live at the Rosary" (such was the name of my residence); "my husband told me yesterday he had found out it was you who had paid our bill at the shop. We both feel that we can never thank you enough for your kindness. You cannot think what a load you have lifted off from us, and I am so much obliged to you, sir, for taking the trouble to say a word about good things to my husband; he would understand you easier than me, for I am a poor hand at making anything plain. He came back last night quite full of what you had said to him; and you must know that while he has always been a steady man and a good husband to me, he has never cared about such things except just going to church on Sundays; but now he don't seem able to forget what you said to him about the debt."

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You are quite welcome," I replied, "to any little service I have rendered, and I shall be truly thankful if the few words I spoke to your husband last night should, with the blessing of God, lead him to think seriously about salvation. It would be a great thing if in his old age he were brought to know and love the Lord Jesus as his Saviour. I gathered from some remarks of your husband last night that you have known the Lord for many years. Am I not right in supposing so?"

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Yes," said the old woman; "it's many years now since I was led as a lost sinner to flee for refuge to the hope set before us in the gospel. It pleased God to take one dear child away after another, till we were left quite childless. I made a sore trouble of it for a long time. I was, as the Bible says, like Rachel, mourning for her children, and refusing to be comforted; for a while I seemed to think more of those words than any others, but I have found out better words than those since then. I have learned to say it was good for me to be afflicted. It was the loss of those dear little ones which led me to God; and would you believe it, sir, though it's near thirty years ago since the last one died, as I am sitting here alone I can at times see their faces as plain as I can see yours now. I have had many troubles since then, but God has my helper in them all."

been

I had a long chat with this old Christian, for such she evidently was. I found from her conversation that with few advantages and little knowledge she had for all these many years, in her own simple way, been witnessing a good confession, and living in the quiet enjoyment of the

grace of God. She told me that ever since she had been led to know and love the Saviour she had been praying for the conversion of her husband; and now she quite believed that God was about to answer prayer, for he certainly, since last night, had been thinking and talking as she had never known him do before.

Promising, in reply to her urgent request, that I would ere long call and have some further talk with her husband, I returned home, cheered by the hope that the simple act of kindness which had been the source of so much comfort to two old people might prove, in the case of one of them, the means of conversion to God.

I called at the cottage again a few days after this, and had a long and very interesting conversation with James White. The idea of being in debt, hopelessly in debt, to God had taken firm hold of his mind, but he had only very confused notions as to the way of salvation. This I pointed out as plainly and simply as I could, confining myself (as is my custom) almost entirely to the selection of suitable passages from God's own word, passages of Scripture which bear testimony to the freedom and fulness of God's forgiving love, and the completeness and sufficiency of its atoning work. Among others I referred to Isaiah xliv. 22: "I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins;" Isa. xliii. 25, “I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins;" Isa. i. 18, "Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." And I particularly directed his attention to that remarkable passage, Col. ii. 13, 14, “And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses; blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross."

I showed him that the law, as to its condemning power, was nailed to the cross along with the crucified Saviour; so that the believer can now point to the obedience of Jesus Christ as the ground of his justification, even as a debtor might bring out a receipted bill to bar all hostile proceedings on the part of a creditor. And especially did I remind the old man that God was "faithful and just to

forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." He listened to these Scriptures with very evident interest, and finding that he could read, though not very easily, I put marks in his Bible so that he might refer to them at leisure. Leaving him with his mind directed to the testimony of God's word, I promised to call again in a few days.

It

On paying my next visit I discovered, to my great gratification, that the old man clearly saw his way. As I entered the cottage he said, with a bright, pleasant smile, “It's all as plain now, sir, as the daylight-it's only a wonder I didn't see it before-that I didn't see it all at once. was that verse you explained to me that did it. I saw sure enough that if the Lord Jesus Christ had been kind enough to blot out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, nailing it to his cross,' I needn't worry any more about that; just as I needn't worry about the old account at the shop, which you was kind enough to pay, and which, through your kindness, I have got the receipted bill of," said the old man, holding up the said bill as a convincing illustration.

I could only very heartily congratulate my aged friend -for so I esteemed him-on having found peace through believing in Jesus, and that he at last had become a partaker of that heavenly grace which had been a comfort to his wife for so many years.

