c; 2 I CO A- FISHING. 



voice, all do but echo the alternate music and prayers of 

 the stream. 



For of a verity that is church-like, minster-like, cathe- 

 dral-like — not in the dome and Sunday music, but in the 

 calm which enters and possesses our minds. One could 

 not laugh here ; neither could he shout aloud. Smile we 

 can, and do, for smiles are not irreverent, nor are they 

 necessarily out of keeping with holy places. It depends 

 very much on what sort of a smile it is, for they vary as 

 much as words ; but to say that a smile is always wrong 

 in sacred places or at a sacred time, is as untrue as it 

 would be to say that it is always wrong to speak in meet- 

 ing, forgetting altogether the psalm, the hymn, and the 

 prayer. Smiles in church of a Sabbath morning are not 

 heinous sins, and no one thinking rightly would blame 

 me for the smile on that Sunday morning in the church, 

 for it was only the reflection on my face of the smile which 

 came on the rugged countenance of Abraham Stewart 

 when he died. The old man smiled ; of such smiles as 

 that, albeit you and I have had much of happiness and 

 hope in this world, we have never known the beatitude ; 

 for it betokened, coming in on the close of a dark, cloud- 

 ed day, the sunlight of the land of smiles. For such, ver- 

 ily, is heaven, when the folding arms of the Shepherd, to 

 whom all saints are lambs, will not be more full of de- 

 light than the smile with which he clasps them. 



John Stewart told us about the old man, and the scene 

 in his old home on the Saturday evening. " He was a 

 good old man," said Philip. The sound of the waterfall 

 was louder as he spoke. Was it a change of the wind, or 

 was it, as I sometimes think, that the God of nature teaches 

 the winds and w r aters to bear testimony to the memory of 

 his servants ? Certainly the voice of a mountain brook 



