Note 4 — ISAIAH.

A group of rough men were assembled at a tavern one night. One man boasted that it did not make any difference what time he went home, his wife cheerfully opened the door, and provided an entertainment if he was hungry when he got home. So they laid a wager. They said: “Now, we’ll go along with you. So much shall be wagered. We’ll bet so much that when you go home, and make such a demand, she will resist it.” So they went along at two or three o’clock in the morning and knocked at the door. The door opened, and the man said to the wife: “Get us a supper.” She said: “What shall I get?” He selected the articles of food. Very cheerfully were they provided, and about three or four o’clock in the morning they sat down at the table—the most cheerful one in all that company the Christian wife—when the man, the ruffian, the villain, who had demanded all this, broke down and said: “I can’t stand this. O what a wretch I am!” He disbanded that group. He knelt down with his Christian wife and asked her to pray for the salvation of his immortal soul, and before the morning dawned they were united in the faith and hope of the Gospel. A patient, loving, Christian demeanour in the presence of transgression, in the presence of hardness, in the presence of obduracy and crime, is an argument from the throne of the Lord Almighty.—Talmage.