OUR readers will be glad to possess themselves of Miss Barnes’s bright and cheerful little book. It gives a good deal of interesting information about China, and affords cheer and encouragement in its record of Christian work. The chapter on the killing of little infant girls is pathetic, while that on Chinese girlhood and its ways and woes is, perhaps, even more so. Paganism has no mercy in its ways. Yet what shall be said to the appalling reality of four hundred millions of human beings in China living and dying in the dense darkness of heathenism!
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EXPERIENCES.
SOME Christians seem never content unless they think they experience what Mr. So-and-so or some favorite minister experiences.
To them we would say, When the springtime comes, go into a field, white with daisies, pluck a handful of the humble flowers, and see if you can find two exactly alike
If, then, God does not repeat Himself in the flowers of the field, why should you endeavor to find in God’s new creation souls cast in the same mold, or made to the same pattern? There is the trace of God’s hand upon each one of His people. God does not fashion souls as by a machine, each bears His own mighty yet loving impress, yet all bear the family likeness, all are the sons of God.
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SALVATION.
WHEN a man thinks there is very little amiss with him, he will take the medicine he fancies may suit him, but when he fears he is dying he calls in the physician. Now what are you doing for the salvation of your soul? Applying some of your own remedies? Trying what prayers, repentings, almsgivings will do? Or are you so thoroughly in earnest as to your real state that you have placed yourself in the hands of Christ?
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INFLUENCE.
As the gentle falling snow does by small degrees attain to such a weight upon the tree as to break its branches, so do gentle and loving words, by little and little, bend the soul until it breaks beneath them.