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he pursued his tortuous route-now urging, now restraining his docile horse, who seemed almost instinctively to anticipate his instructions, and pricked up his ears at every sound, as if to catch the faintest intimation of his master's will.

"Be ye not as the horse or the mule which have no understanding, whose mouths must be held in with bit and bridle; I will guide thee with mine eye,' says the Almighty to his people in perplexities," repeated Dr. C., "and how many troubles we should be spared by yielding willingly and trustingly to his guidance."

Alice had an extreme horror of being upset, and as she saw the wheels of sundry vehicles locked together by the absurd efforts of their impatient drivers to pass one another in too narrow a space, while each loudly vociferated against his rival, her cheek turned pale, and she was ready to scream with alarm.

"Do not add to the confusion by any unnecessary noise, my dear," said Dr. C. gently, "you will only frighten the horses, and place everybody in real peril. If those foolish men would but be reasonable and patient they would get on much faster, but they hinder their own progress, as well as that of every one else, while they blame all but the right party, just as my patients often thwart my curative measures by their eager desire to adopt strengthening remedies before the fever is subdued; or as in social life, people sometimes begin where they ought to end, and involve themselves in tenfold greater difficulties of expense, or enter on an engagement without surmounting the earlier perplexities first: they will incur a larger debt, because they cannot discharge a smaller oneadopt some desperate expedient by way of retrieving their affairs, and when they fail, as might justly be expected, they lament their misfortune instead of their imprudence-' the foolishness of man perverteth his way, and his heart fretteth against the Lord.'"

By this time our travellers had advanced a considerable distance, and were beginning to emerge from the dense crowds which had hitherto obstructed their road. Alice breathed freely when she saw a clear space round the chaise, till two or three excited bullocks ran hastily past it.

“Oh, uncle!” she exclaimed, "how frightened I should have been, had I known those animals were so near us.

"They look rather formidable, certainly," answered Dr. C., "and we may well be thankful to have been preserved from a danger of which we were unaware at the time. I was reading lately of some travellers in Tartary, who having encamped by night at a place called, 'The Hundred Wells,' wandered about for an hour or two in search of some strayed camels, and when day dawned next morning, revealing their perilous midnight path, they were horror struck to see how it wound about amidst the actual hundred pits which gave a name to the spot.”

"Dear me, how frightful," said Alice, "and how astonishing that they escaped falling into one of the numerous wells.”

"How often in the journey of life," responded her uncle, "are we kept from hidden evils! We see only our narrow escapes; and yet it is of the Lord's mercies that we are not every day consumed, or injured in a thousand different ways which, if our eyes were opened to perceive, our perils would justly excite our apprehension, so that the petition our Lord directs, 'Deliver us from evil!' has a fuller meaning than appears at first sight.”

After a while the horse limped, and on examination was found to have lost a shoe. Time was too precious to permit returning to seek it; but by enquiry they learned that a blacksmith was near, and drove carefully thither to repair damages.

"Now we shall go on well again, I hope," said Alice, “I am glad the poor animal has a new shoe, or these sharp stones might have hurt him sadly."

"For want of a nail the shoe was lost,
For want of a shoe the horse was lost,
For want of a horse the rider was lost-
All for the want of a horse-shoe nail."

Dr. Franklin's philosophy would teach you from this incident never to overlook small difficulties, as they may lead to very serious ones: settle every difficulty as speedily as possible, whether it be a small debt, or a slight misunderstanding. If you have a disagreeable duty to perform, do it

at once; delay will but magnify its difficulty; your doubts of its issue increase your reluctance. Some young ladies, and gentlemen, too, waste a considerable portion of their existence, simply because they cannot overcome the little difficulty of rising early in the morning; and many a family has been reduced to poverty rather than brave the difficulty of retrenching their expenses, or increasing their industry in time."

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'Well, uncle, I hope soon to overcome the difficulty of rising early in the morning, and I may not have to encounter that of altering my habit of life."

