When we have listened to the Word of Christ's saving power; nay, when we have seen it marvellously displayed before our eyes, has there ever been a frightened shrinking from it, a hasty begging of Him to leave us. Why? Ah, for a reason which Simon Peter, trembling there at the knees of Jesus, would not have understood. We are afraid lest He should save us! Our sinfulness meant a secret evil which we were not prepared to abandon, something which, as yet, we had no heart to cast away. And we said, 'Depart, O Lord!' From all such sinning against Gospel grace may we be saved this day!

NOVEMBER 25th.-Delight thyself also in the Lord; and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart.-PSALM XXXVII. 4.

This ancient word of rejoicing trust was made ready in old time for the worship which was to be perfected in Jesus Christ. Let there abide within it the glory of His name, and it stands complete, a perfect shrine of prayer.

Here is a Divine charter of unlimited privilege, together with the condition on which it is claimed and exercised. And surely the condition is no grievous yoke. Never did the mind of man conceive the gaining of so vast a benefit on such easy terms. We are asked to delight ourselves in the Lord, and thus to secure the certainty of getting all our desires fulfilled.

What does this delighting ourselves in the Lord mean? Any one is ready to enjoy the precious benefits of God's providential care, and to make himself happy in the manifold gifts of His bounty. Nay, more. There are very few people, who listen to God's Word at all, but like to consider it as their valuable privilege to keep in store His promises of help, and comfort, and rescue to fall back upon in times of emergency. But surely this cannot be the delighting oneself in the Lord, which is certain of obtaining the fulfilment of all desires: for try to consider how terrible calamities would ensue to them, and to other people, if such persons as these could command the resources of the Divine power to carry out all their selfish wishes.

They delight themselves in the Lord who love Him; not with some indefinite, unpractical sentiment, which calls itself love, but is utterly unlike all else that is called love. It is the love which delights in Him, which finds its enjoyment in His fellowship, and in all it knows concerning Him; which could not be happy unless it put all self at His disposal, and has its ruling desire in seeking to carry out all His will. This love secures its supreme joy herein, that all its desires are according to His good pleasure. Every feeling of restraint and compulsion in yielding our will to the will of God comes from looking

at the two wills as two separate interests, one of which must give way to the other. But love knows no such distinction.

Let the full, beautiful light of this truth rest upon all my worship to-day. If, in the love shed abroad in my heart, by the Holy Ghost given unto me, I appear before Him, my petitions will be the ready echo of His own purpose; and the desires of my heart are sure to be granted.

'ECHOES FROM THE WELSH HILLS.'*

ANY readers of this title would anticipate the lively chat of a tourist's notebook. Mr. Davies, however, deals with higher themes, and the larger portion of his book is occupied with echoes of the Gospel message delivered with all the impassioned fire of Cymric oratory, and reverberating in the honest hearts and thoughtful minds of Welsh villagers. Surely no people save the Hebrews have obeyed so implicitly and heartily the Divine injunction concerning the words of truth: Thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy

children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way.'

Mr. Davies leaves the reader in ignorance of the scene of his story, but gives a graphic and graceful description of it: The everlasting hills surround and caress in their mighty yet tender embrace this little hamlet. All round the scores of humble homesteads of which it consists, except at one narrow outlet, an amphitheatre of hills rises gracefully towards the sky to catch every gleam of sunshine and every shade of passing clouds. In early summer the slopes are adorned with patches of ripening corn, and with rich pasture-land, where sheep fleck the verdant fields, and where cattle graze on the fresh green herbage, or browse on the tender shoots of the luxuriant hedgerows.

* Echoes from the Welsh Hills; or, Reminiscences of the Preachers and People of Wales. By the REV. DAVID DAVIES. London: Alexander and Shepheard.

The greater part of the small population are at work in the fields only an occasional house-wife, on her way to or from the well, carrying the pitcher on her head, her hands meanwhile busily engaged in knitting, or an honest peasant taking a horse to the smithy to be shod, or a knot or two of children at play, may, as a rule, be seen during the busy hours of the day; while only the distant low of the cattle on the neighbouring slopes, or the harmonious sounds from the village anvil, break upon the stillness which reigns around.'

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Yet the age of progress has left its mark even here. A new turnpike road replaces the old highway along which in past years the mysterious hawker of a peculiar type of 'yellow and white cheese,' which on removal from its cask proved to be brandy or gin, wended his unlawful way. Of the two inns supported by the village in stage-coaching days, one only finds customers in these happy days of temperance; the sign of The Greyhound now does duty as a table.

The gray parish church yields the palm of popularity to the 'Horeb' of the Baptists, or the Zion' of the Calvinistic Methodists. The green opposite the church, where, in the days of the Book of Sports, football or cricket, to say nothing of skittles and beer, followed close on the Sunday service, now enjoys her Sabbaths. The old school-house is deserted, and the veteran schoolmaster of a past generation, an old soldier, 'the greater part of whom consisted of timber, put together and repaired gratuitously by a patriotic carpenter of the neighbourhood,' has given place to Llewellyn Pugh, whose general erudition and knowledge of the history, secular and ecclesiastical, of his native country are the admiration of his fellow villagers. We are grateful, however, for the picture of the old pensioner in his palmy days, when the wooden-leg faithfully discharged all the functions which could reasonably be expected of leg or wood, even suggesting to its owner a punishment, whose force he must have known by experience, namely, the compulsion to stand on one leg, when liberty of limb was abused. We catch a glimpse of him as he stands erect, his cane brandished in the air, and his wooden member firmly planted on the floor, reciting his favourite couplet from The Lady of the Lake:

'Come one, come all, this rock shall fly
From its firm base as soon as I !'

