330

THE

Consider the Lilies.

WOOD-SORREL.

HE tenderest flower of all the woods is the little white wood-sorrel-the botanist's Oxalis Acetosella. Its leaves are like a heart reversed, and grow in clusters of three. They are soft and dainty as silk, with some tiny silky hairs upon their surface, and sometimes a tinge of faint pink beneath; the same faint pink tinging the fairy little stem.

The flowers are ethereal flowers, scarcely things of earth, the cups of such transparent white, veined with such lustrous pearl. Then their haunts are so dear, sunny green in blue-green moss; you must lift them, rootlets and all, from the velvety dampness of the cushion where they rest. For you always find the wood-sorrel in some delicious place; the soft and brilliant green of its own cool leaf just lifted, and no more, over some dimmer moss, or making its own sunshine in the shadow of rock or tree.

The leaf of the wood-sorrel always looks as if the sun were shining on it. Where

has it learned its secret of perpetual sunniness?

Would you learn it too, little watcher, if you knew how? It is a dower without price to carry from youth to age.

Yet there are few plants in the whole British Flora, so sensitive as this tiny wood-sorrel, which keeps thus shining on and on. It will not shrink to your touch, but when the darkness comes over it, it softly droops and folds those bright green leaves it bears. Yet folding them backwards and downwards with the sunny side to your eye, bright even in its drooping, it is still the darling of the woods.

'Like hope unto the friendless

When nought round of joy is seen, O'er our graves with love that's endless Waves our own true-hearted green.' This is an Irish song. Most of people do not know that the true-hearted green' of the Irish Shamrock is the wood-sorrel of our own green places. One wonders none at the love that has gathered round so lovely an emblem. All sorts of green leaves are ignorantly called the Shamrock, but the true Irish Shamrock is the woodsorrel and no other. The bright triple leaf was worthy to be woven in royal wreaths.

But a more sacred use has been made of the same sweet flower. It was chosen by the painter Fra Angelico, and set like a sermon in his pictures.

Fra Angelico lived some hundred years ago. He painted a solemn picture of the crucifixion of Christ, and at the foot of the cross he painted the wood-sorrel with its triple leaf, and flowers so tender and pure. He meant all the people who looked at it to think of the Divine Mystery, of the Three-One God; God made manifest to He meant the stainless flowers to be a perpetual remembrancer of the sinless Christ who suffered and died for sin.

men.

that when they were warned, they said: 'O, no fear, we wont go too close; we shall only go a certain distance, and watch, so as not to be caught.' Think you, would that have been wise? Would it not have been better to have kept away as far as possible? So with strong drink. It is like a lion, raging.' For the Bible says, and all experience confirms what the Bible says, in Proverbs, xx. and 1, that

'STRONG DRINK IS RAGING,

and whosoever is deceived thereby, is not wise;' which is tantamount to this, that we should keep as far away from it as possible, lest we be caught and find ourselves among its victims.

You remember the story of how Joseph was sold by his brethren-how, for twenty pieces of silver, they gave him over to a band of merchants on their way to Egypt. And after they had done this cruel thing, they sought to hide their guilt, by taking his coat of many colours,' and dipping it in blood, in order that their father might suppose that he had been devoured by a wild beast. And for a long while, Jacob, their old father, believed this, and said, that without doubt, some evil beast had torn him, and left his coat soaked in his blood! And many a time I have thought, when I have seen people all torn and bruised and bleeding through strong drink, that it looked as if some evil beast had done this-met them and worried them, and left them in a worse condition than the man that fell among thieves on the road to Jericho.

Now, I would like with all my strength to warn you against strong drink, and give you some reasons why you should keep away from it as far as possible.

Strong drink injures the body. It breeds disease. It produces undue excitement in the blood, poisoning it, affecting the liver and the stomach, and weakening the nervous system. Hence, the violent headaches that people often have after indulging in drink. Even as a medicine, or when taken as a stimulant, it should be used with care. For how many have been permanently

diseased and disabled through strong drink, and some have been suddenly cut off, by going to excess. Ah, that is where the evil mainly is, going to excess. But, dont you see, that the people who have fallen into excess, have been the very people that began with little and little. A taste for anything grows. It needs time to strengthen; but once the awful thirst for strong drink has been created, there is hardly anything on earth that can quench it. And I could tell you terrible stories about this.

You have seen the ivy growing round a tree. How small and tender and innocent at first it looks. Why, you would never think that it could possibly put to dishonour and death such a magnificent tree! Yet it does. It gets by slow degrees so strong, as to be able, as if by a thousand fingers, to crush the sturdiest oak to destruction.. And the fact that strong drink has done all this to so many of our finest men and women, ought not that to be a warning to us, never to let it get a hold of us?

But again, strong drink affects the brain or the mind. It beclouds it. It makes people think and act like imbeciles or maniacs. For haven't you often seen people, under the influence of strong drink, do queer things, and babble out the veriest nonsense, ay, and belch forth oaths and curses, like black smoke from a chimney, which they would never have done had they been in their sober senses, had not the fire been kindled within.

