back into the house, leaving him seated on | she had done enough; but the former Masthe bench, staring at the little river. Mid-ter for whom she had tried to work was a summer was a long way off, but he supposed loving Father, who had rewarded her with he must wait till it came, and then come to this place and take his chance again.

Laura," said Mrs. Richmond, coming into the little store-room two days after this, just as Laura had dismissed her sewing-class, and was putting away the work. "Laura, is this true that I hear?"

"About Dick?" said Laura, not pretending to misunderstand her.

It is true, then; what could you mean by it, my dear child?" continued the mother, in a tone of the deepest regret.

"What! did he tell you, mamma?" "No, but Gilbert did. Grace seems to have found it out, and when she asked him he did not deny it, and he wished me to know, he said, because he thought I should use my influence to help his cause. Do you really mean to tell me that you don't care for him?”

"I thought I would rather be a governess than marry him," said Laura, demurely.

"My dear, it is only three months since you expressed a conviction that nobody ever would make you a suitable offer; and I was a little vexed, I confess, because it is so much better that girls should not think much on those matters till occasion arises, but I certainly did not expect that you would shortly have an excellent offer from a thoroughly superior man, and would refuse him point blank."

"He took me by surprise," said Laura; " and besides, I always had a theory that I should not have offers; I was certain that I should not, or else I should not have talked as I did that day."

"A theory!" repeated the mother, with a comical little noise that was not exactly a groan, but something very like one.

"It is very inconvenient, mamma," replied Laura, apologising; "but really I would rather go and be governess to those children."

his own peace in her heart. By degrees, however, as the long winter passed away, she began to perceive that she was still serving the loving Father, and that made all things easier. As for Dick, she had not much time to think of him, and if a circumstance anything but pleasant had not aroused her to think of him, he would almost have passed out of her mind.

She read one day in the newspaper a singular account of the burning of a workhouse. The fire had broken out just at sunset, when a party of young men who were coming home from a boat-race, and going to dine at a large country house, which was mentioned, came running up to help the men who were bringing the fire engine. "One of them," it went on to say, "who was carrying an oar over his shoulder, made use of it to vault into a window some height from the ground. He was a Mr. Vernon. The oar cracked with his weight; but he was flung on to the windowsill, and, directed by the people without, made his way to a ward, where there was said to be a woman lying with her infant of a few hours old. Others of these young men got in also, and their pluck' seemed to increase the daring of the other men. They rescued two or three bedridden people, and exposed themselves rashly. They also saved a good deal of clothing and some stores, and they all got out without a scratch, excepting this Mr. Vernon, who had his left hand badly torn by the fall of a rafter with some jagged nails in it, which caught his fingers, while the infant on his arm and the woman were unhurt.

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"It could not be Dick," thought Laura; or, of course, I should have heard of it from home." It proved, however, that it was Dick, and Grace had to leave her young family, and go to nurse him. Very few particulars were told to Laura; but she So Laura went away, and she was a gov- did not much care for that, as she had read erness, and she did not particularly like it. them in the newspaper. "Dick was better," Her employers were exacting; they were this was sometimes said; and at other rather cold; and Laura, being very shy, times, "Dick has certainly less pain now suffered many little annoyances and much than at first;" finally, they said, "that cut inconvenience without the courage to on his forehead is healed now, and he looks speak. The wear and tear of life having more like himself again." Oh," thought now truly come upon her, she began to feel Laura, "his face is disfigured, then, is it?" the great difference between duties done of But when she got home, and to her surone's own accord, and sought out for one's prise, found him sitting in the drawing-room self, and the sterner kinds of duty that had with her mother and his sister, she saw that come upon her. She sometimes felt as if he was still an invalid wearing his arm in a her taskmasters now were men and women sling. He had a glove on his left hand, who were never satisfied, never thought and at first Laura did not dare to look at

6.

it; but her eyes, in spite of herself, were became a means of grace; and a clean skin drawn to it at last, and she saw that two or the sure means of getting a clean heart. three of its fingers were empty. How Volunteer regiments were addressed as much more beautiful the somewhat hand- though they were religious orders, destined some face appeared now that it was to regenerate the moral life of the nation. adorned with that slight scar, and how Cricket, rowing, running, and jumping, much more interesting the whole man ap- were to do men more good than praying; peared with that becoming sling and the and the "trainer" was to accomplish the somewhat steady set of the mouth, which work which the preacher and the philosolooked as if he had summoned up all his pher had attempted in vain. strength to do battle with pain, and keep its presence to himself, and keep all expression of it down, there is no use in trying to describe. But Laura felt it, and what she did when her mother and Grace left her alone with him, nobody would have told, if she had not told it herself afterwards, and seemed to think it the most natural thing in the world.

