sower of the Word of Truth is sure to find a prepared and hungry soil whenever and wherever he goes forth bearing precious seed, I felt in some degree abashed by the blunt homeliness of my reception.

Though she had already uttered my name, some little time elapsed before the poor woman appeared thoroughly to realize my presence; but when she did so, she turned half round, and something like a smile broke over her saddened features. She told me in terms more hearty, perhaps, than welcome, that she had hoped I was Mr. Reynolds-still leaving me in doubt as to who he was, though it was quite evident he held a more prominent place in her best affections than I did. Her remarks were few and painfully disjointed, for she sometimes labored distressingly for breath. But her words, costing as they did so much, were weighty and full of thought; deep, earnest, and solemn. The process was evidently that by which Christians in all ages have held sweet communion with God and with each other, the several stages being thought, feeling, and expression. "Whilst I was musing, the fire kindled, and at last I spake with my tongue."

I read to her, and we joined in prayer, but wishing to spare her the fatigue of a longer interview, we parted sooner than I could have wished-so profitable to my own soul was this hallowed interview. On reaching the foot of the stairs, I made some enquiries suggested by our conversation, and found out what I had been very curious to know-that Mr. Reynolds was a resident in the neighbourhood, an excellent young man from whom poor Mrs. Griffin had derived much spiritual instruction and comfort-but-a Dissenter!

Though I had of late grown, as I imagined, decidedly orthodox, I was scarcely conscious of the root of bitterness springing up within. The term "dissenter" had been in our neighbourhood, rather a political, than a religious distinction. But, perhaps, I judged the many by the few. At all events, I ought to have learned to distinguish things that differ, and to separate between political varieties of opinion, and an unsound religious creed and practice. For their works' sake, if on no other ground, I should have esteemed and loved the good of all denominations; and knowing that they "held the Head," have

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argued that the body would always move under its influence, and must inevitably receive damage by a schism among its members. At one time I had felt my heart warmed towards all who professed the common faith of the gospel, but recent circumstances, and my more intimate connection with our new incumbent at Springclose, had considerably warped my judgment, and led me to the dangerous effort of turning aside the many rills of Zion into the one broad stream of what I considered orthodoxy. I had forgotten practically that the body was not one member, but many; and that the head, even, could not with propriety say to the feet "I have no need of you.” True, I had been sometimes pulled down from my high standing; and on one occasion I remembered a reproof which had long rankled in my bosom. Assuming, in my condescension, that if all sects formed but one fabric, that to which I belonged might well lay claim to be the key-stone of the glorious structure; I was reminded that for many months past, one of our metropolitan bridges had been without this very key-stone—that the tide of traffic had rolled over it in undiminished volume, that no disaster had resulted, and that, in fact, the crowning piece of its stately arch was never missed at all.

In the littleness of my heart, I therefore felt aggrieved, where following in the apostolic footsteps I ought only to have rejoiced. I brooded over the words of poor Barbara Griffin, repeated to me in all honest simplicity by her attendant—“Mr. Singleton was a fine man—a very fine man—and so was Mr. Enderby— but he didn't speak home like the other." I nursed my discontent instead of rebuking it; and turned away in a spirit not, I fear, very dissimilar to that of Naaman, because the Jordan of Dissent had been preferred to the Arbana and Pharphar of Episcopacy.

I halted on the wooden bridge, and looked back at the little cottage. The worthy neighbour who had tendered her services in nursing Mrs. Griffin was just closing the curtain which had been partially withdrawn on my entrance to the sick chamber. Contrasting the sadness of that little room with the glowing beauty of the landscape out of doors, I felt softened and subdued ; and when I thought of the hours of weariness, and painfulness, and watching passed by that voluntary attendant of the dying

woman, I could scarce forbear weeping. Yet my stubborn spirit refused to give way, and with painfully conflicting feelings, I turned homeward. Everything I saw was colored by the circumstances and associations of that morning. The birds sang joyously, and all things around seemed glad. But the mysterious warfare going on in my own heart appeared to darken my perception of outward objects, and I felt doubly miserable from the sense that I had all things richly to enjoy, whilst I had no capacity for enjoying any.

