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A Page for the Young.

AFRAID OF THUNDER.

"Shall I tell you what I heard Uncle Gillette saying to one of the little girls at school who was afraid of lightning?"

"Oh, do," said Lucy, "I am so frightened when it thunders."

Lucy nestled closer in her sister's lap, and Rosa began:

"There was once a mighty king who was so terrible in war that all his enemies were afraid of him; the very sound of his name made them tremble. His arm was so strong that the horse and its rider would sink under one blow of his battle axe; and when he struck with his sharp sword, his enemies fell dead at his feet. This mighty king had a little fair-haired daughter, who watched him as he prepared for the battle. She saw him put on his helmet, and laughed as the plumes nodded above his brow. She saw the stately battle axe brought forth; she saw him take his keen sword in his hand; he tried its edge, then waved it about his head in the sunlight. She laughed as it, sparkling, glanced through the air; and even while it was upheld she ran towards her father to take a parting kiss. Why was not the little child afraid of the mighty king with the fierce weapons? Because he was her father; she knew that he loved her, loved her as his own life. She knew that those dangerous weapons would never be used against her, unless to save her from worse peril. Do you understand what Uncle Gillette meant by this story?"

"Not exactly," said Lucy; "won't you tell me?"

"He meant," said Rosa, "that God is like that mighty king; sickness, lightning, danger, trial, death, are all his weapons, but we need not fear them if we are truly His children. When the sharp lightning flashes in the sky, we can look calmly at its beauty, for it is in our Father's hand; sickness may be around us, but our Father can keep us safe; death may come, but if we love him, it will only be to send us to our Father's arms." Oh, how sweet it is to feel, amidst all the dangers that surround us, that it is OUR GOD who reigns, and that,

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Dear reader, death is coming; each moment, each throb of your pulse, brings you nearer to the time when you must meet it. This is certain. But when will it be? Ah! you cannot tell. It may not come → you hope it will not come for years, but it may come to-night. It is dreadful to die. To leave everything we have and love; to feel the beatings of the heart quicker and weaker, the breathing shorter and feebler, the strength failing more and more, to feel that we are dying, is painful, intensely painful. Death is terrible. No one can take our place; we must die for ourselves. No one can die with us; we must die alone. Alone we must appear before our Judge. Alone we must pass our trial. Alone we must receive the sentence of our Judge. Alone enter upon the eternal existence which He has assigned us.

Reader, these are solemn realities; such you will then feel them to be. Have you ever asked yourself the question, Am I prepared to die? What will become of me when I die? What will be my eternal, unchangeable condition? It is very, very dreadful to die unprepared, unreconciled, unforgiven. Oh, if you are not prepared, be entreated not to put it off an hour. Seek, through earnest, sincere, unceasing, untiring prayer, forgiveness of your sins through the perfect atonement which Christ has made for them; believe, trust in him with a childlike, yet firm confidence; renounce and forsake your sins; and God will forgive you, will become a father, helper, soul-preserver to you, will guide you by his Holy Spirit through life, and when death comes, He will sustain, comfort, and receive you to himself. Death, then, will have no terrors. Be wise! Be wise! Think! Think!

THE APPEAL:

A Magazine for the People.

"Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace."-Proverbs iii. 17.

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HARVEST HOME! THE BLIGHT.-Cover, p. 2.

A PAGE FOR The Young-The Old Bible.-Cover, p. 3.
THE GREAT HARVEST.-Cover, p. 4.

PRICE ONE HALFPENNY.

LEEDS:

JOHN HEATON, 7, BRIGGATE;

LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, & CO., ARTHUR HALL & CO.,

BENJAMIN L. GREEN;

EDINBURGH: JOHNSTONE & HUNTER.

May be had by order of any Bookseller.

"HARVEST HOME!" Once more the end of the year's labour is gained. Long and patiently has the husbandman watched his crops, through all the changes of anxious and hopeful seasons,-has tilled and manured his land, has weeded his growing plant, has alternately longed for or dreaded the rains of heaven or the withholding of them, has trembled before insects, blight, mildew, and hailstorms, and now at last he sees the fruits of his cares and labours safely housed! Sometimes, indeed, the dreaded evils have swept away all or much of his crops, yet on the average of years, and the average of districts, the husbandman has never been patient and laborious in vain. Neither shall the spiritual husbandman labour patiently in vain. No blight, no hailstorm, no unpropitious seasons, shall eventually destroy his harvest. "As each man soweth for eternity-so shall he also reap."

"HARVEST HOME!" We can remember the time when too many of those who had gathered in the harvest, were hardly able to get home from the harvest supper; and when, after farmers began to refuse to intoxicate their workmen on their own premises, the men would go and intoxicate themselves at a public-house. On thousands of farms things are better now. The men save their money for family comforts. The farmers and their friends provide them and their families a bountiful tea; a chapel or schoolroom is gladly thrown open by the friends of religion for the purpose; and after a cheerful but sober repast, ministers, farmers, and workmen, conclude the evening with suitable addresses. Man is gratified and benefited; GOD, the giver of the harvest, is honoured and pleased. Another "Harvest Home" can be looked forward to with pleasure, and the last one remembered without remorse. And thus everywhere may profanity be changed for thanksgiving; drunkenness for sobriety; and foolish talking for discourse worthy of reasonable, of religious, beings.

