COMPOSED EXPRESSLY

FOR SUNDAY.'

SHUTTING DOORS.

DWARD, don't look so cross when I call you back to shut the door: you know grandmother feels the cold wintry wind: and besides, you will have to spend all your life shutting doors, and might as well begin now.'

'Do forgive me, grandmother; I ought to be ashamed to vex you. But what do you mean? I am going to college; and then I am going to be a lawyer.'

'Well, admitting all that,' said his grandmother, 'I imagine you will have a good many doors to shut, even if you make much of a man.'

'What kind of doors?' said Edward. 'Sit down a moment, and I will give you a list,' said the old lady.

In the first place, Edward, the doors of your ears must be closed against bad language and evil counsel of the boys and young men you will meet with at college, or you will be undone. Let them once get possession of that door, and I would not give much for your future prospects.

"The doors of your eyes, too, must be shut against bad books, idle novels, and low, wicked newspapers, or you will grow up a useless and ignorant man. You will also close them against the fine things exposed for sale in the shop-windows, or you will never learn to save your money, or have any left to give away.

"The door of your lips will need especial care, for they guard an unruly member, which makes great use of the bad company let in at the doors of the eyes and ears. This door is very apt to blow open, and if not constantly watched will let out angry,

trifling, or vulgar words. It will backbite if it is left open too long. I would advise you to keep it shut most of the time, till you have laid up a store of knowledge, or until you have something valuable to say.

'The inner door of your heart must be well shut against temptation, for Conscience, the door-keeper, grows indifferent if you disregard his call, and sometimes he drops asleep at his post; and when you may think you are doing very well, you are fast going down to ruin.

'If you carefully guard the outside doors of your eyes, ears, and lips, you will keep out many cold blasts of sin, which will otherwise get in before you think. This

WHE

WASHING THE HANDS.

THEN Jesus was eating in the house of one of the Jews, the Pharisees were angry with His disciples because they did not wash their hands before they took their food. God had told the Israelites to wash often; it made them clean, and was good for their health: but the Pharisees said that those who did not wash their hands before every meal, and whenever they came into the house, were wicked, which was not true. There was another reason why it was needful for them to wash their hands both before and after eating: they did not eat with knives and forks as we do, but put their hands into the dishes, and pulled the meat which they took out to pieces with their fingers. Rich people had servants to pour water over their hands before they ate, but Jesus and His discipleswere poor, and had no servants.

MANUSCRIPTS.

T is an old tale, but it cannot be too often told, that of the care which those who copied the Holy Scriptures with the pen, before printing was invented, were obliged to take. There were so many rules and regulations that I have heard even the reading of them is a labour. We have them now in old manuscripts, carefully preserved in our great libraries, but only a few scholars can make them out; there they are, however, and very thankful let us be for them, for they are a visible assurance of the care that was taken to hand down the Word of God as accurately as human weakness could do it. If one rule was broken, if one mistake was made, the poor copyer's work all went for nothing; and he had, I believe, to pay for-that is, to work for-the price of the piece of parchment he had spoilt.

In quiet and retired little chambers, each by himself, sat the copyists. No word, no sound to distract his attention. His shoulders grew bowed, and lines of anxiety furrowed his face. His was an honourable, a noble, a devout task, to hand on the precious Scriptures to future times, as his age had received them from the last. Holy teaching, and a blessed task it might be to himself; or, alas! like the copyists of our Lord's time, then called 'Scribes,' it might be to his greater condemnation. The Lord said, Woe to those who know the Scriptures and do them not! None knew them better than the Jewish Scribes, whose duty it was to explain them to the people, as well as to copy them out; and yet our Blessed Lord tells His followers, that though they were to listen to their words, and to do

what Moses through them commanded, yet that they were not to do after their doings.

When the copyist's anxious work was safely and well done,-when the page had been read and re-read, when the lines, and the words, and the letters, had been counted, and all was satisfactory, then what pleasure he had in adding the beautiful decorations. to his pages, which, bright and fresh almost as on the sunny morning when that longpassed-away hand laid on the colours and gold, delight those who can obtain a sight of them in the British Museum and elsewhere!

A work of pleasure it must have been to design the quaint ornaments and lines, the foliage and flowers, and sometimes the little bird on her nest by the window-sill copied in; all that his poor hand could do, and mind invent. No dotted patterns, no ready-made scrolls, were there. It has sometimes struck me that these ornamented pages did a wonderful and unexpected service through the providence of God. I mean thus:-There were wild times, when wild, rough, godless men, would have taken these precious and few manuscripts to clean their armour or to pad their boots with, if it had not been for the gay painting round the pages, which, they would think, might please some young son or daughter; and so, by what has sometimes been called 'idle work of the dark ages,' the precious seed which these gay painted leaves and fanciful flowers enclosed was preserved. Nor are

we behindhand in our days in similar care. We take care now in the way that suits the new state of, things. Not Scribes, but printing-presses must be looked after, and held to rules, lest by accident or design the words of the Bible should be altered. At first this was not attended to, and whole editions were destroyed because wicked

Printed by JOHN STRANGEWAYS,]

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