IN AN EVER-WIDENING CIRCLE.
WHO can tell where the effects of a good deed will end. Oftimes it spreads in an ever-widening circle, till the little action scarcely noticed at the first has become the fruitful cause of immense good. It is related that some years since a boy in the State of Pennsylvania gave some money to buy Bibles for people who could not buy them for themselves. It was not a large sum, but in the end it did a great deal of good. The man to whom he gave it (Rev. G. F. Dale) went as a missionary to Syria. One day a lad came down from one of the little villages among the mountains, and asked for a Bible. He had an old silver coin that he had plowed up on the plain of Cœle-Syria. This he offered for the Bible. It had no intrinsic value, but the missionary took it and gave him a Bible bought with the Pennsylvania boy's money. Some time after the Bible had been given, the lad appeared again, and told the missionary that his people had tried to get his book away from him in order to destroy it. But he had made a chest for it, with a lock and key. The missionary had to return to the United States for rest and to renew his strength. On his return he was told that two young men were to be received into the church the next Sunday. What was his surprise and joy to find that the boy who gave the coin for the Bible was one of them! He had studied the Bible, and it led to his conversion. The boy in Pennsylvania heard of it and rejoiced. He had helped to convert a heathen. The boy in Syria became a Christian worker. It is for us to do right. In the providence of God lies the result. He alone knows the intricate relation of all things.—Christian Work.