th the will of my Father which is in
heaven_." Evils outside the Church, then, are to be combated, and not
tolerated, by all true Christians--even though in the result they are
maligned as renegades to their party, or jeered at as Pharisees or
Puritans. The late Tom Hughes was quite right half a century ago, when
he thus described to the lads before him the lot of a would-be reformer.

"If the angel Gabriel were to come down from heaven, and head a
successful rise against the most abominable and unrighteous vested
interests which this poor old world groans under, he would most
certainly lose his character for many years, probably for centuries,
not only with upholders of the said vested interest, but with the
respectable mass of the people he has delivered. They wouldn't ask him
to dinner, or let their names appear with his in the papers; they would
be careful how they spoke of him in the palaver, or at their clubs.
What can we expect, then, when we have only poor gallant, blundering
men like Garibaldi and Mazzini, and righteous causes which do not
triumph in their hands; men who have holes enough in their armour, God
knows, easy to be hit by respectabilities sitting in their
lounge-chairs, and having large balances at their bankers. But you are
brave, gallant boys, who have no balances or bankers, and hate
easy-chairs. You only want to have your heads set straight to take the
right side; so bear in mind that majorities, especially respectable
ones, are nine times out of ten in the wrong, and that if you see a man
or boy striving earnestly on the weaker side, however wrong-headed or
blundering he may be, you are not to go and join the cry against him.
If you cannot join him, and help him, and make him wiser, at any rate
remember that he has found something in the world which he will fight
and suffer for--which is just what you have got to do for
yourselves--and so think and speak of him tenderly."

Those manly words are worth quoting in full, and they will fitly set
forth the service young Asa rendered to his kingdom, and to the world
at large.

I.

It may be well to analyse a little more closely the reformation this
right-hearted king attempted. He diminished opportunities for sin.
The traffic in vice, by which many were making profit, he put down with
a strong hand. And there are hotbeds of vice to be found in our own
land, where strong appeal is made to the lusts of the flesh, and where
intoxicating dri