downward course-neglect of religion, the concert hall, the wine room, and the drink. It is the old, old story. His prospects in life are blasted, and respect for broken-hearted parents alone saves the partners from consigning him to a felon's fate, We hear important facts, let us use them.

What we read, of time wasted through drink—of money squandered through drink-of grain destroyed in making drink -of miseries occasioned through using drink-of crime committed to obtain drink, or when under its influence of peril to life and property on sea and ashore through the drink-of poor-houses filled by the drink-of churches, chapels, and schools emptied by the drink-of seventeen out of twenty lunatics made so by drink—of the many diseases occasioned, or their virulence increased by the drink-and when we add to this (and much more might be said) the utter uselessness of the drinks for which all this suffering and calamity is endured, what can be said in favour of the common sense of those who disregard the facts they may read, hear, see, and know, on the other side of the question?

We have the facts of both sides to read and use; and if the mischievous character of the drink is pourtrayed in sad and revolting colours, the results flowing from the adoption of temperance principles are unquestionably cheering and glorious, seeming the brighter, if that were possible, because of the opposing gloom. Let us go on, then, appealing to the facts which are relevant to our movement, and using them with all the assiduity and power we can command, and we shall still find them mighty in their influence for good, leading thousands to the adoption of that pledge, which, by the blessing of God, is still as powerful as it ever has been, and ever must be, in preserving the young, and redeeming the old from the blighting influences of intoxicating drinks.

THE GREAT SCOTTISH PREACHER.

By the Rev. G. W. MCCREE.

The Rev. Dr. Guthrie, of Edinburgh, is confessedly the most illustrious preacher of his age. Here he is let us study him. Seated in a beautiful metropolitan church, we see around us two thousand well-dressed persons, and mingled with them may be counted about a hundred ministers. In the carved pulpit stands Dr. Guthrie. He is tall, venerable, and self-possessed. Long grey locks fall from his fine broad temples. A capacious fore

head indicates benevolence, thought, and power. No noviceno trifler is before us. This man knows what work is. He has waded through the floods of sorrow. He is as familiar with life as with learning. The ragged child, the fallen woman, the bloated drunkard, the hunted criminal, have found in him a warm friend and loving teacher. Both humour and piety dwell in his soul, and war not with each other. He knows when to smile and when to pray. There is "a time to weep and a time to laugh," and Dr. Guthrie contrives to do both with perfect consistency. Homely and sublime words alike resemble music when spoken by him. He can play at golf, sail a boat, write a book, preach a sermon, play with a child, argue with a philosopher, address a temperance meeting, or seek for a ragged child in a dirty garret, and do it all with skill, and grace, and zeal. He is a man "thoroughly furnished unto every good work." Listen to him! How impressively he speaks! Florid periods, snatches of holy song, familiar illustrations, grand bursts of eloquence, sketches of character, brief appeals, daring denunciations of popular sins, humorous anecdotes, pathetic consolation, and forcible proclamations of inspired truths flow from his lips. He preaches for an hour and a half, and yet you weary not. His sermon is a prose poem, and when it is delivered you sigh with regret, and wish the "old man eloquent" would resume his "wondrous tale."

THE BLIND BOY AT PLAY.

The blind boy's been at play, mother,
The merry games we had;
We led him on his way, mother,
And every step was glad;
But when we found a starry flower,
And praised its varied hue,

A tear came trembling down his cheek,
Just like a drop of dew.

We took him to the mill, mother,
Where falling waters made
A rainbow o'er the hills, mother,
As golden sun-rays play'd:
But when we shouted at the scene,
And hail'd the clear, blue sky,
He stood quite still upon the bank,
And breathed a long, long sigh.

We ask'd him why he wept, mother,
Whene'er we found the spots
Where periwinkles crept, mother,
O'er wild forget-me-nots.

"Ah me!" he said, while tears ran down

As fast as summer showers

"It is because I cannot see

The sunshine and the flowers."

Oh! that poor sightless boy, mother,
He taught me that I'm blest;
For I can look with joy, mother,
On all I love the best;

And when I see the dancing stream,
And daisies red and white,

I kneel upon the meadow-sod,
And thank my God for sight.

Eliza Cook.

VILLAGE SKETCHES, No. 1.

By the Rev. T. C. WHITEHEAD, M.A.

WINTER EVENINGS.

A country village as drawn from imagination by a poet, and a country village as it exists in real life, are two very different places. So I have discovered from living in a real country village for a considerable period

of my life, during the last ten years of which I have been the clergyman of the one in which I now reside.

