to which he might have left the memory of a reign and an age consecrated to God-the curse which destroyed its spiritual life, and which broke up its national existence. Nowhere more terribly than in the contrasting periods of Solomon's career-its hopeful beginning at twenty, its degrading close at sixty-do we see the fatal curse of misused advantages. A DAY AT A TIME. IN anticipating the miseries, cares, and toils of life, we are wont to roll them up into a huge mass, whose weight descending at once like an avalanche, will certainly crush us. But this is a mistake; for we live but a day at a time, and each day brings but a day's sorrow or joy with it, alternating like the lights and shadows over the summer hills. Although there are exceptions to this rule, when a whole lifetime of joy or sorrow seems concentrated in one little hour, yet it is none the less true that it is the common lot to live but a day at a time. "Give us this day our daily bread," is to be our daily prayer-not bread for to-morrow, next week, or next year. It is bread for to-day; grace, strength, trust for to-day. As to the future, with its troop of threatening spectres, that is out of our line; it belongs to God alone, and with him let us leave it. Would we cherish a child-like spirit towards our kind Father, we shall not say to him, Father, it is true we have bread for to-day, but we are afraid that somehow we shall be disappointed as to future supplies; we are afraid that at some coming period, when we ask for bread, thou wilt give us a stone. We are afraid, though thou hast hitherto kept our feet from falling, that some time or other the good hand that has restrained and blessed us will let us go, and so we shall stumble and fall upon the dark mountains of sin and death. Desponding child of God, remember you live but a day at a time. If you are sustained now, thank God and take courage. Trust in a covenant-keeping God. Commit your future necessities into His hands who sees the end from the beginning, and all will be well. It is the soundest reason, the truest philosophy, the simplest faith which are involved in obedience to our Lord's command. "Take no thought for to-morrow, the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself: suffi cient unto the day is the evil thereof." In this is to be found the secret of true happiness and true strength. It is not to-day's duties which crush, or to-day's trials which overwhelm us; but the anxious thought for to-morrow. Let us endeavour to say, not with the lip only, but from the heart This day, dear Lord, this day This day, dear Lord, this day In thought and word and deed, This day, dear Lord, this day ན་ This day, dear Lord, this day Comes from thy loving hand Bearing, rejoicing, sorrowing; Having done all, to stand. This day, dear Lord, this day Thy promises, through Him who died For me on Calvary; And ever, blessed Lord, Let good or ill betide, Be thou my portion and my strength, My comforter, my guide. A SAILOR'S EXPERIENCE OF GOD'S PROVIDENCE, (Concluded from the last Number.) "THE next morning our hearts were gladdened by a sight of the glorious sun soon after he rose, and as an additional cause for gratitude, a fair, gentle breeze sprang up, and we rowed away due west, taking the oars spell and spell about, and working as hard as we were able, in the sanguine hope that we might see the land before nightfall. We calculated we had rowed upwards of twenty miles, passing several large islands of ice; but neither land nor friendly ship appeared, and as night was closing upon us, we resolved to shelter under an enormous mass of ice, whose magnitude above the water was greater than any cathedral we had ever seen. As the sun went down, the wind and sea got up, and rain fell in torrents, which we caught in a tarpaulin, and drank with avidity. Our position under the icy mountain was by no means so safe as we had anticipated, for the heavy rain detached large portions from the crown of the mass, which fell with a thundering noise into the sea, threatening to crush us to atoms. As we crouched close to each other during that dismal night, gnashing our teeth, and our strength exhausted by labour and want of food, I thought how little real gratitude we feel for the comforts of a home, with fire and food, warm dwellings, and beds to sleep in. How I longed for even the accommodation of a beggar in a barn, with the nice clean straw to lie upon, and some cold potatoes from the farmhouse. And yet there were many mercies mingled with our lot. Our breath was still in our nostrils, we were all still on praying ground. God wonderfully supported nature that it did not utterly fail; we were all ready to perish, but not one of us had already perished, but all lived to witness the dawn of another day. "Next morning the sun shone brightly, and the weather was fair, with an easterly wind; all cheering signs to feed us with the hopes of deliverance, when we had nothing else to feed upon; and with our remaining strength we took short spells at the oars, and made very fair progress. After the sun had passed the meridian