"HARVEST HOME!" This will one day be the shout of angels; for the Lord saith, that "the harvest is the end of the world, and the reapers are the angels " (Matt. xiii. 24-30 and 36-43). Read this parable and its interpretation. Ask yourself honestly whether you shall be amongst the wheat gathered into the garner of Christ with the happy shouts of angels, or among the tares gathered together to be burned in the fire.

Sir,-As your cheap little magazine circulates a good deal in many agricultural districts, perhaps you may not object to a few lines from a farmer. We have this year several striking instances in our neighbourhood of the extent to which the bread of our natural life is at the mercy of invisible, but most destructive enemies. Through the kindness of Providence, though warned of our dependance, we have not suffered largely; but we have seen almost with a kind of awe what might have been the case.

All your readers have heard enough of the potatoe blight; how, in the latter part of July, it has generally made its appearance, and in three or four weeks levels to the ground a whole field of the finest appearance, quickly destroying the root also. Nearly about the same time the wheat-blight appeared this year: the wheat, which a fortnight before was all in bloom, and promising a splendid crop, turned so dark, that the field really looked as if clad in mourning, and by the beginning of August every kernel was utterly withered in the ears,-they containd no grain at all. A scientific friend informs me, that the cause of this blight is a fungus, gradually spreading itself by its invisible seeds, which, living on the wheat, absorb the juices which should nourish the kernel. Whatever the cause, it is as yet quite as much invisible and irresistible to us as the potatoe rot, which once reduced half a nation to famine, and repealed the Corn Laws. Now, we are too ready to think, perhaps, that depending on wheat more than on potatoes, and wheat being obtainable from every quarter, we are almost safe against future famine. Let the remarkable fact I have mentioned preserve us from profane reliance on "bread alone." Our blessed Lord has taught us that we live rather "on every word that proceedeth from the mouth of God." Let us mingle our thankfulness for the harvest given us and spared us, with humble acknowledgment, that He who gives could so easily have taken away. And, oh! how frightful to imagine for a moment the horrors of nearly thirty millions of people contending for bread. I need not picture its effects on every household, on every branch of commerce. Let us remember how righteously He might thus visit a nation, of which the truly thankful are but so small a portion; and that that word of His-that promise, is our temporal hope: "While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night, shall not cease" (Gen. viii. 22).

Have you room for a thought which occurred to me, as leaning over a gate I looked on the mournful scene? It concerned THE YOUNG PEOPLE of our land. I have seen youth promising, hopeful, carefully tilled as it were, and just entering upon manhood, like the beautiful field of wheat just beginning to form the grain in the ear, when some blighting seduction, originated by some social tempter perhaps, has begun a dark spot on the heart; it has spread to the life, it has propagated itself on all sides,-and when parents, friends, and ministers had looked for a pleasing and plentiful harvest, all has ended in a moral blight. Conscience sapped, prayer given up, duty irksome, pleasure the chief concern, God forgotten by preference-Spiritual Blight! our hopeful youth from this, the most awful blight of all.

I am, Sir, yours, with sincere interest in your labour of love,

God save

A NORFOLK FARMER.

DIALOGUES BETWEEN A TOWN MISSIONARY AND A

FREETHINKER.

MATTER AND A CREATOR.

[The difficulties and objections adverted to in these dialogues, are, as nearly as we can remember, in the very words in which we have heard them.]

Town Missionary.-Good morning, friend; I hope work is more plentiful now, as you seem so busy.

Freethinker.-Why, yes; they say there are so many orders in, that the combing machines can't comb fast enough, so they've set us all to work; but it's desperate low pay. I have known the time when I could earn twice and three times as much, and shorter hours too. However, 'tis no use troubling you with all that, you can't help it if you would.

Town Missionary. Well, I gladly would if I could; but how it can be done I really don't know. Nothing ever grieves me more, not even the sight of sickness and pain itself, than to know of so many industrious persons who either cannot get work, or who, if they can, are yet so wretchedly paid for it that they can hardly live. Idleness deserves suffering; but industry deserves "a fair day's work, and a fair day's wages." God grant that every man have both soon!

Freethinker. So should I say, too; but you know I told you I had my doubts about a God at all. And for this, I suppose you will denounce me as a blasphemer and a scoffer, only fit to be "put down," and hardly worth reasoning with. I see you've got your hands full of the old sort there; I know they will never convince me, and 't isn't worth while your leaving me any of them.

Town Missionary.-You are doubly wrong. What I've got in my hands is a "new sort." It is some numbers of "The Appeal," a monthly magazine, full of various kinds of reading; and it is edited by a person whom you would agree with on every point, perhaps, but religion, and I do not know that you would not agree with him, and me too, in a sense, in that also; for neither he nor I would set you down as "a scoffer and a blasphemer," because you questioned the common views on religious subjects. Indeed, we only wonder that there are not more of what are called infidels and sceptics; so unworthy of their creed are half the professors of Christianity, and. half the sects of the day.

Freethinker.-I see you are disposed to be fair. And I will tell you honestly how and when I began to leave you, for I was brought up at one of your Sunday schools. When the woolcombers first were so badly off, many of us had little or nothing else to do but to talk over our hardships. We soon began to perceive our political slavery, and thought that if we had a vote, as we ought to have, and all the points of the Charter, we could take care of our interests as well as

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