Promises.

IN the spring we can see and hear an abundance of promises. The land is full of them. Wherever we lift our eyes we can see the old familiar characters which delighted our childhood, but which are just as full of joy for us to-day as they were then, and which tell us the same prophetic story of beauty and delight. Perhaps there are few days that so touch our hearts as the bright February ones; and may not the reason be that they convey to us so many promises which are certain to be kept? Although we have not ceased to look for the storm and cold of winter, though every morning before the sun has lighted the earth we feel constrained to brace ourselves up for a possible display of frost and snow, still we cannot walk abroad without seeing the promise of far different scenes. Everywhere our eyes are gladdened by multitudes of bursting buds, and young tender leaves. Down among the withered stems of the last year there is fresh young life, a brighter green, a more vivid beauty. Modest, nestling violets, quite hidden away in their warm beds of old and young leaves, cannot help betraying their whereabouts by their own tell-tale sweetness. Timid and fragile primroses are lifting their pale faces to the greeting of the generous sun. Daisies are opening their eyes, and the celandines have been already a long time awake. Delicate snowdrops and golden crocuses, and dozens of other flowers, beautify our gardens. The hedges are covered with constantly-growing buds of beauties yet to be. There are signs of life upon the trees. The elms are rich in clusters of blossoms, and the willows have hung out a host of floating banners to welcome the approach of spring. Everywhere, among the insects, and the birds, and the winds, and, better still, in our own hearts, an anticipatory joy is arousing us, and we eagerly receive and welcome the promises of the spring.

Because we know they will be kept. We are trusting to what has never betrayed our trust, we are looking for what we are certain to see. We may have fits of temporary despondency and impatience; we may even say, “If the

things really intend to grow, why do they not move on more rapidly?" But in our sane and sober moments we rely without hesitation upon the promises. We shall soon walk down forest paths over yielding mosses, while a thousand blossoms spring about us, and the air is full of the strange sweetness of pines and ferns and innumerable wild flowers, and musical with wonderful nightingales' songs among the cool shades of a million of leaves. We take the promises and believe in them, and show that we believe in them by watching for the signs of their fulfilment; for the fact is, all these things are God's promises of yet greater joy to His children, and we never, never knew one word of His to fail.

There are plenty of other promises that people find it harder to believe in. The promises of youth are sweeter than any indications of spring. We see bright young faces constantly rippling over with laughter, but we cannot fathom the fountain beneath. We look into clear, bright eyes, but we cannot see through into the hearts. If we could, we should find an immense amount of faith in the promises which the young have seen and heard. They are just beginning to taste the marvellous sweetness of life. Joys, deeper and more worthy than anything they have dreamed of before, are opening to them; and as they take them half-timidly a voice within says, "These are only earnests; look for more down the vista of the years that are to be. Fresh flowers will bloom, new fruits ripen, and the way shall be still sunny." Is the promise credited? Certainly it is by the young.

But others say, "No. You have the best now; there is nothing more to look forward to. The spring of February is the only one for any; and the voice in your heart is a false prophet."

Are we sure of that? May it not rather be the voice of the Father in heaven, whose very name is Love? Why are we so continually damping young joy by saying that the promise will not be kept? In our own case the voice that promised us long years of happiness has not really failed. Spring came, and summer, and autumn, each more glorious than the other. And even with all our tendencies to grumbling we dare not say other than "Thou hast done well with Thy servant." There failed not aught of any

good thing which the Lord had spoken unto the house of Israel; all came to pass.

Let us, then, believe all His promises. Let us tell the young to trust in the Lord and expect the joy that their hearts are looking for. And for ourselves, when He says, "The desert shall blossom as the rose," and They that wait upon the Lord shall not want any good thing," let us not grieve Him by expecting to live in perpetual winter.

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Friends in Need.

We do not live many years in the world without so frequently being brought into times of peculiar emergency and trial that we learn to look for them as we do for the snows of winter. They may not come, of course; but the probability is that they will, and so we expect them. We find it is one of the lessons which at first we are loth to learn; but while, with other good things, experience teaches us that though for the most part life may be made up of gentle sunshine and soft showers, still there are such things as lightning flashes and perfect torrents of rain. And naturally having attained to this knowledge, the next inquiry is, What friends can we find for our times of need? What sort of shelters are there for the beatings of the tempests?

