fell asleep, and slept pretty well. The next morning I was much better, and I hope by to-morrow morning I shall be all right once again. "It is afternoon while I write this part of my letter. I feel much better than I did this morning. Don't, I pray, make yourself uncomfortable about me. I shall be all right by morning, I hope.

"From your loving

"MARY."

The following day, about noon, I received from my mother the mournful intelligence that, instead of being "all right by morning," as she had expected, she was much worse. I was requested to return home with all speed. Sickness had again commenced, and medical aid was immediately called in. By a few minutes after two o'clock, I was in the railway carriage, moving swiftly towards Cheadle. As the steam wafted me over the fields, and through the towns and villages, I was the subject of many melancholy musings. I feared to approach, lest the sad news of her exit should await me. Before five o'clock I arrived home, and found my wife somewhat improved, but before morning she again relapsed, and continued to grow worse until death removed her hence. Medicines had not the slightest effect. Another medical gentleman was called in, but without effect. Death was rapidly approaching, and she was well prepared to meet him. She frequently expressed her confidence in God's paternal care, and this peculiar relationship of Jehovah was especially dear to her. "Whom he loveth" she said, "he chasteneth." Observing that I was much concerned for her recovery, and that I earnestly watched the application of the means used, she said, "Don't, my dear, don't make yourself so unhappy." About eight o'clock on the evening of the 11th of December, every one present believed her to be leaving this world. Just as the attack commenced I had gone down stairs, and she said, "Tell Thomas to come here." I hastened up into the room, she put out her hand and said, "Thomas, I am going to die." I said, "I hope not, dear." She replied, "I am." She began immediately to sink, her features changed, her eyes closed, and occasionally opened, when they appeared to be set and covered with a thin film, and her breathing indicated the approach of death. She was at this time supported in the arms of her brother, Mr. R. Birch, who appeared deeply affected. We all thought she was about to make the momentous change, whilst her lips moved rapidly in prayer and communion with God. Suddenly she turned up her eyes; her hands and arms (which had been cold almost as death) became in a moment much warmer, and in a very exhausted manner she said, "I thought I was going to die, I made sure I was going home; but God is not quite ready for me yet. He is about to revive me for a little while longer." In an hour or two afterwards, she said to me, "Thomas, I have just been thinking what a glorious change I should have had, out of these sufferings into those glories which await me in heaven, should not I?" I replied, "Yes, love, you would have had a glorious change; you would now have been in the company of Christ and the spirits of just men made perfect, praising before the throne of God." These were precious moments to her. Never did a spirit triumph more completely over sufferings. The terrors of the grave and the horrors of death she never thought of. She knew no temptation. This was, probably, partly the effect of her all but spotless

In

Not

life. Her happy mental state was not got up on the bed of affliction. Her life was eminently a religious life. She made but little show or noise, and on account of her afflictions she was seldom seeu abroad; but the religious feeling was constantly uppermost in her mind, and religious principle actuated her in all her intercourse with her fellows. She lived every day as if she felt assured that on the morrow she should have to meet the Judge of quick and dead. She had an abiding consciousness of the favour of God. It was no excitement that produced this feeling. There was an enlightened conviction, which naturally grew out of her views of God's character, faith in his Son, and a consistent deportment. Her patience under sufferings excited the surprise of all who saw her. From first to last not a murmur escaped her lips. She appeared to think she had cause only for rejoicing. this feature of her character there was perfect magnanimity. because she was insensible to pain did she patiently submit, but because her religious emotions and her sublime prospects completely neutralized its effects on her feelings. Her mind, though extraordinarily active, yet always serene, was thoroughly absorbed with the glorious theme of heaven and heavenly associations. She was anxious about her child, but said, "I can willingly leave him with my dear husband. I know he will take care of him." When I spoke to her about the loss I should sustain by her death, and told her how faithfully she had fulfilled her duties as a wife and a mother, she said, "I can now die happy," and with great emotion she added, "You have always been to me the kindest of husbands." Whilst she continued to live, she repeated signs of the tenderness and strength of her affection towards her husband and her child. I am going home. I shall soon be with my heavenly Father. I shall soon be with Jesus; bless his name. Bless the Lord, he is very good; he supports me in my affliction. He is taking me home." About twelve o'clock I asked her whether I should read a few verses out of the Bible. Her countenance lighted up, and she said with extraordinary emotion, "Yes, do." I brought the Bible to her bed side. She said she "loved that book," and placing her hand on its open pages, said, "Ah! these are my last moments.' I said, "My dear, you are not afraid to die, are you?" She replied, with much earnestness, "I am ready this moment. Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. Come, Lord Jesus, and come quickly." I had opened the sacred book, and by some strange chance, or providence, and without the least intention on my part, I alighted on the xxiii. Psalm. I commenced reading, and read each phrase slowly and distinctly. She appeared overcome with joy. When I began, "The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want," she exclaimed, "No, I shall not. Bless him." I continued, He maketh me to lie down in green pastures" she smiled, and said, "He does ;" and when I came to the phrase, "He leadeth me by the side of still waters," she smiled again and said, Yes," while her emotion was unutterable. When I came to the fourth verse, " Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil," her rapture rose still higher. She repeated the words with great emphasis, and kept a word or two in advance of my reading. At this stage my heart was ready to burst with grief. I could not refrain from sobbing aloud. She hushed me in the most tender manner, and said, "Come, now, my dear, read again."

