mercifully pardon his children, and yet righteously keep them from knowing it till their spirits leave their bodies, which may be so diseased as to prevent their being assured that they are really saved. John Kewen was like a condemned criminal, or an impoverished person who might lose the senses of sight and hearing after being made aware of his sad condition, but who could never understand and enjoy the promise of pardon and plenty, which might be made to him. He could find no comfort, he could not rest. A Sabbath morning came, on which it was discovered that he had fled. While it was yet early the backdoor of the house was found unfastened. Foot-marks could be traced in the deep snow which had fallen. These marks indicated that he had got over the garden fence. On the other side of the fence the marks were traceable into the road. There the footprints mingled with others which went in all directions, so that once more nothing was left but to ask the questions, "What can be the reason of it all? what will be the end?" and to pray that, as before, Jehovah would be the wanderer's helper.

Twelve months have past away since that mournful wintry Sabbath day. Nothing has been heard of the fugitive since he left. Ore friend called at Denis's and ascertained that he had not been there. Another wrote to say that he spoke to a person standing on a pier near Londonbridge who he thought was John Kewen, but who declared that he knew no person of that name. His father remembers his asking him where the Great Salt Lake Valley was situated, so that it has been imagined that he has joined himself with some emigrants bound for the settlement of those deluded people the Mormonites. Sometimes, because he took with him two flutes, it is fancied that he may be strolling as Oliver Goldsmith did, earning a scanty subsistance by his musical performances. Fears that he has sought in self-destruction the ease he could not find in life, sometimes distress the minds of his family. At other times it is hoped that he is secured in some asylum for the insane, or quietly and comfortably getting a liveli hood, though wishing to remain unknown. Ignorance of his present condition hangs before all as a thick black veil, which no eye can pierce, and no hand can raise, but God's. There is light behind it which

those on this side cannot see; there is light on this side which we can enjoy. In all such cases the part of true wisdom and piety is to wait for the uplifting of the curtain; but if the Great Master sees fit, he may before it should be raised kindly by death call us behind to see what good things he has been preparing for them that love him!

HOW HOLY IS THIS PLACE! Eighteen hundred and fifty-five years and more have passed-a continent and an ocean overstepped-it is in the city of B-, the first day of February, and JESUS yet is visiting a lowly human creature whom he loves. I was one of the company.

Entering a little alley in the humbler quarter of the town, the missionary led me through the wooden gate to the house where the Lord had bid her prepare her dying bed. It had been done as he commanded, by hands but too happy in ministering to the saint whom he would not leave to ordinary providence, choosing to draw near to her himself, and to feed her by his angels.

The place was humbly suitable, and yet delicately neat. We ascended the spotless stairs, and my companion stepped softly into the low chamber, while I listened without, fearing lest we might break in upon that sacred sleep-in Jesus-for which she had hoped ere this.

It had not come. There she lay motionless, the faint life yet trembling in her breast. Wasted, wasted away-her lips had shrunk apart and lost their office; her breath laboured short, and shook the slight remnant of her form; her voice, a thin chirp, panting and failing, with painful effort, informed us that "No, she was not quite home-but very near-bless the Lord-very near !"

It would have been fearful to look upon that life-in-death, but her face was as the face of an angel! Its radiance was the first object I saw. Joy was poured upon her head. Her joy was full. Her gasping inarticulate speech dropped living words of joy. In the heavenly light that beamed from her eyes and suffused her counte nance, the skeleton smile lost all its ghastliness, and became "a smile of glory."

The Lord Jesus, she said, never left her alone, by day or by night. He stayed by her bed-side, and shed his love abroad in

her heart; and when through the night she breathed so painfully, and could not speak, sinking it seemed into death, beneath the mortal anguish that filled her breast, she spake silently to Him in her soul, and He answered her, and encouraged her, and gave her more than natural strength to bear her sufferings. How much she loved Him,-how much she felt herself beloved! Soon, oh soon, she would see Him as He is, -then, as her kindling eyes turned heavenward, then, she exclaimed, one hour, one hour with Him, will be worth an hundredfold all I ever suffered !

I asked her if she had no anxiety in leaving her children in the world.

