children, O father! O mother! more than food, more than clothing, more than shelter-you owe them the example of a prayerful, consecrated, pronounced, out-and-out Christian life. You can not afford to keep it away from them.

Now, as I stand here, you do not see any hands outstretched toward me, and yet there are hands on my brow and hands on both my shoulders. They are hands of parental benediction. It is quite a good many years ago now since we folded those hands as they began the last sleep on the banks of the Raritan, in the village cemetery; but those hands are stretched out toward me to-night, and they are just as warm and they are just as gentle as when I sat at their knee at five years of age. And I shall never shake off those hands. I do not want to. They have helped me so much a thousand times already, and I do not expect to have a trouble or a trial between this and my grave where those hands will not help me. Theirs was not a very splendid home, as the world calls it; but we had a family Bible there, well worn by tender perusal; and there was a family altar there, where we knelt morning and night; and there was a holy Sabbath there; and stretched in a straight line, or hung in loops or festoons, there was a scarlet line in the window. Oh, the tender, precious, blessed memory of a Christian home! Is that the impression you are making upon your children? When you are dead-and it will not be long before you are when you are dead, will your child say, "If there ever was a good Christian father, mine was one. If there ever was a good Christian mother, mine was one?" Will they say that after you are dead? Standing some Sabbath night in church preaching the glorious Gospel, as I am trying to do, will they tell the people in that day how

there are hands of benediction on their brow and hands of parental benediction on both their shoulders?

Still further, we want this scarlet line of the text drawn across the window of our prospects. I see Rahab, and her father, and her mother, and her brothers, and sisters looking out over Jericho, the city of palm-trees, and across the river, and over at the army invading, and then up to the mountains and the sky. Mind you, this house was on the wall, and I suppose the prospect from the window must have been very wide. Besides that, I do not think that the scarlet line at all interfered with the view of the landscape. The assurance it gave of safety must have added to the beauty of the country. To-night, my friends, we stand or sit in the window of earthly prospect, and we look off toward the hills of heaven and the landscape of eternal beauty. God has opened the window for us, and we look out; but how if we do not get there? If we never get there, better never to have had even this faint glimpse of it. We now only get a dim outline of the inhabitants. We now only here and there catch a note of the exquisite harmony.

But blessed be God for this scarlet line in the window! That tells me that the blood of Christ bought that home for my soul, and I shall go there when my work is done here. And as I put my hand on that scarlet line every thing in the future brightens. My eye-sight gets better, and the robes of the victors are more lustrous, and our loved ones who went away some time ago—they do not stand any more with their backs to us, but their faces are this way, and their voice drops through this Sabbath air, saying, with all tenderness and sweetness, "Come! Come! Come!" And the child that you think of only as buried—

why, there she is, and it is May-day in heaven; and they gather the amaranth, and they pluck the lilies, and they twist them into a garland for her brow, and she is one of the May-queens of heaven. Oh, do you think they could see our waving to-night? It is quite a pleasant night outdoors, pretty clear, not many clouds in the sky, quite starlight. I wonder if they can see us from that good land? I think they can. If from this window of earthly prospect we can almost see them, then from their towers of light I think they can fully see us. And so I wave them the glory, and I wave them the joy, and I say, "Have you got through with all your troubles?" and their voices answer, "God hath wiped away all tears from our eyes." I say, "Is it as grand up there as you thought it would be?" and the voices answer, "Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love him." I say, "Do you have any more struggle for bread?" and they answer, "We hunger no more, we thirst no more." And I say, "Have you been out to the cemetery of the golden city?" and they answer, "There is no death here." And I look out through the night heavens, and I say, "Where do you get your light from, and what do you burn in the temple?" and they answer, "There is no night here, and we have no need of candle or of star." And I And I say, "What book do you sing out of?" and they answer, "The Hallelujah Chorus." And I say, "In the splendor and magnif icence of the city, don't you ever get lost?" and they answer, "The Lamb which is in the midst of the throne. leadeth us to living fountains of water." Oh, how near it seems to-night! Their wings-do you not feel them? Their harps do you not hear them? And all that through

the window of our earthly prospect, across which stretcheth the scarlet line.

Be that my choice color forever. Is it too glaring for you? Do you like the blue because it reminds you of the sky, or the green because it makes you think of the foliage, or the black because it has in it the shadows of the night? I take the scarlet because it shall make me think of the price that was paid for my soul. Oh, the blood! the blood! the blood of the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world! Through it we escape sin. Through it we reach heaven. Will you let it atone for you? Believe in it, and you live. Refuse it, and you die. Will you accept it, or will you pull over on you the eternal calamity of rejecting it?

I see where you are. You are at the cross-roads tonight. The next step decides every thing. Pause before you take it; but do not pause too long, lest the wind of God's justice slam to the door that has been standing open so long. I hear the thunder of God's artillery. I hear the blast of the trumpet that wakes the dead. Look out! look out! For in that day, and in our closing moment on earth, better than any other defense or barricade, however high or broad or stupendous, will be one little, thin, scarlet thread in the window.

FROM

THE LAMP.

"Thy word is a lamp.”—Psalm cxix., 105.

ROM six o'clock last evening until six o'clock this morning darkness rested on our part of the earth, and every few hours there rolls a wave of natural night all over the nations. With lamps, and chandeliers, and torches, and lanterns, we try to drive out the night from houses, and churches, and stores, and shops. He who invents a new kind of a light invents his own fortune and the fortune of his children. But there is a night of sin and suffering and shame which needs another kind of illumination. Ancient philosophy made a lamp, but it was a dead failure, and the people kept crying out, "Give us a light! give us a light!" After a while prophet and evangelist and apostle made a lamp. A coal from heaven struck it into a blaze, and uncounted multitudes of people, with an open Bible before them, cry out in rapture and in love, "Thy word is a lamp.”

When, a few years ago, there was a great accident in Hartley Colliery, in England, and two hundred persons lost their lives, the Queen telegraphed down to the scene of disaster, "Can we give you any help? Will you be able to get the men out? How many are lost? Give my sympathy to all the bereft." What consolation it was to the families who stood amidst the consternation and the terror that the throne of England throbbed in sympathy with their disaster! But I have to tell you to-day a more