III.

Euphame did meditate on the remarkable choice that was given her, studied it in all aspects in the dreamy summer gloaming, at the solemn midnight hour, amid the din of everyday life; like a wise woman, deliberately counted the cost on each side; saw the Wrichtishouse of the Napiers in its antique dignity and quaint picturesqueness and romantic beauty, with her old mother's admiring eyes; conjured up the loving old woman of the Trinity; foreseeing her daughter Euphame presiding in the Wrichtishouse; contemplated her lads beneath the stately roof-tree that had been their fathers'; and her girls in the recesses of the windows where their great-great-grandmother tired her hair for her knight, and greeted his return from joust and fray, or ordered her company of maidens, or sat secretly reading her big clasped Bible, under the wicked Cardinal's ban.

Then she turned to the row of cottages out by Warristoun, or the tall out-of-date house once more in complete repair, and fully occupied, in one of the wynds. She looked upon men of stiff carriage, in faded uniform, smoking their pipes of peace, taking their pulls at the black jack, and Mark moving among them of an evening, hailing them as cordially as his brother tradesmen, reading a news print for their information, listening to a veteran's history, strange as that wonderful shipwrecked mariner's, or taking his place among the pensioners, and falling reverently in with their humour, when a battered volunteer, like gallant, simple-hearted Parry, rose on a Sabbath evening, and expounded to them in his straightforward, blunt, but earnest fashion, his passage of Scripture, and prayed a self-taught or rather heaven-taught camp prayer.

Euphame gazed anew, and perceived old women, tidy old women, in the russet gowns still in use, the blue dyed aprons, the snowy mutches, the tartan screens, with their bickers of porridge, their toasts of cheese or bacon, their cosy gossip, their confidential cracks, and one with a glad young visitant in the person of a slip of a blooming daughter or a bouncing fellow of a son, and another with a purring cat on her shoulder, and a flower at her elbow, and a third-poorest of all-with a grand relation at a cool distance. She and Jenny were asking them if they were comfortable, and consulting with them on the disposal of their yarn and their hose, and little Euphame, in and out, here and there, dropping little packets of snuff, sugar-candy, liquorice, and bunches of mint, sage, and marjoram.

Or, again, it was a gentler Mistress Jonet, and a new edition of Euphame's young John Highlandman, and a little Euphame or two, immeasurably poor, without a proud father or tender mother, sporting heedlessly among their uncouth woolly lambkins and wooden carts, about the homely but kind matron's knee..

Euphame could hesitate no longer. The Lord had lent her a goodly store. Should she not at last pay her vow to the Lord? as she was an older, nobler, richer, wiser woman, and her youthful vow was so much the nobler, richer, wiser, too.

"Mark, we are very happy as we are, why need we seek an alteration in our lot, provoking temptation, malice, and envy? We can provide for the bairns in their ain degree-the Lord bless them and keep them !—and if it be good for them, preserve for them as green pastures and still waters as those in which they have been reared. Can we ask more, my dear man, Mark? Let us take our spare gear, and build not a brawer and bonnier house for ourselves, but a refuge for them that are ready to perish, and then we shall still be following the Lord, preparing for immortality and not time, rearing a heavenly and not an earthly habitation which we shall never be wae to quit, for we ken He shall yet build it in perfection, till it fill the whole earth."

"Be it so, lass; I confess I am clean of your mind, and blythe will we be laying the foundation, blyther than if we had been deserting our old home, our tradesman's place, which we have tried not to disparage, and cannot consent to abandon."

So Mark Crichton and Euphame lived and died the heads of a tradesman's household, the first odour of esteem, love, and respect which their virtues excited, never dissipated by restless change and craving effort-old friends about them in their prime, old friends when Mark and Euphame were beyond the three-score and ten, and these watchers and attendants were lusty and vigorous, standing weeping softly, and praising God when the last quivering breath went out. Proud as tradesmen might have been of the goldsmith and his wife, they might have been still prouder in their own persons, but that pride was a rank weed to them, of their great yet modest charities. Mark and Euphame had never a single difference about these endowments, nor, indeed, their children after them, who forgot the Wrichtishouse (long vanished), but who loved to remember their father's scarred veterans, their mother's deaf old wives, their little sister Euphame's wide-mouthed, shock-headed fostersisters-only in one respect Euphame would name her men, women, and children, "My Lady Somer ville's poor;" but Mark on his tongue and in his will persisted in giving them another title, "Euphame's People," "My dear wife, Euphame Napier's People."

