THE SHOP AT CINDER END. 117

“What will Mrs. Higgins think?” sobbed Louie. “You must go, Joe, and tell her they can't come, or she'll be waiting; ” said Susie. “Let me gol” screamed Louie, limping towards the door. Joe put her gently back. “No 1" he said, “you wouldn't go fast enough. It's late now.” “But look here, Joe,” pleaded Louie, as her last chance. “Why shouldn't you and I go with Mr. and Mrs. Higgins 2 Susie can take care of mother.” “Mrs. Higgins didn't ask me; and it would be very wrong to leave Susie alone with mother ill,” answered Joe; and then without giving his sister time to say more, he ran off towards Poplar Farm. The dogcart was coming slowly down the drive as he entered the gate. Mrs. Higgins sat beside her husband with a look of displeasure on her face. “If people can't be in time when other people offer to drive them, they mustn't expect to be waited for,” she cried, when she saw Joe, for she thought he had ran on to say that his mother and Louie were coming. When she heard his errand she was very much offended. She took it as an insult to herself that Mrs. Crane had fallen ill, and could not avail herself of the magnificent offer to be driven to church in the dogcart from Poplar Farm. “If your mother couldn't make it convenient to come, she should have said so at the first, and not let me put myself about for nothing, when I only wanted to do her a kindness. Well I shall know better than ever to offer to help her again, and so you may tell her from me.” “You may be sure I will, ma'am; and I should certainly advise her not to accept such an offer, if it was made; my mother has no occasion to be beholden to anybody.” “Oh, indeed; then may I ask how it is you don't keep a carriage and horses for her, Mr. Crane, since you are so independent 2" “My dear—my dear !” interposed Mr. Higgins mildly. “It's a pity Mrs. Crane can't come, but perhaps it can't be helped; anyway there's no occasion to fall out over it. It's quite time we were off.” So saying, he whipped up his horse, and the dogcart rattled past Joe, and was soon out of sight. That was not a pleasant Sunday at the shop. Joe came back in a bad temper, and it did not soothe him to find that Louie had been indulging in a fit of crying, and now was in the sulks—sitting in a corner of the kitchen, and refusing to help Susie in either of her tasks of nursing, or cooking. Poor Louiel She had looked forward to the day with a childish delight, and now she bore her disappointment like a child—and a spoilt one ! She sat perfectly silent at dinner, and ate very little; as soon as the others had finished she got up and went to her room; by and bye she came down, dressed in the hat and jacket she was to have worn at church.

“Where are you going, Louie I" asked Susie, who was busy washing up.

“To Miss Stubbs.”

“She'll be going to chapel directly,” observed Susie, glancing up at the clock.

“Then I shall go with her.”

“What?” cried Joe. “What's that, Louie 2 Do you mean the chapel on the green ? You can't go there ?”

“Why not ?” asked Louie, very coolly.

“Why you can't walk so far, to begin with ; and you musn't go either.”

“And pray why not?”

“Because they're such a low lot that go there; and—and mother wouldn't like it ! We're church-people you know.” L. “No, I don't know,” said Louie, very provokingly. “Mother said it wasn't respectable never to go to a place of worship. The chapel's a place of worship, and I mean to go there, since I wasn't allowed to go to church. One place of worship is as good as another for all I know ; anyway I mean to go. Good-bye, Susie,” she concluded, nodding at her sister, over the head of her angry brother; “good-bye. I shan't be in to tea.”

(To be continued.)

A SHRINKING FAITH.

“And they came and held Him by the feet;” Matthew xxviii. 9.

| EAR Christ! I, crave to hold Thee “by the Feet;”
I dare not raise
My weary, sorrow-laden eyes to meet
Thy piercing gaze; -
Nor dare I touch in faith, like her of old,
The spotless robe that doth my Lord enfold !

But at Thy Feet. . . . . . where those dear wounds that bled
To heal my own
Tell of Thy Passion, prone I lie, in dread
Lest nought atone
For all the coldness of my love . . . for thought
That dared to take the evil guise of doubt!

Let me stretch out my hands, calm all my fears,
And draw Thou near,
While 1 bedev Thy Feet with bitter tears,
O Saviour dear !
'Tis these dark mists of earth that cloud the skies,
And come between Thee and my yearning eyes.

Dispel them with the brightness of Thy Face;
And as I kneel,
Speak with that voice whose sweet absolving grace
Can make me feel
Once more Thine own; then at Thine Altar, Lord,
Feed me with Bread made Flesh, by Thy true word. Amen.

