upon. In this the snow is but one exemplification of a great law always at work. The most remarkable illustration of it is afforded in the history of God's spiritual connection with our race. Look at the revelation of divine truth to men; it has ever been progressive. Just as the orb of day bursts out suddenly upon the world, dazzling the vision of all created beings with an unexpected glory and an overpowering magnificence, so the sun of truth has diffused its benign light in that proportion and at that rate justified by the particular condition of humanity at a given period. To thousands, besides the apostolic band, do those words of the Saviour apply:"I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now." What wisdom and tenderness! This brief verse is the satisfactory answer to the question, Why has God's revealment of his will been so leisurely and slow? It is because men could not "bear" the full radiance of the truth all at once. The benevolent Father in heaven accommodated the manifestation of Himself and his law to the exact strength or weakness of his earthly children's moral vision. He would not disperse every haze and dissipate each cloud immediately, for then the radiance of the truth would blind instead of blessing them. A careful study of the Mosaic, the Prophetic, and the Christian eras will evince the correctness of our remarks. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews introduces the same fact: "God, who in sundry places and in divers manners, spake unto our fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son." The prophets and good men of times anterior to the Gospel cast the torchlight of truth upon the world, each one exceeded the previous one in strength and brilliancy, until at length He came who said, "I am the truth."

In like manner, it is well for us to remember that the extension of practical Christianity has been a gradual work. There was, first of all, a time

when Christianity was in a minority of one against the whole world; when it was to be found only in its great Founder, Jesus. There was, after wards, a time when the Church consisted of but twelve members. What a striking consideration is that! What a commentary on the language: "The kingdom of heaven is like leave which a woman took and hid in thre measures of meal, until the who was leavened,"-like leaven, whi assimilates the mass to itself by de grees and silently! It is equally with Christianity in the individua It acquires its holy sway and obtain its sacred power over us gradually Sanctification is not the work of moment. It occupies days, month and years. Effectually to master bad babits, overcome depraved pro pensions, and extinguish the long lingering fires of sin, requires time It is the business, not of a small part but of a whole life. "Brighter and brighter unto the perfect day; ing from strength to strength; "waxing stronger and stronger;

growing in grace; "-these phrases and many like them, indicate the gradual nature of godliness. There is large encouragement to the earnest disciple of Christ in this thought When he sees how often his good resolves have been broken, how free quently he has been overcome of temptation, how much evil yet remains in him, let him remember that it is by degrees that he is to become holier. He must not expect to conquer all at once. It does not follow because he has yet much to lament in himself, that he has not also much, and even more, for which "to thank God and take courage.' Forward, then! step by step, day by day, and complete victory shall at last be ours in the land of triumph above.

4. The snow is under the immediate superintendence of God. In the present day there are two distinct notions as to the connection of the Creator with his creation. The first looks upon that connection as past rather than present;

cording to it, God has little or othing to do with the material orld now, having, once for all, at beginning of the world set in opetion a certain 'series of causes and lects which preclude the necessity of rther interference. The other view

that the Almighty One is now recting personally and immediately works. If we may use a commonce illustration, some men regard ture as a watch which the great ker wound up at its construction ith so much skill that it will continue go to the end of time; others regard ature as superintended by God ery day, hour, minute. It seems to that the last of these doctrines at once more scriptural and more atisfactory in its influence on us. That it is the view suggested by bibal writers is obvious. They invariably speak of the vast machinery of the world as under the direct superintendence of Jehovah. Mark only the manner in which they advert to that phenomenon of which we now write: "He saith to the snow, Be thou on the earth," not " said," but "saith." It is a thing now being ne. "He giveth snow"-a present speration. And surely, this aspect of tae divine workings is the most cheer

that can be conceived. The cry of nuine piety is "Let me have a dod who is near me. Tell me not of se who has made the earth and then

tit. Speak to me of one in whom I ctually live, and move, and have my being! I want a present and a near God." Any one that we much love and greatly admire we like to have ar us. The closer to us, the better. If I have a faithful and true friend, let him not dwell in another land, or another town, or another street, or even another habitation, but, if possible, let me have him in my house.

Just so with our eternal Friend. Away with the "science, falsely so called," which would remove Him from us: begone all pseudo-philosophies which seek to put Him at what John Howe sarcastically called "a respectful distance."

"God liveth ever!

Wherefore, soul, despair thou never!
Our God is good, in every place
His love is known, His help is found;
His mighty arm and tender grace
Bring good from ills that hem us round.
Easier than we think can He

Turn our joy to agony;

Soul, remember, 'mid thy pains,
God o'er all for ever reigns."

Does the glance of one fall upon these pages who has not experienced the power of Christ? We would, in closing, remind such that the snow has something to say to him. It speaks of sin. At least, it did so to King David. When he looked forth from his princely house of cedar on the pure and white snow, it brought to mind his own impure and black heart. Therefore he said, "Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow." In like manner, dear reader, let it fill you with earnest and anxious thought concerning your own guilt and depravity. The snow speaks, too, of pardon. Did it only make us feel our evil, it would not be a gladsome messenger; but, thank God! it seems to catch the jubilant strain of mercy, re-echoing the blessed promise "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow." Go now to Him who has given this gracious assurance, seek Him in penitent zeal, and your happy heart shall soon join in the thankful confession of all the redeemed: " As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us."

JOHN GRIERSON'S

REPENTANCE.

