to you, and the rough places plain; if you have entered the house of God, panting after eternal life, as the hart panteth after the water-brooks, and a message has been sent you from the Lord by the mouth of his ministering servant, as it were, taking a burden from your back, healing your wounds, binding up your broken bones, satisfying your spiritual hunger, and leading you to the cross of Christ to rejoice-you will truly thank God for these things, and not forget that they cost you nothing.

These, though many, form but a small part of the good gifts we enjoy ; for the things which cost us nothing are numberless. But now comes the crowning question to you and to myself. How, with such mercies, can we help magnifying the Lord? How, with such abundant gifts, can we do less than live to his glory?

ON SHIPS MISSING.

A FEW hours

ago

I was looking over Lloyd's List" to obtain some nautical information, when my eyes fell on the words " Ships Missing." A chilliness, a sickness of the heart, came over me. "Ships Missing!" What an affecting announcement! how full of melancholy interest and intense anxiety!

The sailing of a ship excites hope, the arrival of a vessel calls forth joy, while the knowledge of a shipwreck occasions grief: these are all distinct and intelligible sensations. But what a mingling of painful emotions, what a forlorn hope, a fearful foreboding, and terrible suspense, does the announcement that a ship is "Missing" produce in the minds of those interested therein!

There are many terms used in "Lloyd's List" which are fearfully significant. They afford us a brief concentration of disasters; a kind of summing up of maritime calamities. Thus we have"A ship went down behind the pier "—“ A strange vessel foundered" "No assistance could be

دو

given"-" Crew drowned”- "All on board lost "

"Not a soul saved." These are short items, but how much of varied and intense suffering do they set forth!

Have you ever seen a merchant ship leaving harbour, with a fair breeze filling her sails; or entering the port with a goodly freight? Do you know aught of the pleasures or the dangers of the deep? Have you felt the delight of dashing through the dark blue waters with a favourable gale; or experienced the terror of the angry tempest, when the masts have gone by the board, when the bulwarks and quarters have been broken in, and the storm-beaten vessel, with parting timbers and six feet water in the hold, has laboured hard in the trough of the sea,

"One wide water all around her,

All above her one black sky?"

If you know all, or any of these things, you will not churlishly refuse to ponder the page that makes "Missing Ships" the subject of its remarks.

In days gone by, a friend who was dear to me set sail for Newfoundland. We had been schoolfellows, and the bonds of friendship and affection that bound us together were strong; how did I yearn for his safe arrival!- but I will be brief. He had a fair voyage there, but the ship in which

he sailed on his return was not sea-worthy; nearly forty years have rolled by, yet never have I heard aught of the "Nancy" but this, that she was among the ships that were Missing." Since then, what scenes of desperate pirates, and cruel bondage, and desert isles, and sharp-pointed rocks, and storms and shipwrecks, and drowning sailors, has my imagination drawn! How often in my fancy has my friend sprang forward, clad in the wretched attire of a broken-down seaman, to meet the grasp of my extended hand!

When a vessel has been wrecked, whatever may be the loss of cargo and life, distressing as the intelligence may be, a time comes when the tears of sorrow cease to fall, and the heart learns to be reconciled to its bereavement. There is a merciful provision in human cares, whereby, like the ocean waves, one swallows up another; but when does the time arrive that the announcement, Ships Missing," can be read without a pang by those whom it concerns? It is, as I said, nearly forty years since the "Nancy" should have returned, and, even now, my eyes are brimming.

I am giving but a melancholy signification to the term "Ships Missing," but certainly not a more melancholy one than the case requires. I want to excite sympathy towards sailors. Their courage and their usefulness, their dangers and

their deprivations, should bind us to them. We owe them much; much ought we to repay.

Let us suppose that we have relations and friends among the sailors of a missing ship: we will call her the Rover:

"She widely spread her snowy wing,

Like the sea-gull of the ocean,
And shaped her way, like a living thing,
Of graceful form and motion."

But the time of her arrival is gone by: days, weeks, and months have passed, and no tidings have been received. She is still "Missing." She may have been blown by stress of weather to the north or south, to the east or west; but of this we know nothing. All is uncertainty, doubt, and fearful apprehension. One thing only we know, and that one thing we know too well, the ship is "Missing."

By and by comes a rumour of a wreck off Antigua, in the West Indies. A squall caught the ship, when she could not clear the rocky headland that stretched out far into the sea. She struck upon the rock, her rudder was torn away, her sails rent, her masts went by the board, and the wild waters made a clear sea over her shattered hull.

Night came on, and the exhausted crew looked