caught by the fringe of the fiery storm, was-not consumed, but-struck dead upon the spot and preserved in rigid figure, a memorial and a beacon. Whether the phrase "pillar of salt," is to be understood literally—that she was encrusted by nitro-sulphuric matter which, at once extinguishing the lamp of life, fixed her as a pillar of congealed substance impregnated with saline particles; or, metaphorically, that, as salt is the emblem of duration and expressive of incorruption, so this victim of the sulphurous tempest is preserved as an enduring witness to the awful consequences of disobedience, I do not attempt to determine. Enough, that she utterly perished, even though she had left the doomed city, was on the right way, and, in point of fact, almost saved!

In its entireness it is an incident that stands alone. Doubtless there have been many cases in which "sudden destruction" has overtaken men on the very threshold of deliverance; but it is not often that a case occurs in which the transition is so rapid and terrific as in this. Now she is perfectly secure; now she is in awful danger; now by miraculous intervention she is rescued; and now she is but a petrified "monument of an unbelieving soul." What a lesson to all who passed that way while yet the pillar stood ! What a lesson to us who read the record!

By our Lord's use of the story, we are taught that the event, in essence if not in circumstance and form, may be repeated in the case of people of today. It is certain that there are many about whom the utmost that can be said is they are almost saved. "Not far from the kingdom of God," but outside. Away from Sodom, but lingering on the plain which the fires can reach! And to such the case of Lot's wife is fraught with impressive warning as it is to those who are slack in their religious course, or are not "giving diligence" to make their calling and election sure; and to those who are making light of the Divine declarations; and to those whose confidence is founded on their relationship with the good and righteous; and to those whose natural tastes or old attachments have not been corrected; and to those who have the lurking notion that worldly advantage is the great thing, or that anything can compensate for harm to the soul. All such, and, indeed, all classes, will do well to "remember Lot's wife."

W. H. C. J.

are seen.

The Life to Come.

THE things that are out of sight are transcendently greater than those which Only a child or a savage has his life bounded by the visible horizon, or the limit of the present moment. And no more should the things of the present existence bound our thoughts. On what ineffable realities does Christian belief lay hold. This world is a mere starting-point. Beyond it lies an eternity as certain as to-morrow, with glories which the highest human imagination dimly paints. We stand on the brink of a sublime future. It does not become us to live with our eyes closed to it. Steadily looked at, there is power enough even in the anticipation to fill us

with rejoicing strength, peace untold, victory complete. Perhaps you are beset with the cares of life, perplexities of bread-winning, and of household ordering. Let not these things darken you with painful apprehension, or fill the whole measure of your thoughts. A few years, and you shall look back on them and smile that they could cloud your way for a moment. Are you weighed down with weakness of body, crippling your powers, crushing your enjoyments? Be of good courage. The strength of the seraph shall be yours. No athlete, rejoicing in manly power, tastes the supreme freedom and joy of the spiritual body that awaits you. Does trouble assail you with bitter and heart-piercing blows? Rejoice and lift up your head, for the time of your redemption draweth nigh. The homeward traveller complains not at beating wind and drenching rain-he hardly feels them. Just before him he knows lies the home from whose windows streams the promise of warmth and comfort; and within are the dear ones the very thought of whom is shield against wet and cold. Is your life dark through the absence of the one whose presence glorified it? Remember how the brief parting used to give sweetness to the meeting. The parting now, long though it seem, is but a moment to the union to which you are drawing near. Its sweetness, its full certainty of an unbroken future, shall have a depth which the worst pang now cannot measure. Are you walking in ways of sin, leaving often your higher life to grovel in the mire of earth? Oh, be not ungrateful for the love that may hereafter be revealed to your sight! You are a prince, whose kingdom has been bought with a great price,-dishonour not Him who bought your inheritance with His blood. Are you living in sluggishness an animal life of eating and sleeping and low self-seeking? You are choosing animalhood instead of angelhood. You are turning your back on heaven opening to win you. Or are you, while striving and aspiring for the better things, sad at heart because God is yet far off, and dim to your thoughts? Be patient. Never was there such cause for patience as you have. The revelation, the awakening, is not far off. You are as a child asleep beneath its mother's eyes. Shadowy dreams are all its mind can reach. A moment more, and it shall awake to the mother's kiss, the mother's smile, pouring forth to it the unutterable tenderness of her heart. These things are real. They are certain. Rather, such thoughts but dimly express the real and certain future. It becomes us to look upon that future often, to let its radiance fill our hearts, that we may walk worthy of the vocation wherewith we are called. All we hold here that is bright and dear is but the faint image of the world just beneath our horizon line, toward which each step is taking us.