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I proceeded with the next phrase, "For thou art with me." She exclaimed, "Yes, he is with me; that is the reason I fear no evil. His rod and his staff, they comfort me. He will go with me. He will not forsake me." I read the whole Psalm, with select and appropriate verses out of other Psalms, and she responded to each and all with the greatest earnestness. She then said, "That will do, love; I am quite exhausted." She continued to be visited with occasional paroxysms of pain, when she called out for me. She frequently said, "Come, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." In an hour or so after, she called me to her bedside and said, "I want you to pray a little with me." These were solemn moments. I felt myself as if on the confines of another world. We all knelt down by the bedside of my dying wife, and I offered, I believe, a fervent prayer to that Being who holds in his hand a universe; to every part of which she most fervently responded. Whilst I was saying, Not our will, Lord, but thy will be done," she exclaimed, "No, no; not our will, his will be done. Thy will be done, Lord." She rapidly grew worse, and between the hours of two and three o'clock she became, we thought, occasionally delirious. She frequently looked earnestly in one direction and said, "I want to go to Jesus. He is there waiting for me. Don't you see him? Don't you see him? Come, I must go, I must go; he is waiting for me," and she several times endeavoured to raise herself up in bed in order to go, as she said, "to meet him." She seemed, by the motions of her lips, to be engaged constantly in prayer and heavenly musings, though she had not strength to articulate a sound. On inquiring what she said, she faintly replied, "I am talking with my Jesus." She continued in this state until a little after four o'clock, when without a sigh, or groan, or struggle, she sweetly fell asleep in Jesus on Wednesday, the 12th day of December, 1849. Her body, on the following Saturday, was interred in the burial ground of the parish Church of Cheadle, by the side of her father-in-law, the late Mr. W. Bullock, by whom she was much esteemed, and towards whom she cherished the highest feelings of respect. "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints."

(To be concluded in the next.)

THE ZEALOUS MAID.-In a family in the north of Ireland a pious young woman was engaged as a servant. The poor girl was much ridiculed for her religion by the young ladies, but did not render evil for evil; but on the contrary, she would allow them to laugh at her, and then mildly reason with them. She made it her study to be useful to them, took opportunities to speak to them about religion, and would offer to read the sacred Scriptures to them when they went to bed. They commonly fell asleep, and that in a little time, under the sound; but she was not discouraged. Having exemplified Christianity in her life, Providence sent a fever to remove her to a better state. The young ladies were not permitted to see her during her illness, but they heard of her behaviour, which did not lessen the impression her previous conduct had made upon them. Soon after the two elder ladies began to make a profession of real religion, the little leaven spread, and now all the young ladies appear truly pious. Other means were employed by God in producing this great change; but one of the two who first became serious informed me, that she chiefly ascribed it to the life and death of the servant-maid.-J. G. Pike.

DISCOURSES, ESSAYS, &c.

THE SIN AND DANGER OF WORLDLY SPECULATION AND CARNALITY OF HEART.

BY MR. S. MILLS.

To a greater or less extent all men have to do with the secularities of life. The relations and circumstances of our earthly condition render it unavoidable. This necessity is recognized in every provision of God's moral administration. He never requires at our hands what the economy of our every-day life makes impossible to perform. When he says, “Set your affections on things above, and not on things on the earth," he is not to be understood as requiring an entire abstraction from whatever is temporal. Some persons have indeed so inferred, and, acting upon the unwarranted assumption, have literally secluded themselves from active life, and upon the altar of superstition sacrificed their social obligations and public usefulness. The Bible justifies no such strange alternative, no such ethereal and selfish piety. Its Divine rebukes are directed against that sort and degree of earthliness which lifts the world into the ascendancy, and induces a growing indifference to whatever is sacred and eternal. Unscriptural worldliness has many aspects, modifications, and objects. In some cases it exists as a confirmed and universal habit. It has no varying or redeeming quality. It is pure, unmixed worldliness. It penetrates the soul, holds undisputed mastery over the whole man, and drags in ignoble captivity at its chariot-wheels the understanding, the conscience, and the heart. In other cases it is seen in the very lowest possible forms of existence. In all these degraded victims say or do, you see and smell the clod. They revel in the vulgarities of life, they glory in the companionship of the swine. All they ever had of the spiritual lies buried beneath the thickest incrustations of earth. Not a ray of light relieves the gloom; not a noble thought; not a spiritual upward aspiration indicates either past or present affinity with spiritual existence. They are emphatically of the "earth, earthy."

