“CLEAN INSIDE."


WHEN the first missionaries at Madagascar had been the means of converting some of the islanders there, a Christian sea-captain asked a former chief what it was that first led him to become a Christian. "Was it any particular sermon you heard, or book which you read?" asked the captain. "No, my friend," replied the chief, "it was no book or sermon. One man, he a wicked thief; another man, he drunk all day long; big chief, he beat his wife and children. Now thief, he steal no more; drunken Tom, he sober; big chief, he very kind to his family. Every heathen man gets something inside him which makes him different; so I became a Christian too, to know how it feel to have something strong inside of me to keep me from being bad."

That old chief had the right idea of Christianity. He had something new and strong inside of him. He had a new motive, —the desire to be true and pure.

At one of the ragged schools in Ireland, a minister asked the children, "What is holiness? "Thereupon a poor little Irish boy, in dirty, tattered rags, jumped up and said, "Please your reverence, it's to be clean inside!" Could any answer be truer? 





W. W. Newton.