We used to sit around the fire on the stormy winter nights and listen to the stories that mother used to tell us about our father, about what he said, how he looked, how he was kind to a friend, and lost a great deal of money by him, and so our little home was mortgaged, and we were poor; but if any body happened to speak the name of that lost boy a great silence would fall upon us, the tears would come into my mother's eyes, and then we would all steal away softly to bed, whispering our good-nights, because we felt that the mention of that name was like a sword thrust to the heart of our mother.

After we got to bed we would lie awake and listen to the roaring of the wind among the mountains, thinking perhaps he was out in the cold somewhere. Maybe he had gone to sea, and while we were snug in bed he might be keeping watch on the wave-beaten deck; perhaps climbing the mast in just such darkness and storm. Now and then, between the gusts, a sound would be heard like the wail of the summer wind when it used to make harpstrings of the leaves and branches of the great maple-trees in the door-yard: now, soft and gentle; then, rising louder and louder. How we would hold our breath and listen! Mother was sitting up to pray for her lost boy. Next morning, perhaps, she would send one of us down to the post-office to ask for a letter-a letter from him, though she never said so. But no letter ever came.

Long years afterward, when our mother was growing old, and her hair was turning gray, one summer afternoon a dark sunburned man, with heavy black beard, was seen coming in at the gate.

He came up under the window first, and looked in as if

he were afraid there might be strangers living in the nouse. He had stopped at the church-yard, on his way through the village, to see whether there were two graves instead of one where our father had been laid so many years ago, but there was only one grave there: surely his mother was not dead. But still she might have moved away. Then he went around and knocked at the door, and his mother came to open it.

Years of hardship and exposure to sun and storm had made him strange even to his mother. She invited him to come in, but he did not move or speak; he stood there humbly and penitently; and, as a sense of his ingratitude began to overwhelm him, the big tears found their way over his weather-beaten cheeks. By those tears the mother recognized her long-lost son. He had come at last. There was so much of the old home in him that he couldn't always stay away. But he would not cross its threshold until he confessed his sin against it, and heard from the same lips which had prayed so often and so long for him the sweet assurance that he was forgiven. “No, no," said he, "I cannot come in until you forgive me."

Do you suppose that mother kept her boy out there in the porch until he had gone through with a long list of apologies, done a long list of penances, and said ever so many prayers? Not a bit of it. She took him to her heart at once; she made him come right in; she forgave him all, and rejoiced over his coming more than over all the other children that hadn't ran away.

And that is just the way God forgives all the prodigal souls who come back to him. O wanderer, come home! come home!

NOAH.

WANT to call your attention to Genesis vii, 1: "And the Lord said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark."

We meet that little word "come" very often in the Scriptures. This is the first time it is used as an invitation; it is the voice of grace, mercy, and love.

One hundred and twenty years before the time of the text Noah received the most awful communication that ever came from heaven to earth. God told him that he was going to destroy the world on account of the great increase of wickedness.

Sin came into the world full grown; the first man born of woman was a murderer. The fact is, man has always been bad; there is nothing good in him-he is bad by nature. We don't need to go to the Bible to prove that. You can look around you and find plenty of proofs. Leave man alone and see how quick he will go to ruin! See how the nations of the earth have gone to ruin when they have been left alone. It was their own sin that drove them to ruin, and it is just the same with individuals. But wickedness had increased in those days; if possible men were worse then than they are now; and so God told Noah to build an ark for the saving of his house, for he was about to destroy the world by a flood: and Noah, having faith in God, obeyed the command.

Noah was instructed to warn the people of their coming doom but they didn't pay any attention to him They asked where was the sign that the world was to be destroyed, and scoffed, just as men now do, at the idea. When Noah was told to build the ark he knew he would be the laughing-stock of the city; but the old man toiled on despite the jeers of his fellows. Thank God! there was one man in that age who dared to go against public sentiment and obey the voice of the Lord. It was one of the wonders of the world; but he worked away on his ark, and what was more, he got his children to believe and help him.

While the ark was building perhaps the people came to look at it, and considered its builder a lunatic for wasting his time and money on this apparently useless undertaking. Men undoubtedly talked then as they do now. You talk with the scoffers of Chicago and you will see that men put up their little puny reason against the Almighty.

I have heard some men say that God cannot destroy this world, and others declare that there is no God. Undoubtedly the antediluvians thought in the same way, and some would probably say, if there was a God he couldn't destroy the world.

I can imagine that business was brisk, and that the warning gave them little trouble. Their saloons and billiard-halls were full every night, and Noah and his ark was the standing joke among them. One hundred years rolled away, and yet no sign of a flood. There were probably astronomers in those days, who tried to read the heavens, but who could see no change; there were geologists, no doubt, who dug down into the bowels of the earth

to bring up some dead carcass to prove that there was no God. I don't know but some of them believed that men were descended from the monkeys, and some subscribed to the evolution theory we hear so much about. At any rate, whatever notions they had, none of them believed in the coming of the flood.

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There were Noah's carpenters; you might see them, gang of men going into the saloons of a night, loafing and drinking and making sport of the foolish old fellow, as they called their master, and excusing themselves for working for him on the ground that his money was as good as any one else's. Poor Noah, what a discouraging time he must have had!

I remember once when I felt very much discouraged. I suppose I got under the juniper-tree, where Elijah went. It seemed to me as if I was not accomplishing any thing, and all my work went for nothing. While I was feeling very glum and sorrowful, one of the Sunday-school teachers came in and asked me how the work had been on the Sunday previous.

"O, very poor, very dull," said I. you?"

"How was it with

"Very good, indeed," said he; "we had a very profitable time studying the character of Noah."

I thought I knew all about Noah, but I inquired what new thing they had found out about him.

"O, nothing new; but just study him, and you will find very much that will help you."

So when he was gone away I took down the Bible and began to study Noah; and I found, among other things, that he had preached a hundred and twenty years without