The chronicle is ended, and the philosophy of hospitals is scarcely touched. To the good and thoughtful, like Euphame and Mark, the savour of life unto life, to the light and unstable like Adie and Katie, as well as to the wicked, too often the source of death unto death. Still the old bands of youths and maidens traverse the busy streets in formal lines; still they are quartered

like young soldiers in their barracks. Still the servants of the great Master work on in this field of His harvest, and as benevolence grows rosier and brighter, and the sun rises higher and higher overhead, we are fain to hope and pray that the proportion of the Marks and Euphames may increase day by day.

Then farewell to Euphame, for she is rapidly fading into a ghost of the past; and as she glides out of sight, we catch the last glimpse of the waiting-woman and the tradesman's wife of more than a century come and gone, but we believe such as she the saint for eternity. She holds in her hand her diamond-rose, and sheds behind her the glittering leaves as she goes; but she bears away in an everlasting crown on her head, the red and white roses of love human and love divine.

THE END.

GOOD WORDS FOR EVERY DAY IN THE YEAR.

OCTOBER 23.

They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea."-Isa. xi. 9.

This is no mere dream; it is a real prophecy of a real state of things yet to be revealed, whether we behold it or not. How difficult it is for our earthly natures to conceive the idea of a world of perfect holiness! If we do not love and long after holiness here, the thought of such a hereafter can give us no feelings but those of dislike and dread. I would pray, "O God, make me see the beauty of Thy holy mountain! It is high, I cannot attain unto it!" I would look on the holiness of Jesus to learn what holiness is; for none but he ever displayed perfect purity on earth; and it is said of those who shall dwell with Him in that world of glory, that they shall be like Him, for they shall see Him as He is. "They shall not hurt nor destroy,"-ah, how unlike this world, so full of wars, and fightings, and tumults! "The earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord," -how unlike its present half heathen state; how unlike our own state of imperfect knowledge and still more

imperfect practice. Be it mine to look forward and long

for that blessed time, for the hope of holiness is a means of holiness; "every one that hath this hope in him, purifieth himself even as he is pure."

"To an inheritance divine,

He taught our hearts to rise; 'Tis uncorrupted, undefiled, Unfading in the skies."

OCTOBER 24.

"Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will show thee."-GEN. xii. 1. By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went."-HEB. xi. 8. "They which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham."-GAL. iii. 7.

Think of our father Abraham in his grand simplicity of faith! Picture him to the mind, wandering away with his whole family and long train of flocks and herds-the richest of all the men of his land-over the great wide plains of the East, which remain the same to this day;

leaving his country, his kindred, his father's house, not to seek for himself fairer pastures or a fixed abode, but in simple obedience to the voice that called him," he he deserve the title of the Father of the Faithful! Think, went out, not knowing whither he went." Well does too, how different was the food which sustained his spiritual life from ours; he had no church, no sacraments, no Bible, no long line of witnesses to the truth saints (or very few and far between) with whom to hold to encourage him in the records of the past, no living sweet counsel; his life of faith was all faith, strong, simple, and alone with God, hearing His voice as He revealed Himself by the name of God Almighty, and ever believing and obeying, so that "he was called the Friend of God." Let us look at him and learn what seed, and heirs according to the promise.". faith is; if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's

OCTOBER 25. ...

"Without me ye can do nothing."-JOHN xv. 5. Do we truly believe those words of Jesus? Do we act as if we believed them? His own apostles believed them," His name, through faith in His name," was the secret by which they worked wonders, and we never read that it failed them. Jesus is the same now as then, and His people are the same now as then; they are as weak as ever, and He is as strong and as willing to be their strength if they but knew and believed this, and were willing to abide in Him." The man the man of God can do nothing for God of himself; of the world does many things in his own strength, but he is weak at the beginning of his Christian course, and weak all the way through, if left alone; but he need never be weak with such a Saviour to go to, such promises to plead, such a prayer-hearing God to Let us bind this word of warning supply all his wants. to our hearts, to make us continually sensible of our own weakness, and if, according to His own word, we abide in Him, and He in us, we shall through His grace be enabled to say with St. Paul, "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me."

