and send the relief that we needed.  Then I went to the window and waited, looking down the street, expecting to see the wood coming.  After waiting a while, without seeing any come, my faith began to fail.  I said to myself, ‘The Lord did provide for Abraham, but He won’t provide for me.’  Our last stick of wood was put in the stove.  It was too cold to keep the children in the house without fire.  I got the children’s clothes out, and thought I would take them to the house of a kind neighbor, where I knew they could stay till we got some wood.  But, just as I was going out with the children, in passing by the window, I saw the top of a great load of wood coming up the road towards our little house.  Can that be for us?  I asked myself.  Presently I saw the wagon turn off the road and come up towards our door.  Then I was puzzled to know how to pay for it.  A dollar and seventy-five cents I knew would only go a little way towards paying for all that wood.  The oxen came slowly on, dragging the load to our door.  I asked the man if there wasn’t same mistake about it.  ‘No, ma’am,’ said he, ‘there’s no mistake.’  ’I did not order it, and I cannot pay for it,’ was my reply.  ‘Never mind, ma’am,’ said he, ’a friend ordered it, and it is all paid for.’  Then he unhitched the oxen from the wagon, and gave them some hay to eat.  When this was done, he asked for a saw and ax, and never stopped till the whole load was cut and split and piled away in the woodshed.

“This was more than I could stand.  My feelings overcame me, and I sat down and cried like a child.  But these were not bitter tears of sorrow.  They were tears of joy and gladness, of gratitude and thankfulness.  I felt ashamed of myself for doubting God’s word, and I prayed that I might never do so again.  What pleasure I had in using that wood!  Every stick of it, as I took it up, seemed to have a voice with which to say ‘Jehovah-Jireh.’  As Abraham stood on the top of Mount Moriah he could say, ‘The Lord will provide.’  But every day, as I went into our woodshed, I could point to that blessed pile of wood sent from heaven, and say, ‘The Lord does provide.’”

A REFRACTORY MAN COMPELLED TO PAY A DEBT.

A refractory man who owed a small debt of about $43, refused to pay it all, but offered to do so if ten dollars was taken off.  His creditor, feeling that it was just, declined to abate the amount.

For more than a year the creditor waited, after having no attention paid to his correspondence or, claim by the debtor, who exhibited unmistakable obstinacy and want of courtesy.  At last it was put into the hands of a lawyer.  The lawyer, too, was fairly provoked at the faithlessness of the debtor in his promises or his attention to the subject; thus matters dragged wearily for months, yet exercised leniency in pressing the claim.

The creditor, whose forbearance had now reached the extremity of endurance, at last was led to take it to the Lord in prayer; saying he would “willingly forgive the whole debt if in anything he was wrong, but if the Lord thought it was right, hoped that his debtor might be compelled to pay the amount he so obstinately withheld.”