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HA

LOOKING UP.

AVE you ever noticed a little child running to meet her father, to ask him for something she wishes very much to get? Perhaps she has quite set her heart on some pretty doll she has seen in a shop window, and she wants some money to make it her own. Or she wishes to go with some little friend to the country, and must first get leave from her father. How she begs for whatever she wants, by her earnest eager look, as well as by the words she says!

Another child may be starving During the frosty, snowy days of last winter, many boys and girls were hungry and cold, and with beseeching eyes, looked up to father or mother, begging for bread. Rich or poor, children ask what they want, and anxiously look up to see if their request is to be granted. Now, this is just what King David said he would do every morning. He tells us in the fifth psalm, 'My voice shalt Thou hear in the morning: in the morning will I direct my prayer unto Thee, and will look up.' God is the great, and good, and wise Father of all, and to Him we send our petitions. What a number of little children have this morning knelt down and said, 'Our Father, who art in heaven!' But now, as the hours of the day are passing, are they all looking up,' to see if the answer is coming? From palace and from cottage, from the lonely home far off in solitude, and from the small close room in the crowded street, the cry goes up. From the little cabin-boy, sailing on the ocean, and wondering how often he will see the sun rise and set, ere he reaches his native land, and sees the dear faces in his old home once more. How marvellous that God should hear the gentlest whisper of a child, as distinctly as the cry of many a burdened weary one, struggling on in the life journey which the little ones have just begun! He listened to the voice of Samuel, as in timid, awe-struck tones, he said: 'Speak, for Thy servant heareth'; and to the long supplication of the aged Daniel, while he set

His face unto the Lord God, to seek by prayer and supplications.' The child prophet and the hoary headed seer, both looked up,' and had their answer. It is this look of faith and trust that brings the blessing, not the length of the petition. 'Lord, save me,' exclaimed Peter, as he felt himself sinking in the waves, and the answer came as speedily as when, after Solomon's long supplication, the Lord appeared to Solomon, and said, I have heard thy prayer, I have hallowed this house.'

The poet Montgomery, who knew well what it was to pour out his requests to God, tells us:

'Prayer is the simplest form of speech

That infant lips can try;
Prayer the sublimest strains that reach
The Majesty on high.

Prayer is the Christian's vital breath,
The Christian's native air;

His watchward at the gates of death---
He enters heav'n with prayer.'

Jesus, the equal with the Father, prayed. These words spake Jesus, and lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come.' If you read the seventeenth chapter of John's gospel, you will find His prayer for His disciples as His heart yearned over them, when parting was near; and if you look at Matthew xxvi. 39th verse, you will see His short, earnest prayer for Himself, as the shadows of suffering deepened around Him. 'O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me: nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt.' For His sake, who bore our sins, and carried our sorrows, and who, in prayer, as in all else, left us an example that we should walk in His steps, we may humbly, yet boldly, 'direct our prayer to God, and "look up."

'O Thou, by whom we come to God,
The Life, the Truth, the Way;
The path of prayer Thyself hast trod ;
Lord, teach us how to pray.'

K.

THE night was clear and cold, while the

stars were shining like golden lamps in the sky above. Inside the house was more agreeable and pleasant than out of doors; at least so thought Jack and Walter Brown, as they sat quite close to a big, blazing fire, which reddened their cheeks and made them feel quite comfortable. Jack had but lately entered the dining room. His mother had been sitting sewing beside the room table in front of the window in the parlour, while the cat was lying as if asleep on the soft carpet.

Jack sat down on the square stool, took his slate and commenced to do his sums, but many of his exclamations made his mother pause in her work, and look at him in surprise, while she held her needle betwixt her finger and thumb.

Jack! Jack!' she cried, 'You will never be a man at all if you grumble so much over a trifling sum.'-Well, mamma,' he replied, 'I have done this old addition seven times, and every time I get a different answer-it's a perfect bother!'

'Come here then, and let me see it.'

Jack rose from his seat, and his mother was not long in shewing his error. After copying it correctly into his copy book, he took the slate and ran down stairs to join his brother. And now Jack was sitting on a corner of the fender, with his slate in one hand and a pencil in the other, with which he was earnestly trying to draw his father's face, who sat reading a book, seated in the big chair; but although Jack had his brows knit and his tongue a little bit outside his mouth and firmly pressed by his teeth, still the likeness did not become very good, and after all his efforts, his brother Walter suggested that he should give it up, as it looked like the stump of an old tree which he had drawn on his slate.

'It's too

'It's that horrid scratchy pencil,' said Jack, pitching it on to the table. blunt and wont draw evenly.'

'Perhaps it is,' said Walter, in reply. 'Mamma says that is the same kind of reason people give who are bad writers,they blame the pen instead of themselves.'