Anxiety! Oh, no! Ten years ago, she had been left a widowed mother; ten years He had been her only protector,-more than husband, father, and brother to her and to her children. Could she doubt Him now? Oh, the guilt of such ingratitude and unbelief! "No, I shall bid my little ones good-bye, as cheerfully as I shall you,

The greeting

gentlemen. He will keep them He will bring them back to me there, soon-to part no more-to part no more!" A christian lady entered. was full of affection. She introduced her visitors to each other; adding, "Mrs. has been one of my comforters. May the Lord reward her for her goodness to me, and comfort her forevermore! My God shall supply all your need, through his riches of glory in Jesus Christ!"

A motion to her cup of cold water was anticipated by an attentive hand, and she received it with lovely courtesy and thanks, not sparing her difficult speech to repeat them as the cup was returned to its place. With thanks she received the proposal to pray with her, and when the solemn service ended, and we rose to take our leave, she thanked each one in turn, gave her hand and an affectionate good-bye to each, and we stepped softly and silently from the hallowed place!

THE WORTH OF FRESH AIR. A FEW WORDS TO THE WORKING CLASSES.* Let me ask you to go out into the fields, or into the streets if you cannot reach the fields, and notice how deliciously fresh the wind blows in your faces. You may do this, day after day, a hundred times, and you will always find the fresh wind blowing, with more or less force, from one quarter or another. It is the most uncommon thing in the world for the air ever to be altogether still.

Now, did you ever think why this is? Did you ever put the question to yourselves, "Why does God so constantly send this pleasant wind ?" It is because he has made it necessary, for the good of creatures which breathe, that the air should be kept continually fresh and pure. Impure vapours are for ever steaming out into it from the damp ground. They pour out into it in streams from all kinds of places, in which decaying substances are gathered together, -they come from chimneys, wherever fires are burning, and they rush out of the mouths of all animals with the breath.

Very often you cannot see these impure

vapours, but neither can you see the strong air that drives the mill-sails round, and that blows the heavy ships over the sea. The vapours are there, although you cannot perceive them,-thick streams of deadly poisons, pouring forth in great abundance. If these deadly poisons remained in their strength thus near to you, they would soon put an end altogether to your lives. This, then, is why the fresh wind blows. It is, sent to weaken and carry away the poisonvapours that gather about living creatures. in order that they may remain alive.

But the fresh wind, which God has sent to blow away poisonous vapours, as soon as they collect near the earth's surface, does not blow freely through our houses. Because it is cold as well as fresh, we place glass in the frames of our windows, and shut our doors to keep it out; we cannot, however, keep the poison-vapours out at the same time. These, indeed, are formed in great quantities within our own bodies, and pass out from our mouths with our breath. Breathing really performs for the inside of our bodies exactly what the wind does for the open air,—it blows away

poison-vapours that would do harm there, if they were not removed.

Just observe the out-and-in play of any one's chest as he breathes. By means of that play, air is pumped into and out of the inside of the body, to act there as a sort of wind. It finds there poison-vapours which have been poured into little chambers from the living blood, and it carries those poison-vapours away with it every time it is sent out through the mouth But if the breath is received into a close room, instead of into the free open air, the poison-vapours gather there more and more, and are breathed over and over again. A strong man spoils by his breathing, in this way, no less than fifty three-bushel sacks of air in twenty-four hours, and changes it into fifty three-bushel sacks of poison.

But this poison, when once made, is all so much the worse, because it does not lie still and quiet as some poisons do. You may stand near a lot of arsenic, and take no harm from it, so long as you do not touch it; but this poison-vapour of the breath, if it is not blown away into the open air, finds its way again and again into your mouths, in spite of you, whenever you breathe, and so gets back into the inside of your bodies.

At what rate do you think each of you is making this poison? Why, actually at the rate of a gallon a minute! Is it not wonderful that you are not found killed in the morning, when you are thus pouring out around yourselves, whilst asleep and unconscious, such a quantity of deadly vapour?

If any one of you were to shut yourself up for twenty-four hours in a room seven feet long, and broad, and high, where no air could come in or go out, all the air contained in it would be found to be changed into deadly vapour by your breathing, at the end of the time, if you could have gone on living so long. The reason why you are not found dead in your close rooms in the morning, is merely that the air does manage to get a little changed in spite of you.

Some of the poison escapes out by the chinks of the windows, and up the chimney, if there is one in the room, and some fresh air comes in at the crevices of the doors. The fresh wind, in fact, does manage to blow slightly through your rooms, and make them somewhat less deadly, in spite of all the pains you take to keep it out. But it is not able to do so as freely as it ought.