He lifted up his somewhat hollow eyes and looked at her; it cannot be said that he felt any conscious regret for what he had done; but he did think- because he did not know better that it had lessened his chance with the woman whom he loved; and while she imagined that he had become beautiful, he remembered that he was

She rose, when he looked at her, and moved towards him; and when, as she came up to him, he also rose, she said, with a kind of sweet entreating in her soft voice, Dick, will you 99 kiss me? She had always been thought an odd girl. Everybody said she was; but she was my friend, and perhaps that was the reason why I never could see it.

From Good Words.

THE DISCIPLINE OF THE BODY.

DURING the last fifteen years, quite enough has been said about the sanctity of the body and the protest against the strange fancy that we honour and please God by impoverishing, torturing, and marring the beauty of what He "curiously wrought," has run into extravagance. A few sensible men proclaimed war against the saintliness of physical weakness, filth, and suffering; and before long their wholesome doctrine was incessantly reiterated with all the passion of fanaticism in every part of the country; the new gospel found its way into innumerable sermons and lectures, into the columns of every newspaper and the pages of every popular magazine. "Great was the company of the preachers." The "tub"

No doubt it is a very fine thing for a man to be able to walk forty miles a day, but that does not make him a saint. There is no virtue in being sickly; but neither, so far as I can see, is it the highest attribute of piety to have the digestion of an ostrich, or the lungs of a racehorse. Many a fool. has had muscles of iron, and nerves of steel; and I imagine that it is even possible to be a member of the Alpine Club, and yet to break all the Commandments.

Still it is true that both the Jewish and the Christian Scriptures speak of our physical nature with honour. They never represent the body as the work of some inferior, and perhaps malignant deity, who so contrived it that we should be constantly tempted to sin. It is God's own handiwork "fearfully and wonderfully made." It is the visible temple of the Holy Ghost-the only visible temple in which God has dwelt since the glory passed away from the inner sanctuary at Jerusalem. Death is not to destroy it. Sown in corruption, it is to be raised in incorruption; sown in weakness, it is to be raised in power. The Incarnation and the prophecy of the Resurrection have finally redeemed it from contempt. That God was manifest in the flesh is the fundamental article of the Christian creed; and when we listen to the desolate words,"dust to dust, ashes to ashes," we confidently believe that the time is coming when "all that are in the graves" shall hear the voice of the Son of God "and shall come forth; that the gracious form and the kindly face have not vanished for ever; that the body, not the same flesh and blood indeed, but still the body which it has been pleasant for us to look upon on earth, will reappear among the shining splendours of heaven.

The body, therefore, with its instincts and wants, is not to be treated as the enemy of the soul, but as its friend- a friend of inferior rank, but still a friend. It asks for warmth and clothing, food and shelter, and for ease and rest after labour; and it should have them all. Let men say what they will in praise of the celestial influence of hunger, whether voluntary or involuntary, it is difficult to see that hunger encourages any

human virtue, or any Christian grace. As for a hard and severe life, as a rule it is probably as injurious to the intellect and the heart, as it certainly is to physical health and beauty. When the Apostles warned men against "fleshly lusts," there is no reason to suppose that they meant to require Christian people to live a life of discomfort and privation.

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or culture exempts us from danger. Medical men have assured me again and again that in houses where no one would expect it, actual drunkenness is the real cause of apparently inexplicable illness. Now and then I have been shocked at finding that women, educated women of good family, and occupying a good social position, are guilty of it. There are circumstances which But that it is necessary, if we are to live make the temptation to this vice specially a pure and devout life, that we should firmly perilous to women whose circumstances excontrol our inferior instincts and passions, empt them from the necessity of earning has been the common faith of all saints; and their own bread. Take the case of a carelessness in the discipline of the body is, young girl whose home before marriage was perhaps, the real cause of the miserably ig- a very bright and merry one; she was surnoble life of many Christian men. They rounded with brothers and sisters and troops have no strong and clear vision of God, no of friends; her mind was occupied with her vivid anticipation of everlasting blessedness music, her drawing, and her books; two or and purity. Their love for Christ smoulders three times a year she made long visits to like a half-extinguished fire without heat, relatives at a distance; she was as free from without brightness, without intensity. care as the lilies that neither sow nor spin, Fleshly lusts" unsubdued are the true ex- or as the birds of the air that make the planation of their moral weakness and spir-spring-time merry with their songs; her itual sluggishness. If a man is conscious that his spiritual nature has no elasticity, that his religious life is dull and heavy, that his prayers have no heart in them, and his thanksgivings no rapture, that his Christian work is feeble and mechanical, a burden to himself and no blessing to others, let him ask whether the flesh has not mastered the spirit, and set himself vigorously to assert his freedom.

