and 365 additions to the corresponding heap of human happiness.

But whether the day will afford us opportunity for duty and service distinctively Christian or not, it will surely bring us the common round and daily task. How to sublimate these, and prevent them from degenerating into a barren drudgery or mechanical routine, is a daily recurring problem. It will go far to solve that problem if we carry into our work divine ideas and a divine purpose. The motive or principle from which our actions are done is everything, and if in our lowly tasks, prosecuted as they often are in loneliness and obscurity, we manifest fidelity and patience, magnanimity and self-denial, we are doing what elevates us to the same moral platform as Moses and Paul and Luther, and puts us in line with God's heroes, martyrs, and all the saintly throng who have walked with Him in white through the ages. It would help us greatly if we could once for all dismiss the idea that our work is something fallen on us by chance, and put in its place the firm belief that it is given us to do by God, and therefore must be capable of ministering to the soul's culture and the ennobling of the whole nature. That is the simple philosophy which takes all the irksomeness out of our earthly taskwork and gives sacredness to secularity. There is one clause which quaint George Herbert assures us "makes drudgery divine.” The clause is "For Thy sake," and if we can only import that clause into all the trivialities of everyday life it will sweeten and sanctify them all. It will make every day a Lord's day, and every act an act of worship; it will make the world itself a sanctuary, and round the most commonplace and menial occupation it will throw an aureole of delight.

One other practical hint we would like to give, viz., that we contrive to live strictly within the limits of the day. Let us take short views of life; let there be no anticipation, and no prophetic peeps into to-morrow. It is time enough to cross bridges when we come to them. Each day has its own engagements, and it is wrong to surcharge it with the next day's engagements as well. Each day has its own cares, but if we crowd into it the extra cares we borrow from the future, we are making a burden for ourselves that will break the stoutest back. "The matter of the day, in the day" is a good old Scriptural motto. It is by one step at a time that the journey of life is best accomplished. "God," says Mr. Emerson, "delights to isolato each day and hide from us the future. We would look before us, but with grand politeness He draws down before us an impenetrable screen of purest sky, and seems to say to us, 'You will not anticipate.'" Let us not with meddling fingers try to lift that "screen of purest sky" which shuts of the coming time from the time that now is, but modestly content ourselves with a humble prayer for daily grace as for daily bread.

Let me be strong in word and deed Just for to-day;

Lord, for to-morrow and its need

I must not pray.

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And now the day is lived through and we are home again. We began the day with God, and now in the evening hour we would hem it well with prayer to keep the ends from ravelling. Night has a religion of its own, and at her dark altars it is well to offer our tribute of praise and our testimony to the divine faithfulness and love. "He who at night closes his eyes without prayer," says an old divine, "lies down before his bed is made." Let us close the day as we would like to close our lives-in prayer. Thus let us live, and each round of the clock will leave us twelve hours nearer heaven. Each well-spent day is another milestone passed on the way to the New Jerusalem, another brick added to the rising masonry of character, another polished stone built into the Temple of Life. So the recipe for successful living is after all a very simple one

For this is life: make this forenoon sublime,
This afternoon a psalm, this night a prayer,
And Time is conquered, and thy crown is won.
S. LAW WILSON, M.A.

FAITH AND PRAYER AT LUCKNOW.

A RECOLLECTION OF THE SIEGE, DEFENCE, AND RESCUE.

BRI

RITISH hearts still beat high at the story of that heroic defence of Lucknow, which General Outram pronounced to be an achievement unparalleled in European history. A little band of eighteen hundred soldiers, barely sufficient to man the defences, and embarrassed by the task of protecting eight hundred women and children, held the Residency in Lucknow for eighty-seven days against a hostile force of fifteen thousand Sepoys who had been trained under the best British masters of war. The whole history is seen as though it were a series of photographs in Lady Inglis' Diary of the siege.1

