M

ANY of the readers of the HIVE live in large towns, and know but little of country life; while others have always lived in villages, and know but little of town life. It is hard to say whether those who live in the country or those who live in the town have the greater advantages. It is, however, certain that those who live in the country see the most of God's works. They are surrounded by green fields instead of red bricks. The living grass is under their feet instead of hard stones. When we leave the streets of a crowded city, where we see only a strip of sky hemmed in between two high walls, and take a walk into the country, and gaze at the fields waving with corn, and listen to the song of the birds, and the hum of the bees, and the rippling brook chanting its quiet tune, ws seem to be brought nearer to God.

In our first engraving this month we have a picture of a village stream, which is a beautiful object, and suggesting many thoughts to those who are thoughtful. When one of our living poets stood one fine day watching such a stream, he heard it singing, and this was its song:

I come from haunts of coot and hern,
I make a sudden sally;

And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley.

I chatter over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles;
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.

I chatter, chatter, as I flow

To join the brimming river ;
For men may come, and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

I steal by lawns and grassy plots,
I slide by hazel covers;

I move the sweet forget-me-nots
That grow for happy lovers.

I slip, I slide, I gleam, I glance,
Among my skimming swallows;
I make the netted sunbeams dance
Against my sandy shallows.

I murmur under moon and stars,
In brambly wildernesses;

I linger by my shingly bars,
I loiter round my cresses.

And out again I curve and flow,
To join the brimming river;
For men may come, and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

This is a very beautiful song,
and we daresay
some of the girls who read the HIVE can
sing it.

A fourth little fox is "I Forgot." He is very provoking. He is a great cheat. He slips through your fingers like Time. He is seldom caught,

Fifth little fox is "Don't Care." Oh, mischief he has done!

the

Sixth little fox is "No Matter." It is matter whether your life is spoiled by small faults.

N

ow, boys, I said there were three black, coarse threads that spoiled the beauty of the velvet of life, and the third is SPITEthat is only another name for hate.

Spite is hate in little things and trifles; hate is spite in larger things, and it usually happens that those towards whom we have shown any spite we soon learn to hate. Spite is the child; hate is the full-grown and dark-spirited man. Spite begins in the indulgence of dislikings, sometimes very unreasonable. When I was teaching a class, a good many years ago, in a Sunday-school, there was a little thoughtful fellow who always had his lessons ready, and his answers clear and correct: in the class three or four boys lower down, was a sturdy little rogue who never had a lesson ready, and I often found him stealing behind his schoolmates to pinch or strike his steady little schoolfellow, and it was only because the works of the one were good and the other evil. I am afraid, my dear lads, that there is something in us which prompts us to hate what is morally excellent, and to admire what is stubborn, and ungentle, and disobedient. Take care of this. What is it you hate? and why do you hate it? Do you hate what is better than yourself? Do you hate what is done well? Recollect, we always hate what is unlike ourselves. From the time of Cain down to the present hour, the bad man hates the good man and all his works.

I cannot tell you all the disagreeable stories about spiteful and hateful people which I have heard or known in my life; but I will tell you three,-they are about three kinds of spite.

There is envious spite. You know that the New Testament speaks of " the spirit that lusteth in us to envy," It is very hard to "rejoice with them that do rejoice," be

cause it requires such an unenvious spirit. I remember hearing of a little girl who went to her Sabbath-school, and when she came home her mother asked her what she had done in school, and she, in the simplicity of her little soul, said, "Oh, dear mother, I am afraid I have done nothing; for you know there was little Mary Curtis, whose baby-brother was buried this week, and she was so sorry, and she cried so that I cried with her; and I took her hands in mine, and kissed her; but it quite took all the lessons out of my head, so that poor Sarah Miles, who is always behind with her lessons, had them this morning quite perfect; and she was so happy that, although she got more tickets than I did, I was quite glad, and I told her so, and kissed her too." "My dear," said the happy mother, "you have not said so many lessons, perhaps, but you have fulfilled the apostle's injunction; you have wept with them that wept, and rejoiced with those who rejoiced.'" But that is not the story, boys, I was going to tell you. It is about the spite of envy. Whenever I see an envious man at work against his neighbour's prosperity, he always looks to me like a man who is pulling another's house down to mend his own with the broken bricks, forgetful that by destroying his neighbour's house he has, perhaps, loosened the foundation of his own; and that, at any rate, the bricks of the building he has pulled down are not of much use to him. 66 'Envy is rottenness to the bones." (Prov. xiv. 30.) It is not what we have, but the way we use it, that makes us happy. I don't know how it happened, but so it was, that old Hooper, who kept the village chandler's shop, became envious of old Moses Owen and his family. Old Moses was a day-labourer, and old Hooper called himself a tradesman; but somehow, poor old Hooper, who was, how

