74

А

THE FLOWER MISSION. LITTLE orphan girl, named Annie, lay on one of the beds of an Infirmary. One day some ladies visited the ward, carrying with them baskets of flowers. One of them went to little Annie, with a bouquet of primroses in her hand. Oh, how pretty!' said Annie, 'I never saw anything so lovely. Is it for me?'

'Yes, Annie, it is for you; and look, these flowers bring you a kind message.'

The child turned round the bouquet, and finding the pretty card attached to it, read—

'God so loved the world, that he gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.'

'But is this message for me? I thought words like these were for older people.'

"They are for you, Annie: God gave Ilis dear Son Jesus Christ for you. He died on the cross that you might be saved from death and go to live with Him for ever in heaven.'

After some days the lady returned. 'I have brought you another bouquet,' she said. Oh! you are so kind,' said the child, 'has it another message to me?'

Yes, Annie, it brings a message which will please you much.'

The child took the flowers, and before waiting to examine them read the message on the card. The words were these:

་

'Jesus called a little child unto Him.'

'Surely,' she said seriously, the Lord Jesus Himself sent me this bouquet. Yes, Jesus calls me!'

'You are right; the Lord calls you by this little verse taken from His Word. He calls you to give Him your heart, so that, taking away all your sins, He may fill it with His love, His peace and His joy.'

This was a happy day for Annie. Her friend often came to see her, and soon observed that she had become very happy, full of trust in the Saviour who had made her his own child.

In the same ward of the Infirmary there was another little orphan girl named Jane. She was lame, and the two children were very fond of each other. They were little

rays of light in that place of sorrow, suffering and sin.

Some of the old women in the Infirmary were very cross and unamiable; and often spoke in a way which grieved the children sorely, and sometimes it was not easy for them patiently to bear.

One day when one of the women had annoyed her very much, Annie toasted the bread she had for her soup, and this greatly pleased her.

These two children are so good and gentle, that in the house they are called little angels of consolation.'

And all this came about through pretty bouquets which were brought to them by these kind friends.

A lady, in a letter to a friend in America, says of the Flower Mission:

'It is such a sweet work, the mingling of the Book of Nature with the Book of Life. The flowers awake the sympathies and draw out the hearts of poor sufferers, and so, through the lesser gifts, open the way to speak of Him who is the gift of God. Each little bouquet has attached to it a small clearly written text, and many are the tales we could tell of the small despised means becoming the power of God unto salvation. Then, too, many of God's children are greatly comforted:-one, suffering much with cancer, told me she thought she never could have got through the past fortnight, if it had not been for the constant repetition of the text, given her at a previous visit, "Fear not, I will help thee." She had hung it up at the back of the bed, but the worsted had given way the day before and she had not had strength to mend it.

'Another aged Christian is a constant living lesson to me. She is in the Workhouse infirmary, suffering very much. She has lost the power of her lower limbs, has no money, and, I believe has no friends. When she requires to be moved (she cannot turn herself in bed from side to side) the nurse turns her about with little more ceremony than she would a log of wood. And yet she once said to me, "that she would not exchange her position in Christ,

76

the Tweed. Looking seaward, there were the long shoreless stretches of the Northern Ocean. Waves tumbling in upon the lowset rocks; waves leaping up in time of storm like wild horses; waves in peace; waves in tumult; waves covered with shadow and black with night; waves glancing with sunlight and bright as burnished silver! All around her, day after day, it was only this, only the world of waves, which Grace Darling saw. What she heard was the crying of sea-birds and storms. And when winter came, its awful voices sounded like calls of terror around the lonely lighthouse, on the Fern Islands where it was built. Yet there, amid that world of waves, this brave girl made beautiful the place where God appointed her to dwell.

It was early in the month of September, more than twenty years ago. The winter storms had begun early that year. One morning, after a wild night, Grace Darling heard human voices mingling with the voices of the storm. And going out, she saw a vessel on the rocks of the farthest island. What was she, that she should bestir herself at such a time? A feeble girl, with the seeds of an early death at work on her already! But she roused her father and pointed out the wreck. Were the human beings clinging to it to be allowed to perish? The old man saw no help for them. He shrank from the entreaty of his daughter to go out to them. It seemed to him certain death to venture on such a sea. The brave girl leaped into the boat of the lighthouse and would go alone; and then the old man's courage was roused. And so, on the morning of that sixth day of September, those two, risking their lives for mercy, pulled through the tempest to the wreck. Nine human beings were there, in the very grasp of deat... And these nine, one by one, this brave girl and her father, going and coming, rescued and carried to the lighthouse, and nursed them till help came.