In January, 1857, Lieutenant-Colonel Inglis marched into Lucknow with the 32nd regiment, little dreaming of the terrible days in store for him and his men. During the month of April, rumours were rife as to the mutinous temper of the native troops in Bengal, but it was thought that the disaffection was only partial, and that a judicious mixture of severity and conciliation would soon bring it to an end. On May 3rd, however, as Colonel Inglis and his wife were driving to church, the military secretary of Sir Henry Lawrence, the chief commissioner, rode up in a state of great excitement, with the order, "I want you and your regiment directly." The colonel turned his horse's head and drove home at full speed, sending every soldier of his force whom he met, back at once to the barracks. In less than an hour, the regiment marched out to Moosa Bagh, where the 7th Oude Infantry were in a state of mutiny. When the Sepoys saw

1 Published by Osgood, MacIlvaine & Co.

that the troops were waiting to receive them, they threw down their arms and fled. The danger was thus over for the moment. Ten days later, however, when bad news came from Meerut and Delhi, the garrison at Lucknow began to prepare for a long and terrible siege.

On the 25th, the women and children were sent to the city Residency which it was thought would prove a place of comparative safety. Cartloads of provisions, grain, and ammunition were coming in continuously. Sir Henry Lawrence himself directed and inspected all things with unwearying energy. Night and day seemed all the same to him.

"Either encouraging the wavering, punishing the rebellious, rewarding. the faithful, visiting the Sepoy line to show his confidence in them, giving audience to influential natives, or examining our own defences, all the energies of his master mind, were employed in the one great effort of deferring the coming catastrophe, which he clearly saw was inevitable, and thereby rendering us better prepared to meet it; and doubtless, but for him, and God's blessing on his endeavour, the fate of all in Lucknow would have been but a prelude to the horrors of Cawnpore."

Lady Inglis was suffering from smallpox, but two faithful friends refused to leave her side. One of them, Mrs. Chase, had just lost her husband, who had been killed in an attack on the Sepoy position at Chinhut. Colonel Chase was a godly man, who used to write daily to his wife when absent on duty, letters full of Christian confidence and manly soldier-like courage. His wife, therefore, had strong consolation in the midst of her great sorrow.

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On the morning of July 1st, the first attack was made on the Residency. The cannonading and musketry firing were so terrific, that Lady Inglis says: We felt sure the enemy must get in, when the most terrible death awaited us. We sat trembling, hardly able to breathe, when Mrs. Chase proposed reading the Litany, and came with her sister and knelt down by my bedside; the soothing effect of prayer was marvellous. We felt different beings, and, though still much alarmed, could talk calmly of our danger, knowing that we were in God's hands, and that without His will, not all the fury of the enemy could hurt us."

Next day, Sir Henry Lawrence's thigh was broken by a shell from a howitzer. After two days of fearful pain, borne with heroic patience, this " good man and true Christian," was released from his suffering. The charge of the troops now fell on Inglis. It could certainly not. have fallen into wiser or more competent hands. Inglis knew every man in his regiment by name, and once when some soldiers had climbed a wall, and been mistaken for the enemy, the brigadier recognised the face of one of his own men just in time to stop the firing.

The story of the siege is full of hair-breadth escapes, and moving losses. But faith and prayer gave those on whom the chief strain fell the support they needed. Brigadier Inglis managed to take breakfast and dinner with his wife and her friends, and read Psalms and

prayers, "with us in the morning, which was a great comfort, and prepared us for each day's trials." The enemy possessed powerful artillery, and kept up a nearly incessant fire from strong and commanding positions. No one knew whose turn to meet suffering and death might be next. Mr. Polehampton, one of the chaplains whose words had often proved a great comfort to the troubled garrison, was shot through the body whilst shaving himself in the hospital, but, happily, no vital part was touched. The mutineers shot arrows with oiled wicks attached in order to fire the grain stacks. Sometimes huge blocks of wood like a barrel of beer were hurled in from a funnel in the ground, charged with powder. Inglis himself seemed to bear a charmed life. One morning he had left his room in the Residency house a little earlier than usual. Soon afterwards, a round shot came through the door and passed over his bed. Had he still been in the chamber, he could scarcely have escaped.

