to me in the first instance, and then it may be for others.

It is not for me to judge whether these hitherto unused reminiscences are gold, or silver, or even iron dust. But such as they are, I hold them to be treasure-trove. They are crown property of the Great King. They may not be bartered for earthly gains, nor kept on one's antiquarian shelves as curiosities of a forgotten past. The tooth of time may have eaten away some of the finer edges of the facts, or they may have become crusted with earthy excrescences. But such as they are, He has royal rights over them, which I cheerfully and joyfully respect. They are at His disposal, to freshen their lessons to my own heart, or to make use of them by my tongue or pen as He may direct, for the good of others.

I propose therefore to cull a few recollections of interviews which I have had with atheists and sceptics within the three kingdoms or abroad, during the last twenty years, and to place this sheaf of firstfruits at the disposal of this Christian journal.

One other word ere I begin. An hour ago, a child, scarcely into his teens of months, tripped over a cord that held a young kid tied to graze in front of a cottage door, and by his cries brought two bright girls out to his help. The child, who had strayed from his own door, was unknown to them, and they did not know what to do with him. I had just come up and was gathering the story, when the child raised his little hands and uttered an inarticulate cry of joy. It was at the sight of a labourer a long way off in the direction in which I was going. "Is that your Da," I said, "and do you wish to go to him?" offering the child two fingers of my right hand. The girls dropped off with glee, and went into their own house, while we made for the far-off father. We had only gone a short way, when the little man stopped, turned round in front of me, and pretty soon (though he could not speak) got me to carry him, until he joyfully dropped into his father's arms. As we parted, he uttered a little chirrup, which I interpreted to mean, Thank you, sir.-Let me hope that some wandering children of our Heavenly Father, as we meet together on the road of life to tell and hear my simple story, may catch sight of Him, and perhaps find my arm or hand helpful to them on their way to His; perhaps too may even come to look over their shoulder to send a prayer in my direction, that will more than pay me back again.

I. ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF INFIDELITY.

As I glance over my pretty long list of interviews with sceptics of almost every grade, thickly thronging memories crowd upon me, that seem to whisper, Write but what we dictate; and though you draw but a thin line or two of moralizing, we may speak by God's grace to men's hearts.

My first reminiscence is of a talk and discussion, when only a boy, with a boat-builder, who (if my memory does not fail me in this) found pleasure in throwing into my young mind the seeds of infidelity, under injunctions not to tell of our conversation. The ink in which the conversation was written on my spirit is now nearly invisible: only I remember enough to make me sure that his must have been a coarse atheism; for in reply to an argument which

I drew from our own fearful and wonderful frame, he had the daring to assert that the chemist and electrician could make and vitalize beings like us. Thus do clever, immoral sceptics begin to sow their tares in young hearts, and have no great respect to truth.

Yet they do often respect true piety. About the same age, I frequently met a shrewd old weaver, who had among his neighbours a reputation for freethinking. He had a bad opinion of most people, and said that his friends came "with the rake and never with the shovel;" but I remember that he respected the sturdy character of my father. He confined his assaults on me to a playful teaching me my ignorance; and this had the useful effect of leading me to think. He posed me, when I was entering on the mysteries of Latin grammar, to translate Infirtaris, Inocnonis, with Forte dux fel flat in guttur. There are many, who though themselves floundering in the quagmire of infidelity nevertheless hesitate to be will-of-the-wisps to others. Practically admitting the dreary desolateness of being orphaned children in a fatherless world, they have enough of heart to make them leave those around them at liberty to enjoy what they themselves have lost.

But the carnal mind is enmity against God. The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. Such is the scriptural explanation of the unbelief of men; such the scriptural account of the practical atheism which every unrenewed heart exhibits. No wonder, then, if men pass from practical to intellectual atheism, and begin to lead others by their words and lives in the same direction. A man must have gone a good way, however, before he relishes to be called an infidel, (as I remember learning at a Young Men's Christian Fellowship meeting); but this early squeamishness is soon got over, and ere long men glory in their shame. Endless occasions nurse those seeds into maturity.

I, a wild enough boy, remember losing all faith in a Sabbath-school teacher, who caused red-hot pence and half-pence to be flung to children on his marriage day. For many years I have felt no wonder that that gentleman soon came out a full-blown scoffer, and, if I am rightly informed, died as such.

A young student next rises into view, who, though his beard had not grown, wrote letters to literary celebrities, and sought credit for originality in what some of his companions thought rather fanciful ways. The eternal existence of matter and spirit was one of his first halting-places, until Hegel lured him into the dark. If he still lives, let us hope he has long outgrown this.

The case of a Dane in a consul's office next comes back to memory, showing how the semi-sceptical remarks of some great genius like Goethe may push the inexperienced young thinker over the precipice. I shall have more to say of him afterwards.

