OIL FOR CREAKING HINGES.

I.

TAKING UP THE THREAD.

"Turn ye to the stronghold, ye prisoners of hope.”

Y DEAR FRIENDS,-Many things have happened since I last wrote to you: happened to you,-happened to me,-happened to England, happened to Europe,-happened to the world. We are all much nearer the end of time for ourselves, the end of this state of things for us all. And are we certainly nearer heaven, certainly nearer happiness: "looking for and hasting unto the day of Christ!"

As I look around I see many things to make me anxious and sorrowful, and many things to make me glad. So I will even sit down for a little more converse with you, and my first greeting shall be a simple question: "Are you happy, my friends?"

Joy and sorrow, health and sickness, have been

B

ours by turns: and how have we learnt the lessons our Divine Teacher has put before us? "He doth not willingly afflict nor grieve the children of men;" but afflicts us "for our profit, that we might be partakers of His holiness." Oh, wondrous thought! Yet some of us think it very hard when we are called on to suffer. I grant you it is hard for the natural man, who does not know the love in the heart of God towards us, who does not see the needs be, and frets against the discipline, instead of turning to the Lord and kissing the hand that smites.

I was out on my rounds one day, when I was told there was sorrow in a house I knew. I went in, and found the poor mother broken-hearted at the sudden and shocking death, by burning, of a little girl of four or five. Her pinafore had caught fire: there was, perhaps, a little want of presence of mind, and the mischief was done in a few minutes. The fire had not touched the face, and the little form lay very placid as the father took me to see it. The mother comforted herself that the little one loved to sing at home the hymns learned at the Infant School, and this gave me the opportunity for pleading with them to give their hearts to the Lord, that if death should come to them so suddenly they might be ready. Did they? It is not for me to judge them, but I fear their own hearts would condemn them in this matter.

I went but a little further, and found sorrow in another home. The baby of about ten months old

had pulled some scalding coffee over it, and the little life was soon gasped out from the shock and pain. There was another prattling child; but the mother found it very hard to part with her baby, even though Jesus the Good Shepherd had taken it to His care, from the evil to come; and her tears flowed fast as we prayed that good might come out of the sorrow, and that the father might heed the warning voice, and give up the drink to which he was just a little tempted to give way. The strong man bowed his head to the stroke, and meant to do differently; but when the edge of the sorrow wore away, I fear the good resolutions were let slip. Oh, what a hold sin has on us! How hard do we find it to yield ourselves to the service of God.

I went but a little farther again, and I heard that there had been an accident in the works, and that a strong man was laid a corpse in a moment.

The three funerals met in the same churchyard on the following Sunday afternoon; and surely the warning was uttered loudly enough: "Prepare to meet thy God!" So I pause to wonder who of my former friends will read these words, as I remember that many may have, must have, passed beyond the reach my voice and pen.

of

"Plunged into a world unknown,"

Their doom is already fixed,

“Fixed in the everlasting state."

One I know went down in the horror of the wreck of the ill-fated Northfleet. A handsome lad he was, and I pitied him always so much, as I knew his home was very wretched, owing to the drink and mismanagement, and he often looked so white and half-starved. I did not know quite so much of him as of some of you, but I know he had heard the glad tidings of a gracious Saviour's love and work of reconciliation, and that he had been invited oftentimes to prove for himself the truth of the good news. I had lost sight of him for some time, and then I was shocked to hear that he had been lost on that fatal night. There was a Bible lying for him at the clergyman's, with his name written in it, that he had not taken the trouble to fetch. But if he was one of those who listened to and was touched by the exhortations of the mission preacher in the Thames, he may have cried out, with the dying thief on the cross, "Lord, remember me!" and even as the surging waters closed over his head, may have been sustained by the thought which cheered the dying sailor who had been enabled to trust himself to a mighty Saviour,-" The plank bears."

The death of another for whom I was much interested, and of whom I had not heard for some time, was thus mentioned to me in a letter by a Scripturereader: "As he was wheeling a barrow on a plank across the shaft, he slipped, and fell to the bottom. Poor T: I spoke to him, in company with others, about soul matters, the last Sabbath he spent on earth.