"Man's wisdom is to seek

His strength in God alone, And ev'n an angel would be weak Who trusted in his own."

OCTOBER 26.

"When the Lord shall build up Zion, he shall appear in his glory."-Ps. cii. 16.

the condition of the Church, the true Zion. They see iniquity abound, and the love of many wax cold; the kingdom of God does not seem to advance as they would have it do, and adversaries, both from within and from without, hinder its progress; they see glorious things spoken of the city of God in holy prophecy, but still the fulfilment lingers; "Zion is a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation!" When such thoughts oppress our hearts, as they must sometimes do the hearts of all who long for the advancement of God's kingdom upon earth, let us think of the sure promise, and remember that it is We sigh for the Lord's own work to build up Zion. more efficient ministers, more zealous and more numerous missionaries: well, but it is the Lord who shall build up Zion, and He will do it in His own good time and in His own way; and when He does the work "He shall appear in His glory," and we shall know that He has done all things well. Zion's prosperity is not dearer to us than it is to Zion's Lord; and the day will come, which it should cheer our hearts to think of, when He will "present to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, but holy and with. out blemish."

The servants of God are often cast down in looking at

"What though the gates of hell withstood,
Yet must this building rise;
'Tis thine own work, Almighty God,
And wondrous in our eyes.'

OCTOBER 27.

"The glorious majesty of his kingdom."—

Ps. cxlv. 12.

Let me raise my thoughts from the earth and meditate on this great subject. Let me think of the King and His kingdom! How wonderful He is in His majesty, how infinite and unsearchable in His wisdom, how marvellous in His condescension that he permits even such as me to approach His mercy-seat and to call Him, Abba, Father! If my eye could pierce the veil of blue firmament that hides from this world the glories of His heavenly temple, I would see such a light as "no man can approach unto," such a vision of splendour as made Isaiah cry, "Woe is me for I am undone !" It is in mercy and pity for our weakness that this "glorious majesty of His kingdom" is concealed from us; but let us not forget its existence, nor cease to remember, when we draw near to our God, that He sits upon a throne before which the seraphim cover their faces with their wings. He has shown us in another way the glorious majesty of His kingdom. He has translated us into it; He has brought into it those who were rebels against His government, making them meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light. He has given life to the dead, pardon to the guilty, holiness to the unholy, salvation to the lost. "Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen."

OCTOBER 28.

"Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run that ye may obtain."-1 COR. ix. 24. The Christian life is compared to a race, but, oh, how indolent are too many of the runners! How languid are their efforts compared with the intense energy of many who are striving for the veriest trifles! Do we not see every nerve strained, every thought bent on winning the prize in the literal race? while in the race for riches, and the pursuit of fame, fashion, or ambition, the competitors risk life itself to gain their end, putting to shame the feeble efforts of many who seek to obtain not a corruptible but an incorruptible crown. May I be roused to energy by the sight of these runners in the race of life, and learn something of what the apostle meant when he said, "So run that ye may obtain." May I run in the right path; many fall into fatal error here. May I run with a right spirit, and above all, may I run "looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our Faith."

"Oh, help each other, hasten on,

Behold, the goal is nigh at hand;
The battle-field will soon be won,

Your King shall soon before you stand;

To calmest rest he leads you now,

And sets His crown upon your brow-Press on!"

for ever.

OCTOBER 29.

"They that trust in the Lord shall be as Mount Zion, which cannot be removed, but abideth As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about his people from henceforth, even for ever."-Ps. cxxv. 1, 2.

A glance at a map or good picture of Jerusalem will show the beauty and force of this illustration; it will city, and will explain to us how it stands, not in a valley show the girdle of heights which encompass the chosen surrounded by mountains, but upon a hill, surrounded indeed, but separated from its mountain defences by a circle of deep ravines, so that it may be called with truth, " a city set upon a hill which cannot be hid." And thus are the people who trust in the Lord set apart, and set upon a hill, so that they cannot be hid, and

yet surrounded by the Lord Himself as their defence and shelter, their wall of fire and glory in the midst of them! How safe they are! How tenderly are they cared for Jerusalem still stands surrounded by her mountains, to show how the Lord is round about His people; but the heaps of ruins which speak of her fall, and of God's awful judgments, are a solemn voice of warning to those who forsake the God of their salvation, and cease to trust in Him who alone can sustain them. "And who art thou that mournest me,'

Replies the ruin gray,

'And fear'st not rather that thyself
Mayst prove a castaway?'

