hear what was his joy and hope and unfailing consolation amid all his trials. Here is a brief pas

"Verily, sir, it is but a little while that prisons shall hold us. Surely He is gone to prepare a place for us; and He will come again to receive us to Himself, that where He is we may be also. And what have we to do but to believe, and wait and out for His coming, in which is all our hope. 'Twill be time enough for us to be preferred then. We know beforehand who shall then be uppermost."*

love, and long, and look

But Alleine's recompense was not altogether deferred to the time of Christ's coming. Have we noticed that significant promise concerning the suffering Messiah-"He shall prolong his days." † He was "cut off out of the land of the living;' his days on the earth prematurely ended; but they were prolonged in the ministry of the Spirit and in the lives of his followers. And what was true

*It is good to hear such a true note struck concerning the Christian's hope and reward. No talk of that sentimental heaven fitted up with modern improvements, which is so popular in our times! In another place, speaking of the death of his father, he says: "But I bless the Lord, I do believe and expect the return of the Redeemer with all his saints, and the most glorious resurrection of my own dead body with all believers; and this makes me rest in hope, and fills me with unspeakably more joy than the death of myself or any other saint can with grief."

† Is. 53: 10.

"No

of him, is true in a measure of his faithful servants in all ages. Joseph Alleine was cut off at thirtyfive years of age, only one half of man's allotted time upon the earth being given him. But he left behind him, among other writings, one brief treatise called "The Alarm to the Unconverted." It is a plain book, endowed with none of those elements of a literary immortality which belong to the famous works of his brother Puritans-having nothing of the glowing imagery of Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," or of the sparkling brilliance of Gurnall's "Christian Armor." But thirty-five years after the author's death Dr. Calamy wrote: book in the English tongue, the Bible only excepted, can equal it for the number that hath been. dispersed." Men would call its career a literary marvel, thirty thousand copies being once struck off at a single edition, so great was the demand. We call it a divine and visible seal affixed by the Lord to the fidelity of one of his anointed ones. It would seem as though God breathed into it a special inspiration of his Spirit, saying, "Since wicked men have cut off my well beloved servant by their persecutions, so that he lived out but half his days on the earth, I decree him to live on after his death, to prolong his days and see his seed, in

the influence of this little book." It is altogether unprecedented, so far as our knowledge goesthis post mortem ministry of the best of Puritans. We hear of an indolent Scotch minister reading parts of this book to his congregation, and a revival resulting therefrom, which swept over a whole region with its transforming power. Oh, wise and trusting servant of God, serenely suffering in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, and enduring "as seeing him that is invisible," how true thy words, "Hath he not a thousand ways, both outward and inward, to make up a little outward disadvantage to us?" He who loved the preaching of the gospel and the saving of souls better than his own life, wrought, by this work, even more mightily after his death than by his oral teaching in his life.

God is not limited to present times and circumstances in giving his servants the reward of their labor. The shutting of one pulpit may be but the opening of a wide and effectual door into another. Edwards in New England, Spener in Germany, Monod in France, were each thrust out of their churches, and their places of testimony closed against them, because they moved for a purer faith and a higher style of Christian living than

that prevailing about them. But no smallest loss of influence or usefulness was thereby incurred.

And then there is the inner joy, the testimony of a good conscience in the breast of those who have been faithful unto death in their witness for Christ. Here is a spiritual revenue, over and above all others. "God pays, but not always at the end of the week," says an oft-quoted proverb; and we may add, nor always in the same currency. By a divine exchange he often settles temporal losses with spiritual coin, a coin which bears only the image and superscription of Christ, and therefore has no value in the world's markets, but which is of inestimable worth to such as have spiritual discernment. How endless the illustrations of this inward spiritual requital, if we had space to consider them. Here is the patience and faith of the saints-the balm of the Spirit healing the wounds of the sword, the reality of heavenly citizenship assuaging all the pains and privations of earthly exile.

We need not wonder if Zinzendorf, who exclaims from a glowing heart, "I have one passion; it is He, He alone," should soon find himself the object of bitterest contempt in a world whose one passion is self and self alone. But what matters

it? "By faith Noah. prepared an ark to the saving of his house, by which he condemned the world." A holy choice of God and life eternal as our supreme good, will cast an inevitable reflection upon such as mind earthly things. But the portion of such is with the Lord, and in the communion that lifts us into his presence. Slander and detraction followed Zinzendorf as dark shadows follow a brilliant light. He who had renounced earthly citizenship, owning that "that place is our proper home where we have the greatest opportunity of laboring for our Saviour," found his residence for years in exile. But in the midst of it all he could say, "I would rather be despised and hated for the sake of Jesus, than be beloved for my own sake." Weighed down with labor, and often bearing the heavy cross of obloquy, he could yet exclaim concerning a journey, "All the way I swam in peace and joy in the Lord."

Thrice blessed are they who have such a portion. "And your joy no man taketh from you," says says the Saviour. Let God's servants be incited, by these brief glimpses of suffering and victorious lives, to choose this divine inheritance. "It is a faithful saying: For if we be dead with Him, we shall also live with Him; if we suffer with Him, we shall