THE CHURCH MOUSE.

A LITTLE mouse once lived in a church in

home was right under the organ.

city. His

Mouse was an aristocratic little creature; he had no more affinity with the vulgar mice who inhabit corn-barns and granaries than the Prince of Wales with a chimney-sweep.

The grand roar of the organ had been his lullaby; he had looked through stained glass windows all his life, and the bonnets which came there to worship every Sunday were made by the most fashionable milliners in

You have often heard the expression, "As poor as a church mouse;" but this one was as plump as a Christmas turkey, and I will tell you why. Just outside the iron railing in front of the church an old woman kept a fruit and candy stall.

Fair or foul, there she sat under her umbrella-for in fair weather it shielded her from the sun, and in foul it sheltered her from the rain. Mouse supposed this stall was placed there on purpose for him, so he helped himself freely to anything he fancied.

Sometimes the old woman saw him, and aimed a blow at him with her umbrella, which made him very indignant, and he wondered the police did not arrest her for assault and battery, as well as for being a thief.

Being so fat and well fed, I don't see why he should have had such a habit of gnawing things which were not at all nourishing. He would gnaw the organ, the velvet prayer books, the pulpit, and even the great Bible itself.

The sexton tried every means to catch him he set traps, he brought in a cat, and at last he went so far as to set a price on his head. He actually offered a sixpence to any boy who would bring him that mouse, dead or alive.

It was all in vain. Mouse grew bolder and bolder. One day he got into the sleeve of the minister's surplice, which was a very wicked and outrageous thing indeed.

Then he skipped away and hid himself in the folds of a lady's dress. She shook her dress, almost shrieking with fright. A gentleman pulled out his handkerchief, and out popped mouse with it. He then disappeared, no one knew where, but if a bit of gauze or ribbon fluttered in the summer breeze, the owner imagined the mouse was at the bottom of it.

POETRY.

The churchwarden had, as usual, settled himself to sleep as soon as the sermon commenced-a habit which annoyed the minister a great deal. His head, which was rather bald, was bent forward on his breast, so that the sunbeams, coming through the stained window, cast flickering rays of red and blue upon it. Mouse, who bad been all this time roaming about the church, spied this beautiful shining object, and felt a desire to know what it was.

To scramble to the gentleman's shoulder, and thence to the top of his head, was the work of a moment. There he sat upright, facing the pulpit, then whisked suddenly about and faced the audience.

A smile passed from one face to another, and some little boys and girls giggled outright. Then the churchwarden's wife, very much ashamed, poked her husband with her parasol. He awoke with a start, bringing his head up suddenly, and the mouse scampered away.

The sexton started in pursuit of him as soon as the benediction was pronounced, but the minister begged him to spare its life, saying it had done what he had never been able to do with his best sermons-it had kept the congregation awake through the entire service.

The churchwarden was never known to sleep in church again, even on the hottest summer day; or, if he fell into a doze, he would wake with a start, and clap his hand to his head. Mouse lived on to a grey old age.

Poetry.

ALL IS WELL.

HER window opens to the bay,
On glistening light or misty gray,
And there, at dawn and set of day,
In prayer she kneels !

"Dear Lord!" she saith, " To many a home,

From wind and wave the wanderers come;

I only see the tossing foam

Of stranger keels.

ANECDOTES AND SELECTIONS.

Anecdotes and Selections.

CHRISTIAN EFFORT.-God is not to be served by child's play, or sham work with no toil in it. I believe with all my heart in the Spirit of God; but I do not believe in human idleness. Celestial power uses human effort. The Spirit of God usually works most where we work most. With regard to our own salvation, the meritorious part of that is finished for us; but still in vain it is written, "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling;" and the reason given is, "For it is God which worketh in you, both to will and to do of His good pleasure. We work because God works: to loiter because God works is wicked reasoning. Do not tell me that because God will fulfil His own purposes, therefore His people may go to sleep, for it never was His purpose to lull His people to slumber; but His great design is the education of an intelligent host of co-workers with Himself. The Lord has made us and ordained us that we in our measure may work together with Him. It is His office to bless our efforts; but it is at once our privilege and our duty, each one of us, to yield ourselves as the instruments of the Divine purpose. Let but men be prepared to labour, and God is prepared to bless their labour, for is it not written, "Paul planteth, and Apollos watereth?" And what happens? "God giveth the increase." He seldom denies the increase where there is a planting Paul and a watering Apollos. Earnest efforts and believing dependence upon God are sure to be attended with a blessing.

