FACTS, HINTS, GEMS, AND POETRY.

A RIGHT DELAY.

THAT miracle in Cana is significant of much. Among other things it is significant of a right delay. As another has suggested, it is a miracle that as yet there had been no miracle. There is nothing more wonderful about the life of Christ than the sublime leisure of it. For thirty years he had lived in the world, and this is the first instance of his supernatural power.

It is a mark of the divine working that it consumes time. There is no haste in Deity. God waits for consummation. With him a thousand years are as one day. There is the slow procession of the geologic ages before the earth is fit for man. There is the long want and woe and ignorance before the fulness of the times strikes and Christ comes. Now, since Christ has suffered, eighteen hundred years and more have gone, and Christianity is still militant, not triumphant.

This mark of the divine is stamped upon the life of Christ. Jesus waits. From a singular and silent seclusion of thirty years that life burst into the brief ministry. But though brief, it is a ministry strong with the unwashed forces of all those thirty years, and so it is a ministry of power, perpetuating itself in an accumulating influence.

God waits; but that which issues from the waiting lasts.

Whatever contradicts the divine plan must pay the price of haste; that price is brief duration. All that is done before the hour is come decays fast. All precocious things ripened before their time, wither before their time."

The life of Christ in this respect of waiting is both a lesson and a rebuke to our feverishness. Precocity is at once our great desire and our great curse. Life is a mighty forcing process. Things get large quickly, but too often they get rotten, or at best, hollow. Seeming to be, not being-display, not dense and honest substance-gilding not gold-this is too much the way of it. Miss Society cannot wait to gather a substantial womanhood, either as to strength of body or mental culture. So she flutters swiftly through multitudinous studies, sipping possibly a little knowledge here and there, gets spangled over with a few accomplishments, and comes out-perhaps a pretty thing, but simply worthless for the duties of the sacred womanhood confronting her. Young Mr. Eager, with his fortune to make, cannot think of any old fogey way of honest continuous days' works of intelligent economy, of slow and solid accumulation. He must speculate a

THE TRUE CHRISTIAN AND THE SHAM.

fortune at once, or must seize riches by some lucky venture. He will conquer wealth by a dash of his pen.

Thus everywhere is this reckless haste rampant; and the haste leads to decay. Divorces, defalcations, business and political corruptions-these are the crops we gather.

But Christ did not hasten. He could bide His time. For thirty years the little world of Nazareth was a world large enough for Him. Doing the Father's business in Nazareth, He did the Father's business thoroughly and lastingly as the teacher and Saviour of the world. The beginning of miracles did not take place until the time of manhood brought with it the work of manhood. In the presence of this glory of delay, which this beginning of miracles manifests, we should let the fever of our life cool and bid our hearts grow patient. It is better to be true and thorough than to be fast.

THE TRUE CHRISTIAN AND THE SHAM.

WE judge of a sovereign by his subjects, of a husbandman by his farm, and of a father by the state of his family. It may be, it were, indeed, unfair, to apply this rule to our faith and its Founders. Yet men have done, and will do so; and thus the cause of God and of religion has had to suffer grievous injury at the hands of its nominal friends. By their coldness, their worldliness, their mean selfishness, their open sinfulness, the little apparent difference between them and those who make no profession at all-nay, sometimes by their glaring inferiority to the latter in the bloom and fruit of the natural virtues, professing Christians, like venders of bad coinage, have exposed genuine piety to a suspicion. Their hands have inflicted its deepest wounds in the cause of Christ. In true kindness of heart, sweetness of temper, open-handed generosity, the common charities of life, many mere men of the world lose nothing by comparison with such professors; and how are you to keep the world from saying, "Ah! your man of religion is no better than others; nay, he is sometimes worse!" With what frightful prominence does this stand out in the never-to-be-forgotten answer of an Indian chief to the missionary who urged him to become a Christian. The plumed and painted savage drew himself up in the consciousness of superior rectitude, and with indignation quivering on his lip and flashing in his eye, he replied "Christian lie! Christian cheat! Christian steal, drink, murder! Christian has robbed me of my

MARY LAMB.

lands, and slain my tribe!" Adding, as he haughtily turned away, "The devil, Christian! I will be no Christian!" May such reflections teach us to be careful how we make a religious profession! And having made the profession, cost what it may cost, by the grace of God let us live up to it, and act it out. It is better not to vow, than, having vowed, not to pay.-Dr. Guthrie.

