Church. As a last measure the Bishop was ordered to leave Milan : but he stood to his post, and Justina and her party were obliged to leave him in peace, contenting themselves with an imperial edict that all sects of Christians should be tolerated. When Justina died, Valentinian became a Catholic, and Ambrose rose to even higher distinction than before.

But it was in his intercourse with Theodosius the Great, the Emperor of the East, that the courage and independence of Ambrose were most strikingly displayed.

In the year 390, the people of Thessalonica, the capital of Illyria, having risen in insurrection because a favourite charioteer was imprisoned for his crimes, attacked the garrison, killed the governor Botheric and the officers, and dragged their bodies through the streets of the city. Indignant at what he considered an outrage on the majesty of the Roman empire, Theodosius, instead of punishing the guilty only, sent an army of barbarians to the city. A grand spectacle was announced to take place in the Circus; and while the unsuspecting citizens were awaiting the commencement of the entertainment the soldiers fell upon them, and massacred them without distinction for three hours, leaving the ground cumbered with more than seven thousand dead bodies.

When Ambrose heard of this frightful slaughter he was filled with horror, and retired into the country to avoid the presence of Theodosius, who was then at Milan; and wrote privately to the Emperor, exhorting him to penitence and prayer, and advising him not to approach the altar of Christ to receive the Holy Eucharist with hands stained with the blood of the innocent. Touched by this earnest appeal, the Emperor saw when it was too late the consequences of his blind fury, and gave himself up to grief for a while. When, however, he proceeded as usual to perform his devotions in the great church, he was met in the porch by the Bishop, who boldly telling him that private repentance was not sufficient to atone for a public crime, or to appease the justice of Heaven, forbade him to enter the sacred building. Theodosius humbly replied, that if he had committed homicide, David, the man after God's own heart, had been guilty both of murder and adultery. 'You have imitated David in his crime, imitate then his repentance,' said Ambrose. Theodosius, submitting himself to the Bishop, performed penance in the midst of the church, stripped of his diadem and purple robe, and after eight months of prayer and supplication he was allowed to receive the Holy Communion.

It is difficult for us at the present day to fully estimate the importance of this event to religion and humanity. Christianity had not yet been declared the religion of the Roman empire; paganism still existed, and with it the old idea that the emperors possessed a power equal to that of the gods.' Ambrose taught Theodosius that Christianity recognised no moral difference between an emperor and the meanest of his subjects.

The great Bishop retained his influence in the Church and in public affairs till his death in A.D. 397.

A. R.

BRO

ROWN and burly, honest and free,
Resting, he sits by the fire;
Wife at his side, and bairns at his knee,
What can he more desire?

And he sings them a song, not grand
nor long,

But that song in their hearts shall
stay,

And cheer them on, when he is gone,
To labour, and trust, and pray.
'Low and mighty; master and man;
Labour and do your best!
Think you can do it, and do it you can,
God will take care of the rest.'

Late and early, early and late,
His heart in his honest hand;
This first thought as he gangs his
gait-

God and his master's land!

And in after days, in life's great throng,
When his children are scattered wide,
Each at his work, recalls the song
He sang that eventide :-

'Low and mighty; master and man;
Labour and do your best!

Think you can do it, and do it you

can,

God will take care of the rest!

ON A RAINY DAY AFTER A DROUGHT.

A REFLECTION AFTER THE MANNER OF BOYLE.

BY J. HILDYARD, B.D., RECTOR OF INGOLDSBY.

To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the Heaven.' Eccles. iii. 1.

E have been having of late a long succession of dry weather, which was, indeed, very seasonable for getting in the spring corn, clearing the fallows, and other works on the farm, whence the well-known proverb, 'A bushel of March dust is worth a king's ransom.' But now has come such a deluge of rain as entirely to preclude the possibility of all outdoor employment; and I hear the dressing-machine going in the barn, while one is in the chaff-house cutting straw for the horses, another in the wood-house sawing firewood, while the boy is busy rubbing the sprouts off the potatoes and sorting them for seed. Each one seems to have turned his hand to some fit occupation, and to be supremely indifferent to the rain, not unaccompanied by wind, which is making everything extremely disagreeable without, though it is so far from being unacceptable, that indeed it was the thing of all others to be desired, as it had been prayed for on two successive Sundays on account of the want of keep for the stock.

Thus he who would humour his studies aright will, when the afflatus (so to speak) is upon him, push those mental efforts which require all his power, and which can only be matured under favourable auspices. But when interrupted by occasional distraction, temporary dyspepsia, or, as is the case with many, variations in the atmosphere, he has other tasks of a lighter character to betake himself to, upon which he cheerfully amuses himself, instead of fretting and fuming, as some will do, because he cannot get on with the particular one which he was about. There is a time,' as the wise man says, 'for every work under the sun,' and what may be very well done at one season will often be very ill done at another.

The true art of study is not so much to have set times, as I have somewhere read, for everything, as to have something handy for all times. No one is so completely master of himself as to be always able to command his own talents, be they what they may; but every one may, by a certain diversity of occupations, have such fitting employment for any contingency that he never need be, as he never should be, absolutely idle. If he is in the vein for composing, that, let us say, may be his best employment, and to be pressed accordingly. But if he is not, there are other things he may be doing subsidiary to his main object, but to which he would be unwilling to sacrifice too much valuable time. He may be reading books bearing on his subject, and making extracts for future use; or he may read over again what he has before himself written, always remembering that to erase is often the best use of his pen; or he may be adding to his general stock of knowledge, by diving into various authors, and so keep the springs, as it were, of his mental resources still ever supplied with fresh matter. Anything, in short, is better than absolute idleness. A change from riding to walking, or walking to riding, is often a greater rest and refreshment to the limbs than to sit quite still; and so it is of the mind.

The labourers on my little farm did not stand, as some louts will do in the towns, watching the rain pour along the gutters by their doors, with perhaps a dirty pipe in their mouths, waiting,' as the fable says (untruly) of the rustic,

'Till the river pass away-but no

Ceaseless it flows, and will for ever flow.'

My people, like their master, each set themselves naturally to a wetday job, and I found my account in it by getting many useful things done which would never have been thought of had it still held fair. Meanwhile Providence is working for me in the fields, and I save the labour which would have been ill-bestowed on any outdoor work at such a season. Let us all have our 'rainy-day jobs,' and we should see more smiling faces, and hear less grumbling on a wet day, than we often now do.