"I am a dry and withered branch,
My place is given to thee;
But wo to every barren graft
Of the wild live-tree!'"

OCTOBER 30.

"For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory."-2 Cor. iv. 17. Let us place our sorrows and sufferings, pains and fears, into this balance; weigh them against the "far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory," and then say whether we would exchange our portion as Christian sufferers for the best portion the world can give its children? But we can weigh them aright only when we are enabled" to look, not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal." It is the thought of eternity that enables us to take a just view of present and future refuse to look beyond them; yet this is the true way to things. Our sufferings may so oppress us that we may get above them, and when we do so by the exercise of lively faith, we shall perceive how exceeding great is that weight of glory compared with which even the heaviest afflictions are light. Lord, strengthen our faith, and animate our hope, that we may look beyond things temporal to the unseen glories of the things which

are eternal.

"What faith rejoices to behold,

We long and pant to see, We would be absent from the flesh, And present, Lord, with Thee !"

OCTOBER 31.

"This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them; and their sins and iniquities will I remember no more."-HEB. X. 16, 17.

How wonderful is the covenant under which Thou hast placed me, O my God! How marvellous is the revelation of Thy character in such a covenant! Here it is all grace-free, rich, abounding grace! Thy holy law, which man could never keep, Thou Thyself wilt plant in his heart and write in his mind, and those sins and iniquities which caused Thee to hide Thy face from him, Thou wilt remember no more! It is when such a word as this is spoken to the mourning penitent sinner that he learns to hate his sin; he cries, Thou wilt remember my sins no more, but can I forget them, or cease to hate them, O my Father? Can I forget that in this better covenant, or fail to entreat Thee to write they were blotted out by the shed blood of Thine own dear Son? Can I cease to admire Thy love displayed it continually on my heart?

"With you a covenant I will make,
That ever shall endure;

The hope that gladdened David's heart,
My mercy hath made sure."

"

THE railway from Hanover to Harburg runs through a dull, uniform level, where one look from the carriage window reveals the same scenery as another-fields of thin grass, clumps of trees, a sandy soil ploughed lightly in narrow furrows, and occasional tracts of moor or down. However, railway judgment is here manifestly in error; for many a choice little bit of landscape lies a few miles off on either side, and about two hours from Hanover, there is a wide range of country known as the Lüneburger Heath, with a peculiar wild beauty of its own, and proverbial for the strong home-love of its peasantry. It is like neither heath, nor moor, nor down of ours. Sometimes the rich purple bloom rolls away, unbroken for miles, in long swelling lines, sometimes the path

| leads through a wood, and then again the wood opens to let in reaches of bright green meadow; or the heath sinks suddenly down into a quiet valley, with meadows and patches of timber, and a clear stream winding through it, or it stops at the edge of a rocky path, or the ground rises rapidly up to an eminence, crowned with huge and knotty oaks, and then the heath stretches on again, fold after fold of purple glorious with light and shadow from the broad sky above. There is not a sound, nor a bird on the wing; yet it is not lonely but solemn and still, the sense of an almost personal companionship, and a touch of that mystery and joy of nature that the broad, free, silent spaces bring. The country is thinly peopled, and almost entirely by small yeomen and peasants.

They live, for the most part, in little scattered hamlets that are perched upon the hilly parts, and clustered round with trees, and overlook the tillage grounds which extend to some distance from them into the heath. Sometimes, instead of these clearings, on which the stranger stumbles with much suddenness and surprise, and which are often exceedingly picturesque in situation, there is a little village lying down in the valley, and with woods, and water, and meadows so charmingly disposed about it, as to make one think it had been done for effect. The people are as characteristic as their country. They retain more of the old Saxon element than perhaps will be found elsewhere in Germany; they have a sturdy, independent, selfreliant spirit, a very marked family as distinguished from the common continental social life, much of the primitive English strength and honesty, and a local attachment as powerful as that of a Highlander or a Swiss.

