Resignation.

WHEN I can trust my all with God
In trial's fearful hour;
Bow, all resigned, beneath His rod,
And bless His sparing power—
A joy springs up amid distress,
A fountain in the wilderness.

Oh! to be brought to Jesu's feet,
Though sorrows fix me there,
Is still a privilege! and sweet

To meet the Lord in prayer,
Though sighs and tears its language be,
If Christ be nigh, and smile on me!
Bless'd be the sovereign hand that gave!
And bless'd the hand that takes!
Bless'd be the Lord, who smites to save,
And heals the heart He breaks!
Faithful and just are all His ways!
Let heaven and earth proclaim His praise!

Sursum Corda.

Look up, look up with faithful eyes
Beyond the deep eternities-

What canst thou see?

Nay, thou wilt never see aright
While faithless tears bedim thy sight-
Come, answer me.

Should not this link earth's chain hath lost
Make heavenly links, though at thy cost,
More dear to thee?

For where thy hope and treasure is
Laid up in heaven or earth, know this-
There too thy heart shall be.

CECIL MOORE, M.A.

EDINBURGH SUNDAY FREE BREAKFASTS.

IT T is seven o'clock; walk with us up the Canongate, past the house where John Knox lived and prayed, and on towards the Grass-market, consecrated by the ashes of so many martyrs. Look down those narrow closes, and here and there you will see one and another street waif emerging. Follow, up the Cowgate, past the Magdalen Chapelthe birthplace of Presbyterianism, on to the Drill Hall. There all is bustle and hurry. Barefooted mothers and fathers are hastening along, some leading, some carrying, gipsy-like fashion, their ragged "bairns." We go with them into the large square hall (which on other days serves the purpose both of a drill hall and a skating rink), show our tickets, and wend our way to the seats set apart for visitors. They are well filled, and form a striking contrast, in point of dress, at any rate, to the crowd of faces before us. To our right is a platform considerably raised, and occupied by a number of ladies and gentlemen, who have already commenced to sing to their strange audience some of those hymns we used so constantly to hear, and which still linger with us. Scattered over the hall are bands of "Christian workers," including both ladies and gentlemen; the former attending to the women, the

latter to the men. They have been up early; and, if they cared, could tell us that they have occupied from seven till eight o'clock in visiting the lodging and other houses which fill the lower parts of Edinburgh. In front, and filling the larger part of the immense area, seated on plain benches, are nearly a thousand of the lowest and most miserable whom the capital of Scotland contains.

Precisely at eight o'clock the energetic chairman enters, and gives out, according to Scotch custom, a psalm. The vast audience rises to its feet, and the singing is hearty. Prayer, which is very short, is offered, and the breakfast is commenced. Large jugs, together with paper bags, whose contents are eagerly scanned, are distributed to each. These bags have been made up the previous Saturday afternoon by those same ladies we see walking about. That meat and bread has been cut, and those thousand parcels arranged by them. Good warm tea is brought round, and in about twenty minutes, during which the choir sing, the breakfast is over. But this is by no means all. The jugs collected, and hymn-books distributed, an earnest prayer and address follow, closing with a stirring and solemn appeal to embrace the gospel. A parting hymn sung as a solo closes the service, the doors are thrown open, and all wend their way to their desolate homes. We stand looking at them as they go, and we wonder with what feelings they leave. Many-most-go away contented with their breakfast, and extremely glad that they have been able to save twopence or so for the public-house: by them the address is, for the moment, entirely forgotten. But yet we cannot doubt that even by them at some future time, and by some others even now, those words will be remembered, and may be the means of deterring them from crime and vice.

Such then is, we think, a fair account of a "Sunday Free Breakfast;" an institution which is now to be seen in many large cities, and which at the present time is attracting considerable attention. Let us endeavour, as impartially as we can, to estimate its influence on the community it is intended to benefit.

In the first place, it cannot be doubted that this mode of dispensing charity is accompanied with the relief of much distress. To many, Sunday morning is the only day during the week in which they get anything like a breakfast: many, we know, look forward to it, for they have been out of work, and are absolutely unable to pay for ordinary food. We remember the case of a poor man, his wife, and two children, living in one of the most wretched places. Meeting us in the street, he begged us to come and see his wife, who was, he said, very ill. We followed him up five stories to a small room. Though during the month of January, and intensely cold, there was no fire. Entering, we found the poor woman lying in a corner, ill, and the children rolled up in their rags. On inquiring if there was any food in the house, we learned, and we have since discovered the story to be true, that for two days, until that morning (it was Sunday), none of them had tasted anything, and what they had now was the remains of the husband's and children's breakfast obtained at the Drill Hall. We believe it would not be rash to say there are many such instances.

On the other hand, it is quite true that this institution is open to very considerable abuse. To take a case in point. Here is a man who is given to

HE valley of Westerthaul formed part of a district bearing the same desigSWAIN S. nation, which though within the bounds of what was then the Electorate, and is now the Kingdom of Bavaria, was one of those independent baronies, the last remnants of the feudal system, that were still to be found in much-divided Germany. Within his own domain the lord of the soil had sovereign rights and absolute jurisdiction.

