furnishing materials for joy and praise and confidence and hope. The Divine mercy to which David turned for solace when the thought of life's failures made him sad, has pledged itself not only to forgive the earthly past but also to make perfect the heavenly future. “As we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.” What bliss there must be for those who have been for cen. turies in heaven, and whose memories, revisiting centuries of life and labour, find in them obedience to every commandment, the fulfilment of every early promise, and the accomplishment of every high purpose ! To that perfect life which His grace will give us beyond the grave, God's word directs the hope of every one who is troubled in spirit and broken in heart by the memories of this faulty life, and who cries out in agony,

" When shall I, Lord, a journey take

Through my departed years,
And not a mournful visit make,

And not return in tears ?"

SQUIRE LORD'S PROPHECIES. It is said truly that prophecies | their unbrotherly pleasure at woes often work out their own fulfilment; which should be as their own, for and we know that modern prophets the sorrows of another to-day may toil hard, and usually with good suc be ours to-morrow. cess, to make good their predictions. It is not possible that God gives

The most disagreeable of all self these croakers--the ravens of human confident and conceited people, are society-any power over the destiny those who set themselves up for of their fellows. They are, however, oracles of wisdom, pronouncing judg. sometimes left of heaven to work out ment on things of the present, and what is in them. prognosticating those of the future. There was a man living far up Having unbounded confidence in among the hills a few years ago, who themselves, they expect every one was possessed of this evil spirit of else to have the same. If they once divination. He was a genial man in foretell evil, sad to say, they are dis his family, and in many respects in appointed if good comes; for they the community. But, notwithstandwould rather see sorrow in others, ing the coals he sent to the minister, than lose their character for shrewd. and the provisions he gave the poor, ness and acute judgment; and if, per he was a terror to everybody. When chance, they foretell good, they will à father had sent his son forth to make any effort or sacrifice to accom make his way in life, he was afraid plish that good.

to meet Squire Lord, lest he might . They are the class of people who say, “It's certain destruction to always cry, “I told you so," or, “Just | him!” Young maidens dreaded to as I prophesied," whenever a neigh let their heart's secrets reach his ear, bour's child goes astray, or a pros for he so often said, " That's a match perous man loses his all. And they that was never made in heaven, and utter these words with such a grim one that will bring no happiness on delight, while assuming an air of earth!" If his advice had been given regret, that one would fain banish and refused, in these or any other them from the family of man for cases, then he added active measures of evil to his prophecy; thus giving he might have meddled kindly. His a lesson to those who presumed to wife was a just woman, and had too know more of their own affairs than much to do fighting flies and chashe did.

ing away the motes in the sunbeams The wide halls of Squire Lord's to trouble others. fine homestead were neat, and dark, The squire's man, who was a fixand cold, and silent. The grass on ture on the premises, and lived in a his lawns was smooth as velvet, and cottage in the village, was killed by the flowers in his front garden prim the kick of a horse he was breaking and unbroken, dropping their seeds in for his master. The squire said, in autumn undisturbed. No head- “I told you so," in his dying ear; less rocking-horse ever disfigured but forgot, for the moment, that the the broad piazza shadowed with wild faithful creature was only doing his roses and clematis ; and no broken bidding. He, however, remembered dolls or cracked dishes made the afterwards that the plan and the risk “litter” his wife hated on any part of were his own; so, to atone for the his premises. God had sent no little loss to John's widow, he offered to children, with their sunshine, and take little Sam, and bring him up, warmth, and music; there were no while she went back to live in the little feet to trample down the grass, | mountains with her old father. no little hands to pick the flowers, With many misgivings she yielded no playful spirits to crave and then consent, and poor Sammy, exultant destroy the toys which are the im at the grand prospect, promised to plements of childhood's labour. . drive up to grandfather's next sum.

The squire's wife was demure, and mer and to bring her a new shawl cold, and silent, as her halls and and a parasol. chambers, and was possessed of an Vainas werethechild's gay dreams, uneasy spirit, which, although it he was not ill-used. He was made never threw her down and tore her, master of the poultry-yard, and sent kept herself and every one around to the town on errands. Three new her armed with sand, and brush, and “scrapers” were fixed at the doors, broom, and duster all the year round; which he was told it was his especial so that with wet floors, half scoured duty to use every time he came from tins, and water splashing at the school or play. He was well fed and windows, the part of the house they neatly clothed. occupied-the main building was | Sammy was a good and a bright always shut up-was never in order. boy, and the squire declared, after