JOHN MILTON.--Language is too imperfect to convey my own conception of this lofty, and vestal, and stately soul. He was, to my mind, one of the very purest, one of the very sublimest of mortal men; from eighteen Christian centuries the noblest impersonation of Christian manhood-patriot, saint, and sage. I imagine him sometimes armed with that "fiery whip" where with he threatened tyrannous kings and prelatical impostors, and with such an eye as struck Gehazzi with leprosy and Simon Magus with a curse, and sometimes in his softer and gentler moods of tenderness and hope. Shakspeare may have been the greater poet, but if he and Milton were now to enter this room in mortal form, I should bow to Milton first; for never, I think, lived any man with a more intense and glowing conviction that the soul of inan is an emanation from the breath of God, and that "the love of God is a fire sent from heaven to be kept alive upon the altar of our hearts; and that, for the dignity of God's image upon him, a man should dread, more even than the censure of others, the reflection of his own severe and modest eye upon himself." O, that many and many, especially of our youths, were like him-religious without austerity, learned without pedantry, pure though passionate, graceful yet strong. If it were so, this England of ours would have a brighter future destiny.-Gentlemen's Magazine.

ANECDOTES AND SELECTIONS.

FAITH AND WORKS.-Two gentlemen were one day crossing the river in a ferry-boat. A dispute about faith and works arose, one saying that good works were of small importance, and that faith was every thing, the other asserting the contrary. Not being able to convince each other, the ferryman, an enlightened Christian, asked permission to give his opinion. Consent being granted, he said, "I hold in my hands two oars. That in my right hand I call 'faith,' the other, in my left, works.' Now, gentlemen, please to observe, I pull the oar of faith, and pull that alone. See! the boat goes round and round, and the boat makes no progress. I do the same with the oar of works, and with a precisely similar result-no advance. Mark! I pull both together, we go on apace, and in a very few minutes we shall be at our landing-place. So, in my humble opinion," he added, "faith without works, or works without faith, will not suffice. Let there be both, and the haven of eternal rest is sure to be reached." As the flower is before the fruit, so is faith before good works. Faith is the parent of works, and the children will bear a resemblance to the parent. It is not enough that the inward works of a clock are well constructed, and also the dial-plate and hands; the one must act on the other, the works must regulate the movements of the hands. Archbishop Whately.

LINGERING CORRUPTION.—I do not affirm that the most advanced saint is altogether free from the bondage of sin. No. The holiest believer carries that about with him which painfully reminds him of his old condition. I have read of brave, stout captives who had escaped from prison, but who brought away with them, in swollen joints or festering wounds, the marks and injuries of the cruel fetters. And do not old sins continue to hang about a man, even after grace has delivered him from their dominant power? Who does not need every day and hour to resort to the fountain of cleansing, and wash his heart in the blood of Christ, oftener than he washes his hands in water? We need to be renewed day by day; converted as it were, not once or twice, but every day. Surely the happiness of a child of God lies mainly in this—that sin, though it remains within his heart, has ceased to reign there, and that, made perfect at length in holiness, he shall enter by the dismal gate of death into the full and glorious liberty of the children of God.-Dr. Guthrie.

ASCENDING MONT BLANC.-Mr. S. H. Leathe last year ascended to the top of Mont Blanc. He was two days in accomplishing the feat, having been driven back the first day to a point half way up the mountain by a blinding snow storm. He thus describes his sensations when on the topmost peak:-"My first feeling was disappointment that it was not higher. I had not realized we were so near the top until within ten steps of the highest point. I stood for a few minutes gazing at the magnificent view spread out on all sides. All fatigue was forgotten in the excitement; in fact, I never felt better in my