favourite with her. The morning of her death, she begged it might be read to her, and afterwards said, Yes, I am going to walk through the valley of the shadow of death; but God's rod and staff will support me.' Upon one occasion, she begged a pious woman who was with her to pray for her, who answered, I will pray for you, Mary; but you must not depend upon what such a poor creature as I can do for you.' Mary interrupted her quickly, saying, No, I trust only in the Lord Jesus Christ.' And another time she was so earnest that two women who were sitting up with her should pray to Jesus, that though they said they did not know how to pray, to satisfy her they were obliged to do it in their poor way,' as they expressed it. Her sufferings were very great and lingering, but her patience was exemplary; not a murmur escaped her lips, even when the people who attended her were cross and inattentive to her requests. She longed to be released, but expressed herself perfectly willing to wait God's time; and the natural love of life, and fear of death was completely overcome in her. Indeed, this was very remarkable from the first. She made every arrangement for her funeral, chose six of her young companions to carry the pall, and selected two hymns to be sung. The last intelligible words she spoke were the following from a favourite hymn: "Behold the Saviour of mankind Surely we may have humble, yet confident hope, that through faith in this blessed Redeemer, she has now joined that happy throng who are ascribing their salvation to Him who was slain, and who has redeemed them to God by his blood. And when we consider how entirely she was precluded from means of grace, unable to read, and surrounded by ungodly people, we must allow that she was indeed taught of the Lord. She experienced the truth of that delightful declaration of the prophet: "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee." Her death-bed was truly peaceful; no rapture, or joy, but a settled abiding peace; so that all around her were constrained to wish that theirs might be equally blessed! Having brought this little narrative to a close, a few remarks upon it may perhaps not be deemed superfluous. In this young villager, we have a striking proof of the insufficiency of a blameless moral deportment to give comfort in the hours of sickness and of death. However confident and self-satisfied we may be while in health and prosperity, the time will come when, as with her, this sandy foundation will give way, and we shall find we require something more to give us courage to appear before a holy God. It is written, that not only " the wicked shall be turned into hell, but all the nations that forget God;" and this forgetfulness of God, which is thus described as meriting equal punishment with wicked actions, is consistent with, and often united to, propriety of external conduct; and appears to have been a distinguishing characteristic of him," who was clothed with purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day." May, then, both the writer. and the reader of these remarks" win Christ, and be found in him; not having" or depending upon own righteousness, which is of the law, but the righteousness which, is of God by faith." For it is only when we are "justified by faith in a Redeemer, that we can have, peace with God:" peace which shall endure and give comfort and support, not only in times of sickness and adversity, and in the hour of death, but shall accom their pany us to those blessed mansions, where, in a sweeter and nobler strain, we shall hymn the praises of redeeming love. Fixing the eye of faith then upon this glorious expectation, may we seek holiness of heart as well as of conduct! The latter may be produced by the restraints of education and habit; the other is utterly impossible with out the enabling grace of God. Let the foregoing facts animate Sunday school teachers in the prosecution of their work. The good done is not limited to their little scholars, delightful as is the hope of leading even them into the narrow path; but it enters many a cottage, where the teacher is unknown; and if one soul is brought by their means to inquire," What must I do to be saved?" their labours have not been in vain. May the number of pious Sunday school teachers be daily increased, particularly from among young women in the middling ranks of life, who are, by their education and the influence they possess over their humbler neighbours, peculiarly fitted for it. Their time is also more at their own disposal than it can be at any after period of life, when sickness or the cares of a family may diminish their activity and usefulness. Let the reflection, that their hours are at their own disposal, teach them the awful responsibility they are incurring by not disposing of them to the glory of God and the good of their fellow-creatures, and of the account they will have to give at the day of judgment for squandering this precious talent committed to their care. But by pursuing steadily the path of duty and usefulness, they will have opened to them new sources of interest and gratification, far surpassing all that the transitory and unsatisfying pleasures of the world can bestow, and they will experience in their own souls the fulfilment of that encou raging promise, "He that watereth, shall be watered." THOUGHTS IN RETIREMENT.-No. IV. * PSALM iv. 4.-Commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still. ACCURACY is so difficult a thing, that no one can form an idea of what it costs to attain it who has never made the attempt. Folly is seldom passive. It will intrude and be impertinent. It is an effect of the curse, that human nature is ever wearying itself in pursuit, and is never satisfied with attainment. Man truly catches t a phantom. The weather is thick and hazythe east wind pierces me-my stomach is dispeptical, and my head aches. In this state, I try to read and pray. I cannot; I have neither ideas nor affections. Well, shall I turn infidel? and looking to a fair day, a south wind, a clear head, when I had much enjoyment and profit in devotional exercises, shall I cry, Mere nerves; E. L it is all imagination? Then I should talk as a fool. Am I to expect the Author of nature to suspend his laws, work a miracle, and prepare a perpetual atmosphere of sunshine, for my accommodation? Must he change perpetually the humours of my body, and keep the organ always in tune? I have no right to expect it. My sensible comforts may be suspended. It is enough if my faith and complacency in Him does not wither-if sin does not revive. Such seasons of darkness afford me an opportunity of humbling myself-of putting faith to the test of justifying God. By and by the clouds will be scattered-the wind will be changed-the frame will get to rights again, and I shall rejoice and be glad. Good people are sometimes need * Continued from Vel. XI. p. 136. If you would be thoroughly happy, you must have no will of your own; you must be absorbed in God. This is the highest exercise of grace and the most perfect bliss. Nothing is more important and conducive to holiness than order. Man is a disorderly creature, and loves to be abroad; but he must be confined, and kept to rule. So vastly important is order, that the want of it in a man's family is by the Apostle made an exclusion from the ministry. 1 Tim. iii. I dislike the distinction of secret and revealed, as applied to the difficulties in theology; it is presumptuous. What do we, what can we know of things hidden from us? They belong not to us. (Deut. xxix. 29.) It is a useless distinction; for we are certain no secret will in God can contradict his revealed will to man. Secret articles, in human treaties, are disgraceful and fraudulent; there are no such articles in the treaty of peace between God and man. We cut, and not untie the knot by having recourse to these subtleties. The Bible is the poor man's book; and poor men are plain men, and have no idea of the quibblings of controversialists. Afflictions are God's whetstones; they put a new edge on old principles. It is much harder work to go to hell than to go to heaven; if, at least, there be any light and conscience. "The way of trangres sors is hard." Many a man, like Colonel Gardiner, wishes himself a dog, and gnaws his tongue for anguish, though he repent, not; but, as the dying bear, hugs the lance that pierceth him, and pulls it closer while he roars out for misery. The godly have their troubles, but they are far less in their endurance. There is one μαas bearing part of the burden, and the greater part too. If God willeth not the death of a sinner, how is it that the majority are not, will not be, saved. Does God want power to execute his own will? This is a specious objection, but admits of an answer. We must not expect God to work contradictions, incongruities, or out of prescribed means. He does not deal with moral agents as with material or brutish natures. Man is not to be governed by force or instinct, but by motive; he is a responsible and a reasonable creature. It is common to confound an abstract attribute with its proper exercise on moral agents. The difficulties on this subject are certainly great; yet if we conceive a man as a mere machine, in motion while impelled, we put him out of his place, out of the scale of his being. We must attend to the varieties of being, and the laws suitable to their government, and not expect the salvation of man by the destruction of his character. The state of the world does not prove the weakness of God, but the desperate wickedness of a fallen creature; which most awfully, yet successfully, resists all the power which an omnipotent Being can congruously throw into his own remedy. Ah! is not sin an infinite evil! Let man learn from this awful fact, not to impute weakness or malignity to his Maker, but to flee with holy violence to God's remedy, and in God's way, from the tremendous influence of this horrid pest. "Hide thyself till the tyranny be overpast." It is easier to preach against sin than of love and holiness; and it is not difficult to assign a cause. We know more of our disease than of our remedy. Sober men are apt to grow dull. Men of quick affections become extravagant. A spiritual sobriety is a rare attainment, but it is a divine character; it is the exercise of the truest devotion. I don't like the word predestinate; it is heathenish. The heathens taught an irresistible destiny, a something uncontrollable even by the Supreme. He, as well as inferior deities and mortals, could not resist or reverse the thread of the fated and fabled sisters. The word goog is to mark out before hand, or to pre-appoint; this God does "after the counsel of his own will," (Eph. i. 11.) freely, "according to the good pleasure of his will" (v. 5.); not from any influence ab extra; nor capriciously, or without the soundest reasons, though these reasons may often be hidden from man. "Clouds and darkness may surround him, yet righteousness and judgment are the habitation of his throne." Psalm xcvii. 