home. Her people were my people. Her God was my God. I loved her songs; her solemn days; her sacramental feasts. My mountain stood strong-and I fell. O, thou pitying Son of God, whose weary foot, eighteen hundred years ago, paced the roads of Judea and the streets of Jerusalem, soughtest thou ever in thy farthest journey, a heart so pierced with sorrow and stained with sin as mine? Thanks to grace sovereign and unsearchable, the lost was found, and I live to sing recovering mercy.

Let me mention a little incident not without instruction. Christ made use of the crowing of a cock to awaken Peter. He employed the ticking of a watch to startle me. I sat musing without aim, amid the deep desolateness of my backsliding, in the silence of an August twilight. The only sound that fell upon my ear was the ticking of my watch; I seemed alone with it, apart with it from the universe. It ticked on solemnly, steadily, reproachfully almost. It became like a thing of life. It had been my companion for twenty years; and, from a mere senseless mechanism, it became, through the condition of my mind, a voice-a whispering spirit-a messenger from the departed Past. Its slow moving hands held my eye like the beck of a father's ghost in the imagination of Hamlet. Never man spake like this watch. What hours, months, and years, we have passed together! It had told me thousands of times the hour of prayer; it had told me of the revival meeting; of the funeral gathering; of the solemn conference; of the sacramental feast; of the moment to take the vows of God upon me; and I had obeyed it. Now it pointed to the hour of silent prayer, and I knelt not; to the meeting for conference and supplication, and I went not; it ticked on, mournfully telling off moments more precious than pearls, and I was a backslider. It became intolerable. Every tick was a stroke of doom, that came booming from some far off belfry or alarm station on the outskirts of time and the universe; and a pressure and a horror, as of an hour teeming with big fates and eternal retribution, crushed me; and every lost opportunity, every misspent hour, seemed

to come up from the dim past, look me sorrowfully in the face, and pass away for ever! It was the hour of conviction. I trust subsequent hours were those of sincere and accepted repentance.

Reader, whoever thou art! beware of abusing time. It seems to thee now, perhaps, the most noiseless of things, gliding away inaudibly as the movement of stars; but neglected too long, the faintest stroke of the time-piece falling on the dull ear of death, shall sound clear and awful as the knell of a world, and all lost hours shall meet together and shriek around thee like murdered men. Be a devoted Christian, make friends of the hours of life, and as it closes, they shall chant thee to sleep with sweet memories on the bosom of Jesus. THE FOUND ONE.

Original.

THE POOR MAN'S APPEAL.

SHALL I relate an incident which I received from the lips of my father in early childhood, and which may in part account for those peculiarly tender and delightful recollections of the covenant which a faithful God made to his ancient people, sustained through ages of unbelief and spiritual darkness, and has so gloriously fulfilled in the experience of every believing disciple? The Christian remembers it under the pressure of life's toils; the parent remembers it through hope and sorrow; in the hour when the child of prayer and of promise breaks away from the God of his youth, rushing fearlessly on, the covenant, suspended like the bow on the cloud, brings peace to his agonized heart. But it is one thing to be cheered by recollections of this gracious covenant, and another, rightly to understand its conditions, and our own obligations in reference to it.

My father was a man who would go far out of his way to obtain a single additional evidence of covenant faithfulness,

or another argument in favor of his own strong belief in the unchangeable promise of Jehovah.

Providential Care, the theme on which he loved to dwell in health and life, was the dying song which floated from his lips as the last strings were severed which bound him to those who were soon to be the widow and the orphans. But what a rich treasure of facts did his busy and fertile mind glean up along his earthly pilgrimage in favor of that strong covenant, and how did he love to visit the poor and the sorrowful, to gather from their humble histories the tokens of God's love! How often was he at the dying bed of the Christian, to witness the glory of that faithfulness which the Redeemer displays in the soul's utmost need. But these were not all; he had richer treasures still, laid away for his own passage through that valley. Promises full, expressive, complete-promises for himself, his children, his all, for the present and future, "exceeding great and precious;" clustering around his fainting soul, by a sweet and holy ministry, they wafted him away to endless fruition.

