nd wants me to come home."

Dr. T.L. Cuyler went to make his first call on a rich merchant. It was a
cold winter evening, and as the door was opened when the minister was
leaving, a cold, piercing gale swept in. Dr. Cuyler said, "What an awful
night for the poor!" The merchant went back and brought a roll of
bank-bills, saying, "Give these to the poorest people you know." Some
days after, Dr. Cuyler wrote him, telling him how his bounty had
relieved many poor, and then added, "How is it that a man so kind to his
fellow-creatures has always been so unkind to his Savior as to refuse
him his heart?" That sentence touched him. He sent for the minister to
talk to him, was converted, and told Dr. Cuyler that he was the first
person in twenty years who had spoken to him about his soul.

Do not allow letter-writing to excuse you from direct personal work; but
watch for opportunity to write, as well as speak, that "by all means you
may save some."

STUDY XXIV.

TRACTS AND BOOKS.

Memory Verse: "And when I looked, behold, a hand was sent unto me; and,
lo, a roll of a book was therein."--(Ezek. ii, 9.)

Scripture for Meditation: Eccl. xi, 1; 1 Tim. iv, 7-16.

The influence of a tract or of a good book can not be estimated. Rev. J.
Hudson Taylor, of the China Inland Mission, was converted in boyhood
through reading a gospel tract which he found in his father's library.
"He had been frequently troubled about his soul, and had again and again
tried to become a Christian, but had failed so often that he had
concluded that there was no use in trying any more."

An agent of the American Tract Society relates the following:

"A man on a canal-boat received a tract, but to show his contempt for
the tract and its giver, took out his penknife and cut it up into
fantastic shapes. Then he held it up to the derision of the company.

"In tearing it apart, one of the pieces clung to his knee. His eyes were
attracted by the only word on it--'eternity.' He turned it over, and
there was the word 'God.'

"These ideas remained in his mind. He tried to laugh them off; then to
drink, to play cards in order to banish them. But they still clung to
him, and plagued him till he sought God and preparation for eternity."

There is an old true story about a tract, that should be told over and
over again:

A Puritan minister named Sibbs wrote a tract called "The Bruised Reed."
A copy of this was given by a humble layman to a little b