er me, this time with closed eyes and folded
arms. He seemed to be looking to some far-off place.

'My son,' Buddha said, 'just close your eyes and fold your arms, and
forget all about yourself. Get into a state of rest. Don't think
about anything that can disturb. Get so still that nothing can move
you. Then, my child, you will be in such delicious rest as I am.'

'Yes, father,' I answered, 'I will when I am above ground. Can't you
help me out?' But Buddha, too, was gone.

I was just beginning to sink into despair when I saw another figure
above me, different from the others. There were marks of suffering
on His face. I cried out to Him:

'O, Father! can you help me?'

'My child,' He said, 'what is the matter?'

Before I could answer Him, He was down in the mire by my side. He
folded His arms about me and lifted me up; then He fed me and rested
me. When I was well He did not say: Now, don't do that again, but He
said: 'We will walk on together now'; and we have been walking
together until this day."

This was a poor Chinaman's way of telling of the compassionate love
and help of the Lord Jesus.

I was reading, some time ago, of a young man who had just come out
of a saloon, and had mounted his horse. As a certain deacon passed
on his way to church, he followed and said,

"Deacon, can you tell me how far it is to hell?"

The deacon's heart was pained to think that a young man like that
should talk so lightly; he passed on and said nothing. When he came
round the corner to the church, he found that the horse had thrown
that young man, and he was dead. So you may be nearer the Judgment
than you think.

When I was in Switzerland many years ago, I learned some solemn
lessons about the suddenness with which death may overtake us. I saw
several places where land-slides had occurred, completely destroying
whole villages; or where avalanches had swept down the mountain
sides, leaving destruction in their wake. A terrible calamity
happened in the year 1806 to a village, called Goldau, situated in a
fertile valley at the foot of the Rossberg mountain. The season had
been unusually wet, and this had made the crops all the more
abundant.

Early one morning a young peasant, passing the cottage of an old man
whom he knew, saw him sitting at the door in the full rays of the
sun.

"Good morning, neighbor," said he; "we are likely to have a fine
day."

"Time we should have a fine day," growled the old man; "it has be