You sometimes feel how close and uncomfortable the air of your rooms is to you in the morning, but you get so used to it, that you hardly notice it, full of danger as it is. I have sometimes had to go into one of your sleeping-rooms, early in the morning, to see some one who has been very ill, and I have at once smelt and tasted the poison, and been nearly stifled, so that I have had to gasp for breath, and put my head out of the window, before I could speak; and yet some three or four persons lay breathing the same dreadful air, just as they had been doing the greater part of the night, quietly, and really not knowing what they were about, or the danger they were in.

In planning the arrangements of animal life, God has ordered that pure air shall be constantly taken into the inside of the body, in order that the poisonous vapours, formed there by its waste, may be blown away and rendered harmless. But when pure air is not properly supplied for the breathing, and the poisonous vapours that have just been poured out are taken in again and again, the blood, and all the parts of the living body which are nourished by the blood, get to be tainted by the poison, and injured. The body is then no longer sound. It is full of discomfort, and becomes diseased.

This is one way, then, in which many of you lay up misery and mischief for yourselves. You are not careful to have always about you that fresh pure air which God intended that you should. You smother yourselves slowly. You die years before your time, and are seen going down to your graves, more and more weakened and worn day after day. Such of you as work in the open fields all the day long, get there so much fresh air, that a great deal of the mischief done in the night is remedied before it is repeated, and so does not tell so sadly and quickly upon your frames as it otherwise would. But those who live in the close rooms of cities, in the day as well as in the night, show the slow poisoning which is going on within them very soon. It is seen in their pale thin faces, dull sunk eyes, and languid move

ments.

Men who dwell in the country and work in the fields, live, as a general rule, seventeen years longer than those who dwell in towns and work in close rooms. But men who dwell in the country and work in the

open fields, would live many years longer than they do, if they took care always to have the fresh air of heaven inside of their dwellings as well as around them. It is hardly possible that any of you can conceive how much of illness and suffering is produced by people breathing impure and poisonous air.

The fresh air will pass through rooms of its own accord, if a free passage is left for it. There must, however, be both a way for it out of the room, and an entrance by which it may come in, otherwise there will be scarcely any movement in it. If only one opening is left, the air will not flow through that opening either outwards or inwards. But if one of the top window-panes be taken out from its frame, and a plate of zinc full of small holes be put into its place, -or if a tube of zinc, filled with small holes and open at the outer end, be made to pass through either the top of the wall or the roof of the room, and then holes be made through the bottom of the door of equal size and number, a gentle wind will blow constantly through the room with enough force to keep its air pure,-the poisonous vapours will be mixed with the air in the room, and will flow out in a constant stream through the holes in the zinc plate, and pure fresh air to the same amount will run in by the holes in the bottom of the door.

Some of you will say, But it will cost me more both in money and time than I can spare to get plates of metal, and to have glass taken out of my windows, when perhaps I shall have to leave my house in a few weeks, and go to live in another cottage. Then take a large gimblet, and bore a row of holes through the upper part of the wooden window frame, just above the glass, make them sloping a little downwards, so that the rain may not run in. This, at least, will cost you nothing, and you can do it for yourself, and if too much air passes for comfort, a little putty, or a few pegs of

wood, will serve to make all right, and regulate the draught until it is just what you want.

Most of you will know that this making of an artificial wind to blow through the inside of houses is called by a particular name-it is termed "ventilating." "Toventilate" is taken from an old Latin word which means "to blow" or fan with the wind.

All the rooms of dwelling-houses ought then to be properly ventilated before people are allowed to live in them; and this is the more necessary, the more those who inhabit them are confined to the rooms. As a general rule, your landlords ought to have proper contrivances, of some such nature as those described, connected with the rooms of the houses you hire of them; but as your landlords are frequently as ignorant upon these matters as you are yourselves, and as you are the sufferers when the right thing is' not done, it is your duty to look to the matter. It will very seldom happen, if you' are good tenants, that they will not have the arrangements made for you, provided you explain what you wish. But if any of you chance to have a landlord who will not, then there is no other choice for you-you must do so for yourselves. It may cost you a little money at first, which you may think yourself ill able to spare, but this apparent cost will really be a very great saving to you in the end. One week's illness would take from you the same money many times over, besides adding suffering and wretchedness to the expense.

Remember, if you wish to be free from illness, and to keep your body strong and sound, you must have the rooms in which you live and sleep properly ventilated or blown through by fresh wind. Under no, other circumstances can you save yourself from being slowly poisoned, and enjoy for long years that greatest of all blessings. which God has in his loving mercy provided for man- good health.

