immeasurably the burden of hard, humble labour will be lightened wherever the heart is pervaded by the feeling, that such toil is the service to which a wise, gracious Father in heaven is pleased to appoint you. Confidence in the considerate care and kindness of God, when He is seen in Christ as a God of love, will go an immense way in making the yoke easy and the burden light. Long hours, hard toil, coarse clothing, humble fare, so far as these are inseparable from your condition, and are not the fruit of your own indolence or folly, will be in a sense transfigured, made radiant with the light of heaven, when they are numbered with the "all things that work together for good." For nearly half his lifetime on earth, the divine Saviour of the world had no better lot. For many a year the morning sun found him toiling in the workshop of Nazareth, fashioning, most likely, tables, and chairs, and ladders, and ploughs for the wild, rough Nazarenes; often weary, often worried, and often, doubtless, confronted with the question whether this was fit work for one that had come to save the world, and whether it was desirable that so many years of vigour should be consumed in so humble toil. But in his case, every incipient murmur of this kind would be silenced by the thought that such was the appointment of Him, whose will, he, as a man, had bound himself to

acquiesce in, and whose work he had undertaken to do. The example of Christ will often present itself to the Christian workman as a motive of commanding power. A French workman, who was guillotined in Paris in the reign of terror, is said to have boasted on the scaffold that the sans-culotte Jesus Christ belonged to the same fraternity as he. The excited and half-frantic democrat had caught a distorted glimpse of the great truth, which in its clearness and beauty can never be far from the view of the Christian workman, that the King of Glory, when he came to earth to suffer for his sins, did at the same time, as a brother-labourer, share his burdens. and endure his toils.

Besides these considerations, there are many others of a more ordinary kind that should be kept before your minds, as contributing to give you success in your work, and to lighten its labour.

In the first place, all experience goes to prove the immense value to the workman of the spirit of steadiness and perseverance. "Persevere," used to be the constant advice of George Stephenson to young workmen. His own wonderful career had been a striking proof of the value of the principle. The son of a poor, workman, and brought up as one of a family of eight persons, on twelve shillings a week, he had PERSEVERED, and through perseverance

he had triumphed. No man ever brushed aside more vigorously or more uniformly the temptations to idleness and listlessness. Improving every spare moment," the gold dust of time," as Young calls it; learning to read long after he had begun to work; using his eyes and his brains on everything that came under his notice, and especially on the machinery with which he worked,—he became at last the founder of our vast railway system, and one of the most honoured and valued men of the country. "The man," he said, "that wished to rise in his trade or profession, must never see any insurmountable difficulties before him. Obstacles might appear to be such; but they must be thrown overboard or conquered." This was the course he had himself pursued. Even the Chat Moss, on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, after it had swallowed up the funds of the company, and whole embankments of earth, and all the ordinary resources of engineers, did not swallow up the perseverance of George Stephenson, and he conquered it. To all who work among machinery, the example and counsels of Stephenson are particularly useful. Mr. Smiles, his biographer, well remarks, that in the improvement of the steam-engine mechanical instinct has carried the day over the efforts of pure intellect. It is not our philosophers in their closets. but our practical

men, such as James Watt, the instrument-maker, and George Stephenson, the working engineer, that have discovered and improved the steam-engine. The remark is full of instruction for practical engineers. More especially if they have that spirit of devout admiration of the wisdom of the Great Artificer that characterized Stephenson! "Whilst walking in the woods, or through the grounds (in his later years), he would arrest the attention of his friends by allusion to some simple object,--such as a leaf, a blade of grass, a bit of bark, a nest of birds, or an ant carrying its eggs across the path,and descant in glowing terms on the creative power of the Divine Mechanician, whose contrivances were so exhaustless and so wonderful. This was a theme upon which he was often accustomed to dwell, in reverential admiration, when in the society of his more intimate friends."

Stephenson was far too wise a man not to see that if he meant to rise as a workman, he must act throughout on the most determined rules of sobriety. When very young, "on the invitation of his master, Ralph Dodds, and an invitation from a master to a workman is not easy to resist, he had been induced occasionally to join him in a forenoon glass of ale in the public-house of the village. But one day, about noon, when Mr. Dodds had got him as far as

E

the public-house door, on his invitation to come

and take a glass o' yel,' Stephenson made a dead stop, and said firmly, 'No, sir, you must excuse me; I have made a resolution to drink no more at this time of day.' And he went back. He desired to retain the character of a steady workman; and the instances of the men about him who had made shipwreck of their character through intemperance, were then, as now, unhappily too frequent."

In the next place, it must be laid down as indispensable to a successful and honourable workman, that he cultivate a habit of strictest truthfulness and integrity. It cannot need to be proved that no man or woman, in any rank of life, is worthy of esteem, whose word cannot be relied on as perfectly true, and whose fingers cannot be trusted as perfectly honest. We would specially urge a high standard of truth and integrity between servants and masters. It is a fact which few will question, that less guilt is often attached to deceit practised towards a master or mistress, than to deceit practised toward a fellowservant. No doubt this practice of deception may be owing, in some instances, to the furious tempers of masters and mistresses, which drive truth away from them; but the practice indicates the leaven of a very wretched feeling the feeling that employers are a kind of natural enemies to their servants; and