MARY LAMB.

SHE was no great beauty that a sculptor would have chosen for a model, and yet she had a face which, from its charm of expression, the eye loved to rest upon, even as it loves to rest on running water. No doubt some men would soon have found out the treasure that the clerk's household had within it, and have borne her away to be what God had created her to be a home queen, if it had not been that the fatal shadow that was to cloud her whole life began so early to hang around her; it troubled the serene depths of her eyes; it thrilled in melancholy cadences in her voice; it showed itself in drooping head and languid step; but still those who loved her seem never to have caught a glimpse of the terrible truth. We shrink from the attempt to look into that once happy family group on the day when that truth burst in such sudden and awful horror upon them. There are some things too sad for the eye or the mind to dwell upon; the mother lay dead, and the tender hand that had so long soothed her in her weakness with its fond ministries had dealt the blow which killed her-a fit of raving madness had, all at once, come upon the daughter. Mary Lamb was put under gentle restraint, and skilful medical treatment and watchful care soon restored entirely her reason; but the doctors said that the fearful disease would very likely return in paroxysms; and now it was that the life of Charles Lamb wove itself into the life of his sister, and that their story became one of the most beautiful and touching stories in the whole history of humanity. Charles Lamb was at this period a young clerk, with talents that already began to show a strong inclination to struggle beyond the desk at which he sat. He had a fancy that sparkled over in lively puns and quaint sayings at gay supper parties, where, if truth must be told, the revels were prolonged somewhat beyond the convivial, and which broke forth into airy fire-works of wit that often found their way into print. He had genial sympathies that woke into music even at the sight of a little friendless chimneysweep; he had a heart that had already

BIBLE THOUGHTS.

warm chambers in it prepared for wife and children. There was a woman whom he loved: that Alice W., who throughout his life was to float before his soul's eyes-a dear memory, a radiant ideal. If ever there was a man who would have found a breadth of all joy, a perfecting of all noble things that were in him, a softening and a deepening of all his finer feelings in domestic life, it was Charles Lamb; and yet, for the dear love he bore his sister Mary, this man resolved calmly to forego everything that is sweetest in the names of husband and father. Charles Lamb lost no time in putting into execution the generous resolution he had made. He arranged his bachelor dwelling so that it might receive a lady; he took Mary from the house of the doctor with whom she was living; he surrounded her with every little comfort and amusement his love could devise; he watched over her health as tenderly as if he had been a woman. But his sister was not the only object that demanded the young man's care and love; his widowed father must have a share of both. Every evening he went to the old man's house, to bring him news and cheerful talk, and play with him his beloved game of cribbage. We must remember that the man who thus devoted himself to his family was no plodding clerk whose mind was one great book of figures, but a man who had in him more than the full share of quicksilver usually belonging to genius, whose nerves thrilled at a rough sound or unlovely sight, like delicate strings at a rude touch. When we look at the story of Charles Lamb, let it never be said that a man of intellect cannot be a man of home, too.-American.

BIBLE THOUGHTS.

"Are there not twelve hours in the day?"-John xi. 9.

IT is the Son of God who asks this question; He who is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever; He to whom one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. What does He mean by such a question? He first speaks of Himself, and silences the fear of His disciples; as if He would say, I must finish my allotted journey; I must make use of my allotted portion of daylight; I must work while it is day; my day is not yet done, though it is drawing near its close, and the night is coming. ;

1. We have enough of time allotted to us for doing our work here. It is vain for us to murmur, and wish it was longer. God's answer is, "It is enough ;" and shall not that satisfy? Three