This

all birds and enjoy their varied song, I confess the sight of the Redbreast brings up a loving feeling stronger than that which I experience in beholding any other of the feathered tribe." But this was not enough. The taste for reading being acquired, it grew with the opportunity. Having a good voice, he became the family reader as time permitted. On the Sunday he might have been seen, surrounded by the family and some of the neighbours, reading the religious tracts he had gathered during the week. And such was the benefit derived from this exercise, that it not only fostered piety in the family and those who frequently assembled with them, it was often blessed to his own soul, "refreshing and invigorating" his mind. accounts for his warm praise of good tracts, enforcing his opinion as to their usefulness by the aid of the following appropriate quotation from William Howett, slightly altered, we think :-"Tracts run up and down like the angels of God, blessing all, giving to all, and asking no gift in return. They can be printed in all sizes, on all subjects, in all places, at all hours. They can talk to one as well as to a multitude, and to a multitude as well as one. They can tell their story in the kitchen or the shop, in the parlour or the closet, in the railway carriage or the omnibus, on the broad highway or in the footpath through the field; and no one can betray them into hasty or random expressions. Being short and to the point, they may thus speak wisely and well, and so become the teachers and reformers of all classes, the regenerators and benefactors of all lands." He adds, "A good tract, having the blessing of the Divine Master, often becomes the messenger of mercy; it may rouse a country to a sense of its duty, shaking the foundations of corruption; or it may tell, as it often tells, the good news as proclaimed in the simple and blessed Gospel of Jesus Christ, as it did to me, renewing and confirming what I had previously heard and read."

WHAT SOME BOOKS DID FOR HIM.

Of necessity he was a lad of few books. This we see from the catalogue he has given us, but there are others which have not yet been specially mentioned, and which did much for

He says, "I had longed for a book about Sir William Wallace; and at last I got a copy of Blind Harry's quaint rhymes on the remarkable deeds of the great hero. How I devoured this interesting book! The good aim, the earnest patriotism, the mighty strength of the overpowering chief wrought like a charm upon my mind, and before I had gone through the book, I felt the full force of the poet's words

'At Wallace's name, what Scottish blood,

But boils up in a spring-tide flood?'”

As for Burns, he continues, "How I read and laughed, and wept! I earnestly wished that I might be able to evince even a tenth part of his vast, rich, and glowing genius. There was such a charm about him that I was almost falling in love with all he said and did, even with his errors. There was also something in my circumstances at the time which made me most ready to swallow his bitter things. Happily ere this, I had experienced the religious feelings so eloquently, graphically, and touchingly expressed in his "Cottar's Saturday Night;" but I had seen a specimen of, and had suffered from, the hypocrisy which quailed under his withering, under his cutting satire. I admired, nay, almost worshipped the poet, but wept for the man.

"And as for the Scottish Worthies," he adds, "their manly and heroic deeds, their strong hearts and noble aims, their indomitable resolution, and wild enthusiasm, stamped an impression upon my mind that will ever remain. Their glorious deeds won my admiration, and their intense sufferings awakened my sympathy. Often did I pause and tremble

WHAT SOME BOOKS DID FOR HIM.

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when reading the stirring records of these stern and savage times. What a glorious idea, thought I to myself, to see the rich and poor, the learned and unlettered, asserting the right to think for themselves, rising in fearless honesty against oppression, and bravely vindicating, to the death, the liberty of the human conscience—to see them manfully paying the stern penalty of their burning love towards eternal truth! to see them

'Still pressing onward, red-wat-shod,'

to victory or death; and at last dying in hope and in the sweet peace of believing!"

And the same enthusiasm is manifested in reference to Bunyan's best book. He says, "The beautiful and inspiring story of the 'Pilgrim's Progress' was of another stamp, but no less interesting. Tell a boy in his teens that this book is a work of fiction, and he will not readily believe you. There is such a reality about it. But it becomes doubly interesting to the youth if he has, by God's help, commenced his homeward, the heavenly journey. To him the great allegory becomes a great fact—a splendid conception, admirably illustrated by the life of the noble Pilgrim himself-a book alike for old and young, and for all conditions and positions in life."

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And it is proper to add that the Book of books was his book. Other books were useful to him, but it was at the fountain of all truth, the Word of God, that his heart was refreshed and his soul strengthened-especially when "imbibing the Gospels, learning the words and ways of Jesus." He says, The joy and profit which I derived from the sacred pages cannot be described. Though I could in a measure (only as a boy could) see the soundness of its maxims, the wisdom of its precepts, and the importance of its commands, yet to me its poetry was more attractive than its philosophy; and its history, its journeys, and biographies, gained from me more

I

time than its prophecies and doctrines. I felt such a pleasure in drinking deeper and deeper at this blessed fountain. cannot tell the grateful emotions which filled my heart as I found in the Divine Book lessons so suited to my age, and instruction so well adapted to my condition. With a hearty enthusiasm, and the tears of gratitude streaming down my pale cheeks, I was able to join in the sentiment of the hymn, beginning

CHAPTER VII.

THE DAWN DARKENED.

THE LIGHT OBSCURED.

"THUS it was,” as he says, "that God was pleased to work all things together for good. I loved my Father in Jesus, and the Comforter blessed my soul." But, alas! he in time, for a season, fell into the troubled waters of religious doubt, and became fearfully unsettled. This need not be a matter of surprise, though it is greatly to be regretted, not more on his account than on the account of others who have also fallenand some are falling even now-by the same or similar causes. The more immediate results of these causes vary in various intellects and temperaments, under various degrees of culture and kinds of circumstances, but there is an evident similarity running through them all. Still, some are more generally felt than others. What injured our friend in a very special manner might not have been known, or, at least, noticed by others moving in another sphere of life; the circumstances as well as the training being different.

In his case-having an observing eye and a sensitive mind -the foundation of this Doubting Castle was laid by the conduct, or rather the misconduct of some professors of religion known to him. It is truly pitiful to read his thrilling wail. In one part he says:— "By the grace of God, when I was yet of tender years, I was enabled, by the eye of simple faith, to see the day-star arise. Though, to me, that beautiful star seemed