One night, when eighteen years had passed, He sang his evening psalm: The voices of the day were hushed, The sea lay still and calm. One best-known psalm it was he sung; There lay an English vessel near Upon the calm still sea, And as on deck the sailors watched, "No Moslem lips that song have sung," "No Moslem lips have sung those notes Of holy praise," said he, "It surely is some Christian man Held in captivity. Come, let us save him. Man the boats, In silence soon they crossed the bay, As closer to the spot they came, More clear they heard the voice: At last the sacred words" Come ye Then ceased the song; he heard their steps, The longed for hour had come at last- An aged woman sat at eve, She thought about her long-lost boy, Yet with a thought of tenderness, "For I am very old and frail, Full soon will come the day When I shall meet him in that land "All praise to God, by whom such hope I soon shall meet my boy again, And then her voice arose in song The while, new tears of gladness stole Was it an echo of her words? Or did she hear a voice That joined with hers to sing-"Come ye It was no echo soon she knew, For when the verse was done, A great glad voice cried "Mother!" then The Carpenter's Shed. CHAPTER II. OM MORRISON was not the man to let the grass grow beneath his feet once a plan had formed itself within his mind; and within a short time of his conversation with Mrs. Grainger the meetings were successfully commenced. It so happened, however, that for several Thursday evenings she was unable to be present, though when at length Mrs. Grainger found her way to the shed, a pleasant sight met her eye. Nearly the whole of the available space was covered by an audience whose dress proclaimed them to be of the humblest class; some had evidently only just come in from their daily occupations, while others, to judge by their shabby appearance, might have been out of regular employment for no little time. Apparently the singing had been something of a failure, for Tom was saying, in his hearty way— tune. "Never mind, friends, if we couldn't quite manage the It's far more that we mean what we say than go rattling through some pretty air and make a mockery of the words meantime. For I take it, we've got to tune something more than the voice; you see what the Book says, 'making melody in your heart to the Lord.' And so, though we did strike off wrong pitch at first, if we meant what we sang-or rather, tried to sing-I think perhaps the angels found some music in it after all. But here's my friend, John Davidson, and he has promised to say a few words to us to night." There was a little stir among the people as John walked up the room; many were not accustomed to sitting still for long together, and these took every opportunity of changing their position or of whispering a word to their next-door neighbour. But there was an instant hush of expectation when it was seen that the coming speaker was a railway official from the nearest station. Even a little crying child was quieted by the sight of his shining buttons, not that John had especially prepared himself for the occasion; according to his friend's directions, he had but appeared in his working clothes; and thus week by week the people were beginning to feel that religion was not a matter to be wrapped up in lavender with the Sunday dress, but a something to be brought into contact with the details of everyday life. "I have a great deal to do with trains and stations, as you can see," began John Davidson, in a simple, straightforward manner; "and I'd like to tell you some of the thoughts that come in my head when I'm about my work; but I don't mean to talk for long, so I'll put what I have to say very briefly." But what next he said was lost to many there, and among them to Mrs. Grainger, who was watching the entrance of two very different men: the one, with a sad, downcast expression on his face, had just edged himself through the door and taken the nearest seat as though to apologise for occupying that small amount of room; when the other, with an independent jaunty air, marched noisily up near to the place where she was sitting, quite unabashed by the energetic whispers of his uncle, Joe Macey, to "walk quiet if he could." For Joe Macey himself was there at his old work of guarding the door, and of giving a glad welcome to all who came, as once he had extended it to Tom. But meanwhile his nephew Sam was sometimes a sore trial to his temper, for though he and others were glad enough of his assistance, as Sam possessed a fine bass voice, they found it hard to tolerate that cool independence of manner and word. When once again the room was free from noise, the speaker was saying: "Not to be in time is the mistake so many people make: and I was very sorry for that lady this morning. She was there at the station just after the train had gone; and you should have seen the way she was in. Something great must have depended on her going, I suppose, for she said she would not have let it occur for a thousand pounds; but the clock at home must have been wrong time. Now it just struck me that a great many clocks are set to wrong time, and if we let that happen through our carelessness—as nine times out of ten it does-why, we have only ourselves to blame for the consequences. Friends, this is what I mean. If we get wrong notions in our head and don't trouble to set them right when we might. then, of course, harm must come of it in the end. To give you an illustration. There was a man a while ago who used to listen to a lot of infidel stuff in the open air, and tried to influence others by repeating it to them; and the other day he went to a church to hear a celebrated preacher, though most likely he only thought to make fun or something of that kind. But when he left, he said: "That's a different God from any I've ever heard of, and if it's all true, I'll never say a word against Him again.' Now whose fault was it he'd got such wrong ideas of God? His own, I say, all the time he could read this Book "-and John held up his pocket Bible. "And now, whatever other good he may do, he can't undo the mischief done. "But there are lots of other people as well, with false ideas of God, and of time and eternity and their own souls. That's what I mean by having the clocks wrong. Why, where do you think we get our right time from? Isn't it from the sun itself? And so with our opinions and beliefs, we've been given a Heavenly Guide to set them by, and if we don't make use of that, we have only ourselves to thank. Though for that matter, I've heard people say that so long as they do what they think right it must be well with them; but it seems to me if we're shaping our course by a lot of errors, we're responsible for those errors if they might have been corrected with a little care. There was a case in this morning's paper of a man who ran his ship right on to a rock and nearly broke it in half; but when they asked him how he did it, he said he didn't know the rock was there. But that wasn't any excuse; it was marked down plainly enough in his chart, only he had not troubled to look, and so he got very justly blamed.! ८ "But now to come back to the point. I'll just mention one wrong idea that makes a number of people too late. God is so merciful,' they say, 'He will never take much notice of our sins, and so on, and on they go in the same heedless way, never starting on the heavenly road, until at length they lie in the grave unforgiven as they had lived. Now there never was a bigger mistake. It is true, God is so merciful, He sent His Son to die for us all, but by the very greatness of that sacrifice, we may measure something of His hatred for our sins; and how can we escape if we neglect it don't say reject, but simply neglect—so great salvation? Friends, let us look to it we are starting in time |