the knowledge, and unspeakable grace from the effect, of the supplications of their brethren.

To those who have realised this truth in any degree, the Daily Service of the church is a continual and increasing happiness. Praying at the same hour, and in the very words of their brethren, and as fellow-members of the mystical body of Christ, they feel that their many voices rise to Heaven as one, and that the one Spirit descends upon all, and abides in all, because all are one.

CHAPTER XVII.

An Early Spring.

"I would not miss one sigh or tear,

Heart-pang, or throbbing brow;
Sweet was the chastisement severe,

And sweet its memory now."

LYRA APOSTOLICA.

THE tendency of a life in towns, is to lead men to forget natural, and to value revealed, religion only; or, to speak more accurately, to overlook the simple virtues and plain laws of right and wrong, which are evident, to a great extent, without the Gospel, although included in it, and endued with new sanctions and blessings; and to attend to that portion of Christianity only, which is generally called the doctrine of grace, the full and free pardon offered to sinful man, in Christ; as if this were the whole of the Gospel, as if that free pardon were offered to persons who, possessing the Gospel privileges, lived as careless of justice and truth as the very heathen, and sometimes more so. The pardon of the cross of Christ, and faith in that pardon, are the two great ideas of popular or city religionists, without the practice of the cross, without attention to the ancient virtues now stamped with

the cross, and consecrated as its fruits, and the evidences of its power in the heart of man.

In the country, however, the very reverse is the case. Most farmers and labourers live by a natural religion, and do not enter into the peculiar doctrine of the Incarnation. Right and wrong, death and judgment, the duty to man and to God, are familiar thoughts with them, but unconnected with that new doctrine of them which our Lord revealed. They learn from things around them, much in which the inhabitants of towns are wanting. On the other hand, they do not feel that all outward things are to be seen now in the light of Gospel truth. They do not feel that the religion of the ancient Jews or pious heathens, was something very different, and short of, that which is expected of the Christian. To state the fact roughly but plainly; the people of towns have more Christianity in doctrine, and no more in practice: the people of the country have less doctrinal Christianity, but are more practical of the religion which they possess.

It was to meet this evil, as well as to prevent that deadness and earthliness which a continual unthoughtfulness of God's creation is sure to cause, that Mr. Lee was so anxious to explain the objects of nature not only in a religious but in a Gospel spirit. He did not speak of the harvest as an emblem of death, without bringing forward the whole doctrine of the seed-corn as declared by our Lord, and in the first Epistle to the Corinthians.

He did not point out the lily as an emblem of the beauty of simplicity, without adding Who it was Who had called our thoughts to it, Who it was Who exemplified the lesson. And hence the spiritual

sense in which he had led William to understand the things around him, always led him at once from any dreamy, unreal moralising spirit to Christian doctrine, and to Christian practice.

The thoughts of William and his wife upon the evening of the 28th of September lead to these reflections. As the farm was not let, he was to stay on for the present, and had moved nothing, but he was threshing out some wheat, to bring things gradually into compass.

They were leaning over the yard-gate, and watching the winnowing, and this significant process soon brought its true lesson to their minds.

"This," said William, "is the winnowing and the sifting which we are now suffering. May the chaff be blown away, and the good corn left, if there be any!"

"The chaff He shall burn up with unquenchable fire," added Ellen ; "The wicked are like the chaff which the wind [scattereth away before the face of the earth."

"I shall never be thankful enough that I have had my eyes opened to these things. I do not know how worldly I should have become without them. Once they were nothing to me, but now they are a constant comfort and warning."

"Look at that beautiful sunset, William; quick,

in a few minutes it will have sunk behind that bank of clouds."

William looked, but the sun was gone; only bright rays remained, reaching from where they stood to the edge of the burning cloud.

"These call us after it,” said William; "the Sun of Righteousness calls us to Him."

"But look there in the east. It is nearly as bright as in the west."

"Have you heard Mr. Lee speak of that?" "No, never."

"He says two things of it. He sees in it the likeness of the Saints helping each other on,—the highest Saints, the clouds in the west made bright by the light of God's countenance, and reflecting their light upon His holy people till they shine, too, though with less brightness."

"And the other?"

"He says that the last act of the sun is to throw some light on the east, to remind people of his rising, and to keep them looking there, like the words of the Angels at the Ascension, that we might keep looking for and hasting to' the second coming 'more than they that watch for the morning.""

"Heaviness may endure for a night, but joy-” "Yes, dear Ellen, but do not let us be looking for an earthly joy, or all this trial will be lost upon us." "No, dearest; but still I hope even here."

"Do; but let us hope more there," said William, pointing eastwards.