We have not far to go without finding such friends as these times make especially necessary. Those who have stood us in good stead when one storm has fallen, are sure to be appealed to again, and strongly relied upon when next the need has arisen. Proved friends may be those who have walked with us along pleasant, sunny paths; but they are certainly those who have stretched strong arms around us when we have stood upon the edge of the precipice, or have sheltered us when the pitiless rain has beaten upon us.

Well, indeed, is it if we can count among the faces that smile upon us in the gladness of the morning those who

have watched by us in the night. We all have some of them, tried, and trusted, and true as steel, who could not fail us if they tried, and would not if they could. To them in our time of extremity we are certain to look. Whatever names we keep for our swallows, we do know what to give to our doves.

But friends in need are not necessarily persons. Trial is one. Often when everything goes brightly with us, and our merry little boat skips gaily over the waters, it is a time of the greatest need. We need a stern, strong hand to keep us from the rapids. We should glide on and on to destruction if we were left to ourselves. But we are not. One with a severe face and a harsh voice takes possession of us, and we receive some very rough handling. "We did not want that stranger." Ah, but we did though, for sorrow is sometimes a saviour.

Pain is often a friend in need. We did not know him when he came. We did not think he was a friend at all, but he had some glorious things to tell us, and we could not listen while the music was so loud and the joyous singing rang in our ears. Pain did but hush the noise and take us away to an inner room where we could give good heed to his message.

Oh, we think we know our friends, but we often find ourselves mistaken. We imagined them very different from what they really were; and conscious of this, knowing also that we do not always know even what times of need really are, let us love with all our hearts the One Great Friend on whom we can rely, and take the others on trust.

An Insidious Foe.

PRIDE is a very easily besetting sin. It comes to us in so many guises that very often it is hard, and, perhaps, impossible to escape it. It is an unpleasant but persistent lover; it will not be repulsed, and no amount of scorn or coldness is sufficient to make it cease from its insinuating

and encroaching attempts to gain the mastery. And the worst of it is that it is so silent and subtle that it sometimes succeeds in appropriating us to itself before we are aware of its presence. It is possible to be bound hand and foot, and yet at the same time persuade ourselves that we are altogether free and untrammelled. Pride hangs things upon us that we mistake for ornaments; it is only other eyes that see them to be heavy and unlovely chains.

So thoroughly self-deceived are we, so utterly unconscious of the power which pride has gained over us, that we are very loth indeed to confess that it has any dominion at all in our hearts. Some faults we can admit gracefully enough. "We have not angelic tempers; we wish we had, and are sorry that we have not; but it is a fact, nevertheless, that we are irritable and hasty, and easily put into a passion." Then we are not as diligent as we might be; indolence, ease, luxury, are such enticing things that we are not always proof against them. "Obstinate?" "Well, yes, perhaps we are; for when we see our own way to be the best, naturally we like to have it. But when you say we are proud you certainly make a mistake. If there is one thing more than another for which we deserve to be celebrated, surely it is humility!"

And yet perhaps pride is really the sin that most readily finds us out. We are proud of everything-of name if we have one worth mentioning, of riches if we possess any, of family if we are fortunate enough to have one, and of ourselves most of all. If we have not one thing, we only glory in another more perseveringly. A man who has not a particularly poetic temperament, but who, having an immense amount of good common-sense and practical wisdom, has amassed a fortune, is very likely to laud his own useful endowments, and call other things "stuff and nonsense." But the artist would not change with him for the world; if he happen to be poor he only the more heartily scorns the man who has not "a soul above money!" A girl, whose gift of beauty attracts all eyes, can scarcely help a feeling of self-satisfaction that she is not dowdy," and her sister is almost sure to pride herself upon her intellectual attainments, and be thankful that she is not "a dressed-up doll!"

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Perhaps the most popular pride of the present day is