In ages gone by the barons of Westerthaul had held high state, and exercised the right of dungeon and gallows in their ancient castle, standing, at the time of our story, on a steep hill side that overlooked the Danube; but the failure of direct heirs, and the claims of collateral relations, had made its ownership a complicated question.

For more than fifty years, according to the long-winded process of German law, the barony had been in litigation between the Electors of Bavaria, the Archdukes of Austria, and the descendants of a certain Count Arnolph von Heklinbach. Great peace had the inhabitants of mountain hamlet and valley farm while that lengthy suit dragged on from court to court and from council to council; there was no baron or his steward to exact tolls and dues, service-days, or recruits for the Elector's army; but now, when men who remembered its commencement in their youth had become the grandfathers of families, a report reached Westerthaul that the final decision Lad been given in favour of Count Arnolph's descendant, who also bore his ancestor's name.

Little was known of him in his newly-acquired barony, except that he was by birth an Austrian, and by faith a Catholic; that he had spent a graceless youth at the Court of Vienna, and raped the usual harvest of infirmity and age before the time; that like many men of similar antecedents, he had given up his latter years to what were called devout austerities, living under the dominion of his confessor, a Jesuit monk, and that of his steward, who happened to be the monk's brother.

This account of their lord was confirmed to the minds of the honest country-people soon after when a coach-and-six, with an sttendant train of horse and footmen, the mode of high-class tavelling in those days, brought to the long-uninhabited castle "The most puissant Arnolph von Heklinbach, Baron of

Westerthaul," a long, lean, worried-looking old man; Ludwig Neiler, his much entrusted steward, a short, stout man, whose face proclaimed to all beholders that temperance had not been the rule of his life; and Brother Lorencius, the Jesuit monk, who had obtained a dispensation to live out of his monastery for the special purpose of directing the baron's conscience.

The arrival caused no joy in the district, where old men remembered the sway of former barons; but the Lord of Westerthaul had to be welcomed by his tenants, or vassals, according to ancient usage. They waited upon him in his castle hall with presents in their hands, and words of homage on their lips, acknowledging him to be the rightful owner of the barony; promising for themselves and their sons to be his true liegemen, to pay his dues in peace and follow his banner in war. The baron received them and their homage with great condescension, declared a remission of tolls and taxes for the last fifty years, during which nobody had power to collect them, and talked in vague terms of the good he intended to do among them.

The tenantry retired with a general impression that their new lord would not be a hard master; but in a short time they found that he was no master at all.

Occupied with the variations of his own broken health, and the superstitious observances which he called devotion, the baron had neither time nor inclination to attend to the affairs of his ample domain. They were left entirely to Ludwig Neiler, and he managed them as might be expected from a man of his habits; sometimes with an over-lax and sometimes with an over-strict hand, which gave rise to endless bickerings between him and the tenants; and things would have been worse but for the interference of Brother Lorencius.

The important office he filled in their lord's establishment, his monastic garb and general appearance, which, unlike that of the steward, spoke of a sober, if not an ascetic life, all contributed to give him great, influence with the peasantry, which he employed to prevent or modify disputes between them and Ludwig, at the same time keeping the latter in regulation as far as it was possible.

The baron's confessor was a busy, but not a bad man; as in many similar cases, the monk was less in fault than the system to which he belonged. His zeal for religion, as it was understood by his church and order, was fervent and sincere; and finding the district in a quiet, undemonstrative state under its old and peaceable priest, he took the earliest opportunity to get up a devout sensation.

The church of Westerthaul was dedicated to St. Armidus, said to have been a Christian martyr in the fifth century, when the land groaned under the terrible rule of the Huns; but it possessed neither picture nor image of its patron, and none was supposed to be extant, till in the crypt of the cathedral of Ulm, which was then undergoing repair, a wooden statue, evidently of medieval workmanship from its rude and lifeless execution, was discovered, and in its hand a scroll, which set forth in barbarous Latin that it was the undoubted image of the most glorious martyr Saint Armidus, and had been carved by the recluse Aldebert, who was under a vow never to see the day, but did his work by the light of a torch which the saint himself

held for him in his cell from All Saints' Day to the Feast of the Nativity. The truth of the tale was vouched for by the signature of two bishops, and the scroll bore date fifteen hundred and seventeen-the very dawn of the Reformation. There was a treasure undreamt of for the church of Westerthaul, and a glory for Brother Lorencius and his noble penitent! By the funds of the one and the energy of the other, the statue and its voucher were part coaxed, part purchased from the see of Ulm, and brought home in such triumph as never had been seen on the Upper Danube before.

Scarcely had a suitable situation been found for its patron saint in the church of Westerthaul when the day appropriated to him in the calendar arrived. It came in the midst of harvest, when the ripe corn demanded the peasants' time and attention; but the hitherto quiet country people were stirred up to a fanatical ferment by this time. From the most distant villages and outlying farms, they crowded with offerings and homage to St. Armidus, otherwise the rudely carved resemblance of a man in ancient dress not very well defined, to which most of them offered prayers, and some expected it to work miracles. Like Philip the Second before the relics of St. Quintin, Lord Arnolph set an example of fervent worship to his tenantry.

