“The Charcoal Carrier.”  One Sunday afternoon, in summer, a little girl named Mary, going home from a Sunday-school in the country, sat down to rest under the shade of a tree by the roadside.  While sitting there she opened her Bible to read.  As she sat reading, a man, well known in that neighborhood as Jacob, the charcoal carrier, came by with his donkey.  Jacob used to work in the woods, making charcoal, which he carried away in sacks on his donkey’s back, and sold.  He was not a Christian man, and was accustomed to work with his donkey as hard on Sunday as on week-days.

When he came by where Mary was sitting, he stopped a moment, and said, in a good-natured way: 

“What book is that you are reading, my little maid?”

“It is God’s book—­the Bible,” said Mary.

“Let me hear you read a little in it, if you please,” said he, stopping his donkey.

Mary began at the place where the book was open, and read:—­“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.  Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work.”

“There, that’s enough,” said Jacob, “and now tell me what it means.”

“It means,” said Mary, “that you mustn’t carry charcoal, on Sunday, nor let your donkey carry it.”

“Does it?” said Jacob, musing a little.  “I tell you what then, I must think over what you have said.”

And he did think over it.  And the result of his thinking was, that instead of going with his donkey to the woods on the next Sunday, he went with his two little girls to the Sunday-school.  And the end of it all was that Jacob, the charcoal carrier, became a Christian, and God’s blessing rested on him and his family.

Little Mary was doing an apostle’s work when she read and explained the Bible to Jacob and was the means of bringing him to Jesus.

“The Use of Fragments.”  In the Cathedral at Lincoln, England, there is a window of stained glass which was made by an apprentice out of little pieces of glass that had been thrown aside by his master as useless.  It is said to be the most beautiful window in the Cathedral.  And if, like this apprentice, we carefully gather up, and improve the little bits of time, of knowledge, and of opportunities that we have, we may do work for God more beautiful than that Cathedral window.  We may do work like that which the apostles were sent to do.  Here are some sweet lines, written by I know not whom, about that beautiful window, made out of the little pieces of glass: 

  “Great things are made of fragments small,
    Small things are germs of great;
  And, of earth’s stately temples, all
    To fragments owe their weight.

  “This window, peer of all the rest,
    Of fragments small is wrought;
  Of fragments that the artist deemed
    Unworthy of his thought.

  “And thus may we, of little things,
    Kind words and gentle deeds,
  Add wealth or beauty to our lives,
    Which greater acts exceeds.