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Dr. Doldrums was somehow to blame for the smoky chimney and the bedraggled room, and Dr. Doldrums so received it, and felt sensibly aggrieved.

"At any rate," he said, pulling out his watch with a nervous jerk, "it's time Bridget brought in breakfast. Half-past eight, true as I live it ought to have been on the table half an hour ago," and the doctor gave a violent pull at the bell-rope. "There's no use pulling that way," said his wife; "Bridget never comes till she gets ready, and she's but just this moment come downstairs. Bridget never does get up, and never will, till cook has half got breakfast ready, and we always have to wait for her to set the things on." "But why do you let her lie abed 80" said Dr. Doldrums; "you ought not to permit it."

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"I should like to know how I am to help it," said Mrs. Doldrums. Bridget takes so many airs on herself that there is no living, and she won't hear a word from me." "I should make her hear a word," aid Dr. Doldrums. "It's your usiness to control your servants, ny dear, and there's no use in shirkng it," said the doctor, rejoicing in having got the staff into his own hands, and proceeding to administer eproof on his side.

"Servants, my dear, are what their nistress makes them," he said, Towing calm and didactic in his urn. "Now, there's Mrs. Upandrest always has her girls up, and breakfast on the table by seven o'clock. She has no difficulty about it. It's just your habit of lying in bed in the mornings, my dear. A house never can be properly manged, where the mistress is not up arly and attending to her household

oncerns."

"My dear, you don't know anying about it," flashed Mrs. Dolrums. "Men are always talking and ictating; but I'd like to see them y and manage a family."

"Well, I could manage a family if it were my business," persisted the doctor.

"Oh, I dare say. I'd like to see you talking to Bridget, for instance. She'd be off before noon."

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Well, she should be off, then," said the doctor resolutely; "and I'd get somebody that should attend to her duties."

"Yes, true enough; you'd send the girls flying, just as Mrs. Upanddrest does. There is a stream of girls going and coming through the house the whole time; she never keeps a girl more than a month. I tell you, girls know their power; and they won't stay in places where they are hauled up before light, and ordered about as Mrs. Upanddrest does. They won't stand it."

"It's all from want of proper attention of the mistress of the household," said Dr. Doldrums, resolutely. My dear, you are unreasonable," said Mrs. Doldrums.

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"I am only telling you the truth, my dear," said Dr. Doldrums.

By this time both parties were as thoroughly uncomfortable as heart could wish, and Dr. Doldrums gave. another twitch at the bell, which brought down, not Biddy, but the bell-rope.

"I hope you feel better now," " said Mrs. Doldrums, with sarcastic acrimony. "We shall have to have the bell-hanger now, as well as the ma

son.

The upshot of the matter was that Dr. and Mrs. Doldrums separated that morning in a mood of mind thoroughly uncomfortable.

They were two perfectly sincere Christians, who would either of them have gone to the stake for their religion; and loved each other so truly that, if need were, either one of them would have shed blood and laid down life for the other; and yet the frame of mind in which they parted for the day was neither Christian nor loving.

The March winds, the blues, the

smoky chimney, the tidings of falling stocks, had quite got the victory over the splendid vision of the last evening's prayer-meeting; all the heavenly fragrance and aroma were gone.

He

The doctor was turning a corner, going to his business, when a feeble, piping voice arrested him. turned, and saw the thin, wan face of poor Jerry, a miserable cripple, who, having lost both legs, was compelled to scuff about the world on a much lower level than the majority of his brethren. Jerry was a pensioner on the alms of the church, and a constant attendant at prayermeetings.

"I wanted to thank you for what you said to us last night at prayermeeting," said Jerry; "it made me happy all night. Ő doctor, what a blessed thing it is to be a Christian! You made me realize it as I never did before. You made me feel that it's no matter what happens to us here, so long as nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. You see, doctor, I have such pains at nights that I can't sleep much, and sometimes I've been kind o' tempted to murmur; and then thinkin' what a poor cripple I am, and kind o' wishin' things was with me as they used to be, is a great temptation; but you nelped me to get over it. O doctor, I wish I had your faith."

The doctor felt heartily ashamed of himself.

"Jerry," he said, "you don't know me;" and the doctor, sitting down by Jerry on the steps of the Exmouth chapel, which happened to be near by, made a clean breast of it, and told him all his frailty.

