"Live while you live, the epicure would say,
And seize the pleasures of the passing day.
Live while you live, the sacred preacher cries,
And give to God each moment as it flies.
Lord, in my view let both united be:

I live in pleasure when I live in Thee.”

How very different is the tone of those who begin life without Abel's faith and firstlings. On his thirtythird birthday, Lord Byron wrote

"Through life's dull road, so dim and dirty,

I have dragg'd to three and thirty.

What have these years left to me?
Nothing except thirty-three."

And Hartley Coleridge wrote the following lines on the fly-leaf of his Bible—

"When I received this volume small,

My years were barely seventeen,

When it was hoped I should be all
Which once, alas! I might have been.

And now my years are thirty-five,

And every mother hopes her lamb,

And every happy child alive,

May never be what I now am.”

From among our firstlings we should choose

III. Our Fatlings.

Abel carefully picked out for his offerings the fattest of his lambs, kids, and calves. Like him, bring to God's altar the flower of your flock, the best of your

best of everything. As nothing is too great for God to give you, so nothing should be too great for you to give to God. You should not keep the fatted calf for strangers. The truth is, that the goods of this life are not really your own till you have given them to God. What a blessed thing to offer to the Saviour all the powers of an unpolluted youth, of an unblighted heart. In your home life, in your school life, in your social life, in your church life, let your rule be-"The firstlings of the flock and the fat thereof."

Some twelve years ago I was lecturing upon Abel. At the close I appealed to the young in words like these "Some do not take Abel's way. All that is finest, fullest, and fairest they give to the devil. Then when they are old and broken-down; when their blood is thin and they are ready to die; when sin can give them no more pleasure, and has left them next to no heart to give, they creep to Christ with their last, and their leanest, and their leavings. The poor outcasts of the world, and almost the outcasts of the devil, they offer themselves to God not a 'living' but a dying sacrifice. Wonderful to tell, Christ does not scorn the poor dregs of their wasted lives. But their godless companions often scorn them cruelly, yet not so cruelly as they scorn themselves. Such behaviour is not only very sinful and very foolish-—it is also very mean, very shabby, and very base. base. Will you ever treat God and Christ in that way ?"

The next evening a young woman, a stranger, called upon me. I greatly admired her frankness and hearti

ness. This was her story. "I had a godly upbringing in the country, but I came to a godless house in Glasgow, where all the religion that was in me was taken out of me. I felt that I was just a heathen when I came over here last week. I am now a servant in a house near your church. I got out last Sunday, and I thought that I would go into the nearest church, and see what like it was. I had the notion that it was a Roman Catholic Church, but I did not care what it was. All you said went in at the one ear and out at the other till you came to the close of your sermon. You then said that some young folk gave their youth to sin, and hoped to come to Christ in old age. My head then went down on the book-board, and I said to myself, That's God's truth, and that's me, and nothing can be more mean and shabby.' Thoughts of my praying mother came rushing into my heart and melted me, and I resolved, there and then, that my sinful and mean life, by God's help, would end from that hour."

A few nights afterwards she came to me with a young woman, and said, "This is the only companion I have in Glasgow. Last Monday night, I went straight from you to her, and told her all I had said to you, and she has resolved to begin the Christian life along with me.”

Again she called and said, "I wish to come to the Lord's Supper." "We celebrate it," I said, "a month hence, and again in three months. When do you wish to come?" She made a beautiful reply: "Oh, if you

please, it's the firstlings with me now: I would like to come to the first communion." She and her companion both came, and since then she has drawn others to our church, and for many years she constantly brought offerings of devout worship to this altar where she was moved by the story of Abel's firstlings and fatlings.

A bright boy of twelve listened to this sermon. His mother asked him some questions about it at dinnertime, and then said, "Are you going to do the mean and shabby thing?" In a firm tone he at once replied, "No, mother, I never will."

Will you do the mean and shabby thing? Your heart replies-does it not?-with a round and rousing No.

CHAPTER III.

THE RAINBOW.

"And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between Me and you, and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations: I do set My bow in the cloud."-GEN. ix. 12.

THE objects used in the Bible for lessons are simple, and such as are often seen by everybody except the blind. They are like the rainbow which fills the whole sky, and is seen as easily by the child as by the philosopher. This is one reason why the Bible is so popular and so easily understood: it brings truth within reach of the senses, while its rich sign-language delights the imagination, and it invites us to enter the temple of truth through the gate that is called Beautiful. It is thus a book for the millions. If we adopt its methods of teaching the whole world may become a Bible to us, full of parables, pictures, and doctrines. As the Bible has so many object-lessons, we may, in any part of the world, gain or recall much sacred learning without books. For the lessons and objects are linked together in our minds, so that many of the things we see and handle body forth to our eyes the truths of the Gospel. Whenever, for example, you see the rainbow, you are reminded of God's covenant of