The squire had a little office at one he had been with him a week, that side of the front gate, where he might he'd make a man. He bought him whittle, tear papers, and do any other a jack-knife-his heart's desire-a outrageous thing he pleased; and harmonicon, and a watchman's rattle, there he usually abode for peace' which belligerent instruments he sake; for if he ventured to open a warned him never to use within a crack in a sitting-room blind, he was mile of the house, except in the office warned against letting in flies, and or the barn. And he began to love if he stepped into the kitchen or the boy, who was really his only dining-room, he stumbled over a pail companion. He and his wife soon of water, or was warned not to brush ceased to call him" John's Sammy," against the clothes-horse.

and he became “our boy." The poor man lived in an upper If there was ever any rest for the sepulchre; and it is no wonder that, squire at home, it was in the evenhaving no domestic affairs of his ing, when his frugal wife couldn't own, he fell into the bad habit of see to scrub and scour, and when meddling with other people’s. But Matty, the girl, was asleep. Then

he would sit beside her and Sammy, | “Why, they say that a highly reand repeat the news he had heard in spectable man, that has known the the office and in the town.

boy from the cradle, told his employer One evening Squire Lord came in, that he had warned his father to keep after having shaken the snow well the boy at home under his own eye, from his overcoat and hung it on a for he knew he'd turn out bad; and peg in the back entry, and said, so the man says he'll let him go at is Well, things always turn out just once, and not lose his time teaching as I prophesy!”

him even to plane boards.” “ What's happened now ?” asked “ Then he isn't in prison yet !” exmadam, coldly, without lcoking up claimed the wife. from the stocking she was darning. “No, oh no, but he's got a bad

“Enough !" ejaculated the oracle; name, and that's the first step in the " enough has happened! Didn't I way to it,” replied the prophet. tell Wilder if he sent his son off to Well!” cried Mrs. Lord, :laying learn a trade he'd go to ruin? and her stocking in her lap, and looking so he has.”

keenly at her husband,“ I guess I'm “Did you want him to sit at the a prophet, too, this time!"" cobbler's bench and keep three idle “Ah! you thought his father would lads at home lounging about ?” ruin him by not taking my advice,

“No; but I advised him not to did you ?" send either of them away.”

“No; but I guess you were the “They'd have starved here; I think 'very respectable man' who told his the man did the best he could,” re- employer that you warned his father plied madam, addressing the stock to keep him under his eye!” ing on her hand. “What's Charlie “Me! I don't know the man,” done at D- p”.

replied Mr. Lord. “He's lost his place there !” ex “ Didn't I hear a man that came claimed the squire, as if that were a from D- , to get his bill against prison offence. “It's just as I warned the Ward estate, ask you about the his father.”

Wilders P” “ You're just like the gipsy that “Could that be the carpenter that told mother once she'd be a widow," Charlie went to P” asked the squire, said Sammy, innocently.

in amazement. The squire, all absorbed in his “Of course it was, and you've given seer wisdom, did not notice this re- a bad name to the boy!” mark, but continued, “Now you After a long pause, the squire, must remember, I told Lee that having turned his thoughts in his boys would be drowned that another direction, remarked, “I hear day?” '

that the Church have called that “I don't remember anything about minister from P- . They'll rue it, I it; and only one of them was can tell them. They can't support drowned,” replied Mrs. Lord.

him, to begin with; and he won't “Well, I knew he would be," was please the people, nor fill the pews, the reply. “I warned them about neither.” sailing and swimming.”

"Wasn't the Church unanimous" "I hope you're not glad of it," ex asked Mrs. Lord. claimed the lady, who had very little “Oh, yes; but it won't work, -you faith in the powers of her home see if it does." prophet. “But what has Charlie “Well, we who are outside the Wilder lost his place for He was Church had better keep still. If those always a good boy here, and he hain't in the Church are satisfied, we ought gone to destruction in ten days, I not to complain; besides, all but you know.”

do like him."

“Well, you mark my word!" re- | he should be successful, Sam told iterated the squire.

| his father that-with his consentAnd his next step was to give up he had decided to bring a wife home. his two pews, and to announce that “ Not the doctor's daughter !" exhe had no more coal for that par claimed the squire. sonage at present. Then he hired “Yes, it was just the doctor's expensive pews in the other church, Mary.” But the squire said it would and criticised and condemned the never do. Mary had been brought minister he had never heard. He up tenderly and genteelly, and he influenced his brothers and other had no fortune to keep up her style, relatives who had no principle to and Sam was reminded that he was bind them to any church, to leave “a poor boy, and had not a penny to the sanctuary where they had sat begin life with.” from childhood; and by his severe Now the young man had regarded remarks made others suspicious of himself as anything but poor, and the good man of whom he had pro- fancied he had a fine home, and phesied evil. It became fashionable horses, and money for a wife. He now to go to the other church. had given his life to the interest