ONLY that one cabin in sight, in all green, level prairie. No foot came e-only God's winds and rains d it out, and the sunshine that kes no heart until the grave ers it. Alone John Grierson had ed out the logs of which it was de, and shaped the lonely dwelling; there, face to face with his own al, he hid himself away, and almost

eved that neither God nor man ould find him. At first he had only thought of safety. He had been ready

welcome solitude. But when a whole year went by, and, save in his ut secret journeys to the nearest market-town, he saw no one, he began feel a growing, unutterable horror f the very isolation he had sought; nd it seemed to him as if some myserious influence interfered to turn way the steps of travellers from as dwelling. Every day, and all the ay, only his own shuddering soul for pany, until, slowly, he began to that God had found him, and to zow conscious of a shadowy, accusing Presence, grand and awful.

It was in early summer that he felt first,-vaguely and at intervals in the nning, but soon constantly, and Fith a shuddering, nervous horror that ever left him. He went out into the ride expanse of prairie-with the blue, ful sky above him, and the level and, which no house dotted, stretchfar and away-and it seemed to n the Presence filled the infinite Trace around him full. From the still y a voice called downward, "Where thy brother?" until he fled swiftly, and shut himself again into his lonely abin, barring the door tight. And bre, in his silent room, the Presence brooded still, and night or day the Vuce was never silent.

His loneliness grew insupportable. He was ready, at last, to suffer any penalty, bear any doom, if only he could flee from the unseen terror of his solitude. He made up his mind deliberately. Not once had the foot of another human being crossed his threshold. Lynx-eyed justice would never find him here. Here from all human vengeance he was safe; and to go home was to face death. He knew where he had left the body of a murdered man, still and ghastly in the moonlight. The place drew him back with an awful fascination. He must go there yet once more, and then he would deliver himself up to justice. If in the grave he could escape that Presence, he would be content to die.

When he had made up his mind, he hurried off with feverish eagerness. He shut the door of his lonely cabinthe shelter where man could not find him; but where solitude had been his judge and the executioner of his sentence. He travelled night and day; and at last he stood, at a high noon of summer, in that spot where he had left his brother lying in the moonlight, with the awful whiteness on his stil, brow. He half expected to find therel even now, that upturned, reproachful face. Instead, soft green mosses carpeted the spot; green-tree boughs, through which the sunlight sifted, hung over it. It looked so strangely peaceful that the very stillness shook him with his old vague terror; and even here he felt the Presence, from which he thought he had escaped; and heard the voice calling downward from the sky, "Where is thy brother?" and an echo, slow, wailing, unutterably sad, sighed the question again through all the tree boughs.

Fast as his trembling limbs would carry him, he turned and fled-but not this time into any wilderness. He walked through familiar ways, never

A A

pausing to note any well-known scene, or watch any of the splendid tokens of summer along the highway. He hurried on until he stood before the door of the magistrate to whom his confession was to be made. And here, with his hand upon the knocker, his heart began to fail him. Even yet, he thought, he might go away and be safe. He saw, as in a vision, his lonely cabin, standing in the midst of tall, rank grass, and millions of gaudy flowers, the affluent vegetation of the prairie.

For a moment he was tempted to go back; but the ghosts, as it seemed, of his still days there rose before himthe white, frozen winter, with not a sound save howling wind, or driving storm, or the cry of some desolate bird or beast-the summer when the stillness seemed yet more terrible, and the Presence had overshadowed him. No; he might suffer anything else, but he could not go back into that prison, where nothing human had been his gaoler. He raised the knocker and used it resolutely, and the man he sought came himself to the door.

A light of neighbourly recognition gleamed in the magistrate's eyes, and with extended hand, and surprised yet cordial air, he cried, cheerily,

"That you, Grierson? Come back, eh, as suddenly and mysteriously as you went away!"

John Grierson did not answer the cordial greeting, or pay any heed to the extended hand. His only, overpowering thought was how to lay down his burden-how to ease his tortured, remorseful heart-how to escape the Presence that pursued him. He said, hoarsely,

"I killed a man, and I am come to deliver myself up to justice. I am the murderer of my brother, James Grierson."

Squire Granger's face grew pale. He thought that he was talking with an escaped madman; and began to consider what he should do for selfprotection. He stepped a little farther back, and said, soothingly,

"James Grierson is alive and well.

You had better go home and see him You can't be arrested, you know, fe a crime that never was committed. and then he was going to shut the door.

Grierson, too quick for him, wrenche it out of his hand, and stood face t face with him in the passage.

"Squire Granger," he said, with steady earnestness which compel reply, "is it true that my brothe James Grierson, whom I left for des is alive and well?"

"He was this morning." A sudden resolution Grierson's manner.

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gave force

You were my father's friend,” said, "and you have known me your life. You must listen to

confession."

Silently Squire Granger opened t door of a room at his right hand, a motioned into it his strange gus And there, in that quiet room, Jol Grierson told his story.

After his father died, he and his bry ther had lived together, pleasant enough, on the old place. They ha even been fonder of each other, per haps, than the majority of brother until Olive Lansing crossed their trac and they both loved her. She was coquettish creature, with her dar bewildering eyes, her syren voice, her piquant manner. If she preferr either of them, she let neither kn it; and they both went on loving more and more, and growing to each other. One night they met the wood. By some strange fatal John, with his gun on his should was coming back from a day's hunt just as James was going gaily ba from a visit to her, with a rose she h given him in his button-hole. It w a peculiar rose, which bloomed where else in town save on the bu that stood in her sitting-room windo John recognized it at once, and stung almost to madness by that and his brother's gay air of satisfacti There were a few wild words-passio ate and unbrotherly on both side and then John Grierson, always