Brother Lorencius instituted several new ceremonies in honour of the saint, and also preached a sermon on the subject which powerfully impressed his hearers; yet Brother Lorencius was not satisfied, for one of the most respectable families in the barony had neither worshipped the image nor heard his dis

course.

Martin Kindermann had paid homage and dues to the Lord of Westerthaul, as the feudal tenure of his farm required, kept clear of disputes with the steward, and shown due respect to the confessor whenever he chanced to cross his path. Mindful of the apostle's injunction, "As much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men," he and his had avoided the possibility of offending their Catholic neighbours, and at the same time maintained their own Protestant principles, by keeping well out of the way of St. Armidus and his pageant.

On the day when all the rest of the country-people, including the men whom Martin had engaged to assist in cutting down his crop, laid aside scythe and sickle and thronged the valley church, to pay divine honours to the ill-carved wooden image, the Kindermanns were busy in the harvest-field from morning till night, reaping the corn, binding up the sheaves, and, when their work was done, giving thanks to the Lord of the harvest for that and all the good days they had seen.

Next morning, the engaged men returned; no fault was found regarding their absence; the day passed in peace and good-will between them and the family, and in the evening all sat down together at the well-spread table in Martin's comfortable kitchen. The cloudless light of a full harvest moon was shining without on hill and river, the broad bright blaze of the evening fire flashed up from the hearth within, but every door and window stood open, for the night was warm, and the breeze laden with summer odours was welcome to the tired reapers. The supper was about to begin, Martin had risen to say his accustomed grace, his Catholic assistants were prepared to cross themselves by way of warding off any chance taint of Lutheran heresy, which they had not thought of in other harvest times, when the frightened look of Catharine, who sat nearest to the outer door, caught Martha's attention, and as she inquired "What is it, child?" in walked Brother Lorencius.

"Good evening to your reverence," said Martin with a respectful bow-the sober-minded farmer was not easily surprised. "Will you please to sit down at our poor table, and do us the favour to share our supper?"

"Martin Kindermann," said the monk, standing still in the doorway and leaning on the staff he always carried-it was his method when bent on a striking effect-"I thank you for your hospitable invitation, which I cannot accept because it is a meagre day with me; yet I would willingly sit down and ask a

blessing on your supper, but my spirit is grieved by observing that neither you nor any of your family were at church yesterday when we celebrated the festival of our blessed patron, the most holy Saint Armidus."

"I and my family are Lutherans, your reverence," said Martin.

"Lutherans!" cried the confessor, with a well-got-up start: 66 I did not imagine there were heretics in Westerthaul; " and he almost sunk on the chair which Martha, with kindly deference, had placed for him.

"We are Lutherans, and have been such ever since the Reformation. My forefathers lived and died in that confession, as I hope to do." The small exhibition was lost on Martin. “So your reverence will understand why we were not at church yesterday."

Martin Kindermann," and the monk's voice took a friendly tone, "you are an honest and a pious man, but yet in heathen darkness, owing to the grievous heresy in which you have been brought up. I will be happy to come when occasion serves, and instruct you and your family in the doctrines of the only true church."

"Many thanks to your reverence," said Martin. "No doubt your offer is made out of Christian charity, but I and my family have a sure instructor in the Lutheran Bible, for which my great-great-grandfather made a journey to Wittenberg nearly two hundred years ago."

"It is a perilous instructor for the ignorant," said the monk. "Have you not heard what St. Peter says, that they wrest the Scriptures to their own destruction? Martin Kindermann, I fear that is somewhat your case, seeing you purposely fail in due reverence to those holy men whom the church has canonized, and whose prayers and mediation with God are the chief support of our sinful souls through the trials and temptations of this uncertain life."

"My Bible tells me that there is but one Mediator between God and man, even the man Christ Jesus; in Him I place my confidence in this life and for that to come," said Martin. "His intercession is sufficient: compared with it, the prayers of saints are of no more value than our own. Doubtless they were good and holy men, and as such should be examples to us; but surely they were nothing beyond the angel who said to St. John, when he fell at his feet to worship him, 'See thou do it not; for I also am thy fellow-servant, and of them that keep the words of the prophecy of this book : worship God.'"

Brother Lorencius was well-versed in the theology of his church and the learning of his order, but his acquaintance with the Bible was by no means so intimate or extensive as that of the Lutheran farmer. He knew not what to answer, and at the same time, perceiving from the looks of the men at Martin's table that they thought him worsted in the argument, the human pride which a monk's cowl can no more extinguish than a soldier's helmet received a wound not to be forgotten or forgiven; he rose from his chair, walked out of the door, and after a movement intended for shaking the dust of the farmhouse off his feet, set forth at a rapid pace for the castle.

SABBATH EXERCISES.

NO. I.

Find texts on the mighty power of God, and arrange them to form an acrostic on the word OMNIPOTENT.

NO. II.

Find texts to show that God knows all things, and arrange them to form an acrostic on the word OMNISCIENT,