One of these villages, called Hermannsburg, may be taken for a picture of the rest. It consists of an irregular street of pretty cottages, divided into two parts by the little river Oerze, well sheltered by noble trees, and crowned by the wooden spire of its church. The cottages lie far apart, with their gardens between, little by-paths running from one to the other. Every house has the galloping horse of the old Saxons, or at least his head, perched upon the gable; within there is roominess and comfort, and that indefinable homeliness which is so rare out of Great Britain. In this particular village there are none of those miserable hovels at the outskirts that offend the eye elsewhere, there are no beggars, no rough or vagrant loungers about the streets, nor any ragged children toddling out of sunk doorways to hunt up the stranger. So far, however, it is exceptional, and owes its immunity to a more powerful agency than local cha

racter.

About twelve years ago a new clergyman came to the parish, and it is since then that people have begun to talk of the Lüneburger Heath. He was a Hermannsburger himself, and the son of its former pastor. Bred upon the Heath, it seems to have exerted the same influence over him as over the rest, and his character has all the freedom, sturdiness, and power of self-containment of the district, as well as other traits as marked. When a boy his great pleasure was to roam over the downs, and through the deep woods, Tacitus in hand, and to read his vivid descriptions of the old German tribes, and their ways, recalling about him on the spot every feature of the past. Many stories are told of his independence when a student, and even as a candidat, and the difficulty he sometimes got into with professors and ecclesiastical boards, by his bold and to him necessary selfassertion. He was a hard reader, and an honest and steady thinker, a man to succeed and be held in esteem, and to whom university life must have been dear; but, as he says, "I am a Lüneburger, body and soul, and there is not a country in the world that I would put before the Lüneburger Heath; and next to being a Lüneburger, I am a Hermannsburger, and I hold that Hermannsburg is the best and prettiest village in the Heath." And so before his father died, he came to assist him

in his cure. It was only a year or two, when, in 1848, he was left alone. From this time he entered with all his heart on the singular labours which have occupied him incessantly ever since. He would have made an admirable antiquarian rector in England. A book-worm by nature, his delight is to root out the moth-eaten parchments of some village church, and pore through them for a hint of the old doings in his parish, or any parish in the district. He is indefatigable in his exhumations, and there is now scarcely a spot with which he has not connected some story out of the ninth and tenth centuries. He would also have made, like most antiquarians, an excellent churchman. His church is as dear and sacred to him as his mother; he lives for its order and purity; he loves to restore its ancient old usages, such as the currende, or singing-boys, who are trained in the village school, and go round the neighbourhood chanting Christmas and Easter hymns at every house. A scholar and a man of courtesy and refinement, he also considers himself one of the people, never raises himself above their capacity, speaks with them, and even preaches in their own dialect, and lives among them as a brother or a father. He is an original thinker and an eloquent speaker; eloquent by saying the true thing in the right phrases, and with the proper feeling, not by words, but by simplicity and truth. And he has a healthy and overflowing humour that is quite irrepressible, delightfully quaint, naïve, and shrewd. I mention these traits, because they help one to a better understanding of his work, of the self-sacrifice and qualifications that it required. But that which alone qualified him for it in any fit sense, was his exceeding faith in God. The nearness and perfect confidence of his relation to God; the character of his spiritual intercourse, which is a perpetual and most deep communion with Jesus; the profoundness and humility of his spiritual knowledge; the utter earnestness and consecration of the man; and the real strength and beauty of his life. Like any other child of God, he has become a power in the world, by giving himself up to the power of God; for in proportion as Christ is in the believer, so is He the power of God in him.

He found the village and the neighbourhood very different from what they are now. There was always considerable orthodoxy in Hanover, but it was orthodoxy of the church, and not of the Spirit : it was quite as powerless for good, and quite as hurtful to the people, as Rationalism, which was dominant elsewhere. It was only one phase of the common death that had overspread Germany. When the ministry is frigid and careless, it is natural that the people will be frigid and careless, and live without much thought, but how to make the best of the world that lies next them. There is little Christian life in Hanover even yet; it may be imagined what it was twenty years ago. Like a true pastor, Mr. Harms recognised that his first duty lay within his own parish, and it was there he sought for Christian reform. Two disadvantages told against him. That it was his native parish is not so great a hindrance in Germany as it is regarded elsewhere; pastorates that remain in the family as many as four or five generations are not uncommon, and are regarded as strengthening the