I had walked some distance moodily, when I heard the slow music of a street organ. It was the same I had met with near the cottage of poor Barbara. A peal of childish laughter broke on my ears as I drew nearer. My old friend, the monkey, was enacting some piece of solemn drollery, and the poor boy, as if engaged in a singular kind of penance, was gravely wheeling round, first lifting to a right angle one leg, and then, the other. I thought of those children in the market place, who were so hard to please, refusing to respond to what was piped for their diversion, and contrasted them with the lively little group before me. Not only was the spirit of this scene transfused throughout the whole company, but the exuberant joyousness of each young heart improved upon it. It was a pretty picture, because so truthful. The outer and the inner world spoke the same language, each answering to each as face to face.

And, wherefore, was it otherwise with my own proud spirit? In the cottage of poor Barbara, I had heard songs and gladness -the music of our common hope; and why should I do violence to the harmonies thus awakened in the very depths of my being? I felt that I was wrong; but I walked home in bondage to my own wayward heart, admiring, though I delayed to imitate, the greatness of that manly mind, which said, "Whether in pretence or in truth Christ is preached, I therein do rejoice-yea, and will rejoice."

H. R. E.

(To be continued.)

WONDERS OF THE FIRMAMENT.

Let me try to give you some idea of the vastness of the material universe. You imagine, in looking at the stars in a clear winter's night, that they are numberless. This, however, you would soon find to be a mistake, were you once fairly engaged in making the attempt to count their dazzling numbers. Not more than a thousand are visible to the naked eye even under the most favorable circumstances. But even at this point pause, and think what a mighty step you have made in the very first elements of astronomical science. The natural telescope of your eye has taken in a thousand worlds,—a thousand worlds, not only each equal or nearly so to our own globe, but the vast majority of them immensely larger, so that you can call them without exaggeration a thousand suns! Some of those suns, moreover, in all probability are much larger than that old flame that has been blazing so long in our sky, though he bears the proportion to our earth which the number 329,630 bears to the number one.

Advance a step further. Lift up the telescope that new eye which man has made for himself-and it will open up to your minds greater and more astounding marvels than these; it will teach you to look not only upon this earth, but upon the thousands visible from it by the naked eye as a very little thing; it will show you millions upon millions of stars, each star a several sun burning aloft in what to us is the invisible ether.

Advance yet another step. We see by the naked eye that our sun is attended by a train of planets, Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, the Earth, and the rest, which derive light, and life, and beauty, from his eternal smile. Now, although a powerful telescope cannot as yet show us the trains which accompany the other suns of the system, from their extreme distance and comparative minuteness, yet it has rendered their existence highly probable, and, indeed, has of late it is said, discovered certain minute points floating in the blaze of their central luminaries, which are probably planets. Pause here again and wonder. Millions of millions of suns, multiplied by millions of millions of

* To which should be added the important fact that unlike the stars, they are not self-luminous but shine only with a borrowed light.-ED.

planets revolving around them--and yet even this is not the universe! For advance another step up this awful ladder. Besides the regular and ordinary luminaries, there are others which sometimes shoot across their orbits in a line altogether peculiar to themselves; vast and vagrant bodies, called comets, constituting a family altogether singular, pursuing paths the most capricious, serving purposes the most obscure, obeying laws, the depth of which it is impossible for us to fathom-now approaching to the sun so nearly as if they wished to plunge into the bosom of his beams, and now receding from him so far, as if they wished a Repeal of the Union, and to rush within the mighty vortex of some other system. Now if each sun is attended as ours is by hundreds of those eccentric luminaries, what an addition does this make to our conceptions of the vastness of the material universe.

But let us go a little higher still. You must all have noticed a white substance like spilt milk, winding on amongst the larger stars. What is it? It is called the Milky Way, and every distinct drop of it, nay, the half of every distinct drop, is a star or separate sun. Indeed all the large stars we perceive with the naked eye are supposed to be just drops of this giant stream-drops individually visible because nearer to us than the others, so that to beings far enough away, all the stars in our nocturnal sky would appear but as one small faint film of whitish matter.

Now here comes one of the mightiest marvels in modern Astronomy; the telescope discovers, in innumerable quarters of the sky, similar sprinklings of starry light resembling those little eddies of dust made on the way-side by the wind, with this difference, that every particle of that dust is a sun, as large or larger than the king of our day. We speak in lofty terms of our firmament. Why, firmaments are scattered in profusion through the vast regions of space, of every variety and shape, one in the form of what is called a true lover's knot, another forming an exact counterpart of our Milky Way, and perhaps containing in one of its corners, an exact counterpart of our earth; and if so, the idea arises, if there be inhabitants there, how natural the question, "What are they doing in that other earth?" Curious question! Are they at present debating a