THE OLD MILL.

BY CHARLOTTE L. SEAVER.

ANKLE deep in leaves I stand,

Of crimson-brown and yellow,
And watch the sunset fade away
In tender tints and mellow.
Its changing light seems burnishing
The windows of the mill,
That just across the river, there,
Stands motionless and still.

So still, so quiet now it is;

Yet once 'twas full of noise, And full of human lives that held The selfsame pains and joys

We have and feel. This autumn night

Like some dead thing it stands,

And those who worked there, night and day,

With busy, tired hands,

Have gone away. I wonder if

They ever thought while there

How much the threads they wove and spun Were like the lives we bear?

Some, smooth and spotless, glide along,
Some marred and disarranged;
Each would have different been, perhaps,
If the weaver's hand were changed.
Some, broken by a heedless grasp,
The woven part alone

Is looked at by our careless eye;
The rest to God is known.

Ah! He, the Weaver up above,
Who watches night and day,
Will gather up the broken threads
We idly throw away.

He in His loving hand will take
What ruthlessly we blight,

And join with tender care the threads,
And make them pure and white.

And yet-oh, life is long, so long!
And holds so much of pain;
So many quivering, broken threads,
And many a blot and stain;
And many yearning eyes that seek
To see the mercy-seat,

Yet, dim with pain, they miss the way
Before they reach His feet.

The shadows deepen round the mill,
And hide it from my sight,

And weary day is closing now

Her dark-fringed eyelid, night.

The glistening stars, like quivering tears, That tremble ere they fall,

Steal out, as here I think and dream,

In heaven we shall know all.

CHILDREN OF THE BIBLE.

BY THE REV. R. J. GRIFFITHS, M.A., LL.D.

III. THE CHILD MOSES.

It was determined to put every baby boy born to the Jews to death. That was indeed a pitiless decree. You can imagine how terrible it was for the poor Hebrew mothers to see their little ones torn from them to be flung into the Nile or to be strangled; and it is not surprising that when Moses was born Jochebed determined to keep him alive as long as she could. And that little slave baby was a very beautiful child. This is what is meant when it is said that he was a "proper" child. His mother knew of many of her neighbours whose children had been taken from them never to be brought back again. She could not bear to think of the sweet little one who smiled so lovingly at her, doomed to so horrible a fate; anything was better than that. It nearly broke her heart to think of it; to think of the many, many mothers who went about with white, sad faces, always mourning for their lost darlings who had been murdered at the command of the wicked king. She would not give up Moses until she was forced to do so, and so she hid him in her cottage for three months. But at the end of that time the child could be heard outside whenever he cried, and it was impossible to conceal him any longer. It must have been a dreadful moment for the poor mother when she was obliged to part with her baby. But she was a good woman; she trusted God fully. She believed that He could take care of her child, and she placed him entirely in God's hands, certain that He would do what was best. So she made a little cradle and put Moses into it. Then I have no doubt she kneeled down and cried very much, and prayed very earnestly to the great Father in heaven. She begged very hard that God would save her beautiful little boy from a dreadful death, and then she got up from her knees and carried the cradle down to the river bank. There she left it among the reeds, hoping, perhaps, that somebody coming down to bathe would see the child, as Pharaoh's daughter did see him, and would pity the helpless little infant. There, on the river bank she left him and

returned home.

She did not linger near to see what became of him. No, she could not keep watch herself, but she told her little girl Miriam to do that, while she went on no doubt praying very earnestly to God. And God heard her prayers, as He always does hear our prayers when we are in earnest and really want to be heard. God always answers such prayers. He may not do it in the way that we expect. He may not give us the thing that we wish for. There may be hundreds of good and wise reasons not known to us why He should not send us the exact answer we ask for; but He always gives us something to reward us for going to Him. St. Paul was once suffering severely from some disease, which he calls a "thorn in the flesh," and he went to God to ask Him to take away the pain. He did not ask God to bless the suffering and to make it useful to him. No, but like a hurt child he pleaded only that it might be taken away. But that was not in accordance with God's plans. He could not take it away, but because St. Paul had come as a suppliant to His feet He would not send him empty-handed away. He gave him strength to bear his trouble. "My strength," He said, "is sufficient for thee." In the case of Moses, however, God gave the poor mother exactly what she asked for. He saved her little one's life by sending the king's own daughter to the rescue. This great lady looked upon the baby, and she made up her mind to adopt it as her own. That was very delightful; but it was still better when she sent Miriam to find a nurse, and Miriam brought back her own mother to take charge of Moses God had listened to her strong cry of agony, and had spared

her son.

And if you read the whole story of Moses you will see that, like his mother, his great strength throughout his whole life was his faith. Faith, as we are told in the beginning of the eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, "is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." It is to think so much of things that as yet we have not seen, to ponder over them, to pray over them, and to have them so constantly present in our minds, that not only are we sure that there really are such things, but we feel as if we actually saw and touched them sometimes now. We get something of their substance here on earth. They are very much more than words and pictures to us. They are just as real, and sometimes much more so, than if we had actually seen them with our eyes. We believe in them. I have never seen the Emperor of Germany, but I believe that there

is such a person. I am quite certain of it. And so I believe still more strongly that there is a God, because although I have never yet seen Him we can read His letters to us in the Bible. We can speak to Him, and He replies by putting the answers to our questions as good thoughts into our hearts. This is faith: to be so full of the great unseen world where God is, that our belief colours and shapes everything we do. It is the power of holding fast to the great future, to be quite certain that there is a great future, and so to live here as those who are sowing glory or shame for ourselves in that hereafter. The mother of Moses had faith in God. She believed that He could act in this world just as easily as in heaven if He chose. She believed that He was strong enough to save her child, even from Egypt's king, if He liked. And as all good mothers do, she taught her son to have the same strong, happy confidence in God. You can see how perfectly he trusted God in every portion of his life. The chapter from which the text is taken tells us that "by faith Moses when he was come to years refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season." He thought it best to suffer a little in this short life, that he might rest for ever in the endless glorious life of the next world. And he did it, we are told, because he thought "the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt, for he had respect unto the recompense of the reward." He knew that God would more than reward him for all his hardships, and his eyes were always fixed on that reward. It was not a small thing to be the son of a king's daughter, to be educated in all the learning of Egypt, to have fine clothes, carriages to ride in, and servants to wait upon him. There were thousands who would have been delighted to change places with him. And he knew very well that the Israelites with whom he was about to cast in his lot were not only miserable slaves, but that they were not even good and meek and patient people. They were very quarrelsome and very hard to manage. It was not at all pleasant to think of giving up his palace home to join these wretched brickmakers. Nor did Moses know anything either about God's intention to take them to the land of Canaan, and to make them into a great nation. If he had known it we might have said that he wanted to be their leader and their king. It would not have been so surprising to see him giving up his great and rich friends. But he knew nothing of what God intended