terial virtues: Popular, popular, so very popular. There was nothing more to be said. I could not help recalling Christ's words: "Woe unto you when all men speak well of you." Popularity is the minister's golden calf, as it was Aaron's-he pleased the people. A Popular Preacher we often hear of; but what an incongruous title were that of a Popular Prophet! Has the Church so great need of fore-tellers, who can peer into futurity and tell us what is coming, even to the year and the day? There has been no lack of such, and if these men were willing to stand the good old Mosaic test, no one could object, though such literature would be thereby much curtailed. "When a prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously. That prophet shall die." (Deut. xviii. 20, 22.)

What we need more is the prophet who expounds not his own ideas, but the ideas of God; who preaches not himself, but Christ and His Word—who, taught by the Spirit, sees and sets forth the things of the Spirit as revealed in God's Word by the Spirit, but clothes the old Bible truths in modern words and forms and imagery so as to make them clear and vivid to the mind and heart and conscience of even the common people—a prophet who speaks as one having authority, because God speaks through him; who speaks the truth in power and yet in love, as Christ's great prophet spoke it, a prophet who scorns luxury and ease, and whose life is as the body of the spear to press home the point of his teaching. Such prophets are needed in the Church.

"The preacher is a messenger; his sermon is a message; he receives it from God; partly through the Bible, i.e., through messengers of olden times, partly through the Church, i.e., through the spiritual consciousness of devout souls of all time, partly by direct communion with God. His message is one of faith, hope and love-faith, a spiritual consciousness; hope, a glad expectancy; love, an unselfish service. Its value is measured, not by its literary or oratorical excellence, but by its life-giving qualities.

His message in spirit is the same which has been given by the prophets of all the ages, but its form must be adapted to the thought forms of his own time. And while his immediate object must be the inspiration of the individual, his ultimate object must be so to give that inspiration that a new social order, an order of love and not of ordered and regulated selfishness should rule in the social, the industrial, and the political world. "I add, to any young man who may read these pages, and who is deliberating the question of his profession, that never was the cloth or the pulpit less venerated than now; never was so scant respect paid to the mere vestment and standing-place; but never did an age or a nation so greatly need the prophet, . . and never was an age or nation more ready

to hear and heed the prophet, if he comes to it inspired by the consciousness of a divine message." "'*

Dear brethren, I fear that my address has broken out into what might be termed a concio ad clerum-an Episcopal charge; but, believe me, I have spoken these words with deep self-conviction, and there is none among you who more needs to lay them to heart.

I am sure you will all join with me in devoutly offering our Church of England collect for St. John Baptist's Day:

"Almighty God, by whose providence Thy servant John Baptist was wonderfully born, and sent to prepare the way of Thy Son our Saviour, by preaching ofrepentance; Make us so to follow his doctrine and holy life, that we may truly repent according to his preaching; and after his example constantly speak the truth, boldly rebuke vice, and patiently suffer for the truth's sake, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."

When night falls thickly down, shine through the dark,
So shall I fearlessly press on until

I reach the mark.

Jesus, my Life!

Though heart and flesh may fail, Thou art the same, -
Give of Thy strength, so shall my soul forget
Her weary frame.

Jesus, my King!

Let me but hear Thy voice, and I obey—

Thou art my Life, my Light, my Guide through gloom
To endless day.

Jesus, my God!

The close cannot be far, of earthly years;

The time draws nigh when Thine own tender touch
Shall dry my tears.

TORONTO.

* Lyman Abbott, "What Are a Christian Preacher's Functions."Forum, July, 1893.

SPINDLES AND OARS.

BY ANNIE E. HOLDSWORTH.

CHAPTER I.-THE MINISTER.

A HANDFUL of fishermen's cottages, and a cluster of mills on the brae above them were, may be, all that a lone stranger would see in Skyrle. And seeing these, I doubt he would get never a hint of its life, tossing like a shuttle from factory to

shore, from green wave to dusty loom.
It is not everywhere that you find the
noise of the mills drowned by the roar of
the sea; or the simple ways of the fisher-
folk mixing with the wheels and whirl of
the factory: but in Skyrle you can't get
them parted. Sea and land, change and
rest, birth and death, tears and laughing,
spindles and oars make up the lives of
the folk that live there. But when our
minister, Mr. Grahame, came to the north
it was terribly flattering to see how well
the town pleased him.

He had been expecting only a fishing. village; and when he saw all the braw houses and all the kirks-Skyrle being one of those places that keep their religion in brick-and the harbour, and the common, he was very well pleased to find himself in Scotland. And a fine sight it was to see his happy face when he knew he had no plan to make, and no week-night sermon to preach, and but one class to meet through the week.

