tongue, and a headache almost unbearable. My doctor says that if I do not get out of the house I now live in, all the medicine in the world will never keep me well, for that the marshy ground about it is enough to give the ague to anybody."

This conversation, taking place as it did in my hearing, set me thinking of the difficulty there was in getting health, and I pitied from my heart not only the man with the ague, but every son and daughter of Adam who had to pass through the furnace of affliction. The lesson, whether obtained from high or low life, that teaches us to feel for others, is worth learning. A wondrous thing it is, knowing as we all do that we have but a life-interest in this world, that we are not more anxious to secure a freehold in the world that is to come.

"How do you get on?" said a well-to-do sort of a man, seemingly in trade, to another, who appeared to be a tradesman too, but sadly under the weather. "Get on!" replied he; "not at all; it is quite as much as I can do to keep on my legs. My prices are lower than they were, while all the materials I use are rising; and then what do you think of coals being three pounds a ton? I tell my wife to get ready with the children to move to a bigger house— the union workhouse; and if things go on much longer as they do now, it may turn out to be no joke after all."

I listened to the poor tradesman's account with

much sympathy, for it is a hard thing, with a wife and children, to look coming poverty in the face without shrinking. I was not sorry that his words had reached my ears, for they made me feel for all who were struggling to maintain their position in the world. Truly, a man had need to seek, through Christ, a home above the stars, seeing that there is so much trouble below them.

"How do you get on?" said one young man to another who was studying medicine and surgery at a London college. "Oh! it is no easy work to get on at all; for what with reading, attending to the patients, dissecting, and hearing lectures, I can hardly tell which way to look. General and structural anatomy, of themselves, to say nothing of medicine and chemistry, will take a lifetime fully to understand them. Why, there are in the human frame two hundred and forty-six bones, and we ought to be as much at home with them as with our old gloves. But what are these, compared with the muscles, veins, arteries, and other parts of the human frame? I heard a lecture yesterday that will set me thinking for a month. To tell the truth, I get on very slowly."

Ay, thought I, it is up-hill work to acquire knowledge of any kind. What the student said made me think it was a sad pity that so much time should be wasted as there is in the world, when so much of it was needed to obtain knowledge.

"How do you get on?" said one old man to another as they came out of a place of divine worship together one Sabbath day. "Slow enough," was the reply; "but the gracious discourse we have heard is just the thing to quicken us both in running the race that is set before us. Blessed be God for the gift of his ministering servants, for, without them and his quickening grace, we should be more like crawling tortoises than harts panting for the water-brooks."

The remark appeared to me to be only too true; it led me, however, to estimate God's ministers more highly, and to be more anxious for the quickening influences of the Holy Spirit. From all these instances we may gather the fact that it is not easy to gain health, wealth, or knowledge; and that we must be diligent to use the means, if we would make rapid progress in our heavenward

course.

Reader! how do you get on with your health? What with food, clothing, lodging, fuel, and medicine, these perishable bodies of our's cost us a pretty sum of money; but it will only be for a time. How do you bear your bodily afflictions? Some think too much of them: how is it with you? "It may be," as that good man, Brooks, has it, "they are not great, if you look upon them with Scripture spectacles. Flesh and blood many times look upon mole-hills as mountains, and scratches upon the

hand as stabs at the heart; we make elephants of flies, and of little pigmies we frame giants. Carnal reason often looks upon troubles through false glasses. As there are some glasses that will make great things seem little, so there are others that will make little things seem great; and it may be that thou lookest upon thy afflictions through one of them. Look upon thy afflictions in the glass of the word; look upon them in a Scripture dress, and then they will be found to be but little. He that shall look into a gospel-glass shall be able to say, 'Heavy afflictions are light, long afflictions are short, bitter afflictions are sweet, and great afflictions are little.' It is good to make a judgment of your afflictions by a gospel light and by a gospel rule."

How do you get on in your circumstances? If you are rich, are you thankful? If you are poor, are you humble, patient, and content with God's dealings with you? A gracious text is that in the sixth chapter of Timothy, and as true as it is gracious: "Godliness with contentment is great gain." Whatever we gain is God's gift, and, if we lose all, "is there not enough in God still? Are his consolations small? The fountain is as full as ever." "Oh, the depths of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!" Rom. xi. 33.

How do you get on in the way of obtaining knowledge? The way to be wise is this: seek after such knowledge and wisdom as is best worth attaining, and endeavour to possess yourself of it in the best way. Follow this rule, and with God's help you will not fail to be wise. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: a good understanding have all they that do his commandments:" Ps. cxi. 10.

And now, how do you get on in your pilgrimage to the celestial city? This question is of more importance than all the rest put together. Never mind how much it may puzzle you; do your best to reply to it. If your answer be satisfactory, so much the better; and if not, it may set you on "redeeming the time." Of this be assured, that the health and strength of Samson, the riches of Tyre, Babylon, and Jerusalem, and the knowledge and wisdom of King Solomon, would be altogether worthless to you, unless, through God's grace and a saving faith in his Son Jesus Christ, your heart and your hope were set on heaven.

Put the question, "How do I get on?” to yourself under these several particulars; answer it faithfully, and then you will not regret my having put it to you.

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