We see the kindergarten anticipated as the children march round the room learning the alphabet, set to the tune of the Men of Harlech ;'

and we venture to look over the shoulder of the veteran as he ekes out his narrow income after school hours by doling out sheet after sheet of closely-written paper, expressive of the sentiments of 'lovelorn swains,' for the modest sum of threepence per letter.

But now the schoolmaster is exalted into the guide, philosopher, and friend,' of the whole village; and when Shadrach Morgan, the blacksmith, announces that Llewellyn can be induced to tell by the smithy fire the story of the religious struggles and changes of the Welsh people, an audience is soon gathered. Amongst the motley group standing in the ruddy glow we have no difficulty in singling out the worthy smith and his impetuous son Jenkin. Another prominent figure is John Vaughan, the village shoemaker, of established fame as a student and expounder of the Word of God, bringing forth out of his treasury things new and old. Samson Lloyd, the lame tailor, ready to be a zealous Churchman on the chance of being appointed clerk, equally prepared to argue that the Established Church was rotten to the core, so soon as his hope was disappointed; David Lewis, the Gaius of travelling preachers, whose parlour behind the grocer's shop was always ready for their reception; Hugh Roberts, the patriarchal friend of Shadrach's family, with his saintly smile and his far-reaching memory; Caleb Rhys, the weaver, whose travels have brought him into contact with so many preachers in his native land that he is considered a rare judge of sermons; and Mr. Swash, insurance agent, auctioneer and valuer, proudly conscious of his position as a professional man, make up the group present on this and on many another evening.

Full of interest and pathos is Llewellyn's story of the gradual severance of his countrymen from the Episcopal Church. The Reformation under Henry the Eighth scarcely touched the spiritual need of the Welsh for thirty years afterwards; under Queen Elizabeth they are described in the Act authorising the translation of the Scriptures into Welsh as 'utterly destitute of God's Word; in the like or rather more darkness and ignorance than they were in the time of Papistry.' The immorality of the clergy was notorious, insomuch that Archbishop Parker ordered a special visitation of Wales with a view to its spiritual improvement. Shortly afterwards, Dr. Morgan, Bishop of Llandaff, translated large portions of the Old and New Testament into the vulgar tongue; but for nearly one hundred years from Britain's separation from the Church of Rome there were no Bibles in Wales, but only in the cathedrals or in the parish churches or chapels.' The versions of Salesbury and others were expensive and rare, and throughout the Principality there appears to have been a famine not of reading only, but even of hearing the Word of the Lord.' In 1587 we find that only three preachers in Wales resided in their parishes. Dr. Hughes, Bishop of St. Asaph's, himself held sixteen of the richest livings, while many such were in possession of clergymen living out of the country. No wonder that

the indignation of an earnest and patriotic soul like John Penry waxed hot, and that at the last he spake with his tongue in words blunt and rugged as they were forceful. 'Thousands of our people,' he writes, 'know Jesus Christ to be neither God nor man, priest nor prophet, almost never heard of Him.' 'Into what times are we fallen that thieves and murderers of souls, the very patterns and patrons of all covetousness, the very ignominy and reproach of the sacred ministry, cannot be spoken against but this will straightway be made a matter against the State.' Penry was prepared to pay dearly for his bold words, which were soon to cost him his life. Protesting his loyalty to his Queen, this earnest evangelist, whose name, scarcely known in England, is held in the greatest honour by his countrymen, suffered death, on a charge of sedition, though he could not be legally condemned, in 1593.

'You Englishmen,' exclaimed Llewellyn, addressing Swash, 'ask why Nonconformity is so powerful in Wales. Let the immorality of the Welsh clergy in that and the two succeeding centuries, and the scaffold of our beloved John Penry, give you answer.'

In all justice, however, it must be remembered that the first impulse towards a better state of things sprang from within the Established Church, though, as in England, the Reformers were roughly handled, and eventually compelled to seek an independent outlet for their religious zeal.

According to Llewellyn Pugh, Rees Prichard, Vicar of Llandovery, the author of the spiritual songs known as the Welshman's Candle, which are still familiar as household words in his own country, was the only travelling evangelist preaching to the people in their own tongue whose enthusiasm did not issue in his severance from the Church. He died in the early years of the great civil war, during which Welsh Nonconformists suffered greatly.

Under the Long Parliament, however, a gleam of light illumined the darkness of Wales; for it was ordered that 'it shall be lawful for any parish in the kingdom of England and dominion of Wales to get up a lecture, and to maintain an orthodox minister at their own charge, and to preach every Lord's day where there is no preaching, and to preach one day in every week where there is no weekly lecture.' Itinerant lay-preaching throughout the Principality was also encour aged. And sixteen years later, when the Act of Uniformity issued in the ejection of one hundred and sixteen Welsh clergymen, the Gospel, notwithstanding the severest persecution, was sown broadcast in the villages and hamlets of Wales by these devoted men.

Wales, however, appears to have shared in the spiritual apathy so characteristic of the eighteenth century. From this it was aroused