"Well, doctor," said Jerry, "you see the difference between you and me is, you've got so much more of the world. Now I ain't got anything. I'm fallen so low I can't go. no lower, and this great and precious promise is all I have left; and

so it's all I think of, and the more I think of it the more it grows on me. I'm all alone, old and poor and crip pled, but Christ gives me this great, glorious hope, and nothing can take it away, and I think of it day and night. And, doctor, I really don't know but it's worth losing all, as I have, just to know what it is."

The doctor pondered as he went that day on his business.

What if the words of Jerry were true? What if there were such joy, such a glory possible in his Christian life, that to attain it would be worth the loss of all things? Was there not One who spoke of a pear! so precious that a man might sell all that he had to be possessed of it? Why, then, did he tremble and shiver at even an intimation of uncertainty in his worldly goods, when this great treasure, this wonderful joy, was yet in his power—was yet his own?

"Is there truth in what I have been saying?" said he to himself. "Is there anything in it? If there is anything, is there not everything, and should it not be the thought that swallows up all others?"

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Then it struck him that the Bible certainly was written in such a way that its most glorious promises and most triumphant hopes people in trouble. "Count it all joy when ye fall into divers afflictions" seemed, as he remembered it, to be about the tenor of the New Testa ment. "And yet," he said to himself, "I quake at the mere distant shadows of an affliction, and am utterly unmanned at the thought of losing treasures which I profess to believe of only secondary value, while yet I have and hold that glori ous hope of a treasure that is more than heart can ask or think, and is eternal."

Whether the doctor succeeded in making his future life square with his belief, is yet to the seen.

WHAT IS A CHRISTIAN?

BY THE REV. HENRY WARD BEECHER.

I THINK there are a great many persons who are more anxious to know whether they have the evidence of conversion, than to know whether they are living a Christian life. There are a great many persons who have thought upon thought, anxious thoughts, prayerful thoughts, as to whether the great change has passed upon them; whether they are deceived; whether or not they may consider themselves disciples of Christ; whether they have a right to the ordinances and membership of the Christian church; whether they have a right to believe that they shall finally be saved. These thoughts are a great deal more in their minds than the thought, "Am I living the Christian life? Am I performing, day by day, Christian duties?

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A great many persons wait. They feel as though to perform Christian duties before they are Christians would be a kind of insincerity-a sort of wrong done. "If I were a Christian," they say, "I would pray; but then, I am not. If I were a Christian, of course I should not get angry as I do now? If I were a Christian, I should not do many things that I now do." They stand and look upon all the O proprieties of Christian life, and say, "As soon as I am converted I am going to take all these things up.' So they wait, before they take hold of duties which are obvious and plain, for that peculiar mental shock, that vivid transition of feeling, which they seem to think is an indispensable prerequisite for the performance of Christian duty.

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Now, it does not make any difference whether you are a Christian or not, it is your bounden duty to perform Christian duties. reason why a man should love God and his fellow-men is not because he is a member of the church and is converted, but because, in the eternal fitness of things, so to love is the duty of every living creature. It is a duty which belongs to every living man, to live according to that highest style of manhood, which is made known in the Lord Jesus Christ. I should say to a man, "Whether you are converted or not, ore God, and your neighbour as yourself; walk humbly and meekly." "Would that be evidence that I am a Christian ?" "If you love Me, keep My commandments," said the Lord. He that is endeavouring to keep the commandments of the Lord Jesus Christ, and has an intelligent understanding of what those commandments are, is a Christian.

What makes a man a husbandman? A man buys a piece of ground in the country. It is rocky, and a great deal given to weeds, eminently fertile in Canada thistles. There is on it an old run-down barn, full of rats, and mice, all sorts of vermin; and a dilapidated, tenantless house. The man goes on to his place, and lives in this miserable house, and has the rheumatism, and all manner of complaints, and never ploughs a furrow, nor sows a seed, nor eradicates a weed. He crawls out of his rickety, leaky shanty every morning, and walks

about, and looks over his rocky, thorny, thistley farm, that is run down and good for nothing, and brings forth only vicious weeds, and he says, "I am a husbandman." I say that he is not. He owns twenty acres of dirt and rocks and weeds, but he is no husbandman.

