easure, pressed down, and shaken together, and
running over."

Once, a farmer, out on the Western Prairies of America, started for a
distant town, to receive some money due to him. As he left his house,
his only child, a little girl, clung lovingly to him, and reminded him
of his promise to bring her home a present. Late on the same night the
farmer left the town on his way home. The night was very dark and
stormy, and he was yet far from his home, and in the wildest part of
the road, when he heard the cry of a child. The farmer thought that it
might be the device of some robber, as he was known to carry money with
him. He was weary and wet with his journey, and inclined to hasten on,
but again the cry reached him. The farmer determined that whatever
happened he must search for the child, if child there were. Groping in
the darkness, at last he found a little figure, drenched with rain, and
shivering with cold. Wrapping his cloak about the child, he rode
homewards as fast as possible, but when he reached his house, he found
it full of neighbours, standing round his weeping wife. One said to
another, "do not tell him, it will drive him mad." Then, the farmer
set down his bundle, and his wife with a cry of joy saw that it was
their own lost child. The little one had set forth to meet her father,
and had missed her way. The man had, without knowing it, saved his own
daughter. "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy."

SERMON XL.

THE WORDS OF OUR LIPS.

(Fifth Sunday after Trinity.)

1 S. PETER iii. 10.

"For he that will love life, and see good days, let him refrain his
tongue from evil, and his lips that they speak no guile."

Among the scientific wonders of the day, one of the most remarkable is
the telephone, by which we can hear each other's words at a
considerable distance. By means of that instrument the sermon of the
preacher, the music of the singer, the weighty words of the wise, and
the silly babble of the foolish, can be carried over a great space.
Have you ever thought, brethren, that if a telephone could be invented
sufficiently large to convey the words uttered in one day in one of our
great cities, or even in this place, what a babel of strange discordant
sounds would come to our ears? What a mixture of wisdom and folly,
love and hate, selfishness and self-denial, would be heard! Few of us
would be the happier for hearing all the talk of their town or parish
f