chosen to do it; just as he has willed that men should slowly grow from infancy to manhood, instead of creating them at once in maturity. We have only to be silent, and adore his profound wisdom, without comprehending it. Thus we see clearly that we cannot be virtuous but in proportion as we become humble, disinterested, trusting every thing to God, without any unquiet concern about ourselves. We have need of all our crosses. When we suffer much, it is because we have strong ties that it is necessary to loosen. We resist, and we thus retard the divine operation; we repulse the heavenly hand, and it must come again; it would be wiser to yield ourselves at once to God. That the operation of his providence, which overthrows our self-love, should not be painful to us, would require the intervention of a miracle. Would it be less miraculous that a soul, absorbed in its own concerns, should, in a moment, become dead to self, than that a child should go to sleep a child and wake up a man? The work of God in the heart, as upon the body, is invisible; it is by a train of almost insensible events. He not only produces these effects gradually, but by ways that seem so simple, and so calculated to succeed, that human wisdom attributes the success to these natural causes, and thus the finger of God is overlooked. Formerly every work of God was by a miracle, and this precluded that exercise of faith which he now demands of us. It is to try our faith, that God renders this operation so slow and sorrowful.

The ingratitude and inconstancy of our fellow-creatures,

the misapprehensions and disgust we meet with in prosperity, detach us from life and its deceitful enjoyments. God destroys the delusions of self-love by the experience which he gives us of our sinfulness and numberless errors. All this appears natural to us; and thus our self-love is consumed by a slow fire, while we would have it annihilated at once, in the overpowering flame of a pure and devoted love to God; but this would cost us but little pain. It is an excess of self-love that would become perfect in a moment, rather than by slow degrees. What is it that makes us complain of the length of our trials? It is still this attachment to self; and this is what God would destroy. Why should we complain? The love of the beings and things of this world is our evil, and still more the love of ourselves. Our Father in heaven orders a series of events that gradually detach us from the earth, and finally from self. This operation is painful; but it is the disease of our soul that renders it necessary, and that causes the pain we feel. Is it cruelty in the surgeon to cut to the quick? No; on the contrary, it is affection, it is skill; he would so treat his only son.

And thus it is with God; his parental heart does not wish to grieve us; he must wound us to the very heart, that he may cure its malady. He must take from us what is most dear, lest we love it too much, lest we love it to the prejudice of our love for him. We weep, we despair, we groan in our spirits, and we murmur against God; but he leaves us to our sorrow, and we are saved; our present grief saves us from an eternal sorrow.

He

has placed the friends whom he has taken from us, in safety, to restore them to us in eternity. He has deprived us of them, that he may teach us to love them with a pure love, a love that we may enjoy in his presence forever; he confers a greater blessing than we are capable of desiring.

There happens nothing, even to a sinner, that God has not willed. It is he who does all, who rules, who gives to all whatever they receive. He has numbered the very hairs of our head, the leaves of the trees, the sands on the sea-shore, and the drops of the ocean. In creating the universe, his wisdom has weighed and measured the least atom. It is he who, every moment, produces and renews the breath of life within us. It is he who has numbered our days. That which most astonishes us, is nothing in the sight of God. Of what consequence is it whether this frail house of clay crumble into dust a little sooner, or a little later? What do they lose, who are deprived of those whom they love? Perhaps they lose only a perpetual delirium; they lose their forgetfulness of God and of themselves, in which they were plunged; or rather they gain, by the efficacy of this trial, the felicity of detachment from the world; the same stroke that saves the person who dies, prepares others, by suffering, to labor for their own salvation. Is it not then true, that God is good, that he is tender and compassionate towards our real sorrows, even when he strikes us to the heart, and we are tempted to complain of his severity.

Very soon they who are separated will be reunited, and there will appear no trace of the separation. They who are about to set out upon a journey, ought not to feel themselves far distant from those who have gone to the same country, a few days before. Life is like a torrent; the past is but a dream; the present, while we are thinking of it, escapes us, and is precipitated in the same abyss that has swallowed up the past; the future will not be of a different nature, it will pass as rapidly. A few moments, and a few more, and all will be ended; what has appeared long and tedious, will seem short, when it is finished.

It is this unquiet self-love that renders us so sensitive. The sick man, who sleeps ill, thinks the night long. We exaggerate, from cowardice, all the evils which we encounter; they are great, but our sensibility increases them. The true way to bear them is to yield ourselves up with confidence to God. We suffer, indeed, but God wills this suffering, that it may purify us, and render us worthy of him. The world forgets us, slights us, is ungrateful to us, places us in the rank of those who have passed away; true, and is it astonishing that the world should be unjust, treacherous, and deceitful? It is, nevertheless, the same world that you have not been ashamed to love so dearly, and that, perhaps, you still love; and this is the source of your sorrow.

Fenelon, translated by Mrs. Follen.

As the affections are the noblest ingredient in human

nature, so the elevation and the happiness of a human being mainly depend on the right bestowment and ample exercise of these affections. To be self-sufficient and selfseeking - that is, to keep all the affections to one's self, - is the meanest and most miserable predicament a creature can be in. The homestead of a finite spirit — much more the desolate chamber of a sinful heart- does not contain resources enough for its own blessedness. The soul must go out from itself if it would find materials of joy. And just as its happiness depends on going out from itself, so its elevation depends on its going updepends on its setting its affections on something higher than itself something nobler, or holier, or more engaging.

The main part of true religion is the right bestowment of the affections. When these are set on the things above, they are set as high as a seraph can set his. They are set so high that they cannot fail to lift the character along with them, and make his a peculiar character whose ends in living are so lofty.

Rev. James Hamilton.

Madame Adorna said to God one day, in the course of that inward and hidden conversation which was almost continually going on between her soul and her Maker, "Is it possible, my beloved, that men can love Thee, without experiencing consolation and happiness in their love?" An important inquiry, but the same in import with the question whether holiness and happiness are not 'inseparable. By an inward spiritual illumination, which