WORK FOR ALL.



THERE are opportunities every day of our lives to work for the Master. There is work for all; no one need to stand idle. Even for the children the Master has work, little errands. 

At early morning, at the noontide, and when the shades of evening are gathering over hill and plain, the command is given, "Go ye also into the vineyard."

Perhaps some may think that there is not much that they can do; but there is something, however trivial. An old Spanish proverb says that "there is no such thing as a trifle in the world;" and when we think how the lives of all mankind are tangled together, it seems as if every word or action had an influence on some one. 

How careful we should be to perform promptly and well the duties of life, even the smallest.

Every one has at least one talent, and in the great reckoning day, will have to give account of its use. It will not do to hide our light under a bushel, we must let it shine, for "There are many and many around us, Who follow wherever we go; 

If we thought that they walked in the shadow, Our lamps would burn brighter, I know."

The time is short in which to work. 

Even if it were allotted to us to live to three-score and ten, the period of man's life, the time would be none too long in which to work; for there are many all around us who know not Christ as a Saviour, and who are making no preparation for the future life. To be standing idle while one sinner lives to hear a warning voice, is a sin, and will debar us from Heaven.

When the Princess Alice steamboat went down in the dark waters of the Thames, a cry for help arose from hundreds of drowning victims. The Becton boatman, who was the first to bravely launch forth to their rescue, "found a copious harvest of human lives, easily gathered in a moment to the full of the small capacity of the boat. Seeing how soon he had gathered all he could accommodate, and hundreds still struggling and the vast majority of them struggling in vain with the waters, he exclaimed: 'Oh, that I had a bigger boat! I could save so many more!'" 

In a higher and nobler sense, this is the cry of all who are earnestly laboring to save souls from the overwhelming waters of sin and unbelief. Oh, for more and larger opportunities of doing good!" Oh, for a bigger boat" to rescue the perishing from the depths of woe in which they are engulfed; for just in proportion to the "number of boats, and ropes, and safety-belts, and life buoys, and other helps sent forth were the number saved from a watery grave." So, in the missionary work; the more energies employed, the more souls are rescued for Christ.





 V. A. M.




A LITTLE EVERY DAY.



THE longest life is made up of simple days, few or many; but the days grow into years, and give the measure of our lives at the last. The life is, at the last, what the days have been. Let the children therefore look after the days, one day at a time, and put into each one something that will last something worth doing, something worth remembering, something worth imitating by those who follow us.

1. Every day a little knowledge. One fact in a day. How small a thing is one fact! Only one! Ten years pass by. 

Three thousand six hundred and fifty facts are not a small thing.

2. Every day a little self-denial. The thing that is difficult to do today, will be an easy thing to do three hundred and sixty days hence, if each day it shall have been repeated. What power of self-mastery shall he enjoy, who, looking to God for his grace, seeks every day to practice the grace which he prays for!

3. Every day a little helpfulness. We live for the good of others, if our living be in any sense true living. It is not in the great deeds of philanthropy that the only blessing is found. In "Little deeds of kindness," repeated every day, we find true happiness. 

At home, at school, in the street, in the neighbor's house, on the playground, we shall find opportunity every day for usefulness.

4. Every day a little look into the Bible. One chapter a day. What a treasure of Bible knowledge one may acquire in ten years. Every day a verse committed to memory. What a volume in the mind at the end of twenty-five years!




THERE is no grief like the grief that does not speak.