The son of an Irish mill-owner tells, that the inconsistencies and quarrels of Christians would have drawn him down into infidelity, had not the godly life of Lanphier, the beginner of the Fulton Street prayer-meeting in New-York, been an effectual counterpoise.

A Scotch stone-mason, who used to read Hume, Herbert, &c., and to run after secularist and infidel preachers, said it was impossible for very thoughtful men like those to be mistaken. He was asked,

whether those speakers and writers announced the results they had come to, with deep grief-with grief that they were driven by hard logic and stern facts to so pitiful a conclusion as that they had no souls and should have no future, that they were Fatherless and Brotherless in the universe; or whether they appeared to exult in the lamentable doctrines they had reached. He admitted that the latter was usually the case. He was then asked to reflect that this fact indicated the existence in them of a wicked prejudice in favour of the results they proclaimed themselves to have reached; and that the existence of this prejudice sufficiently explained in most cases the possibility of great minds greatly wandering.

A very intelligent Roman Catholic on the Continent explained to me the origin of his infidelity, and of that of tens of thousands more in Romish countries. When he rejected one dogma or practice of what claimed to be an infallible church, he rejected the church itself; and as from his earliest days he had been taught to regard that Church as the Church of Christ, he came naturally enough to reject Christ too. This mild type of infidelity (comparatively easily overcome) prevails among laymen and priests not only in communistic and "International," but in other circles abroad.

A Scotch photographer had passed through the American revival of 1859, very much impressed and anxious, but not converted. He returned home to Edinburgh; and, whilst prosecuting his profession, attended for a succession of Sabbaths the evening evangelistic meetings at the Free Assembly Hall, conducted by Messrs. Gall and Jenkinson. One Sabbath evening, being unable for the crowd to gain admission, he strangely enough turned down to a secularist discussion in Clyde Street. He had thought himself sincere, both in America and at home, in seeking the Saviour; but not having found Him, he, when he failed on that evening to get into the evangelistic service, forthwith resolved to go to hear what could be said against Christianity. And he was carried off his feet in listening to a paper he heard read; until the present writer, who had been led to the same secularist meeting by a remarkable set of providential circumstances, unceremoniously brushed away the rubbish, and reduced the reader of the paper to silence. This young man rushed out after him, and sought private interviews for conversation on the things that concerned the soul. As it turned out, it was unwillingness to trust the Lord to keep him from falling, and a fear that he would not be consistent after receiving the Saviour, that were the soil in which the tempter had all but sown the seeds of secularism.

Two thousand miles off, I some years ago met a most intelligent and accomplished gentleman, of English parentage, but educated abroad. He spoke several languages fluently, and had a more than respectable acquaintance with the natural sciences. He was fond of animals. He was fond also of human society, and was one of the leading spirits in a club of Freemason rationalists. But this was

under a mask. I had had three months' frequent, friendly intercourse with him before the mask fell off. This took place at a Christmas dinner to which he had generously invited me as a stranger. The conversation had turned on the subtleties of

cause and effect, and had then settled into a talk about facts bearing on the supposed spontaneous generation of animals, and on the Darwinian theory of the origin of man, &c. When we were alone in the evening, I expressed some regret for the direction my remarks had taken; but he took me to a room in which he kept, locked from all eyes, a large quantity of infidel literature, and then told me that it was the unfair statements of a well-known book on the evidences of Christianity that had first driven him into free-thinking. He showed me a book "harder," he said, "to answer than Colenso." I read it, and in due time returned it, with notes showing that its positions were illogical, unhistorical, and unscientific. He made no attempt, except by correction of one irrelevant statement, to meet the scores of replies I had given, keenly though he applied his subtle and accomplished mind to examine them, with the aid of a very accomplished secularist physician. In conversation he offered no replies to my arguments. I have no evidence that any serious alteration was effected in his position; but I have mentioned his case as an illustration of the way in which the errors of Christians may become arguments for infidelity. How greatly do we need to be on our guard against using carnal weapons; and, (remembering the promise, Every tongue that riseth against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn) to see to it that our "speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt, that we may know how we ought to answer every man.” In my next article I mean to relate a case or two of hopeful dealing with sceptics. WANDERER.

(To be continued.)

RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES.

OUR correspondence brings us into not infrequent communication with persons who are troubled with These are of religious difficulties and doubts. various kinds. The difficulties of some have reference to the truth of religion, and even of the being of God. The difficulties of another class are doctrinal: some of the revealed truths of Scripture are so inconsistent with their preconceived ideas, that they cannot understand them or find rest in them. Hence they are tossed in uncertainty. And those of others are due to cherished sin, with which they cannot make up their minds to part; for this darkens the spiritual eye, so that they cannot obtain a clear vision of Divine truth, and of necessity prevents a good hope of salvation.