whole life was joyous, varied, and animated. After marriage she has to spend the greater part of nearly every day at home and alone. Her husband leaves her directly after breakfast, and does not return till night. She has her home and servants to attend to; but to a bright, clever girl the managing of household affairs is apt to become depressing. She has children by-and-by, perhaps, but the society of children does not give her the intellectual stimulus and excitement Let him ask himself, for instance, whether to which she has been accustomed. Her he would not be a better man if he drank heart dies down. She gets weary of the less. It is not merely men who drink till grey, dull sky under which she lives, and the they are drunk that are guilty of intemper- habit steals almost insensibly upon her of ance; there are many people who do what is taking stimulants to make her pulse beat perhaps worse than that. I have heard able faster and her spirits move more lightly. If medical men give it as their deliberate opin- she does not break it off at once, she is lost. ion that a man who gets drunk once a Let her do anything that is at all innocent month receives less physical injury than a to escape from her doom. Let her get to man who never loses self-command, but her music again or to her drawing; let her drinks habitually more than he ought. spend her time in dressing herself daintily, Which suffers most morally, it may be hard or in manufacturing the gossip which is comto determine. Unhappily, drinking which mon at morning calls; better still-if she does not end in positive intoxication is re-can- - let her give herself vigorously to garded as innocent. The men who are some kindly, womanly, Christian work for guilty of it would resent even an implied the poor, in which she can find a real intercensure on their excesses. They think they est. Anyhow, let her get some colour, some live freely," but that they are blameless. animation into her life from harmless sources, Their friends become used to their habits; or else she will soon be ruined; unless mere acquaintances say that they never she can find healthy excitement somewhere, seem very bright or active, but charge them the dullness, stillness, and sameness of her with no sin; their own consciences are life will be her destruction. drugged into silence; but all moral nobleness and all lofty devotion inevitably disappear from their character. It will not do to speak of excessive drinking as a vice of which only the poor are guilty. No rank

There is another vice to which we Englishmen are specially prone. Our climate makes a large amount of solid food necessary to us, and for want of genius to do better

we eat grossly. We have no scruples about | ous. Why should we not wait, as Charles it. We are ravenous and voracious, and Lamb puts it, till the world is "aired" befeel no self-reproach. I am inclined to think fore we venture out? If a man can do that good cookery might do at least as much for the morals of the country as gymnastics. Dine in Paris on fourteen courses, and you feel lighter and brighter when you have finished than when you began; "do justice," as the phrase is, to an English dinner of the old fashioned sort, and, without the liberal assistance of sherry and champagne, you are too stupid to talk of anything except local politics and the state of the crops. French wines will never become popular in this country till we get French cooks. The ethics of dining is a neglected branch of the science of morals which urgently requires investigation. Meantime, let men remember that excessive eating is a foul and disgusting vice; its evil effects may be less obvious than those of excessive drinking, but they are not less real, perhaps they are not less serious. All the finer sensibilities of the soul, all moral grace and beauty, are perhaps more certain to perish in the glutton than even in the drunkard.

more work in the day when he lies till halfpast seven, than when he gets up at halfpast five, if he is better tempered at breakfast-time, if his mind is fresher and his heart kindlier, for the rest of the day, it passes my comprehension why he should turn out at the earlier hour. Some people think he ought; and I have honestly tried to discover some intelligible explanation of what seems to me this singular article of faith, but I cannot. If through rising late on weekdays, a man has to hurry away to business without family prayer, if his temper is ruffled morning after morning by the haste and disorder in which it involves him; if he gets up so late on Sunday that he has to make a violent effort to reach his place of worship in tolerable time, and gradually comes to think that he is quite early enough if he is in his seat five minutes after service has begun, then of course he is to be blamed; but though I have a real respect for traditional wisdom, I have never been able to understand why a man should get up at unseemly hours in the night for the mere sake of doing it.

