and sends it, and we are so displeased that we fret and fume, and worry ourselves into a fever of impatience, then we are not waiting really.

It is wonderful what different ways there are of doing this same thing. If we happen to be spending a morning at a railway-station, we see how persons are affected by it. One has an hour to wait for a train, and he saunters up and down the platform or lounges on a seat in the waitingroom with a most placid and contented smile upon his face. Another has to wait half an hour, and he goes off into a passion, scolds the officials, makes himself disagreeable to his companions in tribulation, threatens to write to the papers, and is altogether anything but patient.

But there are more painful things than this kind of waiting. Do we not know what it is to have striven and watched, have risen early and worked late, and then have had to wait for success? Patience then, is a very necessary virtue. It is not easy to be content to wait when we expected the blessing earlier. But it is often good to wait even for this.

It is a painful thing to wait on a sick bed. To suffer pain and weariness and hope deferred, while the long hours pass by and the faint heart grows fainter still. But we see some waiting thus in patient confidence and trust, not passionate, nor eager, not anxious or impatient, but, not knowing whether life or death is before them, lying still and simply waiting. Oh, it is surely not of themselves that the restless spirit is curbed, the eager heart still. And it should comfort us to know that God does not make His children wait without giving them the necessary power.

There is another waiting still. It is when heart and flesh have failed, when the pulse is low, and the eyes are dim, when hope dies, at least with reference to this life, and there is nothing to do but be quiet and listen for the sound of the wings of the dark angel. And yet how many are thus waiting now! Earth is receding, though heaven does not yet loom in sight. They have spoken their farewell to their friends who have walked with them hitherto, though the angel's greeting has not yet reached them. Day and night, in isolation and silence, they wait for the summons. But it shall come soon. They know that. And they shall arise and have what they have hoped for

and reach the home where there will be no longer need of patience.

Let us be content to wait. God help us not to be impatient and hasty; but may we be quiet and resigned, even when the time is long! For He will not mock our patience. His blessings are worth waiting for.

The Necessity of War.

WE have heard a great deal about "the sad necessity of war." But are the words really truthful and well chosen? It is sad beyond all possibility of doubt or power of expression; but are we quite assured that it is also a necessity? Our hearts have been horrified by terrible stories of wholesale bloodshed and murder; but was it obliged to be? Has the fight been a sacred one? and are the slain only a host of martyrs? Was it impossible either to prevent it or to do without it? Was it in very truth necessary to the world or even to a single nation?

It may be ignorance of matters too profound for any but wiser minds, but we cannot ourselves see where the need was, nor what adequate good there is to result from it. And this we feel with regard to all wars. A misunderstanding arises between two or three men, who happen to be placed in high and responsible positions. One man insults another, and angry passions are aroused. Very well, let them settle their quarrel between themselves. If there must be fighting, if boasted civilisation and even Christianity can find no other way, let those who have quarrelled fight it out. The young men cultivating their farms and courting the lasses whom they hope to make their wives, have not quarrelled; why should they be called out to strew other fields with their dead bodies? The middleaged men, doing their duty as fathers of families, spending their time and brains in inventions of machinery and other aids to progress, do not hate the men of other lands; why should they leave their homes to kill and slay those with whom they have not so much as a quarrel? And the

old men who have done what they could and only wish to die in peace, why should they be summoned to the terrible sights and sounds of the battle-field? And then, there are the women and children, the widows and orphans, who had better have been slain too than forced to live on in empty houses and with breaking hearts. What have they done who know nothing about foreigners, except a little pity for them because they are foreigners, that this woe should be brought upon them? Oh, is it not time that all this should cease, and that monarchs and their ministers, or whoever they are who cause and declare war, should be compelled to settle it themselves, instead of wickedly dragging the innocent and unoffending to destruction? Let them fight a duel by all means if they wish it, only let their peoples go free.

