April.

FROM DEARTH TO PLENTY, AND FROM DEATH TO LIFE,

IS NATURE'S PROGRESS, WHEN SHE LECTURES MAN

IN HEAVENLY TRUTH; EVINCING, AS SHE MAKES

THE GRAND TRANSITION, THAT THERE LIVES AND WORKS

A SOUL IN ALL THINGS; AND THAT SOUL IS GOD.

APRIL.

APRIL 1.

A RULE FOR PRAYER.

It helps much to attention and actual advertisement in our prayers, if we say our prayers silently, without the voice, only by the Spirit. For in mental prayer, if our thoughts wander, we only stand still; when our mind returns, we go on again: there is none of the prayer lost, as it is if our mouths speak and our hearts wander. (Jeremy Taylor.)

April 2.

LUTHER.

To some readers it may seem that I have spoken with exaggerated admiration of Luther. No man ever lived whose whole heart and soul have been laid bare, as his have been, to the eyes of mankind. Open as the sky, bold and fearless

as the storm, he gave utterance to all his feelings, all his thoughts; he knew nothing of reserve, and the impression he produced on his hearers and friends was such, that they were anxious to treasure up every word that dropped from his pen or from his lips. No man therefore has ever been exposed to so severe a trial; perhaps no man was ever placed in such difficult circumstances, or assailed by such manifold temptations. And how has he come out of the trial? Through the power of faith, under the guardian care of his heavenly Master, he was enabled to stand through life, and still he stands, and will continue to stand, firmly rooted in the love of all who really knew him. A certain writer has well said: "I have continually been more and more edified, elevated, and strengthened by this man of steel, this sterling soul, in whom certain features of the Christian character were manifested in their full perfection. His image, I confess, was for some years obscured before my eyes; I fixed them exclusively on the ebullitions of his powerful nature, unsubdued as yet by the Spirit of the Lord. But when, on a renewed study of his works, the holy faith and energy of his thoroughly German character, the truth of his whole

being, his wonderful childishness and simplicity, revealed themselves to my sight in their glory, then, I could not but turn to him with entire pure love, and exclaim: 'his weaknesses are only so great, because his virtues are so great.""

April 3.

SPANISH PROVERB.

(Julius Hare.)

God writes straight on crooked lines.

(Unknown.)

[How magnificently simple and true is this thought; condensing in half a dozen words, what is happening daily, hourly, all over the world. Sin, temptation, trial, sorrow,-these are the crooked lines; and over them rises triumphant God's finger, penning, in unerring and majestic straightness, the eternal truth, that, through His providence and love, good comes out of evil, for all those He has created and redeemed.]

(P. M.)

April 4.

AND THE COMMON PEOPLE HEARD HIM GLADLY.

In good truth, the more we know of Christi