grand gatherings at Islington is worth remembering:-"No one who has witnessed these services can doubt their powerful agency for good, not only on the under masses of society, but upon many also who have been accustomed to associate the idea of 'revivalism' with mere fanaticism and excitement. There was certainly nothing of this kind in yesterday's service. The devotional part of the service was as calm and unexciting as in the soberest parish church, while the sermon was not less calculated to benefit the most steadygoing Churchman than to arouse the attention of those who had hitherto thought little about religion." It was at one of the evening meetings in this place that Mr. Moody confessed he felt more solemn than he remembered ever having felt before. A week previously he had talked with a man in the inquiry-room who said he had found Christ; he returned home, was taken ill, to die and to leave a widow and five children. "I may be speaking to-night to some one who will be laid in their coffin a week from to night," added the preacher; "may God help me to be faithful!" We believe it was at one of the eastern meeting-places where a little boy was found looking in this direction and then in that, and on being questioned said he was looking for Christ. He was spoken to, the Word entered his heart, and soon after he was seen looking for Mr. Moody to say to him "Jesus has saved me."

The conversions at the East-end were many of them both striking and characteristic of the neighbourhood. One man who had led a life of drunken debauchery was arrested as if in an instant at the Bow-road Hall. As he passed the gin-shop, after leaving the preaching, new feelings drove from his mind his old temptations. He hastened homeward, cried to his wife to

reach down their dust-covered Bible and to read what he had heard in the third chapter of John's Gospel. "Let's have it!" he cried, referring to the offered everlasting life, and he found it. One infidel after another had prejudice broken down, and others who thought they were right discovered that they were wrong, and were then directed into the strait and narrow way of life.

The cases of striking conversion which came under his notice were confinually being turned to good account by Mr. Moody himself, who has a masterly way of making an anecdote tell with effect, in the best sense, on his audience. Take as an example that case of a Manchester merchant which occurred in one of the evangelist's sermons in London. Surely the objections to instantaneous conversion must seem very puerile when we remember that the agent is the Holy Spirit of God.

When I was in Manchester I went into the gallery one Sunday night to have a talk with a few inquirers, and while I was talking a business man came in and took his seat on the outskirts of the audience. I think at first he had come merely to criticise, and that he was a little sceptical. At last I saw he was in tears. I turned to him and said, "My friend, what is your difficulty?" "Well," he said, “Mr. Moody, the fact is I cannot tell." I said, "Do you believe you are a sinner ?" He said, "Yes, I know that." I said, "Christ is able to save you;" and I used one illustration after another, but he did not see it. At last I used the ark, and I said, "Was it Noah's feelings that saved him? Was it Noah's righteousness that saved him, or was it the ark?" “Mr. Moody," said he, "I see it." He got up and shook hands with me, and said, "Good night; I have to go. I have to go away on

the train to-night, but I was determined to be saved before I went. I see it now." I confess it seemed almost too sudden for me, and I was almost afraid it could not live. A few days after he came and touched me on the shoulder and said, "Do you know me ?" I said, "I know your face, but do not remember where I have seen you." He said, "Do you not remember the illustration of the ark?" I said, "Yes." He said, "It has been all light ever since. I understand it now. Christ is the ark; He saves me, and I must get inside Him." When I went down to Manchester again, and talked to the young friends there, I found he was the brightest light among them.

The following belongs to a class of incident which the preacher was able to give with a thrilling power, bordering on the dramatic, when a wave of emotion might actually be detected as it swept over the great congregation :—

a

I went to a meeting in Chicago a few years ago, and a young man got up and said, "Will you allow me to speak to these young men ?" At first, as he was a stranger, I thought I wouldn't; and then I thought he might have a message from God; so I said, "Say on." And that young man just pleaded with those young men, and said, in closing his speech: "If any of you have fathers, or mothers, or Christian friends, who are diligent for your salvation, treat them kindly, for you will not always have them. I was an only son, and I had a godly father, who went down to his grave praying for me, for I was a wayward boy. After father died mother began to be more anxious than ever. Sometimes she would weep over me and say, 'Oh, my boy, if you were only a Christian I should be so happy.' Some nights I heard her in her chamber weeping and crying to God for her boy. I could not stand it any longer, so I had to leave home. I must become a Christian, or get away from home. So I ran away. It was a long time before I heard of her, and then I was told she was sick, and the thought came stealing over me, 'She may die. I will go back.' And then I thought, 'If I go back home I will have to become a Christian. I cannot live at home with mother without becoming Christian; I will not go.' The next time I heard from that mother I heard she was much worse. Then the thought came to me, 'If my mother died, and I should never see her, I should never forgive myself.' So I started off. There was no railway into the village, and I had to take coach. I got to the village about sundown; the moon had commenced to shine. My mother lived about a mile and a half from the little town, and to get home I had to go by the old village churchyard, so I thought I would go and look at father's grave, and see if there was any new-made grave. As I drew near my heart began to quake. I could not tell why. The moon showed me a new-made grave, and then, for the first time in my life, the question occurred to me, 'Who is going to pray for my lost soul now? Father's gone and mother's dead.' I took up some of the earth and found it was just damp, and I threw myself on my mother's grave, and there I spent the night. I did not move until the break of day; but before I left that grave my mother's God had become my own. And, young men, I believe God for Christ's sake forgave me that night, but I never forgave myself."