Cholera, smallpox, and scurvy, which took the form of loose teeth, swollen heads and boils, became fearfully prevalent. The garrison had to be prepared for attack night and day. One morning, the officer on the look-out reported that the enemy was moving in large masses, as though preparing for attack. Every man was speedily at his post. Inglis seized a quiet moment for breakfast, but as they sat at table, a sound like the firing of a gun under their feet was heard. He rushed ont immediately, knowing it was the explosion of a mine. The noise of firing became terrific, but the enemy were completely repulsed with heavy loss. The prolonged suspense and terrible heat turned Inglis' hair quite gray during the siege. His personal responsibility was awful, but his words and example encouraged and stimulated every man under his orders.

Friday, September 25th, proved "a day never to be forgotten." Hard firing was going on all round, but about six in the evening, tremendous cheering showed that the long-expected relieving party had forced its way in. A few minutes later, Inglis came towards his wife, accompanied by a short, quiet-looking gray-haired man, whom she knew at once to be General Havelock. "He shook hands with me, and said he feared we had suffered

a great deal. I could hardly answer him; I longed to be with John alone, and he shared my feelings, for ere long he returned to me, and never shall I forget his heartfelt kiss as he said, Thank God for this!""

There were still some anxious weeks for the brave garrison after Outram and Havelock brought in the relieving force; but, on November 17th, communication was opened between the troops in the Residency and Colin Campbell's relieving force. The order to leave the scene of their life and death struggle came like a thunderstroke to the brave garrison, who felt as though they could now have driven the enemy completely out of Lucknow, and triumphantly re-established British supremacy. Inglis went to Outram and pleaded for permission to keep the British flag floating on the only spot in Oude

from which it had never been removed through all the mutiny. If only one regiment was allowed him he was willing to undertake this daring feat. But no representations would avail at headquarters, and the garrison marched out.

Havelock did not live to receive the honours due to his historic relief at Lucknow. The noble Christian soldier died a few days after the force left the Residency, and was buried under a group

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of three trees at Alum Bagh. Three or four months brought Lady Inglis safely home to this country, and in the following May, her cup of joy was full, for her husband was able to join her in England. Her diary, which will be read with bated breath, as long as the memory of the Indian Mutiny endures, shows what strong consolation faith and prayer brought to the noble defenders of the British flag in the siege of Lucknow.

JOHN TELFORD, B.A.

Spiritual

"The solitude which is really injurious to Affinities. Us," says Mr. P. G. Hamerton, in his suggestive volume on "The Intellectual Life," "is the severance from all who are capable of understanding us." Our Lord Himself made provision for this natural craving of the human heart for sympathetic fellowship, by sending forth the seventy in pairs. Union in work is the surest foundation for a true friendship. Christ began by setting a great task before His servants, and then mated them together according as they could best help one another towards its fulfilment.

Such spiritual affinity is a very real and sacred thing; and at our peril do we neglect the call of the comrade who, in the face of a common duty, can solemnly and prayerfully say to us: "Let us do this together. Let us help, strengthen, sustain, inspire each other in the work we have both undertaken. We understand each other: we are one in aim, in faith, in method; and the cause shall prosper at our hands."

There could hardly be a greater disaster to Strife the cause of Christ, as it seems to us, than Comrades. strife and severance between a leading pair of

between

workers sent by Him to preach peace and goodwill to mankind. What a loss of power, what a mischievous example, when two, united in aim, differ and dispute about methods, and can no longer act in harmony as in their early hours of consecration and mutual hope!