"Perhaps not, my dear, but every effort in a right direction is an useful item in moral training, ready for application to to every circumstance. If not abridged in the comforts of life, and compelled to relinquish expensive luxuries, you might be called upon to reside in a foreign land, and change the whole routine of your habits, a matter of much difficulty to the ignorant and undisciplined, whose temper and spirits too often fail in such a trial; while those who have acquired the happy art of surmounting obstacles, would learn the language however difficult, and adapt themselves to novel modes and customs with an energy which elicits pleasure from the most untoward events. I love to make myself useful,' journalized a captive lady of rank, so I have been superintending a wash, and hanging out our scanty sheets of linen on the top of our prison tower. She tells a dismal tale, and yet with so cheerful an air, you feel what a treasure she must have been to the party.'

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"I see, uncle, it really is of consequence to overcome difficulties rather than merely to avoid them.”

"A vigorous and successful achievement of difficult undertakings is an equal safeguard against presumption and depression."

"How do you reconcile such opposite effects, uncle ?"

"The fact that certain former difficulties had been conquered which the inexperienced might deem insurmountable, would, I think, lead a correct judgment to suppose it possible that renewed effort might renew success. At the same time, the very perception that his own skill gave him almost an extra

* Lady Sale, in Cabul.

faculty, would prove to a thinking mind how easily the Great Creator can infinitely surpass the wisest of his creatures, and be, as revelation teaches us, ever wonderful in counsel, and mighty in working.""

"That is very true, uncle!”

"On the other hand," continued Dr. C., "however gloomy his prospects might become, such a character would never be unduly depressed, when he remembered that, as he had himself discovered an outlet amidst some perplexities, God would show him another from his present troubles; just as, in fact, the Bible plainly affirms, that 'He will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able to bear, but will, with the temptation, make a way of escape.””

"That is a very consoling consideration," remarked Alice, in a thoughtful tone.

"I have been greatly comforted in my day, Alice, by a quaint meditation upon Moses' rod being turned into a serpent.” "Why, uncle, how could that narrative comfort you!'

"Somewhat after the fashion of Quarles, the writer likened Moses' rod to the difficulty which often menaces the Christian in his daily course, so formidable and deadly that he would fain, like Moses, flee from it, but when at God's bidding he grasps it firmly by the tail, it loses its hurtful properties, and becomes the staff of support and defence through the wilderness. When exercised thus, Alice, we can look back and say, 'I will trust and not be afraid, for I cried unto the Lord and he helped me.'

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"I am sure, then, I will try and meet difficulties more courageously in future," remarked Alice, as they drew near the end of their journey.

"But remember, my dear niece, I speaks only of grasping them at God's bidding. Those who choose out evil paths must take the consequences, and the more they overcome the difficulties of breaking through early restraint, the more rapid will be their downward career. They that observe lying vanities, forsake their own mercy;' and when once the difficulty of a first lie, a first theft, or a first forgery, is conquered, it is tenfold more difficult to regain the character and the peace that has been wrecked."

"It is a blessing then, uncle, that we have been so trained that we feel there is any difficulty to break through, in wandering from the right path."

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Young people, however, do not always value these restraints, but will murmur at the reins, just as in maturer age,

we often regret that our way is 'hedged up' to a course widely differing from that we should choose, Our only remedy is to pray that we may discern the right path, and be ing in the day of His power to attempt any task, trial, our Heavenly Father may prescribe."

"GUILTY, OR NOT GUILTY ?"

(Concluded from page 219.)

made willor meet any

E. W. P.

But we are trenching on the second part of our subject and somewhat anticipating the fact

2. That the existence of this feeling implies an universal want. It is a trite, but a true saying, that the knowledge of a disease is half its cure. But to be half cured of the awful leprosy of sin was rather an aggravation of the malady than a relief. The want, then, was not met by the mere knowledge of its existence; and it did not necessarily follow, that because the whole world was writhing under so terrible an infliction, that it had given any definite form or measure to this want. It wanted light both as to the nature and extent of the malady and the medicine. By the hearing of the ear it had caught some vague rumours of the Great Physician; but until the eye saw him in all his stupendous doings for the rebellious and offending subjects of his healing mercy, it could not fully abhor itself in dust and ashes. To know ourselves as sinners, we must know Jesus as a Saviour, to feel the enormity of our vileness, we must be like Peter "a witness of the sufferings of Christ."

We think, therefore, that an universal want was among the earliest experiences of the human race-a want which was in itself an earnest and a pledge, that God who had created this feeling, would sooner or later satisfy it, since he had made nothing in vain. But the when and how of this purpose were as yet unknown, except through those traditionary vestiges of

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