WHAT HINDERS.-Many a soul sways towards heaven, but cannot ascend thither, because it is anchored to some secret sin.

HUMILITY.-Deep humility is a strong bulwark, and it is only as we enter into it that we find safety and true exaltation.

PRAYER AND SIN.-Either prayer will make a man leave off sinning, or sinning will make a man leave off praying.

Household Treasury.

THE EDINBURGH BASKET-MAN.

VERY recently a poor weary traveller came to Edinburgh to finish his earthly journey. He was suffering from a complication of bodily disorders. He told me that he had been in bad health for four or five years. "About six weeks ago," he said, "I was out trying to make some sort of living by selling a few things which I carried in a basket. About two miles on this side of Linlithgow I met an old woman who was trying to make a livelihood in the same way. Having walked along together for some time, she began to make some remarks on the toil we had to endure in order to gain a living in that manner; but it was quite different, she observed, with better things, for we could get them without toil or travelling. We have only to look up,' she said, 'and ask them from God anywhere, and at all times. I do this just as I am going along the road, and feel so happy and contented with my lot here because of my peace with God and what lies beyond.' I looked into the old woman's face," continued the man, "and she appeared so happy that I began to feel a strange interest in her conversation, and asked her if she was going the same road that I was. 'No,' she said, 'I am going this road, but you go that road, and God will go with you,' and so we parted. But her words had laid deep hold upon my heart, and produced a great revolution in my mind and feelings. I became overwhelmed under a deep sense of my great forgetfulness of Him, and living without God and without hope in the world. I began to look for some place to pray, for a great desire to pray came into my mind; but," he said, "I was ashamed to be seen praying. At last I got behind some kind of hedge, and sunk down upon my knees" (as he expressed it), "and there I poured out my heart before God in agony for forgiveness through Jesus Christ His Son, and I rose from my knees another man. The great burden which had just been weighing me down was removed. I felt as if I were in a new world. 'Old things had passed away, and all things became new.' Then I wondered how I could have lived so long in sin, and an enemy to God. I began to live a new life, under the influence of changed feelings and far different prospects. I now felt happy, and could look forward with hope to my journey's end. This state of mind has continued ever since." I then said to him, "Did you know that old woman?" He replied, "I never saw her before nor since, and what is strange, I had determined that day to go a different road from what I took, and in that case could not have met with her." He saw clearly the hand of God in this event. Soon after this he passed a night of great suffering, and was heard by those in the ward with him calling aloud and earnestly on the Lord Jesus Christ to have mercy upon him and take away all his sins. Among his last words were these, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit"; and thus he passed away to the land of rest and glory, while the sower of the precious seed will never hear of it until they meet above.

AT EVENING TIDE IT SHALL BE LIGHT.

