What does the Master say as He hears words like these? 'My grace is
sufficient for thee.' 'As thy day so shall thy strength be.'

Even in most unlikely and unfruitful soil God can make His plants to
grow and flourish. Where I am, and as I am, and with exactly the same
surroundings as I now possess, God can bless me, and give me grace to
serve and to glorify Him. If I do not become a flourishing plant, it is
not my position that is to blame, it is because I will not seek that
grace which the Lord is ready to give me. 'Ye have not, because ye ask
not. Ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.'




CHAPTER II.

The King's Table.


It was midnight in London, in the year 1665. The houses were closed and
barred, but strange lurid fires were lighted in every street, a stifling
odour of burning pitch and sulphur filled the air, and from time to time
came the heavy rumble of wheels, as a terrible cart, with its awful
load, passed by in the darkness of the night. With the cart came a cry;
so loud, so clear, so piercing, that it could be heard in all the closed
houses of the street. 'Bring out your dead, bring out your dead!'
Then, one door after another was hurriedly opened, and from the
plague-stricken houses one body after another was brought out, and was
thrown hastily into that awful dead cart.