Yet sometimes, as in the case of Paul and Barnabas, the painful separation is wonderfully overruled for good. "The contention was so sharp between them that they departed asunder one from the other." We may be sure it was in no unworthy temper, no sudden passion, that Paul parted from his first apostolic friend and comrade, refusing to compromise himself by a fellowship with John Mark whom he believed to be unfit for missionary work. It must have been a bitter moment for the Apostle of the Gentiles when he stood alone with what he felt to be his mission; not daring, perhaps, to think that he should ever find another friend to share with him, in such close and sacred intimacy, its hardships and its joys. The severance was the result of honest difference of opinion; cach was perfectly sincere in his contention, each was true to his convictions of duty and expediency, and therefore the pain of parting brought its sure reward.

Grief for the loss of one companion made both sufferers more eager in their search for kindred souls, and for each of His lonely workers God held a greater love in store. The faithful Silas was brought to Paul just at the moment when he needed the new and more perfect friendship. God had prepared the two for each other, and brought them together for mutual service in His mission-field. "And Barnabas took Mark," and found him-as Paul himself found him many years afterwards—“ profitable for the ministry." So, where there had been but one pair of workers, now there were two; each pair toiling in their own method for the same great end.

Christ's "Going Away."

"It is expedient for you that I go away." The simple words, so beautifully used by the Saviour to comfort His troubled disciples, are full of meaning for every pair or group of workers in His harvest-field. Christ's going away from the world just when it seemed most in need of Him was but typical of the trial which God often sends to chasten "whom He loveth." We see a number of earnest toilers following a great and good leader. But at a hint of his removal from them, they are all aghast. "We can do nothing without you," they cry. "We could never carry on the work if you were gone!" Then God withdraws the leader, and the old gospel lesson has to be learnt again. "It is expedient for you;" you must grow stronger; your loneliness must throw you back upon God; you have made too much of the bodily manifestation of goodness; you must trust the Invisible Goodness more. "Whatever shall we do without mother?" sob the orphan girls in a deathshadowed home. Then they learn that they in their turn must become motherly. How can I possibly live away from you?" we ask the bosom-friend of many years. And again comes the sternly-tender auswer: "It is expedient for you;" whether the parting be by death, or the call of a higher duty, or by honest difference of opinion, it has at all events its lesson for you. When the Christ goes, the Comforter comes. God gives us, in the life of His Divine Son, and the incidents of His love for His disciples, the type of the highest human affection, and the key to all our perplexities in the relationships of earth; making as it were a gracious covenant, through the ascension of Our Lord and the descent of the Spirit, to assure us that He

will never remove one blessing from us without preparing another and greater blessing for us in its place.

Our

Fellow.

There is a pathetic dignity in St. Paul's Judgments of frank and generous admission, at the close of workers, his life, of his own mistake in judging the young disciple, John Mark, hastily and unjustly on the occasion of the memorable dispute with Barnabas. Paul had refused to accept Mark as a comrade, because he had "departed from them from Pamphylia, and went not with them to the work." Yet when the waverer had grown more steadfast, and proved himself worthy of the trust which the large-hearted and hopeful Barnabas reposed in him, we find the aged Apostle of the Gentiles not only acknowledging the goodness and power of the younger man, but earnestly desiring to see him "before winter." "Take Mark, and bring him with thee "-so runs the message to Timothy-" for he is profitable to me for the ministry."

There is hardly, in all the sacred pages, a more beautiful illustration of the growth and ripening of a Christian character. The entire naturalness and simplicity of the story wins us as we read. We can so easily picture the young Paul, newly converted, all eagerness and impatience for the work, high-spirited uncompromising, idealistic, demanding from everyone the same standard of zeal as his own. Then comes the chastening of the judgment and the heart. Through the long discipline of experience the missionary learns patience and toleration with his comrades; he is "made all things to all men that he may by all means save some." It is as though an old and tried worker, looking back upon such an episode, should say, “Ah, poor lad! I judged him hardly, and he has turned out better than I expected. I hadn't patience with him, for I couldn't stand half-heartedness, and I thought he was not so enthusiastic as I was. But now he has done well, and I'm proud of him. Bring him to see me before I die!"

