to its close, and may God bless the Mission abundantly, both at home and abroad; and to this all of you will say, AMEN. Mission House, Moorgate Street. F. T. THE LITTLE BROOK. ONCE upon a time all the beautiful lakes of our country were lying quietly in their beds. Here and there a white sail was seen on their smooth waters. The steamboats were not then built. On the banks were great forests hanging over and looking down as into a large mirror, in which each tree could see its own form, and admire the beauty of its green clothing. The duck swam and led on her wild young family. The loon dived and screamed, and shook himself, as if he wanted admiration. The deer, with her fawns, waded into the shallow waters, and nipped the tender grass. The trout leaped out here and there in his joy. The beautiful cardinal flower stood in the low grounds and threw her colours far and wide. It seemed as if the fairies might have their home here. But suddenly there was a terrible commotion among the lakes and rivers! The waters boiled and foamed, the waves rolled and dashed, and tried to break out and burst over all their boundaries. The rivers stopped and refused to run, and their sullen waters murmured over their banks. The loon hid himself in an island. The young ducks made for the woods. The deer fled in terror. The trout dived down to the bottom with one whisk of his tail. It was a terrible time, and everything seemed to be going fast to ruin. Just then the king of the lakes came riding over the wild, awful waves on his horse made of spray. "Heyday!" cried he: "what's the matter now?" "Oh!" said a lake, "I am sick of life and sick of my home, and I am determined not to stay here any longer. So are all, and I am speaking for all! We all feel alike." "Well, what's the matter? What would you have ? " "Have! we would have space, and room, and greatness. We want to be each an ocean. We hear the oceans are vast, and salt, and have great ships on them, and great whales swimming in them, and that men can sail on them days and weeks and not see land! How glorious that must be! To have huge ships of war, and battles fought on one's breast, and mighty fish diving and spouting in one's bowels! But instead of that, here we are, with nothing but little speckled troutnot a whale nor a porpoise, not even a lobster or a shark among us! Here we are cooped up in our narrow limits-nothing but lakes! We want to be oceans.' 23 "But my good fellow, the earth is not big enough to have any more oceans! Don't you see that if I let you out you will not be an ocean, but be at once swallowed up in the ocean, and be lost? "Me! why, your Majesty, I am ashamed of myself. I am so small! Just look at that map! Why, I'm only a little black streak!" "And what do you, and the other ten rivers about you, want?" "We want to be Amazons! and be 200 miles wide and 5,000 miles long, and to roll through mighty forests, where crocodiles and monkeys live, and where great serpents and parrots live." "Foolish one! I must make ten or a dozen new continents before you can be Amazons!" Just then the king heard a low, silvery laugh. He looked down, and there was a little mountain brook rippling and laughing along in its pebbly channel. Its face was bright, its eye twinkled, and it danced, and leaped, and almost clapped its hands for joy. The grass was green and the flowers were thick, and honey-bees sang among them, and birds hopped and sang near it. "Little, little brook!" said the king, "don't you want to be an Amazon? Why are you rot in an uproar, and pouting, and wishing you were something great?" "Oh," said the little brook, "didn't you make me? And I suppose you wanted me to be a cheerful little brook, and to run here and keep the grass green, and the flowers bright, and the bees singing, and the birds happy! I suppose if you had wanted me to be an Amazon, or a Missouri, you would have made me so." "Dear little fellow," said the king, "henceforward thou shalt be a favourite with everybody!" And the brook went singing on, and the lakes and rivers were ashamed, and have never had such a rebellion since!-American Paper. WHAT A LITTLE BOY CAN DO. "I WISH, I wish," said a little boy, who awoke early one morning and lay in bed thinking, "I wish I was grown up, so as to do some good. If I was a judge, I would explain the laws; or I might be a missionary; or I could get rich, and give away so much to poor people; but I am only a little boy, and it will take me a great many years to grow up." And so was he going to put off doing good till then? Well," he said to himself, while he was dressing, "I know what I can do. I can be good that's left to little boys." Therefore, when he was dressed, he knelt, and asked God to help him to be good and try to serve him all day with his heart, and not forget. Then he went down. stairs to finish his sums. No sooner was he seated with his slate before him than his mother called him to find his little brother. Charlie did not want to leave his lesson, yet he cheerfully said, "I'll go, mother," and away he ran. And how do you think he found "Eddie"? With a sharp axe in his hand. "I chop," he said; and quite likely the next moment he would have chopped off his little toes. Charlie only thought of minding his mother; but who can tell if his ready obedience did not save his baby-brother from being a cripple for life ? As Charlie was going on an errand for his mother he saw a poor woman whose foot had slipped on the newly made ice, and she fell; and in falling she had spilled her basket of nuts and apples, and some wicked boys were snatching up her apples and running off with them. Little Charlie stopped, and said, "Let me help you to pick up your nuts and apples ;" and his nimble fingers quickly helped her out of her trouble. He did not know how his kind act comforted the poor woman long after she got home, and how she prayed God to bless him, At dinner, as his father and mother were talking, his father said roughly, "I shall not do anything for that man's son: the old man always did his best to injure me." "But, father," said Charlie, looking up into his father's face," does not the Bible say that we must return good for evil?" Charlie did not know that his father thought all the afternoon of what his little boy had said, and that he once murmured to himself, "My boy is more of a Christian than I am. I must be a better man." When Charlie came home from school at night he found that his dear little canary-bird was dead. "Oh, mother! and I took such care of Birdie, and I loved him so, and he sang so sweetly." And the little boy burst into tears over his poor favourite. His mother tried to comfort him. "Who gave Birdie's life, and who took it again?" she asked, stroking his head gently. God," he answered, through his tears; "and he knows best ;" and he tried to quiet himself. A lady, who was a visitor, was sitting in the room at the time. She had lost her two children; and though she hoped they had taken angels' wings and gone to nestle in the heavenly land, she would rather have had her little sons back to her nest again. But when she beheld Charlie's patience and submission to his Father in heaven, she said, "I, too, will trust him, like this little child." When Charlie laid his head on his pillow that night he thought, "I am too little to do good; but, oh, I do want to be good, and to love the Saviour, who came down from heaven to die for me."-Child's Own Magazine. Here, in this happy land, we have the light Chorus,-Pity them, &c. Then, while the mission ships glad tidings bring, MISSIONS IN THE SANDWICH ISLANDS. AN American missionary, who has long been labouring in the Sandwich Islands, gives the following testimony as to some of the moral results of the mission work in one district there:-" It is now over thirty years that I have been labouring among my people, then 6,000 or 7,000 in number, but now less than 4,000. I found them almost naked; but now they are clothed. Then they were ignorant, thoughtless, destitute of books, or ability to read them: now they will compare favourably with the common classes in most countries of Europe. Then they were idle and inefficient, but now comparatively industrious. Then many dug up their grounds with a stick, and he was a favoured man who could get a whaler's spade with which to cultivate his patch of land; but now the spade, the plough, and the harrow, oxen, and carts, have taken the place of slower processes. At that time the people were beginning to say, 'There is but one God, and Jesus Christ is his Son.' Since then thousands in my little field have told me that Jehovah is their God, and Jesus Christ is their only hope and trust. It has been with no common joy that I have repeatedly stood by the dying Hawaiian on his bed of mats, and heard him say, 'Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly.'' |