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broken, is just like a soul separated from God. Reconciliation to our Maker, fellowship with our Father in heaven, is the first step to solid and enduring improvement. Never let us reverse the order established by Him who spake as never man spake

"Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." The Son of Man has come into the world to seek and to save that which is lost. If you receive Him in faith and love, you get the germ of all salvation, temporal and eternal; if you refuse Him, you turn your back upon all true good.

Moral and spiritual excellence is the highest of all excellence, and it has often been realized, to a remarkable degree, in the persons and families of working men. It was in the person of a working man that "the brightness of God's glory" was manifested among men,- one of whom his enemies were wont to ask, Is not this the carpenter? To this inheritance, the highest of all, not many rich men, not many noble, not many mighty after the desh are called; but the poor have this gospel preached unto them. Here, then, is a path of progress, at least as open to the poor as to the rich, and leading to the very highest rewards. Push up this path, working men and women, and encourage your fellows to do the same; crowns and thrones, true

glory and honour are sure and abundant here! We should esteem ourselves right happy if we could but fire all working people with this ambition; if we could but get them haunted by the vision that haunts us, of humble homes brightened by the hopes that cheer the just; of men and women, amid their toils and cares, drawing water with joy from the wells of salvation; the light of heaven falling on the bare house and making all beautiful; the children dwelling in obedience, confidence, and love; truth and honesty, patience and content, sobriety and selfcontrol, faith and love, gems to which diamonds and pearls are mere rubbish, the treasured heirlooms handed down from parent to child!

When one visits a district inhabited by the working classes, one does not often see many traces of this paradise. Carelessness and ignorance, slovenliness and disorder, scolding parents and ill-trained children, if not actual intemperance and open vice, too often show how far we are from the millennium. It is but here and there one meets with families where neatness and cleanliness, cheerfulness and good temper, piety and peace, present some indications of Paradise regained. But the number of such happy homes would be immensely increased, were the earnest cultivation of a moral and religious spirit more common. And how glorious would be the

condition of the country, if, with but few and distant exceptions, the homes of the working classes should be embellished and enriched by those graces and virtues which have a brighter lustre and a higher value than rubies and diamonds. No sights in nature that our eyes are permitted to look on are more interesting than those which unfold, in one view, its manifold riches and varied beauties. What a world of beauty is there in a fine old wood, illuminated some summer eve by the golden glory of the setting sun! How grand and stately the monarchs of the forest, with their ample domes of living green! But underneath these mighty canopies there repose whole worlds of humbler beauty. The mosses that form so soft a carpet for our feet, the ferns that perch so gracefully in the nooks and clefts of the rocks, the lichens that embroider the stems of the rugged pines, the insects that gleam in the sunshine, the wild-flowers that regale sight and smell together, how beautiful are they all, and how endless and inexhaustible are their beauties! Not less inexhaustible would seem the moral and religious wealth of a country, if every humble home were enriched with temperance, cheerfulness, bright domestic affections, and lively piety; and if these were so grouped and arranged in different families as to produce the beautiful variety we find in the familiar scenes of nature's

wealth. Delightful, too, as those fruits are which may be reaped from godliness in the life that now is, they are trifling compared with the blessings it reserves for the life to come. The enjoyment of a peaceful mind and a happy home, what are they to the favour and blessing of God, and the possession of a heart renewed in His image, and ever drinking from the river of His pleasures?

CHAPTER II.

"AUSPICE CHRISTO."

"It is in Christianity, real practical Christianity, constantly and undeviatingly acted upon, and made as much our guide through life, as the compass is the mariner's in his course through the ocean, that the remedy for the present evils in our social system is to be found."-Small Books on Great Subjects.

WHEN a body of men are setting out on a great and difficult enterprise, it is of the utmost importance to know who are their friends. We wish in this chapter to aid in discovering the true value of one who comes to working people, not only with unbounded offers of friendship, but appealing to the sanction of the highest conceivable authority. Is RELIGION really a friend to working men? Will it make any great difference to their enterprise whether they accept its offer or decline it? Will they move on in their upward course as steadily under the guidance of enlightened reason and good sense alone, as under the guidance of earnest, scriptural Christianity? Is its alliance to be warmly welcomed, or scornfully rejected, or indifferently set aside?

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