The village which is the centre of my present parish consists of a pretty cluster of cottages, with the usual thatched roof, and surrounded by tall elm trees. In the day time, when the men and boys are absent at work, and the children at school, when nothing is stirring but the smoke from the chimneys, and nothing heard but the sounds one reads of in a pastoral, a passing traveller might people it in his fancy according to the poet's dream. But of a winter's night, especially when the moon is bright, and the Corydons take to rough sports in the open street (as it is called) he would hear most unpoetical sounds, and see most unpoetical behaviour. In fact the exceeding roughness and rudeness of the male population of a village, between the ages of about fourteen and two or three and twenty, is a well-known subject of complaint amongst all who are interested in our rural districts. They are in general thorough disturbers of the peace. They are too old for home restraint and discipline, which ceases (what little of it is practised at all) with the labouring classes at a very early age. They leave school at about eight, and their mental faculties are therefore very uncultivated; and having a certain amount of strength and animal spirits left to expend when they come home at night from work, they either go to the public house and become more or less sots, or at the best are noisy and mischievous from sheer want of something to do.

In summer time this amount of extra steam requiring to be let off is less mischevious, because it finds proper safety-valves in the cricket-field and in the allotment grounds: but I need not dwell upon the difference between some twenty-five or thirty boys of various ages, from about twelve or fourteen upwards, cheerily and healthily employed in lawful games by daylight, with their elders and friends from time to time looking on, and the same number wandering about by dark in gangs, like the Mohawks of the “Spectator's" times in the unlit streets of London.

The clergyman therefore of a country village has the question repeatedly forced home upon his mind, "What can I do for and with these fellows to make them less a nuisance to their neighbours, and to do them a little good?"

In the ten years that I have been here, this question has again and again occurred to me, not without setting me upon making attempts in all the usual directions. Of course during all that time I have had a night school, but with no other result than that of getting a few steady lads to attend, who for the most part fell off as they learned to write-the one thing which country boys and girls are always anxious to learn. I have also for several seasons had a course of lectures delivered by differ、 ent friends on pleasant subjects; but although the audiences were large, and the lectures listened to with interest, still this did not seem to have any perceptible bearing upon the special "rough lot." It did not sufficiently occupy their time.

I determined last September, at the begining of a new winter campaign, to try a different plan, and to establish “A Free and Easy Night Club." A written notice was pasted against the barn wall in the centre of the

village, which performs the useful part of a public advertiser, to the following effect:" A meeting will be held at the School-room, on Thursday evening, September 22nd, at 7.30, to talk about opening the School-room for the convenience of the people in the village during the winter months. The attendance of men and boys is requested."

Having explained my views to two or three of the leaders among the young men, we succeeded in getting a good meeting, of the very sort that I most wanted. There were from twenty-five to thirty present, when I took the opportunity of saying, that as the School-room was built solely for the benefit of the village, and not for my convenience, 1 considered myself as the trustee of the building for their advantage, and that during the winter I would hand over to them the room for as many nights (four) in the week as it would not be required for public purposes; the sole restrictions I should place upon them being, that they should not injure the property nor use it for such purposes as I should disapprove. I looked to them to be the preservers of order and of the public property. I offered to find firing and lights. The wages of our labourers are small, and therefore I felt it would be unwise to charge any price-at any rate in the first instance-before a taste for the article had been created.

Whether it was on account of the free and easy appearance of the whole thing, and the absence of any kind of constraint over them or not, I cannot say, but the proposal was evidently relished from the first moment. I rather think that it was this absence of the "driving system" which made it take.

"I hear, sir," said an old man of the old school a day or two afterwards; "I hear, sir, that the boys are to do what they like in the school these winter evenings."

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Well," said I," haven't they been doing what they like for these many years outside the school-room? and isn't it worth while for once in a way to try what they will do inside it?

be quieter and better behaved?"

Who knows but they may

"I don't understand it, sir. I don't understand it at all."

But the boys did understand it. We have just closed the room for the present season, having had, through twenty-four weeks, an average of twenty-four present a night for the two hours during which the room has been open. Numerically, the success has been greater than I expected. In talking over the plan, when the room was first opened for this purpose, with a friend and fellow-worker in schemes of this nature, we agreed in thinking that an average of ten or twelve through the season might be considered a fair success.

To those unacquainted with country villages and the extreme difficulty of "getting the people in them out of their old ways" (especially that more unmanageable part of the community for whose benefit almost exclusively this Night Club was instituted), our success may seem no great thing after all; but I have learned not to despise the day of small things, and to believe that some of the most lasting influences are those that begin slowly and quietly, and proceed without fuss or noise, working no faster or farther than the leavening spirit can reach, but working therefore with