Do not look at life's long sorrow;
See how small each moment's pain;
God will help thee for to-morrow—
Every day begin again.

Every hour that fleets so slowly,
Has its task to do or bear;
Luminous the crown and holy,
If thou set each gem with care.
Do not linger with regretting,
Or for passion's hour despond;
Nor, the daily toil forgetting,
Look too eagerly beyond.

Hours are golden links, God's token,
Reaching heaven; but one by one,
Take them, lest the chain be broken,
Ere the pilgrimage be done.

THE MOTHER'S ROCK.

HUMBOLDT, in his celebrated Travels, tells us that after he had left the abodes of civilization far behind, in the wilds of South America, he found, near the confluence of the Atabapo and Rio Terni rivers, a high rock, called the "Mother's Rock."

The circumstances which gave this remarkable name to the rock were these.

In 1799, a Roman Catholic missionary led his halfcivilized Indians out on one of those hostile excursions, which they often made, to kidnap slaves for the Christians. They found a Guahiba woman in a solitary hut, with three children-two of whom were infants. The father, with the older children, had gone out to fish, and the mother in vain tried to fly with her babes. She was seized by these man-hunters, hurried into a boat, and carried away to a missionary station at San Fernando.

She was now far from home, but she had left her children there who had gone with their father. She repeatedly took her three babes and tried to escape; but was as often seized, brought back, and unmercifully beaten with whips.

At length the missionary determined to separate this

mother from her three children; and for this purpose sent her in a boat, up the Atabapo river, to the missions of the Rio Negro, at a station called Javita.

Seated in the bow of the boat, the mother knew not where she was going, or what fate awaited her. She was bound, solitary and alone in the bow of the long-boat; but she judged from the direction of the sun that she was going away from her children. By sudden effort she broke her bonds, plunged into the river, swam to the left bank of the Atabapo, and landed on a rock. She was pursued, and at evening retaken, and brought back to the rock, where she was beaten till her blood reddened the rock, calling for her children; and the rock has ever since been called, "The Mother's Rock." Her hands were then tied upon her back, still bleeding from the lashes of the manatee thongs of leather. She was then dragged to the mission at Javita, and thrown into a kind of stable. The night was profoundly dark, and it was in the midst of the rainy season. She was now full seventy-five miles from her three children, in a straight line. Between her and her children lay forests never penetrated by human footsteps; swamps, and morasses, and rivers, never crossed by man. But her children were at San Fernando: and what can quench a mother's love! Though her arms were wounded, she succeeded in biting her bonds with her teeth, and in the morning she was not to be found! At the fourth rising sun, she had passed through the forests, swam the rivers, and-all bleeding and worn out-was seen hovering round the little cottage in which her children were sleeping!

She was seized once more; and before her wounds were healed, she was again torn from her children, and sent away to the missions on the upper Oronooko river, where she drooped, and shortly died, refusing all kinds of nourishment-died of a broken heart at being torn from her children! Such is the history of "The Mother's Rock."

Perhaps I might make use of this touching story to lead you to contemplate the curse of slavery, or to shew you how far cruelty may fill the hearts of those who profess to bear the image of Jesus Christ; but I have a different object in view, and I mention it solely to illustrate one single point the strength of a mother's love for her children; a feeling as universal as man, and a stream so deep that nothing but the eye of the Omniscient One can see its bot

tom! For wherever you find woman, whether exalted to her place by the gospel, or sunk almost to the level of the brute creation, you find the same unquenchable love for her children. She will cheerfully wear herself out, and go down to the grave, to alleviate the sufferings of a single child. I have now in my mind a poor widow, who told me, at the funeral of a son, whose intellect and reason had been destroyed by fits, that for thirty-eight years she had never passed a single night in which she did not rise once or more, and go and minister to the wants of her poor afflicted child. She was literally worn out, and in a few weeks followed her son to the grave.

Text-ISAIAH xlix. 13-15.

A MOTHER'S LOVE.