Take another man. He has made a poor selection of land. He has a cold, clayey soil, full of springs, and poorly drained. As it slopes to the north, the sun does not strike it till the latest part of the day. He plants a few things, and works hard to cultivate them, but they do not come to much. Every spring he puts in some potatoes, but he gets out only about as many as he puts in. He raises a little grass and grain, but it takes all his time to raise a little. He has no capital, and he makes no headway. And yet, I declare that that man is a husbandman. He is a very poor one, to be sure; but he is trying to be a good one. According to the soil he has, and the strength he has, he does very well. He has but one talent, and the Lord will require of him only according to that one talent.

Another man has a rather better slope to the south, and his soil is warm in spots, though in other spots it is cold. It is rocky, and on the whole rather poor. There is a patch of four or five acres that he bestows his labour upon. This patch is the garden of the farm, and is kept in a very good condition. But the rest of the land is uncultivated. His fences are neglected, and he loses some of his crops on account of his negligence. Nevertheless there are spots on his farm that produce well. He is therefore a better husbandman than the first or second man; and yet he is a very imperfect one. He cultivates only a portion of his land. He does not subdue it all, and see that it is secured from waste.

Another man has a piece of ground very much like that of the man last mentioned; but he has more ingenuity, he is more thorough, and he raises more crops. The annual product of his farm is twice as great. He is a better husbandman.

Another man is in advance of all these. He is a very good farmer. He is getting rich. His soil is excellent, he tills it well, and he has

heavy crops.

Another man is fairly fat. He literally rolls in abundance. He tickles the ground, and it laughs, and yields bountifully. He does not know where to put his crops. He is a jolly old farmer. He has enough to take care of himself, and all that depend upon him. His bounty overflows, and all his labours are blessed by it. He is more a husbandman than all the rest that I have named.

And yet the feeble, broken-down man, who really tries to raise a crop, but cannot on account of his poverty and weakness, is a husbandman, although he is a very poor one.

Now 1 take it that this figure of husbandry, which is the Lord's figure, may be fitly applied to Christians.

That man who begins life under disadvantages of disposition and of early training can make a certain fight. It will be a feeble fight; it will be a fight. He meets with discouragements on every hand, and

he sees others going ahead of him, and he is conscious of his imperfections and failures, and he says, "I am a poor Christian, I am making but little headway; but I am making a fight, though it is a feeble fight." He is making a very feeble fight; and yet, very likely he will stand, in the last day, higher than many of you who make a better one. The Lord will say, "It is required of him, according to what he hath, and not according to what he hath not."

Another man has a better disposition, and had a better early training. Though he has some infelicities of disposition and some bad habits, yet some of the graces were natural to him. He cultivates parts of his disposition, and other parts he neglects. On the whole, he is in the Lord's husbandry. He is better than the other man, but is not very good.

Another man has his whole nature broken up, and under some sort of cultivation. Every part of it is bearing harvests-is yielding spiritual fruit to the glory of God. He is a better Christian, but he is no more really a Christian than that man who is endeavouring under less favourable circumstances to live Christianly.

So to some men you may say, almost from their birth, "You are not far from the kingdom of God." It takes but a little-only a step, as it were to bring them into the holy precincts. Others have to travel a great while before they get into the Celestial City. Much depends upon differences of organizations and variations of condition. The thing which we are to look at, therefore, in ourselves, is not so much, "Am I or am I not a Christian?" as it is, "Being a Christian, and endeavouring to do the will of God, at what point am I standing? Am I really attempting to subdue my whole nature to the law of the Lord Jesus Christ, and to be as sweet, as meek, as gentle, and as fruitbearing in love as my Master, and to be one with Him?"

It is a good thing for a man to pray, and it is a good thing for a man to sing hymns, and it is a good thing for a man to converse on Christian themes, and it is a good thing for a man to be in much companionship with his fellow-travellers to eternity: but if he cannot forgive those who have offended him; if he is perpetually returning the evil which other men have done to him; if he is all the time laying up grudges, and making bitter and ugly speeches; if he is continually shooting out the devil's arrows dipped in the devil's gall, and kindling fires of hatred and anger, and helping on evil devices, I do not care how much he prays or sings; all the prayers and songs in the world will not stand as an equipoise to that malignant disposition which he manifests. A man who would hurt a neighbour; a man who would do harm to a soul for whom Christ died; a man who cannot restrain the bitterness of gall that is in him-do not tell me about his hymns, or his prayers, or his visions! Prayers do not save men; hymns do not save men; visions do not save men. It is the spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ in men that makes them salvable, and nothing else does. God will bear with your faults if you admit them to be faults, and say, "Having fallen into them, I hate them, and I will watch and

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