the sky became overcast, but not so our hopes; for we fell in with abundance of rock-weed, which we devoured with eagerness; for, though it was tough and very salt, hunger made it sweet as the finest salad. "We continued to steer as nearly due west as we could judge, when the man who was seated alongside of me suddenly clutched my arm, and I felt him tremble; his eyes were straining towards the horizon right ahead. As soon as he could speak he leaned towards me, and whispered, as if he were afraid of giving a false alarm, 'Isn't that the land?' I could see nothing but a haze; but at that moment half a dozen hoarse voices shouted in chorus, 'Land! land!' It was a rapturous cry, like the shout of victory when the foe has struck in fight, and every one felt anxious to double-bank the oars to move faster towards our mother earth. There was one man, however, named Jonas, who did not join in the joyful cry. He was the oldest of our crew, whose hair was tinged with gray, and whose weatherbeaten face was carved with lines of long and arduous toil. All through our manifold trials that man had not spoken a word of complaint, but was constantly cheering us. He was a universal favourite; always foremost in danger, always shielding and instructing young hands, and keeping them out of mischief; and yet this man was silent amid our shouts of joy-silent amid our ejaculatory thanks to God! He shaded his dark piercing eyes with his hand as he gazed intently on the horizon, and sunk back into his berth without a single word. We were too much elated, however, to think about anything but getting on shore; and, putting forth all our energies, in half an hour we were close enough to discern that those pleasant hills and indented shores, which we had beheld with such ecstasy, were nothing but a field of ice, with ice mountains interspersed but no land, nor any sign of it! "Just in proportion as our tide of joy had been overflowing, so now this bitter disappointment brought our spirits to the lowest ebb: our hearts died within us, and many loudly expressed a wish to die at once out of such misery. "By the mercy of God, the night was so calm that we most of us slept away our sorrows, dreaming of green fields and feasting; and when we awoke, took a bit of ice, of which we had plenty in the boats, ate a little of the rockweed, and snoozed off again. "Jonas was the first on the look-out, and the dawn had scarcely ripened into light when he startled us with the cry of Land, land! and no mistake!' We rubbed our eyes, and sure enough there was the land about twelve miles distant on the lee beam. We altered our course, and proceeded till we grew more and more confident that we were not again deceived; and with hearts overwhelmed with joy, and mouths filled with praise, we blessed God and took courage. As we neared the shore, we had a farther cause for gladness, for we saw two ships with all sail set coming directly towards us. We shaped our course towards the headmost of the two, and about noon she was within hail. She proved to be a French ship, and rounded to within her own length of our boat. Nothing could exceed the compassionate kindness of her captain. He made his men help us on board, and, like a good Samaritan, he allowed us to take off our clothes and oil our limbs, and gave us abundance to eat, and plenty of good wine to cheer our hearts. We remained on board upwards of an hour, during which time the kind Frenchman had edged away towards the land, until we were about six miles from the shore, which both he and we took to be an English settlement, and then, with deep gratitude for his humanity towards us, we again got into our boat, hoping in two hours to be amongst the English settlers, and all our trials ended. "It was at about 3 P.M. when we reached the shore, but to our amazement we found it a perfectly barren cove, about three leagues to the westward of the plantations we were seeking for. However, as the weather looked coarse to windward, and we were once more on land, it was universally voted that we should remain until the next morning. So we searched about and gathered together some driftwood, and with our lighted match bound up in some withered grass, and swung round in the air till it burst forth in flame, we made a perfect bonfire. "After we had completed these operations, we broiled the fish which the French captain had given us, and wished that God might give him a safe and pleasant voyage home. Altogether we were in far greater comfort than we could have expected when we first discovered the mistake we had made in landing on a desolate shore. It was well for us that we had so much time to make ourselves comfortable before night, for a few hours after sunset the wind rose to a perfect storm, sending the rain and the spray of the sea before it in inundating showers. We had got under the lee of a sand-hill to sleep, when the voice of Jonas roused us. 'Bear a hand,' he cried; 'the yawl will be dashed to smitherins in this sea that's breaking right on shore.' We all followed him to the beach, which was fortunately sandy, |