He has a way of illustrating the completeness of Christ's atonement that the common people cannot fail to understand. That is true art-an art of which all great preachers are masters-which makes the common incidents of every-day life illustrate and make clear the highest truths. The story of the Czar and the soldier was told at the Agicultural Hall :

In Russia, some years ago, there was a man that had a wayward son, and, like a good many fathers, he thought that if he could get him away from his old com

panions and old associations he might save him. So he bought him a commission, and put him in the army. But it is not a change of circumstances that men want; it is a new heart. The young man went on from bad to worse, gambling, drinking, and spending every farthing he could get; and at last, as our saying is in America, he got to the end of his rope. Debts began to press, and he came to his last day. The next day a debt had got to be met, and there was only one way to meet the debt, and that was to sell his commission and pay the debt, and then go home and meet the father that had been so kind to him in disgrace; and the poor man was greatly troubled about it. That night, when he was in his barracks, he took a piece of paper and a pen and put down his debts, and he wrote one debt after another and added them up. They made a long column, and he wrote underneath, "Who is to pay the debt?" Then he laid his head down and wept, and while he was weeping he fell asleep. That night the Czar of all the Russias was passing through the barracks in disguise to see what the soldiers were doing. He came to this man's barracks; the light was burning, and he went to the desk and took up the piece of paper and read it. Then he wrote underneath, "Nicholas pays it." Presently the man awoke from his sleep, and there was the debt still staring him in the face. Who is to pay the debt? But what was his surprise when he saw written underneath "Nicholas"! How came it there? Had some officer gone and written it to play a joke upon him? No, it was the handwriting of the Emperor of all the Russias. What did it mean?

The man would not believe that the Emperor had put his name there; he could not believe that he was going to pay the debt. It was too good to be true. The next morning the money came from the Emperor. Sinner, to night there is One greater than Nicholas, greater than the Czar of all the Russias here. He is here in the Agricultural Hall to-night. You owe God a debt you cannot pay. Would you insult the Almighty by offering the fruits of this frail body to atone for sin? Ten thousand times no. You are a bankrupt in the sight of God and man. Now take a piece of paper and put down your debts, and put down all your sins, and then multiply them by ten thousand that you cannot think of, and then write underneath, "The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin." That is the Gospel.

We need add no more. The power of the man is indisputable, and his Divine credentials are seen in his remarkable success. We trust that the life-like portrait of the evangelist which enriches our present number may be valued in thousands of English homes. G. HOLDEN Pike.

A WEALTHY Christian, who was free with his money but rather chary of his labour, was appointed to look after the poor of a certain district in the division of church labour for the winter. At the end of a month he reported: "A hard field, almost all Roman Catholics, who, while they hate us and the Gospel, accept our charity even if they have funds in the savings' bank. I feel that I have been sowing among rocks, and have lost all faith in this work." There was a good deal of hard truth in his words. Let us be as cautious as we will, our money and our labour will frequently be wasted on those

who despise us and revile the Gospel of love; who covet, while they do not need, our charity; who are sinfully spending money or giving it to priests to build costly churches, or to convert England with the Papacy. But shall we therefore cease to do good to any Shall we fold our hands and look quietly on, while Satan defies God and builds up his own strong towers? Shall we neglect the needy, because of the wrong-doing of the deceivers among whom they dwell?

Had this gentleman, who had “lost all faith” in his mission work, or rather lost heart for it, known the secrets of one poor heart and life “among the rocks,” he would have risen from his bed at night and gone with aid and comfort to a dark cold room in a house from which he had once turned away in disgust and discouragement. Let us visit it.

