“The Unexpected Friend.” The Rev. Mr. Moffatt,—the missionary to Southern Africa, tells an interesting story which illustrates very strikingly this part of our subject. “In one of my early journeys in this land,” he says, “I came, with my companions, to a heathen village on the banks of a river. We had travelled far, and were hungry and thirsty and very weary. The people of the village would not let us come near them. We asked for water and they would not give us any. We offered to buy milk, but they refused to sell us any. We had no prospect but that of spending the night without anything to eat, or to drink. But at the close of the day a woman came to us from the village. She bore on her head a bundle of wood, and had a vessel of milk in her hand. Without saying a word, she handed us the milk. She laid down the wood and returned to the village. Presently she came again with a cooking vessel on her head, with a leg of mutton in one hand and a vessel of water in the other. Silently she kindled the fire and put on the meat. Again and again we asked her who she was and why she was doing all this for us strangers. At last she said that years before there had been a missionary in her neighborhood. He had gone away a long while ago; but from him she had learned to know the Saviour. ‘I love him,’ she said, ‘whose servants you are, and I wish to show my love to him by doing what I can to help you.’ ‘I asked her,’ said Mr. Moffatt, ‘how she, alone in that dark land, without a minister, without a church, and without any Christian friends, had kept up the light of God in her heart?’ She drew from her bosom a soiled and worn copy of the New Testament, which the missionary had given her. ‘This,’ she said, ‘is the fountain from which I drink; this is the oil that makes my lamp burn.’”