But other forms there are of habitual worldliness, less gross and repulsive in their aspect, but little less promotive of alienation from God. To incur the charge of earthliness, it is not necessary to be the morbid miser pining in lonely wretchedness amidst heaps of yellow dust, nor the graceless libertine rioting in the excesses of abandoned sensualism. It is not necessary to lose the last visible trace of our God-given nature, and to suffer the wreck of every noble attribute and virtue. It is enough if, in our purposes and pursuits, we habitually subordinate the spiritual, reserving the higher place and the deeper solicitude for the secular and transitory. No matter what the plausibilities by which we justify, or attempt to justify the preference; to us belongs the charge, and on us rest the consequences, of inordinately minding earthly things. Such in the main is the worldliness of our times. The duties of the spiritual are merged in the pursuits of the material. Men appear to cling to the concerns of time as fondly as they cling to life. Honour, profit, and pleasure, "the great trinity of the world," have their multitudes of willing worshippers, and eager homage do those multitudes present before their own selected shrine. Turn where we will, we behold the predominance of the things that are seen. Every gradation

of society presents an overwhelming proportion of men whose only God is the world, whose loftiest aspirations rise no higher than its ephemeral baubles and its empty vanities. See our large towns and cities; see our halls of commerce, our marts of business; see the all-impelling spirit of competition, the potency of mammon, the burning thirst for gain. See our merchants and our tradesmen; how one single object absorbs their solicitudes and enchains their heart, that object being the more rapidly to accumulate and the more securely to retain the treasures of the world. Look also at our fellow-men in the less public walks of life, and in relation to what a great majority of their order may it be truthfully alleged they "mind earthly things!" Their cares, affections, energies, and hopes appear to have no higher objects than sense, no larger limits than time. To the sordid indulgences of earth they are sacrificing their higher nature, their immortal destinies. O the influence of this world! how thoroughly has it charmed with its blandishments, how largely has it impregnated with its spirit every class of men! It is the magnet attracting myriads of obedient devotees, the mighty motivepower creating stern resolve, enkindling and sustaining burning enthusiasm where all other motives fail to operate. It is the only atmosphere in which the mass of men can find a free and healthy respiration; take them from it, and they grow oppressed and surfeited. Fearfully widespread is this tendency to the secular and earthly, fearfully deep-seated and dominant. No books are read with keener zest than the ledger, the share-list, the newspaper, and the novel. No conversation is so edifying as a warm debate upon the modes and means of self-aggrandizement. No history is so popular as that which abounds with the records of bold, successful speculation. He is the envied and applauded man who excels in the art of striking profitable bargains; and that of all philosophy is the soundest which qualifies its disciples the most expeditiously to rear the temple of fortune or to scale the pinnacle of fame.

The preceding observations have assumed the leading and most general form of the secularity of our times to be, a feverish thirst for gain, or, in the full and forcible words of the Scriptures, a "making haste to be rich." Nor is it a mere assumption. Let the history of the past few years be reviewed and pondered, and such, it will be seen, has assuredly been the direction of the popular feeling and aim.

The events of the period in question are fresh upon the memory. It cannot easily be forgotten how, impelled by a delirious ambition to make their fortunes in a day, and in raptures with the splendid chances of doing so, which were ever and anon flitting across their feverish imagination, men embarked by thousands upon the sea of wild speculation. The public mind appeared almost to burst with the big ideas. that expanded it of the glory and the power of wealth, and with the new modes and channels which science had developed for its vaster and more rapid accumulation. As though sick of the old and ordinary methods of adding to their earthly substance, they committed themselves to all the casualties and consequences of bolder schemes of money-making. The temples of Mammon were hourly besieged and crowded. The Stock Exchange was the great focus of interest, the place of almost universal resort. "Which is the best stock?" "Which line holds out the best chances of a good hit?" were among the current phrases and questions, asked with breathless carnestness and elevated