SILVER SPRAY.

It was a bleak December morning in a great city. The crowds pressed on in search of gain. Care sat upon many faces, deep grief on not a few. Each heart, knowing its own bitterness, was trying to lessen or to bear its burden of sorrow. Blighted hopes, false friendships, hungry wealth, and grim poverty, had all their part in the sombre colouring of that throbbing life-picture. The men who were in earnest had now come forth; fashion and frivolity were yet at home, perhaps asleep.

The faces of the crowd were a curious study, for the soul was incarnate in the features. Pride, passion, and pelf, had their signatures in bold characters on many faces.

But two men claim our notice. The one is pale and thoughtful. He has his burden in that sense of failure which almost crushes him to the earth. His history is only too common. Three years before he became the willing minister of a small and poor Church. He has toiled day and night, and prayed,

thought, visited: many have been converted and cheered on homeward. He is growing in wisdom and power, but he has "failed to make it pay," and the deacons say they cannot go on much longer.

It is surely a hard case. He has a sickly wife and a small family. As a man of culture, he must have books and leisure, must live in a certain class of house, and appear respectable; and as society now is, all this demands money. What can he do? He hates speaking to his people about it, and yet he cannot think to leave the place where God is blessing his labours. No wonder he is sad. An earnest worker about to be driven from his life-work by the cares of this world!

In the next street another man, the chief support of the Church, is confronted by the same problem. He is loth to lose that man who has awakened in him a nobler self, and yet what can he do? No doubt the evil arises from lack of thought, and not from any want of loving interest on the part of the people. They cannot all be Church officers, and matters seem to go on well. Their minister is nicely dressed and apparently cheerful; his sermons are full of power; the congregation increases; and as to the money, why it comes from that mysterious and never-failing fountain known as "the Church funds."

Believing that all goes smoothly, they give loose copper or silver to the collection, pay their pew-rents, praise and love their minister, grow in grace, and have no thought about such an unspiritual thing as money. But this man has to find the means; and

although not rich, he has nobly given more than his share. It cannot go on much longer, for when the rivulets are very small and flow very slowly, who can supply the broad stream?

"How sad!" he is saying to himself. "Here we are now a respectable Church, owing all to our minister, and yet we are about to lose him, because we cannot raise him the salary of a common clerk. Is there no remedy?"

Thus thinking, he runs against a man who is coming hastily round the corner.

"Holloa, there!"

"Holloa, you there!"

"Why, bless me, Brown, is that you? Come along; you are the very man to help me."

Here follow the usual greetings, and the two friends, arm in arm, go down the street.

They were kindred spirits-men in the grandest, noblest sense-men of business, and yet men of God— men who said little about their spiritual feelings, but whose whole being bent in homage before the Divine.

"Well, Herbert," said Mr. Brown, "what's wrong now? One would almost think you a lineal descendant of the weeping prophet."

"And you would be sad also," answered Herbert, "if you had the same reason.'

"And what is that, pray?"

"We are about to lose our minister."

66 Never!" said Brown.

"Why, he is one of the

finest men I ever knew."

"That may be, and yet we must lose him, for we

are unable to raise his salary, and we could not ask him to do with less than he has now."

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'Very strange," said Brown. What are your 'financial arrangements,' as people call them,-how do you raise the money?"

"In the usual way. We have pew-rents and occasional collections, and yet are going behind £50 every year."

"Yes; but have you all a God's purse and weekly offerings?"

"A God's purse and weekly offerings!" said Herbert, in utter amazement, "what do you mean?"

"Mean! I mean what I say. But by your looks I know the secret of your Church failure. But now, Herbert, you listen to me. Your financial arrangements must be changed. Our Church was once in the same condition as yours. We are now flourishing; and the secret is, a God's purse in every house, and weekly offerings in the chapel. We have learned from the principles of the Bible that each Christian should have two purses-one for himself and his wife, and one for God. As a freeman, with a conscience enlightened by God's Word, he must be himself the judge of the extent to which God has prospered him, and of the amount to be put into God's purse; but having once settled the amount, he should think it robbing God to touch the Lord's purse but for the Lord's work. Then coming to God's house with God's purse, let each one leave his offering on the table prepared for it. Let that table be looked on as an altar, each man deeming it a sacred privilege to wor

ship God with his substance-a great honour to cast his gift into the treasury. And if you do this, depend upon it you can not only keep your minister, but give more to the poor and help to spread around the religion of Jesus."

Herbert was amazed and silent, and they walked for a time ere either spoke.

"Why, Brown, you would make giving money an act of family and public worship."

"And so it ought to be, but only the few look on it as such. Take my own case. For many years after my marriage, when I got my quarter's salary, there was a portion for rent, for baker, and grocer, and all the rest, but none for God. I gave as others do, but I had no special purse for Him. But now, while believing that all I have and am is God's, and that in living honestly I please Him, I still hold that some. definite part of my income should go to God's service, and having acted upon my belief, God has prospered me with peace and plenty, with something also for a rainy day, and I have given to His service three times as much as in former days. Get your Church to do the same, and tell me the result. But I must go; good-morning."

Herbert walked on in deep thought, and as he mused, the fire burned. A new light was dawning upon his mind. Nobler resolves of self-sacrifice, like so many angels of mercy, were arising from the graves of a dead past. Conscience also, shaking herself free from the fetters of evil habits, claimed to sit supreme on the throne of his soul. He bent in deep sorrow