the

The late Rev. Jackson Wray once gave a The Lesson of beautiful illustration of the cleansing and Water-Lilies. healing power of the dreaded "waters of affliction" over the human soul. He was walking, he said, beside one of our English lakes on a dry and sultry day, when the leaves of the water-lilies floating near the bank were covered with dust from the high-road hard by, and looked withered and stagnant under the hot sun. Presently a jarring sound across the water broke upon the calm, and a rush of ripples disturbed the surface of the lake. It was a little pleasure-steamer passing by, that ruffled the quiet water and sent a sudden wave out to the shore, washing right over the water-lilies, and plunging their broad leaves into the darkness and stress of its turbulent swell. But when the surge had ebbed away, the leaves came up again, fresh and sweet and shining, cleared of all that choked and defiled them, and able to glisten in the noontide sun, which now revealed their rich, pure colour, hidden and dull before.

So sometimes in arid noon of life, when the cool dew of the morning is dried up, and the world's dust lies thick upon the undisciplined heart, a wave of trouble breaks up the false peace of stagnation, and with the turmoil of the unexpected flood there comes a strange refreshment. The purifying waters of sorrow sweep over the waste places of the soul; tears wash out the sins of yore, and the hidden self lies open to the waiting sun.

L

of

We admire the heroism of those brave reThe Tyranny formers who have led a great crusade against Custom the world; martyrs who have stood alone at the stake, and prophets who have proclaimed in the wilderness a new truth unwelcome to the mass of mankind. But in matters of practical common sense, of fashion and etiquette and social convention, what cowards we are when called upon to be the pioneers of small reforms! We find it harder to make a stand for freedom in the ordinary affairs of life than to suffer for the sake of a moral principle. Indeed there are circles, even in professedly Christian society, where absolute dishonesty and unjust dealing would cost the offender less social ostracism than not to wear a silk hat on Sundays. To be a non-conformist to trivial rules of etiquette which set up necdless barriers between class and class, sect and sect, party and party-to be original in trifles-be out of the fashion-to dare to live a simple, natural, unpretentious life in whatever rank and amid whatever surroundings-is to lay oncself open to the most subtle, the most insidious, and the most relentless form of persecution extant in the nineteenth century.

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"I quite agree with you that it ought to be done, but I would so much rather not be the first to do it!" said a Christian minister the other day, when urged to break through a meaningless habit which separated him from fellow-workers in a similar field. He knew too well that the world will forgive a man who breaks the laws of his country, but it has little mercy for him who ignores "the customs of the trade," "the usages of polite society," or the unwritten code of fashion and conventionality, when these fail to harmonise with his ideals of duty, honour, and truth. The motto of Swedenborg is hard to follow-“In things essential, unity; in things doubtful, liberty; in all things, charity."

and

Many well-meaning workers lose time, "Haste" means, and power, through failure to dis"Despatch." tinguish between haste and despatch-between speed and hurry. Some energetic folk pride themselves on never having a minute to spare, think no man industrious unless he is flustered, and are for ever trying to cram the work of two days into one. Others, in their anxiety to do everything thoroughly, and to take infinite pains, count no task properly performed unless a great deal of time has been spent over it, and are always suspicious of a prompt, decisive action-forgetting that the converse is often nearer the truth, and that before spending much time upon a lengthy task we ought to make very sure that it is worth the doing.

Haste is a sign of weakness: despatch is the proof of strength. In haste, the mind is dissipated, unrestful, impatiently running on to the next task; divided between conflicting claims, unable to confine itself to the work of the moment. In despatch, the mind is active, and yet calm; concentrated fully upon the duty in hand; conscious of a well-ordered sequence of labour to follow, but resolutely bent upon immediate and speedy action. To be hurried, is to work too quickly, or too spasmodically and planlessly, to work well. To be expeditious, is to work quickly, methodically, and so economically as to spend on each moment's action only just as much time, thought, and energy, as are really necessary to do it well. Haste is always waste, but true despatch saves time, increases power, and strengthens character.

