over hill and dale, he came to a quiet nook in a valley between two high mountains where there was a sweet little cottage overgrown with ivy, with its porch covered with flowers. Beneath the porch a maiden sat, knitting. Said he, "I will entice her away to the big town and lead her into ways of folly and sin and shame. She shall perish in an infirmary, and her soul shall be mine forever." He drew near to whisper in her ear some temptation, but he heard her singing:

Jesus, I love thy charming name,

"Tis music to mine ear;

Fain would I sound it out so loud

That earth and heaven should hear.

"That won't answer," said he, and so he flew away until he came to where an old man named Williams lived, and as he drew near he said, "Here old Williams lives. He has served God these fifty years, and if I can get him now what a trophy that would be!" So he went in and passed up-stairs where Williams lay dying. "Now," said he, "I will make him doubt and die in despair."

Satan crossed the room to get at the dying man's ear, and as he came close to him, Williams stretched out his hand and said, "Yea, tho I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff they comfort me." Satan shrank back abashed into the darkness. And so he would always if he found our hearts and our thoughts taken up with doing our duty. It is the earnest, active soul, that is positively doing right, who is beyond the reach of Satan. Paul sums it all up in his word to the Galatians: "Walk in the Spirit and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh."

THE FIRST LIE

"The serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die."-Gen. 3: 4.

WR

E have here the first record of a lie. Satan has been making suggestions and sneers to Eve, but up to this time he has not dared to openly attack God. If Eve had held firm to her loyalty and refused to open the door of her mind and heart to the suggestions of the evil one, she would have been guiltless and Satan never could have made an entrance into her heart. She held the key in her own hand, and if she had not opened her heart to the insinuations of Satan, she would have held safely the gold of her character.

Many years ago a band of Apache Indians captured the army paymaster's safe out in the Western mountains. The safe contained about seven thousand dollars in gold. It weighed four hundred pounds and worked with a combination. None of the Indians had ever examined one at close quarters

before, but they all knew why it was hauled about from post to post and were very anxious to get hold of the money. They first pounded off the knob with stones, thinking the door would then fly open. When that failed, they tried their tomahawks on the chilled steel, hoping to cut a hole in it. After they had worn their tomahawks out in that effort, some of them remembered that they had seen iron softened by fire, and their next move was to give that safe a roasting of many hours; but it proved to be fireproof. They threw big rocks upon it while it was still hot, and dented it till it looked as if it had been through the war, but they were as far from the money as ever. Then they dragged it up the side of the mountain and tumbled it over a precipice several hundred feet high. They expected that when it lighted on the rocks beneath it would burst open like a watermelon, but the only damage done was to break off one of the wheels underneath. They left it lying there where it fell for a while, and then came back and carried it to the river and left it to soak for a week. It was thought that this would soften it up, and great was their

chagrin to find it as hard as ever. They knew that white men sometimes tore things open with gunpowder, so they set to work to blast the safe open, and not knowing how to do it, they spoiled a half-a-dozen Indians and did no damage to the safe. Thus for a month the Indians worked at that safe harder than they had ever worked at anything else in all their lives, but they failed to get inside of it, and finally tumbled it into a deep ravine and left it. A year or two later, after peace was made, the government got on the track of the safe, and an ambulance and a guard were sent for it. It was found lying in the bed of the creek with a pile of driftwood around it. It was a rusty, dented, lonesome-looking old safe. I suppose there never was a worse looking safe so far as outside appearances are concerned. But when it was brought into the fort and the door was opened it yielded up its contents without the loss of a dollar. True, genuine character, that stubbornly maintains its loyalty to God in simple obedience, is like that. You may thrust it into the den of lions with Daniel; you may put it into the fiery furnace with the Hebrew