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KNOCKING, knocking, ever knocking? What's the hour?

Who is there?

'Tis a pilgrim strange and kingly,

Never such was seen before;-
Ah, sweet soul, for such a wonder
Undo the door.

No-that door is hard to open;
Hinges rusty, latch is broken;

Bid Him go.
Wherefore with that knocking dreary
Scare the sleep from one so weary?
Say Him,-no.

Knocking, knocking, ever knocking?
What! Still there?

O, sweet soul, but once behold Him,
With the glory-crowned hair;
And those eyes, so strange and tender,
Waiting there;

Open! Open! Once behold Him,
Him so fair.

Ah, that door! Why wilt thou vex me,
Coming ever to perplex me?
For the key is stiffly rusty,
And the bolt is clogged and dusty;
Many-fingered ivy vine

Seals it fast with twist and twine;
Weeds of years and years before,
Choke the passage of that door.

waning

The night is

In my heart a drear complaining,
And a chilly, sad unrest!

Ah, this knocking! It disturbs me!
Scares my sleep with dreams unblest!
Give me rest,
Rest-ah, rest!

Rest, dear soul, He longs to give thee;
Thou hast only dreamed of pleasure,
Dreamed of gifts and golden treasure,
Dreamed of jewels in thy keeping,
Waked to weariness of weeping ;-
Open to thy soul's one Lover,
And thy night of dreams is over,—
The true gifts He brings have seeming
More than all thy faded dreaming!

Did she open? Doth she? Will she?
So, as wondering we behold,
Grows the picture to a sign,
Pressed upon your soul and mine;
For in every breast that liveth
Is that strange, mysterious door;-
The forsaken and betangled,
Ivy-gnarled and weed-bejangled,
Dusty, rusty, and forgotten ;-
There the pierced hand still knocketh,
And with ever patient watching,

Knocking! Knocking! What? Still With the sad eyes true and tender,

knocking?

He still there?

With the glory-crowned hair,

Still a God is waiting there.

ANECDOTES AND SELECTIONS.

Anecdotes and Selections.

ASK GREAT THINGS.-To a friend asking aid, Alexander gave a blank order on his treasurer, to be filled with any sum he might choose. The indigent philosopher immediately demanded ten thousand pounds. When the treasurer, who had refused to pay the sum, remonstrated with the king, Alexander replied "Let the money be instantly paid. I am delighted with this philosopher's way of thinking. He has done me a signal honour; by the largeness of his request he shows the high idea he has conceived, both of my superior wealth and my royal munificence." Is not the King of kings honoured by large requests? Few seem to be aware how He is dishonoured by their not rising to a more comprehensive and vigorous grasp of faith. All need to be placed in a school where they shall go on from one grade to another in learning the proper scope of supplication and the fulness of God's promises. What a slight it is upon God, who has exhaustless treasures in store for the church and the world, who throws wide open the door and invites believers to become almoners to the largest amount, for them to look doubtingly on, and take hardly enough each for himself, when thousands might as well be filled! Thus are souls kept starving and Zion languishing. O needless famine! O fraudulent bankruptcy! We would be no longer content with moderate desires and requests. In view of the promises, we would stir up ourselves to a devout enterprise; would strike out upon this broad ocean and spread all sail. There is as much encouragement to seek great things as to seek at all. Has not past experience sometimes surprised us by the largeness of bestowment, and that, too, merely as an earnest of what God is ever ready to bestow?

ONE SIN casts the angels out of heaven. One sin blights paradise and ruins a race. One sin spreads itself out, not over a region, but over a world. One sin propagates itself, and overflows, not one generation, but generations for six thousand years. One sin contains enough in its one drop to destroy millions upon millions-to destroy them for eternity. What then must sin be! What must be its virulence, its contagiousness, its immeasurable fruitfulness in evil! What havoc it makes among immortal beings! With what a terrific power it is armed! One sin! Who can count up its consequences? Yet in each of us there are myriads-not one, but myriads of these roots or seeds of evil! Surely if we realised the woe, the curse that is wrapped up in each of these, we should tremble and be appalled. Our hearts would fail us at the thought. We are poison trees, from whose branches there hang myriads of seeds,-seeds which every moment are dropping from us and springing up around. Yet the divine Sin-bearer is at hand, ready to deliver, able to undo the evil. Shall we not seek

THE FIRESIDE.

His aid? Is not that aid available for us to the full, so that life, instead of death, may be ours? "The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." (Rom. vi. 23.)-Bonar.

ANECDOTES OF HAVELOCK'S YOUTH.-When he was about seven years of age, from a very high bough he was attempting to take a bird's nest, the branch broke, and he fell down; the boughs broke his fall, or there probably the young hero had terminated his career; as it was, he lay on the ground insensible: when he recovered from the stunning effects of the fall, he was asked if he did not feel frightened when the branch snapped, and he felt himself falling-"No," said he, "I did not think of being frightened; I had enough to do to think of the eggs, for I thought they were sure to be smashed to pieces!" It is a small incident; but the answer is the very soul of all truly great character the entire forgetfulness of self in the object pursued, whether that object be in childhood a bird's nest, or in old age the relief of Lucknow. And this little incident is mentioned of courage and forethought at twelve, when, seeing an infuriated dog worrying a sheep, he did not merely fly before the dog with force to meet brutality with brutality, but made a rope from a haystack near at hand, threw it round the dog's neck, and then threw the dog into a neighbouring pond to cool and recover, and so walked coolly himself away. Thus, you see, nature laid the foundations in a truly noble human character, and divine grace afterwards glorified it with "the seeds of the kingdom."