There is a Sluggishness, however, which is fatal to manly energy and Christian earnestness. Some men fall into such physical habits that they never seem to be fairly awake. Hard work of every kind, whether of muscle or brain, they systematically evade. They "take things easy." They do not excite themselves." They think they are very harmless, and even very praiseworthy people; and do not see that indolence has grown upon them till the soul is no longer master of itself, or of the body which ought to serve it. The immorality of their life it may perhaps be impossible to make clear to them; but they may be made to perceive that habits which destroy all intensity, and depth, and vehemence of religious feeling must involve them in guilt. Every spiritual impulse is enfeebled, every devout affection is deadened, every act of worship is made a weariness by the sluggishness into which they have permitted themselves to sink. The fiery chariot in which the soul should rise triumphantly to heaven in exulting praise and rapturous adoration has had all its splendours quenched; now and then they may be feebly stirred by the fervour and passion of men of nobler temper, but it is only for a moment; "of the earth, earthy," they have become incapable of the diviner movements and joys of the spiritual life.

are so strangely blended, that the lights and shadows which chase each other across our interior life, do not all come from the upper heavens. By honouring the laws of our physical nature, some of us might come to live a more equable spiritual life.

Very wonderful is the intimate connection, the subtle interaction between the forces of our physical and moral nature. It is one of the chief mysteries of our mysterious being. But it is not a mystery merely; it is a fact of infinite practical significance which cannot be ignored without grave peril. The intelligent recognition of it would As for "fleshly lusts" which betray us insave many good people from much sorrow, to sin, the line of duty is simple and definite as it would save others from grievous sin. I - we must "abstain "from them. Every should like to have the " Diaries" which re- man must learn for himself where his own cord the spiritual experience of certain ex- danger lies, and then must resolve, at whatcellent persons, illustrated with notes by wise ever cost, to have done with his sin. Our physicians who had known them intimately. choice lies between yielding to the degraPeriods of spiritual desertion, when "the ding bondage which has made us despise light of God's countenance was hidden ourselves, and a life inspired with the Holy from them, apparently without any reason, Ghost, a life of strength, joy, and blessmight receive a very instructive explana- edness. It is of no use to try to pray, untion. It might be found that God had been less we "abstain" from that which makes less arbitrary, or as they would say less sov- prayer dull and heartless, and renders us ereign, in his treatment of them than they incapable of receiving the very blessings we supposed. I once tried whether the strange ask for. It is of no use to try to meditate on vicissitudes of glory and gloom which oc- the majesty and goodness of God, unless we curred in the interior life of an eminently" abstain " from that which almost incapacigood man could be accounted for by the physical causes which his own diary suggested; and though the materials at my command were, of course, very imperfect, as I had never known him, and could only infer what his physical history was from accidental and fragmentary hints occurring here and there among the record of his labours, his thanksgivings, his confessions, and his bitter cries to God for the restoration of spiritual joy, the attempt was not altogether We wait for the redemption of our body; unsuccessful. A wise discipline of the body but we must not wait for the Resurrection would free many a devout soul from the evil to liberate us from "fleshly lusts:" these thoughts with which it is haunted, and which" war against the soul;" and unless they are supposed to come from evil spir- are resolutely resisted and subdued, the soul its, from the gloomy fears which are may be in peril of final destruction.

interpreted as signs of a deep-rooted unbelief, and from the despondency which is regarded as the result of the Divine displeasure.

Let no one suppose that I ascribe to merely physical causes all the unspeakable joy and al the unspeakable agony which find a place in the spiritual history of every man who is endeavouring to

live, and move, and have his being in God. This material universe may be an illusion; its stars and suns, its mountains and oceans, may all be a mere fleeting show, projected by the action of the powers of my own inexplicable nature, and without any solid and substantial being; but that my soul is saddened and blessed by its failures and triumphs, by the eclipse of the divine glory, and by the recovery of the beatific vision. this I cannot doubt. It is, however, equally certain that body and soul, flesh and spirit,

tates us for lofty meditation, and which, if for a moment we are swept upwards among the harps and songs of angels, sinks us down at once into our earthly dust again. For some men to rise to a nobler life it may be quite as necessary to eat less as to pray more; to spend less time over their wine as to spend more time over their Bible; to ride, to walk, to run, to bathe, as to engage in regular and earnest Christian work.