I do the same, when I think it right, with my own children; and they often think more of the gift for having to wait for it.”

Winds and Waves.

Band fair seemed the promise of day,

RIGHTLY one morn rose the sun in the east,

But soon o'er the hills dark shadows were seen,
A gloomy and threatening array.

Up, up, they gathered and strong became,
Blacker and thicker they grew;

Behind their folds as they hurried along,

The sun was hidden from view.

And then the winds and the waves began,
To see who should strongest be,

And a noisy roar and shout they raised,
In their rolling boisterous glee.

One great wave came with its head upreared,
White and crested the crown it bore,
On, on it came till with angry moan
It broke on the pebbly shore.

Then back it went to gather again

Fresh force for another blow,

Like a king it rode in its conscious power,
Its grand unceasing flow.

And the wind was trying his mighty strength,
And blowing a shivering blast,

He tried to unfasten the little boats

The sailors had anchored fast.

He thought 'twould be fun to see them ride
Away from the sheltering shore,

And on the tops of the crested waves,

To dance to their deafening roar.

Down and up, up and down, in spite of the wind,

Rode safely each tiny boat,

For the ropes were strong and the anchors firm,
And lightly they kept afloat.

Out far beyond there were other ships,

In peril they seemed to be;

Such boisterous play was no fun to them,
They preferred a calmer sea.

A fisherman's wife strained her eyes to look
What became of one tiny sail,

Iler husband was there with his nets for fish;
Would he weather the stormy gale?

Would his boat ride safe o'er those stormy waves,
Would it stand 'gainst the chilling blast,

And oh would his hand and his heart keep true
Till the peril be overpast?

Ah, well she knows that though fierce and strong

Doth the mighty tempest blow,

There's a voice that can speak with commanding power, "Thus far, but no farther go."

M

Secret.

ARTHA was what one hears called a quaint child. She had her own way of saying and doing things. But then she was a seriously-minded child, fulfilling, to her parents' joy, that statement of the Bible, "Train up a child in the way he shall go, and when he