HAST thou sounded the depths of yonder sea,
And counted the sands that under it be?
Hast thou measured the height of heaven above?
Then may'st thou mete out a mother's love.
Hast thou talked with the blessed of leading on
To the throne of God some wandering son?
Hast thou witnessed the angel's bright employ?
Then may'st thou speak of a mother's joy.
Evening and morn hast thou watched the bee
Go forth on her errands of industry?
The bee for herself hath gathered and toil'd,
But the mother's cares are all for her child.
Hast thou gone with the traveller Thought afar,
From pole to pole, and from star to star?
Thou hast-but on ocean, earth, or sea,
The heart of a mother has gone with thee.
There is not a grand inspiring thought,
There is not a truth by wisdom taught,
There is not a feeling pure and high,
That may not be read in a mother's eye.
And, ever since earth began, that look
Has been, to the wise, an open book,
To win them back from the lore they prize,
To the holier love that edifies.

There are teachings on earth, and sky, and air,
The heavens the glory of God declare!

But louder than the voice beneath, above,
He is heard to speak through a mother's love.

A RIDE IN JUDEA.

THERE is no part of the land of Judea that is not interesting to travel over, because there is no part that we do not read of in the Bible from somebody having lived there, whose history is told in either the Old Testament or the New. It is a small country, which can be travelled over in a few days; but when I was there we travelled slowly, because we liked to examine every place we came to. We rode on asses till we reached Jerusalem; and many times in a day we jumped off our asses to look down into an old well,—such a well as Jesus and his disciples used to rest at in their journeys,—or to trace out among the hillocks of stones the walls of towns which are now only heaps of ruins,—or to gather wild flowers. I never liked flowers so much before. We had been travelling through countries where we scarcely ever saw a tree or a plant that we knew, and for many weeks before we entered Judea we had been in the Desert, where it was a rare thing to see flowers at all, or any thing but parched rocks and hot sands. But as soon as ever we entered Judea, I saw some wild oats, and several sorts of grass like those at home, and plenty of red poppies. The next day, there were wild roses and common white convolvulus, and, to my great delight, whole thickets of blackthorn. This was on the plain of Mamre. In Abraham's time, this plain of Mamre was a wild unenclosed place where shepherds fed their flocks. In the morning they worshipped the rising sun; and at night they worshipped the stars; for it was before the time that any one had taught them the name of Jehovah; and in the middle of the day they assembled under a large spreading tree, where they sat in the shade, and heard Abraham tell of the wonderful things he had seen in the land of Egypt. As one hundred years after another passed away, the plain became enclosed and partly cultivated; and men built a great number of towns on the rising grounds. I could not have believed how many towns they built if I had not seen

the heaps of stones that lie about, and traced out the walls, and found the wells. This was the country of the Philistines; and the descendants of Abraham first lived beside them, and did them some service in return for leave to live there; and after a long time, drove them out. Scarcely anybody lives there now. We came to a village now and then ;—a village of square stone houses standing on a hill; and near each village there were patches of wheat and other corn, and vineyards. The ground is of fertile quality, but so stony, that the wonder is anything grows: but the vineyards are small enough to be partly cleared of stones; and the stones are thrown up in long rows which make fences; and some of them are built into a tower;—a thick low tower, where a man keeps watch over the place, and where the tools are put by. Every vineyard has a winepress and a tower; the winepress being a pit dug to hold the grapes when they are ripe enough to have the juice trodden out by men's bare feet.

When we had gone a few miles through this sort of country, we saw a range of high bare hills, at a distance on our right hand. They were very bare and rocky; but in the morning and evening they looked beautiful in the light of the sun, though they were very glaring in the middle of the day. These were the mountains of Moab; and we knew that the Dead Sea lay below them,-between us and them. Once I caught a sight of the grey waters of the Dead Sea, between an opening in the hills; and that put me in mind of old Naomi and her daughters-in-law, Orpah and Ruth. Old Naomi was a Jewess, whose husband had died among these mountains in Moab. Her two sons had died there too; and when they were dead, Naomi wished to return to her own country. She did so, and her sons' wives came with her. Orpah, we know, turned back. I was sure that Naomi and Ruth came this way, and that we were going to stop where they stopped; but I felt when I was there as if I wished to know exactly where Orpah had turned back.

Ruth and Naomi stopped in the fruitful country where Bethlehem was built long afterwards; and there we rested for the night. When we arrived, the sun was just setting; and it was too late for us to go out that evening to see the valley where the fields of Boaz used to be: but we were out in good time in the morning to look abroad.