of him; and the reason was because his doctrine and baptism needed no seal beyond themselves to authenticate and support them. An indignant summons to honesty, purity, truth, and repentance, needed no divine endorsation to support him who boldly uttered it. The aroused and responsive conscience of the Baptist's hearers was a sufficient witness to the divinity of his doctrine. But when One came after him who laid the foundations of the doctrines of grace in His own person, and above all in His coming death on the cross, that was a revelation and a hope that demanded nothing short of supernatural seals to certify and support Him who uttered it.

And, on the other hand, while the majesty and grace of the message needed correspondingly majestic and gracious seals to be set to it, the humility of the messenger was at the same time such that He had to be accompanied through life with divine acknowledgments and evidences, lest men should wholly overlook Him and fatally neglect His message. The truth is, the Son of God had descended almost too low. Not lower than our need and the nature of His mission demanded but almost too low for our recognition and acceptance. And therefore it was that, while Jesus Christ remained in His estate of humiliation, it was helpful to Him and needful for us that we should be reminded from time to time that the carpenter's son was not what He seemed to be, that there was more here than appeared to the carnal eye; and, in short, that Jesus of Nazareth was all that in His loftiest utterances about Himself He ever said He was, and all that His redeeming mission demanded He should be. His most hidden life, His walk and conversation where He was brought up, must have contained abundant proof that He was not one of Adam's fallen race; but the men of that day had not eyes to see His moral and spiritual glory as yet, and thus His coming, and character, and teaching would have been lost upon the world had His hidden glory not been from time to time manifested in those mighty works, which by God's blessing arrested and awakened and subdued some of the most opposed and prejudiced of men.

Now what was the nature of the glory that Jesus manifested forth when He turned water into wine at the marriage of Cana? Clearly, the glory that belonged to Him as the incarnate Creator and Upholder of all things. John supplies us with a key to his meaning in the eleventh verse of his second

chapter, in what he says in the prologue to his book: "All things were made by the Word before He Himself was made flesh, and without Him was not anything made that was made." The power, therefore, He put forth when He changed water into wine was the very same power He had put forth when, in the beginning, He created the heavens and the earth; and the glory He manifested forth to His disciples, to their great gladness, was the very same glory He had manifested in heaven when all the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy. It was part of our blessed Lord's humiliation, that He should come to this earth, and on it become one of His own creatures; to take to Him our flesh, so as for a time to hide behind it His own proper glory; but it was necessary, at the same time, that some gleams of that glory should sometimes break through the veil of His flesh, in order that men might not altogether miss the saving discovery of who He was they had among them. "This beginning of miracles, therefore, did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory."

But there is a more excellent glory manifested forth here than even that of the incarnate Creator. The glory of divine power is seen when water is turned into wine. No power short of divine power could do that; but the yet nobler power of divine love and compassion is seen in the immediate motive for this miracle, in our Lord's kind consideration for the embarrassment and distress of this poor household. Dante tells us that he heard the souls who were being purged of envy and ill-will chanting out of this scripture, as they sped on their deeds of kindness, "They have no wine!" Mary's glory and her best ornament that day were that the law of kindness was in her tongue; and her Son's truest glory shone forth when He showed that He was so moved by her appeal and by her friends' poverty, as to put forth His divine power to relieve their distress. The divine goodness of Jesus Christ is to us the surest seal of His divinity; His loving-kindness is the best proof to us that He is the onlybegotten Son of Him whose name is love. And thus it was that our Lord first manifested forth at this marriage what appeared in all His words and works, that He was the very Son of God incarnate, that He was the Creator and Upholder of all things, and that His highest glory was that He was full of grace and truth, of loving-kindness and tender mercy.

mission work had real charms for him, and it was with much lingering regret that the proposal was entertained. Very different the two places were; Dublin had its University and its traditions, Belfast its commerce and its parvenus. It was an ambitious move for a young town missionary, and was finally made. The building where he ministered has since been sold, and is now used as a linen warehouse. But the seed of his words blossomed, and fruited into a healthy, vigorous, working church, whose membership equalled his own at Rathgar.

Previous to this time, he made the friendship of Dr. Norman Macleod, the second great factor in his life. Stevenson had been for some time in Germany, and had become greatly interested in several works of Christian usefulness, the impression he gained being published by him in various articles in GOOD WORDS. Readers of the early volumes will remember his papers on "Dr. Chalmers at Elberfeld," "Kaiserswerth and its Deaconesses, Gossner," "Pastor Harms," &c. These were afterwards gathered and re-issued in the well-known volume, "Praying and Working," a title which might well be used as expressing his own life.

Dr. Macleod opened his church in Rathgar, a new suburb of Dublin, in 1862, and two years later officiated with Dr. Morgan at his marriage.

Missions, both at home and abroad, were a life-long passion with Dr. Morgan. This affinity of sympathies drew him to Stevenson, and led him in his old age to request the latter to act with him, as joint convener of the Irish Foreign Mission. When the elder man passed away, Stevenson bulked as the only possible successor, and, as we believe, not a little influenced thereto by the example of Dr. Macleod, he visited our missions in the East. His church gave him leave for a year, while the expense was borne by a friend to missions. The chief lessons of that remarkable tour were given, by Stevenson, in a series of articles, "The Mission Fields of India, China, and Japan," which appeared in GOOD WORDS in 1879. His last contribution to these pages was in 1882, when he published a series of papers on "Bible Truths and Eastern Ways," being a further instalment of the lessons he had learned in his mission travels.