Very likely,' said Jack, in a somewhat dubious tone, as if not quite sure whether his brother intended to snub him or not. 'But what do you think about our Sabbath school teacher wanting us both to join the Band of Hope?'

'I think it's a piece of nonsense,' was Walter's reply. I dont see any use in

them.'

forward a little and lowering his voice, at the same time glancing at his father, who was sitting with his eyes shut; 'don't you remember last week when papa came home tipsy? Why, his legs twisted like a corkscrew as he walked across the dining-room, and he nearly knocked mamma over, and I'm sure mamma was crying afterwards; for when she came to bid us good-night, her eyes were red.'

Hush!' said Jack, 'papa's eyes are open. I think we had better go upstairs.' 'Stop, boys!' said their father, laying down his book; I've been listening to all that you've said, and I want to say something to you.'

O, my! wont we catch it?' whispered Jack to Walter, reseating himself.

'Well, boys, I hear that your teacher wants you to join the Band of Hope, but that you do not see any use in it. Now, I want you to join it, and I'll tell you why. I heard you mention about Tom Torrance's father and mother. Well, Tom's father was with me at school, and he was a far better scholar than I was.'

'He must have been very clever then,' said Jack, who was rather proud of his father's abilities.

'Yes, he was clever. Well, after Tom's father left school, he was apprenticed to a carpenter, and got on famously, and when he was a journeyman he went to Edinburgh. He fell in with a number of young men who liked a drop of drink, and although Will (that is Tom's father's name) had been à teetotaller up till then, he was laughed out of his scruples, and soon drank as freely as any of them. 1 remember the first lad who gave Will drink.'

Who was it, father?' inquired Jack. 'It was myself,' was the reply, and bitterly, bitterly have I rued that day; for after Will got married, he has gone from bad to worse, and you now see what he is, and all through my example; so, you see. boys, I want you to join the Band of Hope, and although others may laugh at you, still you will grow up sober men, and you will never regret it.'

'But, papa, if we join the Band of Hope, wont you sign the pledge too?'

His father looked at Jack in amazement, as if quite astonished, and then said, 'Well, Jack, I think it's the best thing I could do; and who knows but when once I have signed that I may be able to get Will Torrance and his wife to do the same; at least I'll try.'

And he did try. And in the course of a few months, down in Tom Torrance's house were three pledge-cards hanging on the wall, while there was the same number in Jack Burns' house (or rather one more), for his mamma got one too, although she had been a teetotaller all her days; and above the fire-place in each dwelling hangs this inscription:

WINE IS A MOCKER, STRONG DRINK IS RAGING: AND WHOSOEVER IS DECEIVED THEREBY IS NOT WISE.

A CHILD'S SIMPLE FAITH.

On the ground floor in one of the small

alleys in Paris, lived a widow with a large family; the door of their little room opened directly into the street, and was but a bad protection from the bitter cold of a continental winter.

The poor widow has been lying for many weeks on a bed of sickness, unable to rise, much less to work, in order to gain bread for her children. One piece after another of her furniture has been sold to meet the wants of the widow and orphans, but now the remainder is so old and scanty, that there is no hope of getting a purchaser to realise even a few pence to buy a loaf of bread for to-night's supper.

A flickering lamp showed a feeble light over the little room, just enough to show

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the group of shivering, thinly clad children huddled round the bed.

Mother!' said little Louis, a boy of four years old, who would have been a handsome little fellow had not hunger and cold made his little face look very pale and pinched. Mother! have you nothing for us to eat to-night? Not one little, wee bit of bread? I am so awfully hungry?

'No, my darling,' said the mother, surveying her hungry children with a look of yearning and pitying love. 'No, not a tiny, wee bit.' And the tears start to her eyes. Then recollecting that God is always near, she turned her eyes to the stars which looked in upon them through the uncurtained window, and prayed: Almighty God! heavenly Father, give me food for my starving children. Thou who did'st send the ravens to feed Elias in the wilderness, do the same for me and mine, for Jesus' sake.'

6

Louis jumped up and opened the street door as wide as he could, letting the cold. night air in, which made the poor, sick woman shiver in every limb.

'Louis! Louis! what are you doing?' 'I am only opening the door, mother, to let the ravens enter, which God is going to send with bread,' was the cheerful answer.

The mother smiled. Such faith cannot be without result, she thinks, for God is still the Father of the fatherless and the God of the widow.

And sure enough! the Maire,' or Mayor, hurrying past through the frosty starlit night, catches sight of the hungry and miserable family, in the small dimly lighted room. Always ready to help where it is in his power to do so, he enters, and after hearing from the mother the reason why little Louis opened the door so wide, he at once does the work God had thrown in his way, and not only that night, but for many days to come the family is provided with food, fuel, and clothing. Refusing the thanks of the grateful mother, he leaves the little room with the words: Trust only and always in the Lord and He shall give thee thy heart's desire.'

B. J. P.