O! the land rang with praises of this heroic maiden. And poets sang these praises. And royal people sent for her to

'I'M

'M going to God, grandmother, I'm going away to God,' said a dear little girl one day in reply to her grandmother, who, having come some distance to see her, had been asking how she felt. Whatever made the child think that, do you ask? Perhaps the grave look of the kind doctor, as he was coming and going, and doing what he could to make little Gracie well, had put this notion into her head; or do you suppose that the anxious mother had been seeking to lead the thoughts of her young daughter to the 'Happy Land' in view of her approaching death? Neither of these; for although Gracie had been ailing for some time, a fatal termination to her illness was not then expected. But God sees the end from the beginning, and Himself became the teacher of the child, so that, by ways which the wisest man on earth cannot fully understand, the great God was preparing that infant soul for life in a new and better world, and causing her to know that soon-all too soon it seemed to sorrowing friends-she was 'going to God,' into heaven, into the nearer presence of God. Does this seem too wonderful to be real? Wonderful it certainly is, but none the less real on that account; for God's Holy Spirit can do very great things in the hearts of men and women, and little children too, and Gracie M., though very young, not much over five years of age, had got the Spirit's teaching, and so expressed, in her simple way, a confidence so sure as might well be coveted by older people for this is a true story in all its details.

Now I am sure, my young reader, you will want to know something more of this little girl. Well, then, she was not one of the goody-good children we sometimes

wholesome child does not, and could be happy as may be through the long summer day in some quiet corner of the neighbouring wood, building 'make believe' houses which had broken bits of china and pretty stones alike for walls and furnishings. Like a true girl, too, Gracie had her dolls; and during some of the last weeks of her life, when the langour of deep-seated disease had begun to steal over the child, her mother, in order to rouse her, would bring out the hoarded store of 'patches,' and plan with her what was to be made with them. But it would not do; for dear little Gracie had all but done with earthly delights, and she expressed herself as not wishing to 'look at the patches to-day.'

Twenty years, with all their joys and sorrows, have come and gone since Gracie passed away from earth, yet I can all but see her still as she was then, a rosy-cheeked,

earnest attention, and usually she would give a better account of the lesson on her return home than some of the older children did. She had a great liking for hymns, either said or sung, and one hymn-that beginning Come to Jesus'-is inseparably associated with the memory of little Gracie by all who knew her. Some weeks before we came to it in regular course, she had looked forward to it in the hymn book, and of her own accord, committed it to memory, telling her father that it was a bonnie hymn.' She repeated it in Sabbath School a few days before her last illness came on, and the simple words seemed to take a deep hold on her young mind, and they continued to make melody in her heart all through these days of darkness, when her slender frame was struggling with sore disease; and at last, when the little brain began to lose its reckoning, the last ruling thought of

consciousness remained in power, and scraps of this hymn were continually in her mouth. Sometimes her father, to give her a little change, would lift her in his strong tender arms, and have her to sit on his knee by the fire. On such occasions, when her attention was roused by the entrance of a visitor, the old refrain came instinctively to her lips, and, looking up, she would give utterance to the plaintive cry

'Come to Jesus just now,

Just now, come to Jesus.'

Soon complete unconsciousness set in, and she did not notice even the mother who, in terrible anguish, was bending over her bed; still at intervals a smile would flit across her face, whether from some remembered joy of her short earthly life, or from a glimpse into opening heaven, we may not tell; but this we do know, that it was well with the child' as she went down into the dark river of death, for she was 'Safe in the arms of Jesus.' Then the end came, and Gracie had gone to God. All that was left to us was the little body that had been the home of the spirit for five short years; and that, too, having been laid in the small coffin by a mother's careful hands, was covered up and by and by taken to rest in God's acre, and into God's keeping.

I said all that was left to us, but that is not quite correct. I wonder if you children could guess what else besides the body is left in this world when people diesomething indeed that may continue long after the body has become dust? It is the remembrance of their life; and if it was a Christian life, how blessed should that remembrance be.

Now, I know that boys and girls don't like the preachy bit that is apt to come at the close of a story like this, what in my young days was called 'the moral.' Well, I won't detain you, but just to say that there are two distinct thoughts that I would like you to carry away with you the one is that we should get ready for death, the other that we should get ready for

heaven.

It is a serious thing to die, and the only possible preparation is by taking our Gracie's advice, and Come to Jesus just now.' Jesus loves little children, and will be glad to be friends with you; and then you really do belong to Him, for God made you, and has cared for you all the time. Then you know if you get well acquainted with Jesus in this world, get to feel that He is really your friend who died to save you, you will be able quite to trust Him to carry you safe through when you come to die. As to the other, 'getting ready for heaven,' is that not the same thing? It is the same, and yet it is also something more. Just

as the emigrant for some foreign shore naturally thinks a good deal about the country where he is going, and makes all necessary preparation, so should we think about heaven that it may not seem a strange place, but be homelike.

We do not know very much about the employments and scenes in the life to come; only this much we are told, that neither sin nor sorrow can ever enter there. And if we would be preparing for heaven, let us now be seeking to be like Christ in all our thoughts, feelings, and actions, so will the 'Happy Land' be no strange country to us, and this is just what grown-up people speak of as sanctification.' 6 Thus does little