The Class-meeting is one of the best institutions in Methodism. It has done as much as anything else, if not more, to keep up the spiritual life of the churches; it has been a refuge for tens of thousands of tempted ones; it has been a seasonable corrector to many who were just beginning to fall into the paths of sin, and has brought them back to Christ again; it has supplied the social need of our Christian faith, and gathered friends together for spiritual communion; it has been a safeguard against the devices of the devil by affording opportunities for the disciples of our Lord to compare their experiences, tell their temptations, and impart mutual encouragement to each other in the Divine life; it is a natural, seemly, and modest vent for the spiritual fire which glows and flashes in every heart that loves the Lord with sincerity. It was almost self-appointed; it came to be, or grew out of a class of circumstances which would at any other time have produced essentially the same thing; it is the outgrowth of the fervent piety which marked the lives of our fathers in the churches, and it has met the tendencies of glowing Christianity among us ever since. It is an encumbrance only where this kind of Christianity is not maintained; as godly zeal declines, so sinks the estimation for class-meetings; just as the appetite for food forsakes a sickly person, so the desire for experience meetings declines in a sickly church. Persons who never did attend class-meetings cannot be judged by them; their piety may deepen or diminish, but other tests must be found for them. The class-meeting is a Methodist gauge, and only here can it apply. "Little Abe" was a class leader for many years, and there was no work more heartily enjoyed by him than this. The members of his class who survive him often talk of the grand times they had with the little man in this way; it was often like heaven on earth. He was a very successful leader, and always kept his members well together. If any of them absented themselves he was soon on their track, hunting them up and bringing them back to the fold. "MY FATHER'S GOT PLENTY O' TIMBER."