THE SHIP BUILDER AND WHITEFIELD.-An eminent ship builder, being invited to hear Mr. Whitefield preach, at first made several objections, but at last was prevailed on by his friend. When he returned home, his friend inquired, "What do you think of Mr. W. ?" "Think," says he, "I never heard such a man in my life. I tell you, sir, every Sunday that I go to my parish church I can build a ship from stem to stern under the sermon; but, were it to save my soul, under Mr. Whitefield I could not lay a single plank.'

The Fireside.

THE DRUNKARD RESTORED TO HIS WIFE.

I ONCE picked up a man in a market-place. It was said to me, "He is a brute; let him alone." I took him home with me and kept him fourteen days and nights through his delirium; and he nearly frightened Mary out of her wits one night, chasing her all around the house with a boot in his hand. But she recovered her wits, and he recovered his. He said to me, "You wouldn't think I had a wife and child ?"

THE FIRESIDE.

"Well, I shouldn't."

"Yes, I have, and God bless her dear little heart. My Mary is as pretty a little wife as ever stepped," said he.

I asked him where they lived.

"They live two miles away from here."

"When did you see them last ?"

"About two years ago."

Then he told his sad story. I said,

"You must go back again."

"No," he replied, "I mustn't go back; I wont. My wife is better without me than with me. I will not go back any more. I have knocked her, and kicked her, and abused her. Do you suppose that I will go back again ?"

But at length he consented to accompany me to the house. I knocked at the door, and his wife opened it.

"Is this Mrs. Richardson ?"

"Yes, sir,"

"Well, this is Mr. Richardson, and, Mr. Richardson, this is Mrs. Richardson. Now, come into the house."

They went in. The wife sat one side of the room and the man on the other. I wanted to see who would speak first, and it was the woman. But before she spoke she fidgeted a good deal. She pulled up her apron till she got hold of the hem, and then she pulled it down again. Then she folded it up closely, and jerked it out through her fingers an inch at a time, and then she spread it all down again, and then she looked all about the room, and said,

"Well, William," and he said, "Well, Mary."

He had a large handkerchief round his neck, and she said,

"You had better take the handkerchief off: you'll need it when you go out."

He began to fumble about it. The knot was large enough; he could have untied it if he liked; but he said, "Will you untie it, Mary?"

And she worked away at it; but somehow or other, her fingers were clumsy, and she could not get it off; their eyes met, and the lovelight was not all quenched; he opened his arms gently and she fell into them. If you had seen those white arms clasped about his neck, and he sobbing on her bosom, and the child look in wonder, first at one and then at the other, you would have said, "It is not a brute; it is a man, with a great warm heart in his breast."

O, how many hearts and homes might be cheered, if Christian men and women would visit poor drunkards, and point them to the cross of Christ!-John B. Gough.

THE PENNY POST BOX.-FActs, hints, gems, and poETRY.

The Penny Post Box.

SIN BY WHOLESALE WILL BE PUNISHED BY RETAIL.

Men must in Rome do as the Romans do—that is the proverb on which thousands of men have sailed to perdition. And when they have been charged with continuous sinning—with the violation of conscience, with the violation of purity, with the violation of temperance, with the violation of honesty or honour-they have still pleaded, "Yes, we have sinned; but we are not exceptional; we do not stand alone; we are nouns of multitude; all men do these things"—as if the inference was, "Because all men do them, they are not so culpable in us." Men may sin by wholesale; but they are punished by retail. Though hand in hand be joined in iniquity, you may be sure of this: that each man, dissevered from his fellows, will stand up and give account of his iniquity. Though a million men act together in the commission of a transgression, all of that million are not to die together: every separate man is to die by himself, is by himself to go to God, and is by himself to take, not a division as his proportion of the sin, but the whole sin. If a million men sin with you, you do not take a millionth part of the guilt: you take the whole guilt: and so does every man of the million. There were never such dividends in any bank on earth as are apportioned in the court of conscience. There every man not only is a criminal sharer in the transgression which he joins others in committing, but he is responsible for the whole sin, though thousands and millions participate with him in it.

Facts, Hints, Gems, and Poetry.

Fatts.

GREAT BRITAIN is the largest island in Europe, and the most important on the face of the globe.

There are upwards of one hundred and seventy-five islands embraced in the term "British Isles." Some are very small, and have less than half a dozen people living on them.

One island, off Fifeshire, Scotland, called Inch-Colm, has only one inhabitant.

The highest mountain in Scotland is Ben Macdui, in Aberdeenshire4,390 feet.

The highest mountain in Wales is Snowdon-height, 3,570 feet.

The highest mountain in England is Sca-Fell in Cumberland-height, 3,166 feet.

The longest river in England is the Severn. It rises from a spring on the east side of Plinlimmon, proceeds north-east to Shrewsbury, and thence by Worcester and Gloucester to the Bristol Channel. Its extreme length is two hundred and thirty-nine miles.

The largest lake in the British Isles is Lough Neagh, Ireland. It washes the shores of five counties in the province of Ulster, extends twenty miles by twelve, and is celebrated for the encrusting quality of its waters.

The largest county in England is Yorkshire, and the smallest is Rutland.

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