2. Anacreon describes the state of his heart, and compares his affections there to a nest of birds. The infant brood are fledged, and each one builds a nest and has a progeny of his own, and they in succession multiply, and so on ad infinitum. How just a picture of a sinful heart! Sin is infinitely prolific, and one sin gives birth to another, yea twenty more, and so they eat a man up, till there is not one vestige left of original righteousness. A dupe -a slave-a captive-a common sewer-these are his proper names. I long to know more of the remedy. I know much of my dis ease, but am but little acquainted with the cure. It is very hard to live on an idea, and that too while reality is ever before us. Moses lived on an idea the idea of him who was invisible present, or a substance by faith. It is faith which makes that real to an enlightened mind, that appears imaginary to a carnal heart. Great men are in great danger. Who will deal faithfully with them? or venture to tell them of a palpable fault? They are left to find it out themselves. There is one advantage in littleness. Men easily come to the point in such cases. Whatever we delay, having the power to do, and it being proper to do, we never really mean to do at all. Procrastination is trifling with God, and trusting to ourselves. What folly is it deliberately to do that which can be undone only by tears of anguish, and must be undone, or we are ruined. Promptitude in duty is a mark of sincerity. "I made haste," Ps. cxix. 60. A guilty conscience craves delay, and delay aggravates our guilt. Handling takes off the bloom. So contact with the world destroys our simplicity, our tenderness-the freshness of our love. To desire to know is not a prying curiosity; for a knowledge of God is connected with our loving and honouring him. Ignorance is a painful feeling, a part of our punishment; to know as we are known, our reward in heaven. 0 glorious change, to see face to face! Faith lost in vision! It is impossible to say, how much evil is compatible with true grace; an immensity, or who could hope? I could not love God, if he were not an holy being; it is his holiness which inspires me with satisfaction and confidence in him. CLERICUS OXONIENSIS. SUBSTANCE OF A FAREWELL SERMON. Ps. cxxii. 7.-Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces. THIS Psalm beautifully describes the holy delight and joy of the Israelites, when they went up in companies to keep the feasts at Jerusalem. Jerusalem was the metropolis of their country, the residence of the kings of Judah, and the place where their temple stood. In obedience to the divine injunction, the Jews resorted to Jerusalem three times a year, to worship God. In the temple at Jerusalem, God had recorded his holy name; and there, in a more especial manner, he net and blessed his waiting people. When the Jewish constitution was, at length, succeeded by the Gospel, or Christian dispensation, Jerusalem, the "holy city," was rased to the ground; the temple, their "holy and beautiful house," was "burnt up;" and the nation was scattered over the globe. But though the antient Israel of God is scattered, the God of Israel is still worshipped; worshipped under a more clear, glorious, and extensive dispensation. The knowledge of the true God is no longer confined to the land of Canaan, or communicated through types, visions, and shadows; but to them who are in "the ends of the earth" has he manifested his great name, his justice, mercy, holiness, love, power, and goodness, in the glorious person of our Lord Jesus Christ. By the promulgation of the everlasting Gospel," light has arisen on" the people which sat in darkness." The Almighty has in this world, though a world of apostacy and rebellion, a spiritual Jerusalem, a spiritual temple, a spiritual Israel, who, "worship the Father in spirit and in truth;" and who are, through divine grace, training up in the church militant" be low, for the glorious perfect church triumphant above. The joy which the ancient Jews felt and expressed in the peace, prosperity, and glory of their church and nation, is a joy peculiar to every true Christian, to every "Israelite indeed," in the peace, prosperity, and glory of the Christian church; and on her behalf does he breathe out such language as that contained in the text; "Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces." Two things, PEACE and PROSPERITY, are here desired for the church of God. PEACE. AS peace is essential to the happiness and prosperity of an individual, a family, or a society, so it is especially necessary to promote the happiness and prosperity of the church of Christ. Peace, by being delivered from her enemies.-The church of Christ on earth is emphatically styled the church militant, denoting her perpetual warfare with her spiritual enemies. Between Christ and Belial there can be no union, no communion, no peace. Satan is represented as a "roaring lion," walking "about seeking whom he may devour." In the book of Revelation, he is pointed out as a great dragon, pursuing and attempting to destroy the woman, who there represents the church of the living God. Influenced by the powerful, active, artful, and malignant adversary, as well as by their own native enmity to the Gospel of grace, the men of this world have ever hated and persecuted the church, by calumny, fire, and sword. But the Most High, who has power over the fallen angel, over the thrones, dominions, and principalities of Satan, and who restraineth the wrath of man, and confounds his wicked devices, has preserved and will preserve |