In the multiplied duties of pastor, lecturer, convener, educational commissioner, and for the last few months chaplain to the Lord Lieutenant, the busy years flew by. Often complaining of weariness, but seldom actually

ill, no one thought of him as standing next to the breach. A severe sickness of some days seemed the less alarming, and he put from him the idea of rest. So he preached one Sunday, in fulfilment of a long-standing engagement, and before the next the Master, ever watchful over His weary disciples, had called him to rest, not for awhile, but for ever. "The sharpness of death" was over in a brief passage of some twenty minutes. That heart-spasm, which had been as suddenly fatal to two other members of his family, closed too early the life of a minister whom the Church Militant mourned.

The quietness of his work was one of his characteristics. In the courts of his Church his voice was rarely heard, save in connection with that foreign mission, now indissolubly linked with his name. He sat quietly, the broad figure, the bald head with bushy beard, the face of care, certainly ten years older looking than his age-noting everything while other men talked, or turning to his packet of papers if a new idea struck him. For scenes of religious strife he had as little aptitude as inclination. He was shy in manner, and though at all times most ready to give any information sought from him, he could be silent, as well as show himself a most interesting conversationalist.

His dogged perseverance was another characteristic. In his manifold forms of Christian activity he worked with a will. It was from his lips we first heard the proverb, "An hour a day will go through a stone wall." His work meant effort, and that always means exhaustion; neither speaking nor writing came easily. There are sad rumours of nights spent in penning with bandaged brow, when a less conscientious man would scribble off by the yard. The world is slowly coming to believe that the brain-product which costs little is just worth the little that it costs. Fleming Stevenson's activities have been at the price of his life. But he never gave in!

That a man with no one very striking talent should, by quiet force of character, indomitable industry, purity of purpose and life, and intense Christian earnestness, come to the forefront of his Church and his community, is a fact worth studying. He has proved, what Englishmen do not believe, and even the Scotch (who should be our brothers) are half inclined to doubt, that it is possible for a man to be a gentleman, a scholar, something of a courtier, an able administrator, and above all a Christian, and yet-be Irish to the backbone.

M. B. M.

ΟΝ

CHAPTER I.

Na winter night half-a-dozen children romping in a roomy kitchen made a noise like the confusion of Babel. They were all well clad, and well-to-do in aspect, flaxenhaired, rosy-cheeked, blue-eyed, and wholesome. Within certain conditions a pleasanter sight than they afforded could hardly be asked for, though their presence and the noise they made gave but poor assistance to the study of the higher mathematics. A bearded young fellow of six-and-twenty, or thereabouts, with a penholder between his teeth, and a heap of papers scattered loosely before him, sat with both hands in his hair at a big table by the window and looked about him occasionally with an air of abstraction which always melted more or less quickly into a smile. The smile was invariably followed by a momentary relaxation from study, whilst the young man watched the joyous gambadoes of the children, who shouted all together with a wild hilarity and seemed to acquire fresh vigour each time from the mere fact of remaining unrebuked. Always in a little time the young man's smile grew abstracted and faded slowly away as his thoughts gradually drew back to their own refuge.

A great fire with a solid core of red heat burned without noise or flicker on the hearth, and on one side of it sat an elderly woman in a widow's сар, and a gown of respectable black. With all the diversity of feature and expression which marked the group of children there was so strong a likeness between the elderly woman in the chimney corner and every individual member of the noisy little assembly, that a stranger would have had no difficulty in deciding their relationship. Like the children, the woman in the widow's cap and the respectable stuff gown was plump, blue-eyed, rosy, and flaxen-haired. In her case the flax was marked by a thread or two of silver, though not so strongly as to be at first sight noticeable, and her countenance for all its rosy plumpness was drawn to an expression of complaining resignation. She sat with her hands-which like her face were plump and helpless-looking-in her lap, and, with eyebrows raised, as who should say that things were intolerable, and must yet be borne with, she looked into the glowing coals.

XXVIII-6

Facing her sat a woman of a different pattern-bolt upright, lean, and full of nervous energy. Her knitting needles, which in the light of the glowing coals had a quite startling look of being red-hot at moments, clicked with an amazing swiftness and determination. Every little motion of the flashing needles was as brusque, decided, and imperative as the "shoulder arms" of a martinet drill sergeant. Every little tug which unwound the ball of worsted lying in her lap was marked by the same energy and decision.

Her evening dress of clean-washed and primly-starched light print fitted tightly about arms, bust, and waist, and gave to her ungainly figure something of the look of an unsymmetrically packed pin-cushion into which the bran has been rammed too hard. She sat so rigid and unbending whilst the quick knitting needles clicked with their alternate flash from the look of red-hot steel to silver, and silver to red-hot steel, that only head and hands seemed alive, and one might have fancied it possible to stick pins into any part of the print-clad bust and arms without fear of exciting sensation.

There was a momentary hush amongst the children whilst they took breath, and evolved plans for the making of wilder noise than they had yet created. After the recent hubbub the kitchen seemed almost at peace by contrast. Then in a moment of inspiration one of the group proposed that their next amusement should be the game of Sacks to the Mill. This cheerful and invigorating indoor pastime begins by everybody trying to catch hold of somebody else's ankle with a view to bringing him or her to the ground. This object in any one case once achieved, it becomes the business of the rest swiftly and unanimously to choose a victim, and forcibly to deposit that victim upon the recumbent figure. This point is no sooner gained than a similar choice, as swift and unanimous, remains to be made. Finally the game develops into a wrestle of two, and that happy child who lies uppermost on the struggling pile is conqueror. Since it rarely happens that the infant councils are prompt and decided enough to pinion the first body with a second before the fallen one can rise, the game is capable of an almost infinite expansion. Another advantage is that from beginning to end every player can shout his loudest.