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I. "The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life."-Prov. xi. 30. 2. "The fruit of the wicked [tendeth] to sin."-Prov. x. 16. 3. "Let both grow together until the harvest."-Matt. xiii. 30. 4. "I will bring evil upon this people, even the fruit of their thoughts." -Fer. vi. 19.

5. "I will punish you according to the fruit of your doings."-Jer.

xxi. 14.

6. "For the tree is known by his fruit."-Matt. xii. 33.

7. "He.. sought fruit thereon, and found none."-Luke xiii. 6.

8. "From Me is thy fruit found."-Hos. xiv. 8.

9. "And gathereth fruit unto life eternal."-John iv. 36.

10. "Ye have your fruit unto holiness."-Rom. vi. 22.

II. "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace.”—Gal. v. 22. 12. "The fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness."-Ephes. v. 9. 13. "The fruit of our lips giving thanks to His name."-Heb. xiii. 15. 14. "The fruit of righteousness is sown in peace."-James iii. 18. 15. "Every good tree bringeth forth good fruit."-Matt. vii. 17. 16. “Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire."-Matt. vii. 19.

17. "The harvest is the end of the world."—Matt. xiii. 39.

18. "He putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come."-Mark

19.

iv. 29.

"The reapers are the angels."-Matt. xiii. 39.

20. "The harvest is past, . . . and we are not saved."—Fer. viii. 20. 21. "He hath set an harvest for thee."-Hos. vi. II.

22. "Every branch in Me that beareth not fruit He taketh away."John xv. 2.

23.

"He that abideth in Me,

...

-John xv. 5.

24.

the same bringeth forth much fruit.”

"Herein is My Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit."-John xv. 8.

25. "The peaceable fruit of righteousness."-Heb. xii. 11.

26. "Being fruitful in every good work.”—Col. i. 10.

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27. Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance.”—Matt. iii. 8. 28. "Every branch that beareth fruit, He purgeth it."—John xv. 2. 29. "He... sought fruit thereon, and found none."-Luke xiii. 6. "The branch cannot bear fruit of itself."—John xv. 4.

30.

ESUS, may we fruitful be,

Ever following close to Thee;

May Thy grace in us abound,
As our fruits in Thee are found!

Perfect us in holiness,

And the fruits of righteousness;
Let Thy Spirit in each heart
Bid the power of sin depart.

Lord, our faith and love increase;
Fill our souls with joy and peace;
May Thy gentle Spirit shine
In us with His light Divine!
May we not at last be found
Useless cumberers of the ground;
Rather, may the Saviour be
Perfect, fruitful, ripe in Thee.

Ship-breakers and Ship-knackers;

or, "Loss for Christ."

've missed you lately from your usual place on the Lord's day, Mr. Hunt," said a friendly caller. "I hope you've not been ill."

"No, oh no; I've been out on Sundays, The fact is, I can't get used to the change. He's a good gentleman, I make no doubt; but I don't like his way of preaching."

though not to Mr. Hill's chapel.

"What don't you like about it ?"

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Well, for one thing, that way of making us all out as bad as we can be, and talking as if it was no use for us to try and better ourselves. Why, the last Sunday I heard him he went so far as to say a man might have a deal of religion, and yet not be more likely to get to heaven than the worst of criminals."

"But, Mr. Hunt, the sermon did not go further than the text. Look here." And the visitor opened her Bible, and read Rom. iii. 22, 23, "There is no difference: for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God. And the same truth is told us again and again in God's Word: 'Death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.' "The Scripture hath concluded all under sin.' 'We all were by nature the children of wrath.' 'There is none righteous, no, not one.' And we have only to read our Lord's judgment of the Pharisee and publican to see that, as Mr. Hill said, no doings of our own can better us in the sight of God. That Pharisee was a very religious man. I doubt whether many professors of religion could make the boast he made of fasting and almsgiving; yet, because these things were his trust, he went down to his house unsaved. No stronger word could be used of the worst sinner as to his standing before God, than the Lord Jesus uses concerning this most religious Pharisee 'not justified,' still a child of wrath, therefore: while the salvation of God was given to the poor publican, who brought no goodness of

his own to boast, but just cried, "God be merciful to me a sinner Trusting only in God's appointed sacrifice for sin (for the word merciful' really means 'propitiated'), he went down to his house 'justified.'

Mr. Hunt seemed a little at a loss how to continue the argument. He was one of many in the same congregation who, accustomed for years to a ministry of lifeless formalism and a preaching of human morality, were now being stirred to enmity by the offence of the cross.

"Well, ma'am," he said, "give me your plain, practical sermons, like poor Mr. Simpson's, that tell you your duty. My notion of religion is doing our best in that state of life to which God has called us."

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"I never heard of such a thing. It's a scandalous shame, the way our sailors' lives are played pitch-and-toss with! Please to read that bit, ma'am." The speaker was Mr. Hunt, whom his friend found, a few days after the above conversation, reading his newspaper. The para

graph which had so stirred his indignation stated that Her Majesty's ship Neptune had been surveyed at a foreign port, and found to be so rotten that the surveyors had pronounced her unseaworthy. "She is, however," the article went on, "being patched up so as to reach Malta, if possible.”

"You see, ma'am," continued Mr. Hunt, growing more and more excited, "having a boy at sea, such things come home to one. It will be a blessed day when Mr. Plimsoll gets all the old ships handed over to the ship-breakers, instead of those abominable ship-knackers. Why, my Jim was on a voyage once where it was found out afterwards there'd been a big hole in the bottom of the ship, covered by a sheet of copper, only held on by two nails; and the surveyor told the captain they'd had a most wonderful escape with their lives; and another time he saw a ship stopped at a port half-way because some of the passengers insisted on having her surveyed; and sure enough she was condemned; and when she came to be broken up the fore

castle came right away, just pulling it with ropes; but she'd been knackered up and painted over, so that if the passengers hadn't looked sharp she would have gone right on, and the first gale must have done for her."

"But, Mr. Hunt, it would have been a very great loss to the Government to break up such a ship as the Neptune. Do you know that it costs about half a million to build a man-of-war ?”

"That may be, ma'am; but any one can see it's no gain in the end to go patching up a ship that's done for, and sending her out to sea with valuable goods and precious lives in her."

"Then you think, on the whole, that ship-breaking may be a more honest business than ship-knackering ?"

"Certainly, ma'am. I should be sorry to have a hand in patching up one of those worn-out ships, especially if the surveyors had said she wasn't seaworthy. I should feel, if she went down, I had in a manner to answer for all the lives that were lost."

Do

"You don't seem to take the same view, Mr. Hunt, about those who have to answer for the care of men's souls. you know, all this reminds me of the talk we had the other day when you told me why you had left off attending Mr. Hill's ministry?" Mr. Hunt looked somewhat perplexed, but also interested, and his friend continued: "You say it is a shameful risking of those poor sailors' lives to send them out to sea in a patched-up ship, which the surveyors have pronounced unseaworthy. I think it is a much more awful risk to say to men and women whom God, the only true Surveyor of our hearts and lives, has declared to be lost, ruined, dead in trespasses and sins, no soundness in them, 'Try and mend your ways; put patches of repentance on the places in your life which even you can see are bad; lay on a little paint and varnish of your own good deeds, and sail on to meet the storms of judgment which are gathering against a sinful world.' My dear friend, our life eternal depends on the breaking up of every refuge of lies: every

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