( § VI. )

The Rev. John Farrar being requested to draw up his thoughts respecting his departed friend; obliged the Editor with an account, the inserting of which here can not fail to be gratifying to the reader, and at the same time serve to confirm our previous remarks.

"The Biographical notices we have of our sainted friends illustrate the sacred Volume, and attest the sufficiency of divine grace, to enlighten the understanding, to free the conscience from its load of guilt, to renew and console the mind, and to shed a sanctifying influence over the life. Many such instances are lost, but the short and devoted life of Mary Podmore should not thus pass away in silence. It gave me no small pleasure to learn, that you were about to perpetuate the

excellencies of our young friend, by becoming

her biographer.

“There was in her, every evidence of a Saving Conversion. The change was very visible; nothing was substituted in its place; no amiableness of disposition, no speculative knowledge of the Truth, no mere religious impressions. When once awakened, there was no disposition to adopt a false peace or indulge a false security, or to be contented with so much of religion, as should keep her equally remote from the excesses of vice and the ardour of piety. She never rested till the love of God was shed abroad in her heart, and the Spirit became the Comforter. I was acquainted with the workings and reasonings of her mind, at the time she was under conviction, and as you may be aware, was honored by admitting her into the Methodist Society. The first time I had the pleasure of seeing or conversing with her, was on my first visit to Knutsford, immediately after my appointment to the Mac

clesfield Circuit. That visit was a pledge of good to me, happily realized in the steady advancement of the interests of Christ in Knutsford, during the three years I was permitted to labour with my honored and esteemed colleagues there. Immediately after the Evening Service, several young females, evidently under strongly excited feelings, accompanied Mrs. Wright's Class into the Vestry. Among them was Miss P., who expressed a strong desire to flee from the wrath to come, and to be saved from her sins. I was particularly struck with the open but simple method, in which she tremblingly spoke of the convictions, which the Holy Spirit had wrought in her mind; of the means she had adopted to keep up a decent compliance with the outward forms of godliness, but at the same time, to save herself from the reproach of Methodism; and of her determination that day formed, to renounce herself and the world, and to sue for admission into the Church of Christ.

"I wish I could in her own language, which was in keeping with the qualities of her mind, furnish a recital of her conversion to God, with which she edified us in one of the Love

feasts. She occupied about a quarter of an hour, narrating circumstantially the workings of her mind up to the time of her conversion; had I foreseen her premature departure, I would have endeavoured to fix the sentiments where they would have had a better chance of permanency, than in my treacherous memory. The substance only I can perfectly recal. After adverting to the strivings of the Spirit while at school, and the vacillation of her mind, sometimes cherishing and then attempting to stifle them, she stated what had been up to a certain period, her opinion of Methodism;Her antipathy was very strong, and something of the pride of education, and of intellect, had led her frequently to stigmatize her subsequent associates, as a very ignorant and fanatical people-of course it became a principle

with her, to keep at a distance from its Ministry and shun its ordinancies. Her mind had often been fascinated with a love of worldly pleasures; she could not imagine that religion was the only thing to afford her peace and joy. To use her own expression, 'like a Butterfly,' she was flitting from one object to another in search of happiness; refuge from mental disquiet was often sought in some gay party, where her religious impressions had died away, or her convictions had been stifled. The fear of persecution or of ridicule, had been a great snare to her, and lest she should become 'the mark for scorn to point his moving finger at,' she had often been ashamed to avow the rising interest of religion in her heart; at length her soul was broken down in godly sorrow, she told how her mouth had been stopped in self-vindication and palliation of her faults; how she had resolutely left her sins and her sinful associates, and had anxiously asked that people whom she once