ever, not much more than fifty, could never make the two ends of the thread of life meet. And old Moses seemed very quietly to make the ends meet without much trying. In the house of old Moses all was neat and nice as a new pin. In the house of old Hooper I recollect once seeing the cat playing with a shawl and bonnet on a chair; and the idea occurred to me directly that she it was who kept the house in order, for everything looked in a most lively state of confusion. There were plenty of children in both families, but those of Hooper grew up in idleness; those of Moses, in order and diligence. Hooper and his family minded everybody's business but their own: Moses and his family minded nobody's business but their own; and, in the long run, boys, this makes a great difference. Well, the two families became rather conspicuously noticed in the village; old Hooper fixed people's attention, and gave them occasion to remark, by his constant spite against old Moses. I am sorry to say old Hooper made a great profession of religion. And, although he had a heart as black as a coal, he wore what he called a white neckerchief: he called it whitewhite it never had been since it left the draper's shop. At last he got it into his head that he would try to do two things. He thought, foolish man! that he should succeed better if he lived where Moses lived; and he bade a higher rent for his cottage, and he worked very cleverly to get the old man dismissed, by a young master, from his employment. And now everybody thought old Moses would come to the workhouse, or break stones on the road. Well, what do you think? To the very house where old Hooper had lived, old Moses went, helped by his children, whom he had not taught the way of industry and piety for nothing. He set up a little shop himself. Poor old Hooper got worse and worse-" for envy slayeth the silly one" (Job v, 2); his

children got worse and worse too. At last he left the village, and I don't know where he went; but I met him the day before he left I never like to speak unkindly to men in their fallen fortunes, but I could not help saying to him, "Hooper, those bricks did not do." He did not know what I meant, and said, "What bricks?" "The bricks of old Moses Owen's cottage," said I. "You left your house to pull down his, and now you see you are out of house and home, and you cannot use the bricks to build another."

Take care of the black thread of envious spite. There is an old proverb that says, "Curses are like little chickens-they come home to roost." There is a boy here named Tom Battersby, who has a black eye, I am told, by a ball bounding back and striking him. Take care, boys-every blow you strike another, bounds back with just the same fury on yourself. In the long run, God always does good to them that do good. How it ought to hold back our hands from evil to know that "all evil doers shall be cut off."

Now I will tell you another story. The second spite is the spite of revenge. Revenge is folly it is madness. If anyone has done you any harm, it won't do you any good to do them harm in return. A young man once insulted Socrates, the great Grecian philosopher, and went so far as even to kick him; but Socrates walked on and did not heed it at which his friends were surprised.

66

What," said he, "would you have me to do? If an ass kicked me, would you have me to kick him again?' Which answer of Socrates was so much talked of, that always afterwards the young man was called the Kicker. But in this reply of the wise man there was a sort of revenge. It did not come up to Christ, who, "when He was reviled, reviled not again."

And oh, my boys, think how dreadful is that feeling of revenge. The man who has indulged in this evil passion may easily be known. Revenge is like a branding iron,

66

• If

and it burns in its fiery traces in the face of the passionate and wrathful man. thine enemy strike thee, strike him again:" that is what self says. 'If thy enemy hunger, feed him :" that is what Christ says. When you come to know life, you will see in the man who indulges in revenge, dark, blood-shot eyes, and cruel face. Such a man injures himself more than his foe. How much better is it to be

"Sinned against than sinning."

Never injure because you have been injured. There is a fable, that a rat once did an injury to a lion, and when the lion walked majestically on without revenging the insult, the jackal, and the tiger, and the panther, all called the lion coward. Whereupon the lion set up such a roar of laughter as made the desert to shake again, and all the beasts to tremble. 66 No," said he, “I am not a coward; but you might think so if I thought so much of the tooth of a rat as to revenge it by a blow from the paw of a lion." The noblest natures never stoop to revenge.

I am come to my last tale, and that is to ilustrate the spite of disappointment. Some people get into so bad a state of mind, that their hatred is not against anything in particular, but against all things and people in general. And I must admit, my lads, that disappointment sours the spirit very much ; but then sour apples won't make sour apples sweet. Love is a great cure for disappointments. Don't expect much, then you won't be disappointed. Don't calculate on anything on this earth but the love of God; and even of that, don't be disappointed if sometimes you cannot tell how it works. Sometimes even it is as sweet as a rose, and sometimes as sharp as a surgeon's knife. Before we become angry from our disappointments we should ask what right we had to be disappointed. I met a man going along the road-I thought I knew him by

his step. "How is it with you this morning?" said I. "Oh," said he, "very bad indeed; I have been to old Brooksbank, to ask him to lend me ten pounds. Do you think he would do it ?-no, not he. I'll tell you what it is, Amos, I'm sick of the world: so much friendship as he had expressed for me, and now not to lend me ten pounds!" "But stop, stop," said I; "what right had you to expect that he would lend you ten pounds?-it may not be convenient. He may respect you, and yet not be disposed to run the risk. You see you indulged in foolish expectations, and now you are disappointed; and he might say, “Ah! I thought William was a decent fellow: I did not expect that he would put me to the painful disappointment of refusing him this money." It will, my young friends, exalt your love if you reduce your expectations. Human nature is poor, even in the besteven in those who are converted. And now

I have nearly done; but the other day a man spoke so crossly in my hearing that I said to him, "I think you must have drank a great deal of crab-apple wine-and it has almost intoxicated you." He did not like it. But, my little friends, in speech, in action, in character, love one another. I shall some day come and say more to you, but now you see I have said enough about the Three Black Threads of Life.

Some of you go to church and some to chapel. When you go to church next Sunday, and you come to that part of the beautiful prayers where you pray to be saved "from envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness," pray indeed. Envy is the spring-Hatred is the brook-Malice is the river-and Uncharitableness is the sea; and many persons drink of the first, and follow its guidance until they swim, and bathe, and live in the last take care of envy-the fountain, and you shall escape uncharitableness-the sea.