LITTLE JOHNNY.

A STORY FOR SABBATH-SCHOOL CHILDREN.

"Do let me alone, Frank Harris! Oh! dear that's my best hat. I can't go to Sunday-school now." And Johnny lay down on the grass and sobbed as if his heart would break.

"Ha ha! ha-ha-ha! isn't that a good one!" shouted Earnest Norton. "You shan't come to our Sunday-shool,” said another.

"If you come in my claɛs, I'll tear your Testament," chimed in a third.

"Testament!" exclaimed one of the

older boys scornfully. "He'll learn his lessons in the spelling-book, I'll be bound; it's all the same to him!"

Uproarious, mocking laughter rang on the evening air at this sally, and after expending their stock of witticisms, the boys kicked the dirty little hat to the side of its owner, and left Johnny alone with his sorrow. Frank Harris went whistling merrily home.

"Why are you so late, my son? Stop! your clothes are all dusty. Go in at the back door and brush them, and then come to me." Frank obeyed instantly. He loved his mother better than most boys; for, alas! his father had been dead some years.

Oh! mother, isn't it a rich joke? Johnny Bell says he is coming to Sabbath-schoolto our Sabbath-school, mother! Oh! I wonder if he'll wear his old striped frock, and let his hair hang over his eyes as he does at school." And Franky laughed again.

"Stop a moment, Frank," said his mother. "Why is it any worse for Johnny to go to Sabbath-school with mean clothes, than for you to go there with a proud heart?"

Master Frank did not answer, but marched off to the wood-pile. He took up the axe and held it some time in his hands, but instead of commencing his evening work, he laid it down and sat upon the log.

"I'm sorry for Johnny, after all," said he, half aloud. "Don't I know as well as anybody that he never was taught as I am? I believe I'll ask mother to let me go and see him about it next Saturday. But I don't like to go there; his stepmother is so cross, and his father is drunk sometimes. And then they are just like the pigs-so filthy and ignorant. I don't believe there's a book in the house, at least not a whole one."

Johnny still lay on the grass near the school-house, sobbing bitterly. Poor boy! it was not so much to grieve about, that his new hat lay soiled and broken beside him, as that his childish hopes had been cruelly crushed by thoughtless, unkind words, and the little springe of joy that had begun to well up in his heart dried up in a moment. The stars came out and looked down on him with their bright dreamy eyes, but they could do naught to quell his sorrow, and though they bid him still hope on, yet he heard them not in the depth of his misery.

That night, after Johnny had crept supperless to his soiled and uncomfortable bed, it was a long time before he could sleep. At first the voice of his angry stepmother, when she discovered the ruined hat, kept him awake some time, and then a whippowill came and sang under his window a sad and mournful song, and when he did sleep, it was a troubled dreamy sleep that brought no rest to his weary frame. But when the morning dawned, even his stepmother was alarmed, for Johnny knew not the faces of his own brothers, and a cruel fever burned in his veins. The good doctor looked pityingly on him, and promised to do all he could to make him well. At last the fever was broken, and Johnny's strength began to return again. But, though he grew better for a while, yet a terrible cough hurt his poor side very much; and when in the long summer afternoons he walked feebly about the yard, he grew tired easily, and was obliged to rest often. But long before he was able to leave his pillow, Frank Harris and his mother had been many times to his bedside, with nice sweetmeats and pretty books, and Johnny enjoyed reading them very much, and was seldom without the little Testament Frank had given him.

One bright Sabbath morning, all the congregation were very much surprised to see Johnny Bell come creeping bashfully in at the church-door, just before the ringing of the last bell. His face and hands were. neat, and his hair was pushed back from an earnest, thoughtful brow. But his step, was slow and feeble, and a low cough broke. the stillness of the house of God.

Mrs. Norton signed to Earnest to close the pew door as Johnny passed, and Mr. Ellis drew himself up with great dignity, as the coarse, ragged frock brushed against his broadcloth. But John took a lowly seat and listened attentively to the sermon.

The minister was addressing Sabbathschool children, and the tears started in John's dark eye, while he told them how bad it was to tell falsehoods, break God's holy day, and take his name in vain. But when he heard of the love of Jesus, and how he died for poor sinful children, he hid his face in his hands and sobbed aloud. Mrs. Harris was weeping, too, and so was the superintendent, and even Mrs. Norton, after service was over, whispered patronizingly to Mrs. Harris,

"We really must take some notice of