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SUNSHINE.

You are, no doubt, a lover of sunshine.

Your eye has brightened while gazing upon the beam that has lighted up the path before you, made the village windows blaze, and put a golden star on the weathercock of the church steeple. That beam has shined into your very heart, and made you feel glad to be alive.

But there is another kind of sunshine that you love. Is there not some beloved friend whose smile is a brighter and dearer sunbeam to you than the brightest beam that gladdens the earth on a summer's day? Yes, it is the smile of a husband, a wife, a sister, a brother, or-well, no matter!—it is the smile of some dear being, whose every thought is blended with your own, and without whose smile, in the merriest summer time, this would be a gloomy world.

But the shadows of evening have before now closed over the sunshine that has gilded your pathway; and if night has not yet beclouded the sunshiny smiles of those you love, it will do so!

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there are removals in this world of tribulation that have to go and weep

wring the heart!

You may

in the grave-yard, ere long, where they have laid the object dear to you as your own life!

There is yet another kind of sunshine! delight in that, and no night shall close over it for ever— the sunshine of a Saviour's love in the heart. Clouds may intervene for a time, but those clouds shall pass away; the valley of the shadow of death may seem to shut it out for ever, but that will be only the last cloud breaking away before the dawning of eternal daylight and the blaze of everlasting sunshine; for it is expressly written that, "There shall be no night there," Rev. xxi. 25. Well, then, may the clouds and storms of this life be borne with patient and joyful anticipation.

SYMPATHY FOR SAILORS,

Ir was a rough night, a very rough night; and I was just retiring to rest, when in an awkward attempt to carry three books into an adjoining room one of them fell to the ground. Picking it up, and examining the opened page, to see if it was soiled, my eye fell on the following paragraph: "I saw a boy climb to the main-top mast; he had been ordered there to secure a loose tackling ; he would not have gone there could he have helped it. The night was dark to pitchness; but, by the light of the binnacle, I saw enough to tell me that a tear was rolling down his cheek. There was no moment for delay; the order given must be executed, so away went the boy. It was a boy that had entertained me with everlasting stories of his mother and his home; and who told me of the dread he had that he should never return to them. The boy went up. I watched him at first, and then listened to him: he had gained the first steeple, now flew to the second; had put his foot upon the yard, and grasped the

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SYMPATHY FOR SAILORS.

tackling, when-when-but my brain reels; for what I heard was a sudden fall, and then a gurgling in the waters."

Nothing could have been more in character with my thoughts than this affecting narrative, for I was at the moment reflecting on the dangers of the billow-tost mariner in seasons when landsmen, tucked up in their warm blankets, repose in comfort and security.

Very little rest did I obtain that night; for the wind howled and raged as if it had a quarrel with the earth. The thunder, too, roared, the rain descended, the lightning flashed, and I thought of heaving billows, and shattered ships, and shipwrecked seamen. While the storm lasted, oh what sympathy I felt for sailors!

The morning came, the storm was over, the sun shone upon the ground, and when I seated myself at the breakfast-table, my sympathy for sailors was well nigh gone. Thus it is with us all ; subjects which ought to lay hold of our very souls, and wring from us strong compassion, are only reflected on when some arresting fact or fiction, or some unusual circumstance brings them vividly to our transitory remembrance. The debt we owe to sailors is great, yet how little we regard it! No wonder that our proverbial neglect of

SYMPATHY FOR SAILORS.

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seamen should have called forth the pungent

rebuke

"God and our sailor we adore

In times of danger, not before :

The danger o'er, both are alike requited—

God is forgotten, and the sailor slighted."

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