While the kinds of difficulty are various, so is the course they run. Some persons halt between two opinions all their life: in miserable indecision they spend their years, until death closes the scene. Some, wearied of this state of mind, hasten to decide wrong; throwing themselves into the arms of error; of conscience, and plunging headlong into sin. or throwing off all religion; or blindfolding the eyes

But others are better minded. They feel that they must not contentedly remain in indecision; but they will not commit the mad act of ending their

indecision by plunging into infidelity and license in sin. Therefore they look round for guidance and help. This is a class of persons much to be sympathized with. It is something even to render intellectual aid to such persons. But that is far from being enough. Living example is in many cases much more needful and more prevailing-witness the following as related in the memoirs of the late Rev. William Pennefather by one who speaks from experience.

"When I first saw that dear saint of God, Mr. Pennefather, I had been living in London about two years, during which time I had been leading a life of carelessness and sin. About the close of the year 1868 I was brought under deep conviction of my guilt, and in severe conflict of soul I was overwhelmed with distressing doubts. By an apparently trifling circumstance I was brought under Mr. Pennefather's ministry, and was at once conscious of a power which seemed to sway my whole soul like a mighty torrent, and this in spite of my terrible doubts-doubts as to the truth of God's Word and even as to the existence of God Himself. That power was the intense reality of the man who spoke, and the intense reality of the man who lived so mightily the truth he proOften have I gone into that church with some (as I thought) unanswerable difficulty-and as often have I come away marvelling at the power of God's truth, set forth with extreme simplicity, but with a force and unction which carried conviction to my heart. I felt that he was speaking that which he knew, and testifying of that which he had seen; his face beamed with the very light of heaven, and he seemed to speak to us from the presence of Jesus, and as though he himself were in the land of glory. I can never forget the radiance on his brow, or the words of ardent love which flowed forth from his very soul. I was convinced and drawn to Christ-thankfully do I record it. How could I reject that truth which I saw pictured before me in a living man, a lovely example of the religion of Jesus Christ? I felt that nothing but truth could produce such a character -more than this, there must be a real power, a real person, even God the Holy Ghost.

"I came to be intimately acquainted with the preacher, and I met with the same testimony in his daily life. I saw him under a variety of circumstances, and without one single exception I found him always in the same spirit-there was the holy life corresponding with the holy teaching. His power of sympathy was wonderful. I well remember going to him one evening with a doubt which was causing me much anguish of soul; it was touching the righteousness of some of God's most mysterious dealings; he took my hand in his, and tenderly listened to all I had to say. He did not argue the point, but gently turned my distressed mind to the character and holiness of God, assuring me that in His own time all would be made perfectly clear-then, with tears

for my sorrow, he knelt and poured out his soul to God, who could calm and comfort my troubled spirit. He did more for me than any argument could have done; and often have I looked back to that evening with thankfulness when the same thoughts have again distressed me.

"I was then in business in London, and had to witness for Christ among the companions with whom I had previously sinned. I stood alone as a Christian, and I can never express the wonderful power which the remembrance of Mr. Pennefather's holy life was to me in hours of trial; it was such a standing witness to the truth of that religion which I was trying to live out before my companions. I had seen what it was to live Christ, and it gave me courage. I feel that I scarcely know the extent to which that life has influenced me. I believe I never shall know it in this world.

"And now I have left the noisy world of business for the work of the ministry of Christ's gospel in the Church of England, which he loved so well; and in many moments of conflict, when assailed with the fiery darts of unbelief, that house has stood out like a lighthouse in a stormy sea, and I have learned how unspeakably important it is that ministers of the gospel should seek to preach Christ by living Christ."

A PRAYER.

I WOULD not ask Thee that my days
Should flow quite smoothly on and on;
Lest I should learn to love the world
Too well, ere all my time was done.

I would not ask Thee that my work
Should never bring me pain nor fear;
Lest I should learn to work alone,

And never wish Thy presence near.

I would not ask Thee that my friends Should always kind and constant be; Lest I should learn to lay my faith

In them alone, and not in Thee.

But I would ask Thee still to give

By night my sleep, by day my bread;
And that the counsel of Thy Word
Should shine and show the path to tread.
And I would ask a humble heart,

A changeless will to work and wake,
A firm faith in Thy providence:-
The rest-'tis Thine to give or take.
ALFRED NORRIS.

Those that would be kept from sin must not come upon the devil's ground.

There is no fleeing from God's justice but by fleeing to His mercy.

THE GOLD-DIGGER.

IN visitation among the sick and poor, one can scarcely enter a place in which, first and foremost, are not seen proofs of the blighting and marring effects of wilful sin on human life, and specially that crying sin of intemperance.

"Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward" -trouble inevitable in a fallen dying world; but what has not this one sin added, and what is it not adding daily to the sum of human sorrow, being in many cases the cause of it wholly?

