When John and James were younger and besought Christ to call fire from heaven upon the Samaritans, they no doubt attributed their warmth very complacently to a heavenly source, but I have a keen suspicion that they got their kindlings from another quarter just then. They knew not of what spirit they were,' they claimed kinship with the wrong fire, and the Master was not long in undeceiving them. Fire, Shadrach, is sometimes a very cheap article, and may be had in any quantity, while forbearance may be very costly and exceedingly scarce. We want patience and charity as well as the so-called 'fire,' depend upon it."

"So we do, John," replied Shadrach, "and both of us are rather short of those commodities, I'm afraid."

"Very likely," responded John, "anyhow, you will not have your patience tried to-morrow by any papersermon."

"I'm thankful for that," said Shadrach.

He soon finished the two dozen nails that John wanted, and having taken them up in his horny hand, which did not seem to feel the slightest inconvenience from the fact that some of them were almost red hot-so thoroughly in love with fire was this son of Vulcan-he placed them in his cousin's leathern apron and with a "Good night" the two friends parted, John going forth into the darkness and the storm, and Shadrach remaining in the ruddy glow of the blazing forge.

CHAPTER V.

Anniversary Services at "boreb."

EFORE John Vaughan had returned home from Pentre

mawr on Saturday night the storm had burst into a hurricane, and, until Sunday dawned, it raged with scarcely a lull. Throughout the night the wind shrieked furiously through the chinks of the doors, and howled wildly in the large chim

humble homesteads in the village and neighbourhood. The moon which had risen early in the evening tinged everything with its silvery hue, and thus gave a weird appearance to the whole scene. In its clear light the storm, raging in its fury, could almost be seen, as well as felt and heard. Far into the night it reached its highest pitch. To the fanciful listener, half asleep and half awake,

it would seem as if Æolus had been moon-struck and was roving at will, stark mad through creation. Few could sleep. The night was as terrible as it was light, and altogether was a very poor preparation for the Sunday.

There was one man, however—a fond child of Nature, who gloried in her sublimities, and revelled in her wild play-who seemed to catch an inspiration from the sweeping hurricane. He was to be the first preacher for the morning service on the following day at "Horeb Chapel." As he listened in the dead of night, he possibly remembered that in the long ago God had spoken much in the same manner at another Horeb, when, as He passed by, "a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord" (I. Kings, xix. 11). It was quite true that on that occasion He did not seem to Elijah to be in the wind, but rather in "the still small voice," which hitherto the old prophet had been too prone to ignore, yet the wakeful preacher was sure that on this night "the Lord was in the wind." It flashed upon him like a revelation that that storm was a new illustration of a text from which he had once preached, "Was the Lord displeased against the rivers? was Thine anger against the rivers? was Thy wrath against the sea, that Thou didst ride upon Thine horses and Thy chariots of salvation?" (Hab. iii. 8). He thought he could hear on that very night the rumbling of the royal chariots, and the neighing of the imperial steeds—and were they not all engaged as of old in the service of salvation and not of destruction? Did not God save His people in ancient time at the Red Sea in one of the fiercest storms and wildest nights the world had ever seen? Why should not storms be chariots for the great God on His redemptive journeys still ?

The storm had given him a text, and he would preach from it on the morrow. To a preacher whose heart was sensitive to every touch of mystery, and ever throbbed with intense sympathy with all that was grand and thrilling in Nature, having to preach withal in Welsh-a language majestically strong and rugged, yet sweet and rhythmical, whose cadences seem to sweep the whole gamut of human thought and emotion, which has in it the terrible might of the tempest, as well as the soothing calmness of the summer breeze-this text was as congenial to his own mood as it was fitted to the temper of the occasion.

With the dawn of the Christian Sabbath the angry storm subsided as suddenly as did another in olden days, when, on the Sea of Galilee, the Lord of the Sabbath breathed forth His "peace" into the troubled elements. The light of God's holy day touched the raging tempest, and it became a calm, illuminated with its kindly smile the cold, cheerless earth with its battered trees and shrubs, and melted with its warm kiss the frosted dewdrops which the chill blast of the preceding night, save where it had shattered them, had crystallized into still denser and colder forms. It was a bright and sacred morning, typical of another that shall yet dawn, which shall succeed all the storms of time and usher in eternal sunshine.

From all directions, for many miles distant, companies of worshippers-some on foot, others on horseback, or in conveyances more or less primitive-wended their way to the sanctuary on this high day. An occasional hymn, sweetly and plaintively sung in the broad valleys and narrow glens, ascended on the morning air, and was echoed and re-echoed by the rocky buttresses of the everlasting hills.

The morning prayer-meeting at seven o'clock had been well attended by the villagers and those who lived in the immediate neighbourhood. Shadrach Morgan, at the close of the meeting, predicted a glorious day, as he had never found heaven so near as he did on that morning; "and," he significantly continued, "I have never known the Lord's days to be foxy days,' bright in the morning, and wet and cold all the rest of the day; when He gives us heaven in the morning He gives it, too, in the afternoon and evening. He does nothing by halves. 'My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O Lord: in the morning will I direct my prayer unto Thee'-now we have done that; "and will look up'—ah, brethren, that's what we have to do all the day long, LOOK UP! LOOK UP!" John Vaughan nodded his head in cordial assent, and said, “You've struck the key-note to-day, Shadrach ;" and all left for their homes, saying that they had never in their lives seen Shadrach look so much like a prophet; and feeling convinced that what he had said must prove true.

At ten o'clock the chapel was filled with worshippers. The devotional part of the service was conducted with much fervour and pathos by the pastor of the church, after which the younger minister of the two appointed to preach that morning-who, as we have seen, had spent most of the preceding night in reverie amid the wild tumult of the raging storm-ascended the pulpit, and read his text, "Thou didst ride upon Thine horses and Thy chariots of salvation." The strangeness of the text, the commanding presence of the preacher, the people's

Rev. B. Thomas ("Myfyr Emlyn ") of Narberth. The invariable custom is that at services when more than one minister preaches the younger minister preaches first, the position of honour being the last in the service.

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