I have heard of two drunken men actually discussing whether the moon was the sun, and then seeking to settle their dispute by asking a third drunken man what his opinion was, when he, honest man, begged to be excused from giving an answer, as he was a stranger in the place! And I have also heard of a mother, who, under the influence of strong drink, actually put her bag of meal into the cradle, and her baby into the press! And yet, if that were all, if strong drink only led to such ridiculous things, one wouldn't be so grieved. But, look at the quarrellings

and fightings and murders to which it leads. Even at this present moment, as I write, there is a son lying in our Glasgow prison, under the awful accusation of having killed his mother, when she and her son were in a drunken quarrel! And therefore, if strong drink leads to all that, ought we not to keep away from it as far as possible? 'Strong drink is raging.'

But more, it wastes money, and character, and influence for good. A working man told me, with sorrow, that he has seen him on one single night spending ten and fifteen shillings on strong drink, when with his shop mates. And what a waste there must be all over the land, when about two hundred millions of money are spent every year on strong drink! And what good does it do? Good? What evil, rather? What homes it blights! What characters it ruins! What wreck it makes

of many a promising youth!

I knew young lads, who, by beginning to touch strong drink, have gone down to disgrace, some now in eternity, and others dragging out a miserable existence. Oh, you cannot draw a picture dark enough of the evil that strong drink is producing; therefore, dont you see that you ought to keep away from it as far as possible.

For it hardens a' within, and petrifies the feeling. It seems to have the power of drying up the fountains of natural affection. As just the other night, a mother left her baby in the gutter, and had it not been for a passing friend, it might have perished by the morning light. Yea, and to get strong drink, some will rob their dwellings of all their furniture, and leave their children in rags and crying for bread.

And yet, what is last and worst of all, it leads away down to hell. For no drunkard shall inherit the kingdom of heaven. Nothing that defileth shall enter there. And if you say, O but, sir, I dont intend to be a drunkard. True. But how are drunkards made? Is it not by beginning to touch strong drink? Like the boy coursing down the hill side, you get agoing and you cannot stop; when your wisdom is not to get agoing in this direction at all.

33

เ

The boys would all pet and give him fine bread,

And often declare they knew what he said, And cried, whenever he opened his beak: Hush, now keep silence, he's going to speak!'

The boys went to bed, one calm autumn night,

As the moon looked down with silvery light,
And gilded the cage, and wakened the bird,
Who chirruped two notes, by all plainly
heard.

But, lo! in the morning Dickie was dead,
And copious tears the little boys shed,
Till their eyes grew red, for they wept so

34

THE TORN JACKET.

"YOU'RE late from school to-night, Tommy,

It struck five long ago,

Tell mother where you've been-and how
You've torn your jacket so?'

Poor Tommy stood with blushing cheeks,
And hung his head for shame;
He almost felt afraid to speak,

So much he'd been to blame.

For he had done the very things
His mother bade him not;
He did not mean to disobey,

Yet sometimes he forgot.

His mother always told him not
To loiter by the way;

Yet he to-night, when school was done,
Had stayed behind to play.

And she had charged him many times
That he, on no account,
Upon the play-ground wall so high
Must once attempt to mount.
Yet half-a-dozen times that day
He'd scrambled to the top,
That all might see how cleverly

He to the ground could drop.
Poor little boy, he was afraid,

For tender was his years;
Yet he resolved to own the truth,

And answer'd through his tears
'Mother, to-day I climbed the wall
You warn'd me so about,
My sleeve got caught upon a stone,
Which nearly tore it out.

GLIMPSES OF THE NEW HEBRIDES.

KWAMERA STATION, TANNA.

KWAMERA is the Station in Tanna

where Mr and Mrs Watt have laboured since 1867.

On the 4th of May last, after having been absent about a year and a half on a visit to their friends in Scotland, they again arrived at Kwamera and resumed their work. When they landed they were rather disappointed by the changed appearance of the country, and the sad, hungry looking faces of the people. A hurricane had visited the Island and destroyed much of the native food usually so plentiful in Tanna. The people were suffering sorely from want, and some of them had died. So no wonder the missionaries were not greeted so joyously as they would have been, but for the sad calamity which had befallen the people.

Mrs Watt says: 'How wild and desolate the country here looked! great trees thrown down in every direction with their bleached roots pointing to the sky, bare branches instead of rich foliage, and bleak dreary fields. Our home looked like a monument of mercy, or like a weather beaten ship, only not a wreck. It seemed very dreary to me after the nice well carpeted rooms I had so lately left. The natives had done well; had repaired the thatch, white-washed the walls and scrubbed the floors. Outside they had put up a new goat-house, servants' houses, and a new fence round the premises; and as the sea had been washing up inside our fence they must have taken a great deal of trouble to give things the appearance they had.' Still Mr Watt had to do much with his own hands before the damage done by the hurricane was repaired. Twenty-three panes of glass had been broken and the school house had been thrown over, so Mr Watt was kept very busy for a time setting things right again.

But the chief anxiety of the missionaries on their arrival was to provide food for the starving people. Their own stores of flour, rice, biscuits &c., being insufficient, they