A most touching and sorrowful case, specially bearing on this point, is vividly before us.

Passing through one of the large men's-wards of an hospital, our attention was arrested by a sound strangely unusual, resembling more than anything the escape of steam from some valve at high pressure. Wondering as we drew near, we saw a patient seated on the side of his bed in evident agony,-a deathly pallor on his face, on which stood great drops of perspiration, forced out by the agony of "convulsive spasm of the windpipe."

We found it was a patient who had recently undergone the operation of tracheotomy, in order to the insertion of a tube into the windpipe, and who had by this means been saved from suffocation: the rushing of the air through this artificial opening, when the spasm came on, was the cause of the strange sound we had heard. A nurse was standing by, and using means to shorten the spasm. But it was evident that not much could be done to relieve the man; and his stalwart frame was quivering in the almost death-struggle for breath.

Seeing it was useless to speak with one so suffering, we made the round of the other patients. By that time, the spasm had abated; and we drew near the poor fellow, who was now seemingly exhausted. Expressing our sympathy with him in agony so acute, and reminding him of One who "in all our afflictions is afflicted," the gleam of a grateful smile broke over the suffering countenance, and with almost courtly bow and gesture he rose to his feet, as he pointed to his throat to indicate his inability to speak. The lips indeed moved, but he was powerless to articulate a sound. We were struck with the man's appearance and whole bearing, so unmistakably superior-quite one of nature's nobles as to form and feature; yet his clothing was of the very poorest, and patched to the extreme of indigence. What could have brought him so low, was the thought uppermost in our mind?

In subsequent visits, and by means of slate and pencil, the sad history was told.

A pleasant home had once been his, such as many a fine, able British workman possesses; but a wife given to intemperance brought misery into it. He bore his sorrow bravely, and tried to reclaim her, until, going still deeper into sin, she eloped with another man. Struck to the heart, and writhing under the shame which his wife's conduct had brought upon him, he, after waiting in vain for tidings of her, dismantled his home and left for California. There, like many another, he endured hardships and toil incredible, sometimes pretty successful, but often wanting everything; for so great was the scarcity and high price of commonest

necessaries, that, with gold in his pocket, he often went two and three days almost without food; moreover, in that lawless region, he lived with his life in his hand.

Drought and hunger, toil and exposure, were doing their work on a fine muscular frame, and, after being pretty successful for a time, illness overtook him, and he had to sell out his "take" at the diggings. As it proved afterwards he had stopped only three feet short of a seven pound nugget, which the next "digger" found.

Poor fellow! It seemed hard for him indeed, after nearly a year's weary, killing toil.

As soon as able, he made his way back to the nearest settlement, with the little savings he possessed, and there his good abilities and penmanship got him a place at the head of a store, with a good salary and rations. He invested his small savings, and being strictly temperate, would have done well: but the fearful hardship of the "digger's" life had implanted terrible disease in his frame; illness returned, his savings dwindled quickly in that region of extortion, and with the small remainder he made his way back to England.

Her hospitals were the only earthly haven to which he could now look for refuge, and in one of these we found him. No tidings had ever been heard of his wretched wife; but a quiver of the face, whenever we spoke on this subject, told how far feeling was from being extinct.

Instant death had indeed been prevented by surgical help; but suffering under incurable disease was all the poor patient had to look forward to. Yet when he left the hospital, his indomitable spirit preferred struggling on for a livelihood-sufferer as he was-to the alternative of entering the union. For some time, with a little help, he maintained himself as errand-man, living always as "with one foot in the grave' from danger of instantaneous inflammation in the throat. But how patiently suffering was borne, we can never forget.

Deeply anxious for his spiritual state, many were the conversations we had with him. Slate in hand, with a mind full of sorrow, and dark as to anything beyond the strict law of right and wrong, it was difficult to awaken in him any conviction of natural sinfulness and need of a Saviour. But light did begin to dawn; and that blessed Spirit who quickeneth whom He will shone upon the mind, blessing the feeble efforts made. Called long from home, we still communicated with the poor patient. struggled through one year of suffering life, and then, obliged to retreat to the union, he lay down to die, and (as we humbly trust) was received through the merits of the Saviour into the fold of peace above.

He

In recalling this case we can but exclaim afresh, What wreck of human happiness does not the sin of intemperance bring! Hearths and homes, that might be bright with sunshine of blessing and happiness, wrecked, ruined! Hopes blighted, hearts bleeding! Souls, bodies, suffering the fearful penalty of this abominable sin!

Turn! oh turn, ye victims, from the paths of the destroyer! Shake off the terrible fetters he is fastening on you-soul and body! Cry for the help which will enable you to rush forth from the living tomb that is fast closing round you!

We can but lift up our voice of warning again and