The story is a very simple one, taken from the annals of a poor man in the State of Maine. My father turned aside from his journey, on purpose to visit one who loved the promises of God, and had often received the reward of his faith. This poor man was frequently reduced to great necessity, with nothing to feed his hungry children. On one of these trying occasions, when no longer able to bear the grief of his family, he took his hat and went forth to the field. In a retired spot he knelt, and thus he prayed :-" Oh Lord! the God of Abraham, of Isaac and Jacob, the God of the Covenant, ordered in all things and sure. Thou didst permit me, unworthy as I am, to take hold of that covenant, and through all the years of my life thou hast never forsaken me! ways hast thou been faithful, nothing wanting. On my part I promised likewise to be faithful to thee, my God! Thou knowest I have often miserably failed, and in all come short -but I appeal to thee, oh my God, if thou hast not seen an honest endeavor to do thy will and to please thee continually,

Al

and now I call on thee to fulfil thy part of the holy cove nant, and to feed my famishing children!" At these words an eagle flew over the head of this confiding, but bold disciple who had ventured so near the throne, and at his feet dropped a fish, sufficiently large to satisfy present wants. He took it up and went home.

Now, there is nothing remarkable in the fact that he who has said," Command ye me," should have answered the prayer of this poor man; nor was it, that he should plead earnestly for his suffering family. But to say, "Thou knowest that I have heartily and continually endeavored to please thee ;”— this was the point of the story which so deeply influenced my youthful mind. How many of us can make such an appeal?

How many of us have trained our children for God as we promised to do? Let us examine this question, and inquire if, in the integrity of our heart, we have continually led them away, as we promised, from the maxims, and follies, and customs of an evil world; if we have faithfully endeavored to fulfil our part of the Holy Covenant?

Rochester, Mass.

Original.

LETTER TO A FRIEND IN AFFLICTION.

EVER since our last sad meeting in Newark, my very dear friend, I have thought much of you in your loneliness, and have longed to express to you my deep sympathy in your sorrow. The hand of our Father in heaven has indeed been laid heavily upon you, in thus writing your house and your heart desolate. I have remembered you frequently before that "blood-bought Mercy Seat," where thoughts are most ef fectual; and have asked that, in this time "of need" you might find God "a very present help." "The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous runneth into

safe." My dear friend, permit me to ask, have you ever learned by your own experience that—

"He who hath made his refuge God,

Hath found a most secure abode."

Have you learned the sweetness of the assurance recorded in Psalm xxvii. 5? "For in the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion: in the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me; he shall set me upon a rock." Have you made the language of the sweet Psalmist of Israel your own? "Be merciful unto me, oh God, be merciful unto me, for my soul trusteth in thee: yea, in the shadow of thy wings will I make my refuge, until these calamities be overpast" (Psalms lvii. 1). I would fain hope that it is so. I greatly desire that it may be. Oh, that I may so write and pray as to bear some humble part in helping forward this most desirable, this most needful result.

I need not speak to you of the uncertainty or the insufficiency of earthly good; nor yet of the necessity of that new birth without which, as our Saviour assures us, we cannot see the kingdom of God. I need not commend to you the Bible as a revelation from heaven, nor the outward privileges of the sanctuary, with which you have been from your childhood familiar. But I may speak to you of the claims of Christ. We are of the number to whom it is said, "Ye are not your own; ye are bought with a price;" "not with corruptible things, as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ" (1 Pet. i. 18, 19). We are they who ought to be able to exclaim with the Apostle: "For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead; and that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again” (2 Cor. v. 14, 15). And what is it to live for Christ? You, dear sir, know what it is "to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows;" to plan, to labor for the comfort of a beloved wife;-so to identify her happiness with your own, as to render it impossible for you to rejoice unless she shared