daily work with a heavy heart. The rain was as far off as

ever.

A curious faith prevailed among the tribe in what was called rain-making. They believed this power was given to certain native doctors. These men mixed a compound of roots, part of which was given to a sheep, causing it to die in a few minutes in agony; and then the remainder was burnt, so that its smoke rose in a stream towards the heavens. Perhaps rain might fall in quite a natural way in a few days after, but it was quite enough to give the belief that it was this rain medicine that had drawn it down. The rain-doctors had a singular way of arguing on the point. They held that God had created the black man without any of the love He had bestowed on the white man-that He had placed him in a wild arid land—and that He had left one of his tribes to be the foes and destroyers of the other, so that, when angry with each other, they could take revenge through charming away the precious rain, and binding it up in its clouds. But then, to compensate for all this, God had bestowed this one gift of rain-making, by which the black man could break the charm, and bring down the soft showers again upon his desert home. It was quite in vain for long, that our missionary reasoned with them on this superstition. Every day, round the little colony, by the dry bed of the Kolobeng, the process of rain-making went on.

During the long drought, there were great hunting matches in the vast plains. Indeed, except a few roots and small supplies of corn, the flesh and blood of the wild beasts that came in great throngs to some fountains near the Kolobeng, were all the tribe had to live on through the drought. An ingenious, though somewhat cruel way was taken to snare the herds. A huge pit was dug, and overlaid round its edges with the trunks of felled trees. Approaching to this was a long lane, hedged closely in with a stout thicket of staves and branches. At its farthest end this lane widened out somewhat in the form of the letter V. All the country, for miles round, was then beat up by the natives, armed with spears and lances, and the

beasts of chase, of every sort, driven from their lairs, and in one great multitude, gradually hemmed in, till they rushed together, choking up the lane, and with wild confusion streaming forward into the deadly trap. Immense numbers were slaughtered thus at a blow. Few escaped. It was a sight of pain to witness the poor animals, many of them of lovely shape and colour, thus huddled together and crushed in one overthrow. This mode of entrapping them was called a hopo.

It was with great difficulty, meanwhile, that the missionary found pupils in the tribe. They were so engrossed with the necessity of getting daily food, that they could give little or no attention to the Bible he pressed on them in his school and his preaching. It was a trying and almost disheartening task. It needed, to win these poor heathen to the Cross, that not merely preaching its simple message should be daily carried on, but that the preacher should enter into their life, make himself one with their wants and cares, and, if possible, do somewhat for them in their temporal things, that so he might gain their attention to spiritual things. How could they sit in school, or listen with any strong interest to his sermon, if suffering from the gnawing pangs of hunger, or fearing that every day would see them stripped of the bare necessities of life! So, to do them, and to do any of the perishing heathen good, we must send them not only preachers, but with these preachers all the other means of comfort we can-we must give them a share of all the blessings and the comforts the Word of Jesus has brought us, and that they may learn it is not a mere empty sound, but that which makes men better every way, raising body and soul together. If we could but do something to shew the wild but simple-hearted Africans our happy Sabbath classes and our smiling firesides, where all the blessings of the Gospel dwell, and if we could give them but a share in these blessings, it were the best of all preaching, and to them the most powerful of all testimony, that in His Word God is true. We shall see how, in this view, our missionary rospered.

THE NARROW WAY.

In the Arctic regions, ships sometimes get enclosed in a scanty space between ice-islands. The floating rocks glide nearer the ship on every side, and the dismayed seamen behold their only chance of escape from the fatal crash in a narrow channel that momently grows more narrow. How hurriedly they press their vessel through that strip of sea, to reach the comparative safety of the open ocean! Even so must we press along the narrow way that leads to salvation and eternal life, not knowing how soon that narrow way may be closed against us for ever. Men must learn to take the same trouble about the salvation of their souls that they do about their worldly speculations or their pleasure. I have stood near to our Music Hall on a concert night, and watched the eager crowd clustering around the doorway an hour before the time of opening; and then, when the narrow door is unclosed, what a struggling and striving agitates the dense mass of people! what frantic eagerness to be among the earliest within the doors, and to secure a good position in the hall! I have watched the swaying crowd, and wondered how many of them were displaying equal resolution to enter through the straight gate into the kingdom of heaven. Bunyan shews us what spirit should animate us in the episode of the man coming up to the door of the palace which was guarded by armed men. He said to the man who sat at the door with the ink-horn and book, "Set down my name, sir," and fell to, hacking and hewing most fiercely.

Opportunity is like a favouring breeze springing up around a sailing vessel. If the sails be all set, the ship is wafted onward to its port. If the sailors are asleep, or ashore, the breeze may die again, and when they wish to go on, they may not be able; their vessel standing as idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean."

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Opportunity is like a string of stepping stones across a ford. When the traveller comes up to them, he may find that the river, swollen with the rains, is just rising up to them; and if he delays, though his home is on the opposite bank, full in sight, he will have a journey of several miles to reach it.

Opportunity is like a strip of sand at the bottom of cliffs which stretch into the sea on either side of a cove. The greedy tide is lapping up the sand. The narrow strip will quickly become impassable; and then how sad the fate of the thoughtless children who are playing and gathering shells and sea-weed inside the cove !-Union Magazine.

THE MODEL OF THE TABERNACLE.

HIS is a beautiful and complete work of art, designed and carried out by an English gentleman who has the cause of Sabbath schools deeply at heart. The model, which he has exhibited to hundreds of teachers and pupils, is thus described :

"The model of the Tabernacle is on the scale of one inch to the cubit, the cubit being reckoned at twenty-one inches. The base of the model represents a sandy plain; on the centre of this plain is seen the Court of the Tabernacle, 50 cubits broad by 100 cubits long, surrounded by 60 pillars, the pillars 5 cubits apart, and each let into its appropriate socket, and having at its capital a hook, both inside and outside. They are maintained erect by means of ropes from their tops, and are fastened to the ground by 'the pins of the court,' which are 'of brass.'

"Rods connect the capitals of the pillars; from these rods are suspended the hangings for the Court of the Tabernacle, of 'fine twined linen.' At the gate of the Court of the Tabernacle is the 'hanging of blue and purple and scarlet, of fine twined linen, wrought with needlework.'

"Within the Court is seen the Tabernacle. Before entering it let us notice the various individuls and objects in the Court. Here is a poor Jew, with his family; he has brought a turtle-dove as a sin-offering, and, kneeling, presents it to the priest. Here are the elders of the twelve tribes, placing each a hand on the head of the animal to be sacrificed, confessing the sin of the nation, for they are about to offer a national sacrifice. Here are lambs, bulls, and rams, all exquisitely carved, to a scale of 1 in 21. Here are also the priests-the high priest distinguished by the 'plate of pure gold,' upon the forefront of the mitre,' by the ephod and the golden bells and pomegranates upon the hem of the robe round about. Here also are the other priests and Levites in their appropriate robes, all on the minute scale, and yet wonderfully finished. The countenance of the high priest is really a study. Here is the 'laver of brass,' at which the priests washed before offering sacrifice. Here, in connexion with the altar of burntofferings, also, are 'his pans to receive the ashes, and his shovels, and his basons, and his flesh-hooks, and his fire-pans.'

"We now approach the Tabernacle-we see the pillars at the entrance, the vail worked in three colours. We see