. "Ah!" said he to his lassie, Miss Isobel, "had I but known this, I would have prayed for a Scotch circuit when I was a young man. In you go to the manse, child. It will be three good years before we say farewell to it, please God!" So they stepped through the gate close by the kirk; and though it was the gloam

ing, the lassie called out at the bonnie garden, with its bit of green, and old apple trees; and the elms beyond, where the crows built in the spring. But when she saw the house she roared and laughed; though it was an awful fine manse, only low in the roof, and maybe not over bright for a young lassie. She danced into the room where Kirsty, the maid, had spread the supper, and keeked into the chamber opening from it, calling out to her father to come in and see the bed in the wall.

But the minister didna heed her. He hadna minded to stoop coming ben the room, and so had knocked his head on the door beam.

He sat down rubbing his brow; and when Kirsty would have clapped a bittie sweet butter to it, he stapped her; saying, drylike, it was a clever man that made an impression so soon as he entered on a new charge.

In the meantime, Miss Isobel was running over the rooms crying out at all she saw, and laughing at Scotch ways. Kirsty didna like to hear the manse made game of; but all at once the lassie burst into the room, and gave her a kiss in the English fashion.

The tea-pot had been sitting on the hob, and when the lassie spoke Kirsty put it on the table and they began their tea. But it was easy seen they were English by the way they acted with the bannocks; eating them without butter, and never a thought to the syrup, though Kirsty coughed and pushed it beside the minister's plate more than once. But I'm thinking English folk are surely no all right in their taste, for although the tea had been infused the best part of the hour they took ill with it and called for fresh.

This was like to upset Kirsty again; but just then the minister asked what way they called cookies in Scotland; and she was so terrible flattered at kenning mair about it than the minister that she infused more tea and never a word at doing it.

But fra that day she held her head above most of the kirk members; and none ever forgot that it was Kirsty that telled the minister what way they called cookies in Scotland. And it was, maybe, this that made her so free afterwards in criticising the sermons, she feeling she had a right after she had given him the information about the cookies.

Well, this was on the night of the Friday, and by Sabbath forenoon there wasna a kirk member but kenned how the new minister was a widow man with the one lassie, and a wee terrier that they named Skye.

And this being so, it was natural that Mr. Grahame should be well liked in the town-Skyrle having a sair name for the old maids intil it.

And there wasna a member but kenned, too, how the minister had gone into the kirk all his lane on the Saturday, and, kneeling down in the aisle, had put up a prayer for a blessing on his work among the people he hadna seen. But if you hadna felt by his face that the minister was a man of prayer, you would have

telled by his breeks, that were awful shiny and wore at the knees, and good in all other places. And many a time Kirsty-she and the church officer were courting-has seen the key in the vestry door, and keeking in for David, has been sair put about to find the minister at his prayers.

He was the sort of man that clapped at more than one sense from the pulpit; for, shut your eyes as you might, his tongue kept you from sleep through the sermon.

Man! what a voice the minister had!

There was no sleep in the kirk that Sabbath; and even the rooks that gathered on the trees outside stopped their chatter to listen to the sermon.

The church was ane of the auldest i' Skyrle, and had been built by John Wesley himsel'.

It was a quaint-like wee placie with eight sides, for which it got the name of "the totum kirkie." But for all its age, it was bonnie with trees and its diamond-paned windows.

And when you got inside you had a sight of the stained glass windy aboon the pulpit, through which the sun glinted on Sabbath mornings.

To be sure there wasna muckle o' John Wesley remaining i' the kirk. But i' the vestry there was the old pulpit he had used; and an old-fashioned clock that had ticked to his preaching.

And there was aye a musty smell aboot the place that Geordie Mackay praised, calling it the odour of antiquity, tho' it was just the damp. It was Geordie that first found out the human nature in Mr. Grahame.

And I won't say I didna catch a sort of twinkle in the minister's eye when, seeing that William Rafe—the lad that played the harmonium-was like to drop off to sleep, he gave the Book a thump that made more than one swallow their mint drop in a hurry, and sit up very stiff, blinking to show that they were awake.

There's no doubt the minister enjoyed his joke, for I mind him telling David no to put away his little doggie from the vestry at the class.

"No, no, David," said he; "Skye is a good Methodist though he 'is Scotch; and I am glad to have one regular attendant at the class."

So the doggie came every Wednesday; and afterwards would give his paw to any body at the door, for all the world like the minister shaking hands with the members.

He was a great man for dumb things, and had a canary that sat on his shoulder, or ran after his pen as he wrote.

And he had a parrot, too, that was a scandal to Kirsty, for though it sang psalms during the week, it used awful language on Sabbath when the kirk came out.

"A grand sermon and a grand man, yon," said Geordie at the gate that first Sabbath after the sermon. "A grand man, is he no, David?"

"I wouldna say he is no," said David, with his eye on his boots, watching for Kirsty to win into the manse.