bosom, and accused himself of
being the murderer of his child. While he was sleeping his child had
wandered over the precipice. I thought as I heard that, what a picture
of the church of God!

How many fathers and mothers, how many Christian men, are sleeping now
while their children wander over the terrible precipice right into the
bottomless pit. Father, where is your boy to-night?

A Boy's Mistake--A Sad Reconciliation.

There was an Englishman who had an only son; and only sons are often
petted, and humored, and ruined. This boy became very headstrong, and
very often he and his father had trouble. One day they had a quarrel and
the father was very angry, and so was the son; and the father said he
wished the boy would leave home and never come back. The boy said he
would go, and would not come into his father's house again till he sent
for him. The father said he would never send for him. Well, away went
the boy. But when a father gives up a boy, a mother does not. You
mothers will understand that, but the fathers may not. You know there is
no love on earth so strong as a mother's love. A great many things may
separate a man and his wife; a great many things may separate a father
from his son; but there is nothing in the wide world that can ever
separate a true mother from her child. To be sure, there are some
mothers that have drank so much liquor that they have drunk up all their
affection. But I am talking about a true mother; and she would never
cast off her boy.

Well, the mother began to write and plead with the boy to write to his
father first, and he would forgive him; but the boy said, "I will never
go home till father asks me." Then she pled with the father, but the
father said, "No, I will never ask him." At last the mother came down to
her sick-bed, broken-hearted, and when she was given up by the
physicians to die, the husband, anxious to gratify her last wish, wanted
to know if there was nothing he could do for her before she died. The
mother gave him a look; he well knew what it meant. Then she said, "Yes,
there is one thing you can do. You can send for my boy. That is the only
wish on earth you can gratify. If you do not pity him and love him when
I am dead and gone, who will?" "Well," said the father, "I will send
word to him that you want to see him." "No," she says, "you know he will
not come for me. If ever I see him you must send for him."

At last the father went to his office and wrot