young friends and companions—you can do it quite as well in your way, as great men can in theirs. Be humble, modest, true, cordial, without any affectation, and if possible without any consciousness of being either the one or the other. Vacate a well-placed chair for an old or infirm occupant, make way graciously (not affably or patronisingly—what is a chit like you that you should be affable to, or patronise any one?) for a common-place, over-looked guest, or a poor dependent; be pleasant to her or him, if there is a chance of being pleasant without officiousness. Be patient and generous with regard to the foolish and scandalous behaviour of others. Are you at home again? There above all, for charity begins at home, be just, magnanimous, cheerful with your own family, with children, governesses, servants.

I had almost written, that there is as much religion in these trifles as in public prayers, private meditations, and the delivery of largesses, and exhortations without number. At least, there is much religion, there is mercy in little things-and you know who will have mercy rather than sacrifice, and that little things form the sum of human life-there is love to God and love to man in them, and these are more than whole burnt-offerings.

Wherever there is pain and suffering, there Christianity has its chief crown; and, Mary, you may be the

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blessed woman to wear it one day. Without God's Holy Ghost, His Bible, His day, church and priests, service and work, it is certain you will not brave danger, endure contradiction, submit to ingratitude, and still count yourself to have done nothing but what it was indeed your duty and privilege to do-to have earned no wages but what the Master won for you, and holds out in His open hand a free gift; and truly, Mary, without Christianity, neither will you do any of those common, lovely, sweet girlish things as you should do, and without doing the small things there is little hope or possibility that you will ever do the great deeds, the devoir of hero and heroine.

I tell you once more, there is Christianity in threading your mother's needle, or pulling off your little sister's boot, as well as in taking shorthand notes of sermons and distributing tracts, and there is more security of the genuineness of the Christianity in the first instances, than in the last.

I have dwelt on what I believe to be practical Christianity to a girl, and I have left to herself the highest communion which Christianity implies. Surely it has to do with the inner court of the temple of her nature, which any foot save that of the Great High Priest entering, profanes. There is a verse, one of the unspeakably tender verses of the Bible, in which the question is of One who stands at the door and knocks.

None need fear to open, because "it is the Lord," the great and good Elder Brother who was punished for the transgressors, and brings them their pardon. But when He has entered and shut to the door, and sat down to sup, there is only one invited guest.

I cannot have done with this paper without referring to two forms of the practice of faith, which, although they have the support of many examples, are impressed on me as radically mistaken and wrong. The first is the elevation of a man or a woman's soul's salvation as the chief end, and almost sole aim of his or her Christianity. The end of our faith is the salvation of our souls, and there can be no denying the awful importance of one immortal soul, after we have been taught, that though we should gain the whole of God's grand world, and lose our own single soul, it would profit us nothing. There is no paltering with that sentence. But the chief end and entire aim of Christianity is not love to ourselves, even to our own souls, but love to our God and Father, and to our neighbour and brother.

I believe there may be soul selfishness as well as body selfishness, more insidious, more ruinous to all that is generous and gentle. It shocked me indescribably to read lately in the published letter of a good woman, that she could advise a friend to take comfort after the death of a dear relation, because her time would now be her

own to attend more closely, to give herself up more entirely, to the care of her soul. The Lord having died to save the world, should not men and women trust their souls unreservedly and confidingly to Him? and while they strive to keep His commandments and follow in His footsteps, I cannot think it can be for the soul's sound health to be perpetually feeling its pulse, any more than it is for the body's rude health to be for ever tapping the wrist, or pressing the temples.

The second error is still more fundamentally opposed to common sense, common moderation, and consideration, and to the entire reasonableness, the thorough humble, tender humanity of Christianity. It is to argue, that because a man or a woman is not completely of your way of thinking, does not belong to your narrow sect, (all sects are more or less narrow, Mary,) does not believe in your particular, uninspired oracle, (for inspiration is very broad, it is only man's interpretation of it that is scant,) that he or she is without fail fatally wrong, and that you are called upon to set the erring person right, actually without being, so to speak, acquainted with the real man or woman at all, or having the smallest data by which you can fix whether the one or the other may not, after all, be as far in advance of you, as St Paul or Phoebe his sister," "the succourer of many," were of the youngest Roman

convert. You assume the liberty of taking it for granted that the stranger is all wrong, stone-blind, and deaf, and supremely ignorant; and then you set about, in your barbarous stupidity and conceit, improving, enlightening him or her, save the mark! Now remember, Mary, if this remonstrance applies to interference and arrogance anywhere, it applies to them a thousandfold where they wantonly assail the poor or the miserable. If there can be brutal presumption and stolidity more heinous than another, it is in the intrusion of the young, the untried, the fortunate, on those on whom the tower of Siloam has fallen, or whose blood has mingled with their sacrifice, or who have fallen among thieves, and are lying by the roadside, naked and bleeding, with the bold, cool determination to judge and condemn them, improve their adversities to them, and teach them wisdom. How such an aggravated and inhuman piece of heartlessness can have arisen out of a religion, one of the most sacred and emphatic maxims of which is "Judge not that ye be not judged," is a strange mystery.