THE BROKEN FINGER-POST.

THINK not that, because my hairs are grey, the infirmities of age confine me within doors. No! no! I have been dealt with mercifully; and am often found a long way from my own fireside.

Some time ago, when travelling in a strange neighbourhood, I came to a place where the road branched off in two opposite directions, so that how to proceed I did not know. It was, indeed, a puzzling situation; for, as night was coming on, my taking the wrong road would have been attended with great inconvenience.

At last I perceived a finger-post, which, in my perplexity, I had not noticed. Hastening up to it, I read the inscription on the left arm, which pointed towards two distant towns, neither of which I wanted to visit. I then passed round to look at the opposite arm, when lo! it was broken off. "Well, come," said I to myself, taking heart, "I now, at least, know very well the road I am not to go."

THE BROKEN FINGER-POST

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We sometimes meet with such difficulties that we seem to come to a stand in our minds, not knowing which way to turn. What to attempt, how to act, and what will be the end of it, we cannot tell this part of the finger-post is broken off. In such trying and dangerous situations, however, when we might be tempted to turn aside from the path of duty, God does often so mercifully hedge up some of our ways with thorns, and so instruct us by the directions of his holy word, that if we will but give heed to it, there is a plain warning given of the road we are not to go. an unspeakable mercy: let us in all cases turn promptly from the forbidden path, and leave the rest to him. If we sincerely look to Him, in a child-like spirit, we are sure to obtain the direction he has promised to bestow. He will bring even "The blind by a way that they knew not," and "lead them in paths that they have not known." He "will make darkness light before them, and crooked things straight." "Trust," then, "in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths," Isa. xlii. 16; Prov. iii. 5, 6.

THE TIMES.

THE times! the times! We are always talking about them; but though we moralize much, I fear we mend but little. It seems to be a kind of privilege, charter, and birthright among aged people to praise the past times, and deplore the present; the shadowy future is not so frequently the subject of conversation.

But truly the changes are great that take place from the season of youth to that of grey hairs. In my day, the pulling down of old houses, and the building up of new ones; the deaths of old men, and the coming into notice of young men ; the alterations in the customs and fashions that once prevailed, and the changes in the opinions of mankind, have so altered the world, that it is indeed other than it was.

We used to take matters quietly, and move about more at our ease; but now, bustle is the order of the day in all things: whatever we do nust be done by steam. Wherever we go, we nust go by rail-road; and there never was half

the ballooning going forward as there is at the present time. Every one once thought that Chimborazo was the highest mountain in South America, and Dhawaligira, the loftiest in the world; but now it is found out that Sarato lifts up its head above Chimborazo, and that Chamoulari looks down on Dhawaligira.

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But while times, and manners, and customs, and opinions, are thus changing, we aged people should be aware that we are changing too. My limbs used to be more active than they are; and brow was once free from wrinkles. Whether I regard it or not, these grey hairs tell a tale to which I ought to listen. Have the years through which I have passed been many? the fewer, then, are those that remain to me, and the stronger the reason for my thinking less of seasons gone by, and more of those that are to come. Let me,

then, amid the alterations of the times, and the sundry and manifold changes of the world, look to Him who changes not, and fix my heart where true joys are alone to be found.

EDMUND HAWKER.

I HARDLY thought, at one time, that Edmund Hawker would outrun Old Humphrey; but it is even so, and he has got clear of the wilderness before me. I know that Edmund was a man of sorrows; but I know, too, that every sorrow was weighed out to him, even to the scruple, and that the hand of Him whose name is LOVE held up the balances.

People say that he was poor, and so he was in this world's wealth, and thank God for it; for if poverty heaped upon him many cares, it kept him back from many snares: but, after all, Edmund was a rich man; and I will tell you in what his riches consisted-in his gains and his losses; ay in his losses, as well as his gains.

Time was, when Edmund was hale and strong, when he had worldly friends, and money in the Bank; but his riches made themselves wings, and fled away; his worldly friends forsook him, and sickness pulled down his strength, and made him weak as childhood.