A servant of Christ in impaired health and _£. depressed spirits had left his home to spend a few weeks at the house of a relative who resided in an inland county.

While taking a walk one morning, he saw an old man sitting by the roadside, breaking stones with which to mend the road. He came to the stone-breaker, and asked him his age.

"I shall be seventy-two if I live till next Wednesday," answered the man.

"I thought you must be about that age:I am sorry to see one so advanced in years obliged to work so hard; you find it very exhausting."

"Indeed, sir, it is hard work, but not so hard as when I used to do it standing. I find it much easier since I took to do it on my knees."

"Your work is hard, indeed," said the preacher. "Yet mine is much harder."

"Yours, hard work?" said the stone-breaker inquiringly; "You are a gentleman:you don't know anything about harder work than this. Though, thank God, I can work and be happy, too."

"Ah ! my good man, you are speaking to one who is oppressed with the greatness of his work. I work for the salvation of souls. I should be as happy as you are if I could break the stony hearts of my hearers as easily as you break these stones."

"Perhaps you try to do your work standing, sir," was the quick rejoinder. " Try to do it on your knees, sir. I think you'll find you can do it then."

" Thank you, my good man, your advice is worth consideration."

"Why, don't you see," said the stone-breaker, "if you try on your knees to do your work, you get Almighty God to help you, and the work will be well done, and more easily done too."

As the preacher went on his way, the old man's words occurred to him again and again, "Try it on your knees:try it on your knees," and he decided that in going back to his work again he would more frequently " try it on his knees." -Selected.

There are others besides preachers who need to "try it on their knees." How much worry, petulance, ill-tempered words with consequent uneasy, if not defiled, consciences would be avoided if our difficulties were first met on our knees. The spirit subject to God, the heart at rest^under His care -what an exchange from our fretful, anxious thoughts ! Let us "try it on our knees."