Beside those who cared not a straw of his adopted father, and regarded whether truth or error was preached, all that he needed as his. there were a number of timid, though The squire said little but to hint good men in the Church, who had that his brother's daughter would have learned to lean on this rich man for five thousand pounds and a “set out” help in bearing their burdens. These beside, but Sam replied that his took alarm lest the body of Christ decision was made. might be destroyed for want of one “ Very well, Sam, it will be a failworldly man, and talked of dis ure. You'll be a poor man, and have couragement, and said in meeting your wings clipped by care, and that the Church was losing ground hard work, and trouble. Mind my day by day, till, opposed by an enemy words, now, and see if I'm not a true and unsupported by friends, the prophet.” minister saw little hope of success Sam was very regardless of these there, and left for a field where he | prophecies, he had grown so used to might toil unmolested. Then the them. So he married, and took up squire said,

his abode at his father-in-law's till "This is just as I prophesied, - the old man should relent. To his that he would go before two years amazement, he soon found that he were out, and would leave the con had neither home nor employment; gregation smaller than he found it !” and having done nothing through

He had declared the sun was in the life but superintend a large farming west until it really was so.

interest, he was poorly prepared to The long years flew by till the launch forth without either capital squire's brown hair was grey, and | or general business knowledge. the bright boy Sammy was changed He would not remain at home to into an earnest and noble young be mortified by his changed condi, man. He had come up with so little tion. He went off and took up land trouble, and had been so much com- in one of the distant territories, and fort and help, both in house and put himself manfully to the task of office, that he was almost master of clearing it; living in the mean time the estate at twenty-four. He had in a cabin his father would have acted some time for others, and did thought unfit for his cows and oxen. not imagine he was committing a But he had a brave heart and a strong wrong against anybody to act for arm, and no word of discouragement himself. So, after making sure that was ever written home. All was

hopeful and even playful, of the "estate, the mansion, and the dairymaid"-as he called Mary,—till two winters had flown by. Then there were fears for the health of the young wife, and a promise to her mother to bring her home in the spring for her native air.

But alas, the "bringing home" was in the winter, not to gladden a fond father's heart, but only to open his tomb! That was the welcome home in place of the fond greeting to which the frail child had looked forward with such eagerness in her weakness.

When Squire Lord heard the sad result of the sickness of which he had known for months, he went, half ashamed of his cruelty, to the doctor's solemn house. It had been his intention, as soon as his prophecy was sufficiently fulfilled, and they deeply enough humiliated, to call the young exiles home to friends and plenty ; but it was too late!

As he entered the chamber of death, where his son sat with the doctor's family, Sam rose to meet him, saying,

“Father, I beg you not to say, 'I told you so,' for I can't bear it now! Don't triumph over me, for in this thing you have fulfilled, yourself, the prophecy you uttered. Had I never taken her away, she might have been here to bless us all to-day.”

The squire bowed his head over the coffin of the dead, and wept bitterly for a long time. This is said to have been the last prophecy he made and fulfilled; for he soon went away to the land of silence, and left the lonely young man in possession of all his treasures.

Men are punished by the law for threatening evil against others; ought they not also to be punished for prophesying it, as the prediction so surely leads to the fulfilment ?

PHASES OF HUMAN LIFE.
A SERMON FOR THE END OF THE YEAR.

BY THE REV. 1. B. BROWN. "I will bring the blind by a way that they knew not; I will lead them in paths that they have not known: I will make darkness light before them, and crooked things straight. These things will I do unto them, and not forsake them.”—Isaiah xlii. 16.

THERE is one aspect of Nature with which no man, perhaps, however destitute of poetic faculty, can fail to be struck, and that is the infinite diversity under which it presents itself to human notice. In God's works is no humdrum monotony-no stereotyped sameness-like a sandy wilderness without rill or shrub or living creature to relieve its dreadful dulness. We have stars innumerable, one differing from another in glory : and skies, that now smile in their beauty, and anon frown in their wrath: and seasons, bringing summer and winter, seedtime and harvest, in their sure but restless round. We have mountain and valley, ocean and stream, forest and flower, endless in their novelty and charm. We have wonders in the air, and wonders in the deep, and wonders on the land, man himself standing out as the greatest wonder of all : and throughout this boundless maze, this grand moving panorama, there stretches a magnetic chain of unity which binds all created things with an inyincible power to the central throne of the great Creator.