THE darkest night is often succeeded by the brightest morn. How does individual experience testify to the great fact that with the Christian often that which assumes the gloomiest aspect, is followed by the effulgence of the noblest light! The poor negro who exclaimed exultingly of himself, on his poverty-stricken bed, with the destitution of every earthly comfort, and surrounded with every circumstance of want and pain, "Rich Pompey ! Rich Pompey!" is but the experience of many a weary, toil-worn traveller of this world, who has nothing that earth can impart, but everything that heaven can give. We take the beautiful words, "At evening tide there shall be light," and apply them to the prosperity that so often happens after worldly loss, it may be of friends, wealth, position, honour, to a man who like Job sees all his children snatched away, and disease invade, and poverty come, like an armed giant, and yet plucking up, like this old patriarch, hope and cheerfulness, at last witnesses on this side of the grave a change radical and complete for the better; but not any earthly analogy can portray the meaning of these words when time is exchanged for eternity, and the song of the Lamb who has washed His people from sin in His own blood breaks forth from the soul already enrolled in the General Assembly and Church of the Firstborn whose names are written in the Book of Life. Then it will be Light; and if but these few words could be permitted to come to the children of disappointment and earthly afflictions, and this world's saddest trials, it would impart that which would make poor Pompey's experience their own in this probationary state and in the world to come.

What is needed more than all other things for the successful encounter of the ills of life, its dark days and storms, is the cultivation of an internal principle of cheerful submission to the will of God, and confidence in Christ. If we are protected by that which is within, all without will in time be right; that intimate connection God has instituted between happiness and virtue sooner or later will be shown forth in its noblest aspect, and under all the severest disasters it will be seen that "at evening tide it shall be light.”

"ALMOST up-almost up!

ALMOST UP.

was the cry of the wounded sergeant, as they laid him down on the battle-field, and watched tenderly his dying struggles.

"Where did they hit you, sergeant?"

"Almost up."

"No, sergeant; but where did the ball strike you?"

"Almost up," was the reply.

"But, sergeant, you do not understand-where are you wounded?"

Turning back the cloak which had been thrown over the wound, he showed the upper arm and shoulder, mashed and mangled with a shell.

Looking at his wound, he said, "That is what did it. I was hugging the standard to my blouse, and making for the top. I was almost up when that ugly shell knocked me over. If they had let me alone a little longer-two minutes longer-I should have planted the colours on the top-almost up, almost up."

The fight and the flag held all his thoughts. And while his ear was growing heavy in death, with a flushed face and look of ineffable regret, he was repeating, Almost up-almost up."

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"Almost up!" Christian, what is your ambition? Does the battle and the flag fill all your thoughts? Oh! when Jesus leads His army forward, and His promises are yours, and victory is sure, are you, can you be forgetful of the conflict, and too much occupied in making money and enjoying the pleasures of the world, to take up your cross and follow Jesus in saving souls and redeeming a lost world?

"Almost up!" Let this be your cry in life, and your joyful shout in death. And then from the battlements of heaven you shall watch the battle and swell the anthem of victory, as the last stronghold of Satan is captured, and earth echoes back the angels' song, "Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, good-will to man."-Sermon by Rev. Abbot E. Kittredge, in "Chicago Pulpit."

EXPECTATION IN GOD.

THE less we expect from this world the better for us. The less we expect from our fellow-men, whether of spiritual help or of inspiring example, the smaller will be our disappointment. He that leans on his own strength leans on a broken reed. We are always going to be something stronger, purer, and holier. Somewhere in the future, there always hangs in the air a golden ideal of a higher life than we are going to reach ; but as we move on, the dream of better things moves on before us also. It is like the child's running behind the hill to catch the rainbow. When he gets on the hill-top the rainbow is as far off as ever. Thus does our day-dream of a higher Christian life keep floating away from us, and we are left to realize what frail, unreliable creatures we are, when we rest our expectations of growth, and of victory over evil, in ourselves. "My soul, wait thou only upon God! My expectation is only from Him." When we trust God, He never deceives us. When we pray to Him aright-that is with faith, with perseverance, with submissiveness, and with a single eye to God's will-He answers us. He always returns the best answer possible. Our Heavenly Father makes no mistakes in His dealings with suppliants. He is a sovereign, but not a despot. If it pleases Him to keep us waiting for the trial of our faith, then we must wait.

REST IN CHRIST.

THE needle in the compass never stands still till it comes right against the north pole. The wise men of the East never stood still till they were right against the star which appeared unto them; and the star itself never stood