In a lonely room at the top of this house, there sat at midnight a young mother, watching her dying child. She was not the only watcher under that roof which sheltered so much of sin and sorrow. There were wives watching with trembling hearts and pallid lips for the unsteady steps of their husbands on the stairs. There were mothers listening long and vainly for erring sons and daughters. There were men stealing hours from sleep, drinking and playing and quarrelling. The neighbours who had the hearts of women, were wrapped in their own cares; those who had not, were sleeping as soundly as if death were not among them.

There was no light in that lonely room; there was no oil to fill the lamp. There was no fire in the stove, and no coal to make one. The moon in mercy shone in at the window, and lighted the poor mother at her work. The sick child cried, and reached out its thin white hand for milk. But it was frozen in the pail! The woman skimmed off the pearly crystals with her hand, poured the milk into the bottle and then laid it in her bosom to give it warmth !

When the child had moistened its parched lips, it fell into a troubled sleep; and as she watched it the mother prayed, or more properly, she talked to God. She had none else to talk to in this great, strange city; poor lonely heart!

"Oh, Lord God o' my fathers!" she cried, "I was an evil and ungrateful child when I left the love that ye gave me in true and faithful hearts, and took up with false love, and forsook my blessed home with one who had no fear o' God afore his eyes. He promised to love, cherish and protect me; but he loves and cherishes only hisself, and can't protect even that! Pity the soul o' him, Lord; but take me back to my mother, or shut me up in the grave away from sorrow and sin. Here's the darlin' baby, Father; the only thing I have to love in this great strange country; I give it to Thee. I could never see it grow up among the wicked, or hear its red lips cursing God! Take it away to Yerself, and then hold me up while I bear the punishment o' my sin agin my godly parents. Oh, well they knew that the lad, brought up in a false religion, and having no religion at all, would break the heart o' their darlin' child-and so he has-poor sinner! I've been a wilful child, Lord, and forsaken Thy love for an unworthy one, but Thou sees the heart, and knows well that I love Thee yet above all, and bow my poor head under the rod! I thank Thee for the peace that's in my soul, and for my

joy in Thy blessed will. Take the baby, afore it suffers more, to Thine own lovin' arms, and bring its poor sinning father to his senses, that his sin may be forgiven, and his soul saved, and I'll glorify Thy name for ever, when I'm safe with Yerself and the angels. Amen."

God heard this simple prayer for the baby, and took it before the dawning of the day. And the young mother sat in the gray light, tearless beside her dead child, anxious-not as to how her own hunger should be satisfiedbut how it should be buried out of her sight; for she was a stranger, and knew not where to go or whom to ask in reference to the solemn service.

And where was the father of the baby; the man who had wooed a virtuous child away from her Christian home? Alas! having broken the laws of the land many times, he had been at length arrested, and was paying the penalty of his crimes. She was more than alone, for she was shunned by her neighbours, even by those no better than he.

There were doubtless women in that great house who begged money and bread, and spent their earnings in the gin-palace, but she was not one of them. She had neither fire nor light nor food for herself, nor a coffin nor a

grave for her child. Was there ever a case of more helpless and hopeless poverty and woe than hers?

children came to gaze in

As the sun rose and the people in the house began to stir, it was whispered that the child was dead. Women looked in and spoke a pitying word, and wonder on the great mystery. One woman said, "The city will bury it for you;" another, with her hands on her hips, sighed "That's the on'y job that the poor gits done for 'em wid a good will and no grumblin'."

But the poor mother did not know where to find the city, nor of whom to ask this bitter charity. She sat as still as if made of marble, so overcome with weariness and want as hardly to realize the work before her.

By-and-by a woman with her heart full of love for the sorrowful came to the house on an errand connected with her work; and a child on the stairway said to her, by way of telling news: "There's a dead baby upstairs."

This poor woman knew in her soul what was involved in those few wordsthat some poor mother's heart, whether a pure one or not, was in anguish. So, with the memory of a dear little dead face in her heart, she turned her steps, and with the little girl for her guide, soon stood before the childless mother.

"Poor

She laid her hand upon her shoulder, and said in a tender voice: woman! I know how to pity you. I buried my only child long ago, and would have been alone ever since only for the presence of Christ. He can pity and help you, as He did me." Then the tears started from the burning eyes of the poor stranger, who, grasping her visitor's hand, kissed it, and cried: "Oh! do you know Christ? Sit down and talk to me about Him before my heart breaks."

The mourner had found a friend indeed-a poor labouring woman, it is true, but one who had not "lost faith" in Christian work, even though much of it was among the rocks.

Having heard the poor mother's sad story, she returned to her tidy little home in a better house near by, made toast and tea, sent in a basket of