[XXIV. MEETINGS AND GREETINGS]
To those who have happened to read my two former volumes, "Pictures of St. Paul," and "Pictures of St. Peter in an English Home," the Hartley Brothers will already be familiar, for this little work is a sequel to their story. There would have been more symmetry in my arrangement, could I have given the third book the title of "Pictures of St. John," but this could not be accomplished. We know too little of the career of "The Apostle of Love" to treat his history in the same way as the histories of "The Apostle of Faith" and "The Apostle of Hope;" while St. Peter and St. John are so often mentioned together in the Gospels, that much going over ground already trodden would have been rendered inevitable. All that the writer has been able to do is to try to represent the spirit of the disciple whom Jesus loved, as exhibited in those who in modern days tread in his steps. As the Bible itself may be said never to grow old, so the characters of those of whom we read in the Bible are reproduced, generation after generation, in such as are followers of the early Christians. We look on such plants in our gardens now as Adam himself may have tended; in like manner the fruits of the Spirit never die out, they reappear in every age; love, joy, peace are perennial wherever true Christianity exists.
A.L.O.E. may once more remind her readers that she is a Missionary, only employing her pen as supplementary work to humble labours amongst the natives of India, to help on that work by supplying her purse. If writing interferes with evangelisation, the pen ought at once to be laid aside; but practically it does not interfere: it is a handmaid, and not a rival.
And so A.L.O.E. sends forth this book, this child of her old age, to do such humble work as the Lord may permit it to do, looking to Him for the blessing without which all labour is vain.
[A NEW YEAR'S GIFT]
FROM A. L. O. E.
OFTEN, at the festive season, young people want some new amusement to give pleasant occupation in wet days, and during dark evenings. A.L.O.E. has written this little poem to supply such a want; if well learned by heart, and clearly recited, it may make children's parties go off more pleasantly, and, it is hoped, more profitably also. A.L.O.E.'s dear young readers—and perhaps families of old readers also—may welcome this small New Year's Gift, sent across the wide sea from a Missionary's home in India.