E. W.

L

IFE at Mr. Shirley's was a different thing to Wilfred during the next few days, for the hope that had come into it through Mr. Fletcher's kindness made all the hard tasks and harder words he had to bear lose their power to hurt him.

Jem Wills, who had done so much to make the place disagreeable to him, had been dismissed. He came back one morning and begged to be taken on again, promising to leave the drink alone, but Mr. Shirley was firm in his refusal. He had doubted his honesty for a long time, as indeed he doubted everybody's, but in this ase not without reason, and Jem found himself one of the great army of men out of work.

He scowled at Wilfred as he went away, and muttered threats of vengeance on him and everyone in the establishment, but nobody heeded him, or regretted his going.

When Thursday evening came Wilfred got away a little earlier than usual, and went home to get ready for the great event of his second visit to Mr. Fletcher's house. His mother had put aside her work and dressed herself in her faded best, that was neat still in spite of long wear, and Wilfred was soon ready also. His clothes had been mended in many places, but he was slowly saving odd pennies to get more, and meanwhile these were spotlessly clean and tidy.

Jones admitted them this time without any hesitation, though there was certainly no pleasure on his face. But his master's smiling welcome, and little Ida's shy greeting -for she had begged hard to be there-were quite enough. "Prompt to time, I see, Wilfred; I am glad of that. Well, Mrs. Lee, I think I have some good news for you both. First of all let me tell you I am likely to have my watch and chain again, for they caught the thieves before they had time to dispose of their booty. I fancy it will be a good while before they go driving again. But we won't think of them. Perhaps my trouble will prove a good thing in the end, for Wilfred here, at any rate," he added, kindly. "Now to business. I have some influence-I may say a good deal-with a firm of tea merchants in the city, and they want a lad in their office just now, and, to make a long story short, I've got the place for you, my boy. You'll be only a junior, and a very young junior, too, but if you are steady and work hard you'll be able to push your way up. Wait a bit, don't thank me yet," he said, with the merry twinkle in his eye Wilfred liked so well. "It will

be too far from where you now live, Mrs. Lee, but if you will move I know a little place that I think will not be dearer than the lodgings you now have, and Mrs. Fletcher says she will help you with sewing, and, if possible, get other work for you. Run, Ida, and see if grandmamma has the work ready, and if she would like to see Mrs. Leo to-night. She has been so anxious to help," he said, as the child darted away, "and we long to have her grow up to be thoughtful for others."

Mrs. Lee could scarcely find voice to thank him, and before she had half-succeeded he stopped her again.

"Haven't done yet," he interrupted merrily. "I haven't told you your salary yet, Wilfred. Not wages now, you know, but a regular salary. What do you say to seven-and-six a week to begin, and ten shillings by-and-by, as you improve?" Wilfred said nothing, for the simple reason that he could not, and again the kindhearted old man went on:

"One thing more, no, two things, and then you shall go. You will want something of an outfit, so, as you wouldn't take money, I've got this parcel of things for you. And when you are getting five-hundred-a-year you shall repay me, if you like." And the twinkle in his eyes shone brighter than ever, and Wilfred's brown eyes danced in response.

I

"You will have to give a week's notice where you are, suppose, so we had better say you will begin next Monday week. Here is the address, and a letter to take with you when you go. The other thing is that I want to make your chance of getting on as good as possible, and seven-and-six a week won't do everything, you know. How would you like to learn French and Shorthand? I will pay for your evening classes to give you a start. Now you can thank me by doing your very best to get on. Nonsense! my old seals are worth more to me than that, and besides, I have taken a great fancy to you, for my lost Wilfred's sake. Now I'll give you a little word to think about on Monday week, and all your life long. Ye serve the Lord Christ.' I hope you do," he added, earnestly, "if not, begin now, and be a faithful servant. He is a good Master to all who are willing to follow and serve Him."

"Mother gave me that text when I went to Mr. Shirley's, sir," said Wilfred, flushing, "and it has helped me, many a time."

"Ah, that's right, that's right. I am glad you both know the secret of a happy, satisfied life."