severely." “He will not pray for me,” said the husband. "He will, I am sure," said the wife. "Then send for him without delay, for I cannot live as I am." Cuff was sent for. He came sore and bleeding, expecting more ill-usage, when, to his great astonishment, he found his cruel master bowed upon the floor of his room crying to heaven for mercy. “Cuff—will you, can you, pray for me?" was the earnest inquiry. "Yes, massa,” was the prompt reply. “I have been praying for you tonight." They prayed and wept together, until the heavy burden was lightened from the awakened conscience, when the repentant master, springing to his feet, and throwing his arms around his slave, exclaimed, “Cuff, my forgiving brother, from this moment you are a free man!" The master formally emancipated his injured slave, and, with his youthful wife, united himself to the assembly of Christians to worship God, whose name he had blasphemed, and whose disciple he had scourged. "Whoso toucheth you toucheth the apple of mine eye." FRAGMENTS. Extracted from "Fortin's Remarks upon Ecclesiastical History." BY T. R. H. IN the year A.D. 385 lived one named Epiphanius, who had been a monk. One day he invited Hilarion, a monk, to dinner, and a dish of fowls being set before them, Epiphanius helped Hilarion, who said, "Excuse me, father; since I have worn the habit of a monk I have never eaten animal food." "And I," replied Epiphanius, "since I have worn the same habit, have never suffered any one to lie down to sleep having aught against me, nor have I ever gone to sleep with any resentment against another." "The rule which you observe," said Hilarion, "is more excellent than mine." The same Epiphanius destroyed a picture of Christ, or of some saint which he found hung up in a church, accounting it to be a superstitious and idolatrous ornament; and when about the year 388 a sect arose who offered up cakes to the Virgin Mary as to a goddess, the queen of heaven, he wrote against them, and treated them as heretics and idolaters. But the idolatrous worship of the Virgin became, in process of time, the most triumphant of all heresies, and Epiphanius, if he had lived in later years, would have been put into the Inquisition, and roasted alive, for censuring such idolatrous practices, and for destroying a sacred picture. THE MARKET BASKET. 'TWAS Saturday night. The busy streets He watched neat couples wend their way He heaved a bitter sigh. He thought of his dark and wretched home,... And blushed as he shook his empty purse, At a gin-shop bar, when I earn enough "For drink I leave my babes to starve, As thus he thought, a ragged form "Where are you going?" he gruffly asked "It is the one, my mother says, And when she gave it me she cried, 666 Here, take it, Jane," she sobbing said, "We ne'er shall want it more: Ere your father took to drink, it held "So I am going to pawn it now, To buy a loaf to-morrow; "Stay, Jane," the father gently said, Come, tell me child," at length he said, "If this good basket, once again, "O father," cried the smiling girl, "Well, so I will, this very night, He kept his word. Next Saturday, Dear lads and lasses, if you wist, THE ONE THING NEEDFUL. "WHEN Sir Walter Raleigh had laid his head upon the block," says an eloquent divine, "he was asked by the executioner whether it lay aright. Whereupon he returned an answer the power of which we shall all feel when our head is tossing and turning on death's uneasy pillow: "It matters little, my friend, how the head lies, providing the heart be right."" |