our prayers are listened to by One who
has promised never to leave or forsake us. How happy it is to think that
on this Holy day numbers of our fellow creatures are in our own dear
country praying "for all those in danger, necessity, and tribulation,"
and whose voices in earnest prayer meet ours, and join with those of the
choir of angels above. We may hope that He who supports and sends us
comfort in our despair may console our sorrowing ones at home, and give
them hopes, as He does us, of meeting them again in this world. For our
Saviour, Jesus Christ's sake, whose loving words "It is I, be not
afraid," follow us and comfort us far from home. We will ask him to look
down and guard our little island, which He brought from the depths of
the sea, to be our refuge from storms and winds. To Him whose care is
over us we commit ourselves, and those near and dear to us, and we will
believe "that those who cry unto the Lord in their trouble He delivereth
them from their distress."

SERENA'S SERMON.

"Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another, and the Lord
hearkened."--_Malachi_ iii. 16.

We beseech Thee, O Lord, to hear us, for we fear Thee and love Thee. We
are separated from those we love; we cannot speak to them, or they to
us; we have little prospect before us of ever seeing them again; but we
have the gracious Lord to speak to, and we have His gracious promise
that He will hear us. Through our Father in Heaven we can hold
intercourse with our Father on earth. We pray for him, and we know God
heareth the prayer that goeth not out of feigned lips. He prays for us,
and God heareth him, as we see daily, hourly, in the lovely place
allotted to us, in the fruits that rise before us, in the flowers that
spring up to our hands, in the love we bear each other, and, oh, more
than all, in the privilege that we may speak to each other of the
Lord's mercies and loving kindnesses, and know that he heareth us, for
Jesus Christ's sake. Then let us remember, should despondency overwhelm
us, or sorrow cast her gloomy mantle upon us, that this land is not our
"abiding place," that here we have no "continuing city," but that beyond
the tomb we have an house prepared, not made with hands, where we shall
not only meet those from whom we have been torn in this life, but such
things "as eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered
into the heart of man to conceive."

GERTRUDE'S SERMON.

"But they that wait