We copy the following from Mrs. Bevan's book on John Wesley for the lesson it contains.

William Hone was known for many years as an infidel and blasphemer. This was all the more sad, because his father had been a truly Christian man. But old Mr. Hone, having seen how wrong Wesley was on certain points, had not learnt the lesson of "being patient towards all." He and his friends spoke bitterly of Mr. Wesley. They called him a child of the devil.

William Hone, in relating the history of his childhood, says:"I had a most terrific idea of this child of the devil. Being under six years old, I went to a dame's school to learn my book and to be out of harm's way. She was a very staid and pious old woman; she was very fond of me, and I was always good with her, though naughty enough at home. She lived in one room, a large underground kitchen; we went down a flight of steps to it. Her bed was always neatly turned up in one corner. There was a large kitchen grate, and in cold weather always a good fire in it, by which she sat in an old carved wooden armchair, with a small round table before her, on which lay a large open Bible on one side, and on the other a birch rod. Of the Bible she made great use, of the rod very little, yet we looked upon it with fear. There, on low wooden benches, books in hand, sat her little scholars. We all loved her-I most of all; and I was often allowed to sit on a little stool by her side. I think I see her now-that placid old face, with her white hair turned up over a high cushion, and a clean, neat cap on the top of it; all so clean, so tidy, so peaceful.

"One morning' I was told I was not to go to school; I was miserable, naughty, disagreeable, and cried to go. It was a dark day to me. The next day I got up, hoping to go to school; but no, I might not. Then they told me that she was ill, and I cried the more from grief:it was my first sorrow. I passed that day in tears, and cried myself to sleep. Next morning everybody was so tired of me that the servant was told to take me to her. As we approached the house all was so still, it gave me an awful feeling that all was not right; the kitchen door was shut, the servant tapped, and a girl opened it. No scholars, no benches; the bed was let down and curtained; the little round table was covered with a white cloth, and on it something covered up with another.

" ' Here is Master William-he would come,' said the servant; and a low, hollow voice from the bed said, ' Let him stay, he will be good.'

'' There lay my dame-how altered! Death on her face; but I loved her all the same. My little stool was placed near her bolster, and I sat down in silence. Presently, she said to the maid, ' Is he coming?' The maid went to the window and said, ' No.' Again the same question and the same answer. Who could it be ? I wondered in silence, and felt overawed. At last there was a double knock at the house-door above, and the maid said joyfully, 'Oh, madam, Mr. Wesley is come ! "

"Then I was to see the child of the devil! I crept to the window. I could only see a pair of black legs with great silver buckles. The door was opened, steps came down the kitchen stairs, each step increasing my terror.

"Then came in a venerable old man, with, as it seemed to me, the countenance of an angel, shining silver hair waving on his shoulders, with a beautiful, fair, and fresh complexion, and the sweetest smile! This, then, was the child of the devil!'

"He went up to the bed. I trembled for my poor dame, but he took her hand, and spoke so kindly to her, and my dame seemed so glad. He looked at me and said something. She said, ' He is a good boy, and will be quite quiet.' After much talk he uncovered the table, and I saw the bread and wine as I had often seen it at my father's chapel, and then he knelt down and prayed. I was awfully impressed, and quite still. After it was over he turned to me, laid his hand on my head, and said, ' God bless you, my child, and make you a good man.' Was this a child of the devil? I never saw Mr. Wesley again. My dame died, but from that hour I never believed what my father said, or what I heard at chapel. I felt, though I could not have expressed it, how wicked such enmity was between Christians, and I lost confidence in my good father and his religious friends, and in all religion."

And thus through many long years did William Hone live without God, without hope, without happiness. His great talents were used, alas, to hinder the cause of Christ. His life, which might have been spent in God's blessed service, was worse than useless. You will be glad to hear that in his last years, God, in His great mercy, brought him to repentance. Then at last he remembered the lessons of grace and truth which he had learnt from his father, and he said that in spite of the bitter words spoken so unadvisedly of John Wesley, his father had taught him rightly about the Lord Jesus, the Saviour of the lost. F. B.

"It was in a country house that William Hone, already well-advanced in life, met a child reading a New Testament. "Why do you read a stupid book like that?" he asked. " It is my sick mother's only comfort," answered the child. "My mother's only comfort"-it kept ringing through the unhappy man's mind, and he finally resolved to read the Bible for himself, and not go by other men's opinion of it, as he had done.

He procured a Bible, and as he read it God spoke to his soul through it. Some time after this his own hand wrote the following lines on the fly-leaf of his Bible:

"The proudest heart that ever beat
Hath been subdued in me ;
The wildest will that ever rose
To scorn Thy cause or aid Thy foes,
Is quelled, my God, by Thee."