But duelling is to be abolished from the face of the earth; it is a wrong and barbarous thing. Is there any common-sense left in the world? It is wrong for two men to talk about pistols, and an early meeting in some quiet spot, with the understanding that one shall be shot. It is a just and holy thing for thousands of men to stand face to face with each other and shoot each other down with as much rapidity as possible! Murder is so wrong in detail, that if a man in the heat of passion take another's life, he must be scorned, and hated, and executed; he is so bad that the righteous world will hold him no longer! But wholesale murder is another thing! If the man at the bidding of his officer exert himself and contrive to take not one life, but a score or two, he is a hero, and deserves a medal, and will hereafter be crowned and petted in the drawing-rooms, as if the blood on his hands were a thing to be coveted!

There is only one thing more absurd, and we saw it at the beginning of the war between France and Germany. It was the great and good efforts made to provide hospitals, doctors, nurses, and other necessaries for the sick and wounded, while there were only strong and stalwart men with nothing the matter with them, and who ought not and need not have been sick and wounded; and it was also, the immense orders for widows' bonnets and black crape, while husbands and brothers were full of life and health! And now, when all have been used, when vil

lages have been burnt, and bodies buried by thousands, what is there but heart-sickness and grief as relics of this most unholy and absurd war?

Let us talk no more about the "sad necessity." It is idle to speak thus at such times as these. Are not the people greater than kings and stronger than governments? If they say, " We will not fight," who is to make them? Let them obey all righteous laws right loyally; but when God says, "Thou shalt not kill," shall they obey man, who bids them take mitrailleuses and chassepots that they may do the more murder?

War is a terribly guilty thing; and though almost always a few persons are the most to blame, yet there are very many others who are not guiltless. Those who, either by spoken orations or written words, stir up the people to strife and hatred until they forget that they are brothers, and think only that they are enemies, are not guiltless. Those who fan the flame of ambition or jealousy in the breasts of monarchs are not guiltless. Those who write war songs strong with subtle passion are not guiltless. And the men themselves who, though they are men. and can be brave as heroes, yet allow themselves to be slaughtered by thousands, instead of banding together in peaceful resistance, are not guiltless.

How long is it to continue? Surely there will be better times when swords shall be beaten into ploughshares and spears into pruning-hooks, for the Lord hath spoken it. But cannot we hasten it on? Cannot we at least help to make the next generation a peace-loving one? We are teaching our children not to be cruel. And surely we shall soon also teach them that it must be in the sight of Jesus, the Prince of Peace, a most sinful thing to take away human life. But let us exercise a little common sense about it. Let us not talk to them of glorious victories, and say nothing of suffering and dying men. us not provide them with mimic swords and guns for toys, nor solicit their admiration for red coats. Let us teach them that the pomp of war is the pomp of death. If they grow up, hating wrong but loving their fellows; if they are trained to be soldiers of Him who said, “Blessed are the peace makers," we shall soon have heard the last about "the sad necessity of war."

Let

The Fruit of a Lesson.

SOME years ago, a mother spent a Sunday evening in giving a lesson to her little boy on these four words :

"THOU SHALT NOT KILL."

It was so plain and forcible that it impressed him very strongly; and she afterwards overheard him say, in his prattling way," Paul will never kill anything again; for mamma said that only God could make life, and only He should take it away.'

And so the lesson bore its first fruits even while childhood lasted; for Paul, different from many boys who seem to be inherently cruel to weak and defenceless things, never took away the life of fly or spider, or anything that the great God had made. ·

As he grew older, life became even more a sacred thing to him. He was a brave lad, and belonged to that noble corps whose duty it is to hasten to the rescue of houses and men threatened by fire. He feared no flames; he would scorn danger if a little child were to be saved, or an old woman helped. But he could never read a newspaper account of a murder, or of the death-punishment inflicted upon any fellow-creature, without enduring positive suffering and shedding bitter tears.

One day, not so very long ago, this Sunday-school boy, grown now to a young man, came to his mother, who sat at home, in fear and trembling.

A look into his face assured her that something had happened.

"My son, tell me.”

'It is all settled, mother. We are ordered to the war at once."

Well, Paul?"

Well, mother, you know without my telling you that I will never fire a shot, and no power on earth shall make me."

"But you must go, Paul; they will force you."

"I shall go, mother, because, as you say, I am obliged;