As I took my departure the old woman said, “I have been praying for this a good many years now; and though I have sometimes seemed to be hoping against hope, I have always believed that God would, sooner or later, answer my prayers. We have, under God, a good deal to thank you for, sir."

After this I often paid a visit to the old people, and never without deriving profit myself from that which afforded pleasure to them.

A year or two after I first made their acquaintance they passed away from this life within a few weeks of one another, and were buried in the same grave, "in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ." Since then I seldom see a receipted bill without my thoughts reverting to old James White, and the way in which he, in the gracious and wonderworking providence of God, was led, in his old age, to the Saviour of sinners.

RACHEL'S BIG SCHOLAR.

WANT none of their charity: I want work. I ask no help but what these ten fingers can earn me. They have been the best friends I ever had, and they have kept you, Mary, and the child

The words were almost savagely spoken, one winter's morning, in a Lancashire town. The speaker was Mark Harvey, a weaver out of work-as indeed all the "hands" in the town were then, for the cotton famine was stalking grimly through it. The "Mary" referred to was his wife, on whose pleasant, patient face want was sharply written, and the ugly writing was all the more legible from her courageous efforts to conceal it. The "child' was a girl about twelve years of age, Rachel by name, and their only little one. The three were thinly dressed for such a bitter morning, and the room in which they were assembled looked comfortless in the extreme. One by one, all the articles of furniture had gone to purchase food, and it was now almost bare. A mere ghost of a fire flickered in the grate, and more than once it seemed as if it would be blown out by the violent gusts which roared down the chimney.

Mark, while speaking, was looking moodily from the window at the mill in which he had worked for several years, and earned good wages. It was silent now; and to the weaver's imagination it took the shape of a relentless, cruel monster, laughing at his despair. Many a time had he been wearied and stunned with its whirring machinery; but what a music there would have been in the click of the shuttle now! Many a time had the early morning bell hurried him to work from a sleep which had not been half long and deep enough; but what would not he, and hundreds more, have given to have heard it again clanging out! He had hitherto been enabled comfortably to pay his way, and it was with indescribable bitterness that he found this no longer possible. Years before, this trouble, however severe, would not have been unbearable, for he Icould have taken it to the Lord and could have "cast" it upon him. Now, he could not do that. Contact with secularists," and the reading of sceptical books, had followed upon an act of backsliding, and Mark soon became an avowed sceptic. In his case, as in that of many others,

an irreligious life had been the parent of infidelity. Still, he was a sober and industrious man, a kind husband, and a tender father to his little Rachel, and he never interfered with mother and daughter attending a place of worship.

It was a call from their good minister with offers of assistance which drew from Mark, on the morning on which our little story opens, the words we have heard him utter. The thought of taking charity was most repugnant to him; although there was but a scanty crust in the house, he resolutely refused. Neither would he go to the school to which the minister invited him, where scores of his own class were spending the time in reading, or in receiving instruction by which they are the gainers to this day.

Long after the minister had gone, he stood by the window, seeing the same dismal sights which he had seen for weeks past. Poor workpeople, pinched and haggard, went listlessly by, or stood in groups talking, or watched the bundles of clothing which every day were being brought up from the railway station. Very saddening it was to walk through the town in those days! Yet, there was something so quiet and uncomplaining about the distressed operatives, and they accepted their fate with such patient resignation, that it brought what our Queen has touchingly called "a lump in the throat" of almost every visitor who talked with them.

Turning at length, with a sigh, from the window, Mark, with greater gentleness than could have been expected from the tone in which he had last spoken, said, “Rachel, lass, aren't you going to school to-day?"

The child threw a wistful glance first at her father and then at her mother, and gave no reply.

"What's the matter, child? Are you ill?" he asked, anxiously, and catching hold of her hand.

"Oh, father!" cried the child, with thrilling entreaty, "let us have school at home to-day. Listen how the wind roars; you can't go out, and no good would be done if you did," she added, sorrowfully.

Mark Harvey was astonished at the earnestness with which his little girl had spoken, and now it was his turn to be silent.

"Hear the child read, Mark; that's what she means, said his wife.

"Oh, I have no objection to that, if that is what you