B. LEITH ADAMS

SHORT NOTICES OF MINOR SAINT DAYS. 119
NEGLECTED oppoRTUNITIES.

E shall then know better than we now do, how that every soul on its way to Eternity has its appointed times and seasons of good, which if they be allowed to pass away, shall never, never return again. Though the person be not lost, yet the innocence, the heroism, the saintliness, may be. We must therefore lose no opportunity of doing good to the souls and bodies of those whom God s good Providence has put under our care, because if we miss it by our own fault, it may never again be allowed to us; the persons whom God intended us to profit, may be taken out of our reach, may be taken into another world before they come in our way again.” Rev. JoHN KEBLE.

SHORT NOTICES OF MINOR SAINT DAYS.

Y 3rd.—Invention of the Cross. The event commemorated this day is the finding of the Cross on which our Lord suffered, by S. Helena, mother of Constantine the Great. Inventio in Latin means a “finding.”

A.D. 826. May 6th.-S. John the Evangelist ante Portam Latinam. The Roman Emperor Domitian ordered S. John the Evangelist to be thrown into a cauldron of boiling oil, but he came out unhurt. This happened A.D. 95, outside the gate of Rome called Latina, because it led to Latium. May 19th. —S. Dunstan, Archbishop and Confessor. S. Dunstan lived in the tenth century. He was superior of the monastery of Glastonbury, and afterwards became Archbishop of Canterbury. His name signifies “firm as a rock.” A.D. 988. May 26th.-S. Augustine, Archbishop and Confessor. He was sent by S. Gregory the Great on a mission to convert the Saxons, and was the first Archbishop of Canterbury. He died at the commencement of the seventh century. A.D. 604. May 27th.—Wenerable Bede, Priest and Confessor. This Saint was an English monk in the monastery of Jarrow, and the most learned and celebrated writer of the eighth century. He is said to have expired while dictating the last words of a translation of S. John's Gospel. He is usually represented with a book and as a Benedictine. A.D. 785.

PRotestANTs.-The word “Protestant” is negative rather than affirmative in its meaning. It indicates disbelief in something rather than belief in anything. A man may protest against much error, and yet hitnself hold but little truth. He may strongly denounce evil in others, but possess little good in h’s own character. For the errors of Rome there may be substituted the errors of his sect or party, which are utterly opposed to the simple faith of Christ, and are destructive of the Font's true life.

S. THOMAS CONFESSION OF FAITH.

- ||ND after eight days again His Disciples were within, and | Thomas with them; then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto you. Then - saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold My Hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust t into My Side: and be not faithless, but believing.” Not only by His risen Body and His Wounds, and His appearing thus in the midst of them, the doors being closed, but also by showing a knowledge of the Apostle's thoughts and His words when absent and unseen, He manifests His Godhead, meeting the very words of former unbelief, and the wants of a distrustful heart.

“And Thomas answered and said, My Lord and my God.” This was a full confession indeed, and the first confession of our Lord's Divinity since His Resurrection: out of weakness had strength been perfected; the words are full of devout affection also, and overwhelming joy, as claiming Him as his own God in his own former Lord. It is my Lord and my God—not merely general, as S. Peter's great declaration had been, “Thou art the Christ—the Son of the Living God,” but it expresses that new doctrine which our Lord had expressed to Mary Magdalene, “I ascend unto My God and YoUR God.”

Before this Thomas had loved Christ well and faithfully, but he had loved Him as man; and therefore he said, “Let us go and die with Him;” but now he loved Christ as God, and therefore he had within that strength, whereby Divine Love “hopeth all things and believeth all things.” He thinks no more, We will die with Him, but— He is our Life, and we will live with Him and for Him, for he is our God for ever and ever. Nay, he loved Christ now as both God and Man in one Person, and therefore he has not now to say, as before, “We know not whither Thou goest, and how can we know the way ?” but he knew him as “the Way, the Truth, and the Life: our God for ever, our Guide unto death,” and could say, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.”

“Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen Me thou hast believed : blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.” Thus, in consideration of the weakness of S. Thomas, our Lord has given his Church unto the end greater and more palpable proofs of His Resurrection. “Think not,” says S. Gregory, “that this happened by chance that a chosen disciple should have been absent ; being absent, should have doubted; doubting, should have handled; handling, should have believed. All this occurred by a divine ordering, whereby the mercy of God brought it about by wonderful means, that that doubting disciple should feel the wounds in his Lord's Flesh, and so heal the wounds of our unbelief. For the incredulity of Thomas hath done more for our * * an the belief of the disciples.”—Isaac Williams.