they are poisons, and he is our deadly enemy. If we go on a journey, how many persons we never saw before require us to confide in them, in order that we may be comfortably and pleasantly conveyed to our desired place? In short, as has been already said, we must daily walk by faith in each other, or the business and pleasures of life are at an end. And, as a matter of fact, we do daily confide in all sorts of men. This is admitted to be reasonable. Now, we inquire, must it not be much more reasonable to walk by faith in God? What, though he be invisible? We trust other invisible objects-objects, too, that never afforded us proofs of their existence, as God does continually. What, though we never saw or heard him? We trust others whom we never heard or saw. All men, by their every day conduct, decide that walking by faith is reasonable, so far as men are concerned; and the real question at issue between sinners and the Bible is not the reasonableness of faith, but the reasonableness of extending it to God as well as to men. Oh, strange infatuation-dreadful blindness! Is it surprising that the Scriptures denounce in such strong and unsparing terms the spirit of unbelief as a spirit which makes God a liar, and denies him the confidence which we freely accord to the most unworthy of our fellow-men?

And, oh! how much reason have the best Christians to reprove themselves for this sin. Lord, increase our faith, is the prayer we most need to urge importunately, even after all our experience of the divine faithfulness. Christian parents! are we not specially in danger of this sin, as we see the hopes we had formed concerning our children deferred from year to year, notwithstanding all the blessed and sure promises of our heavenly Father regarding our dear offspring. Oh! for a strong, a lasting faith, To credit what the Almighty saith,

especially while engaged in the arduous process of educating those committed to our trust, that we might cast in the seed, confident of the harvest. HANNAH.

Original.

ENCOURAGEMENT FOR PRAYER.

St. John, v. 1-9.

BY MRS. M. L. GARDINER.

BENEATH Bethesda's shady grove,
A beauteous pool serenely lay;
Unmoved, save by the breath of love,
And calm as summer's opening day.
Around its waters clear and deep,
The wretched and the suffering haste,
Hoping to take the favored leap,
And of its healing virtues taste.

Upon a cloud, with wings outspread,
An angel form delighted flies;
Enters the pool with noiseless tread,
And then ascends his native skies.
His annual visit thus he pays

And lightly moves the limpid pool;
Who in it, first, his body lays,
Of every malady is whole.

Unto its brink from year to year

A suffering cripple weeping came;
Helpless he lay, 'mid hope and fear,
Wretched, forsaken, friendless, lame!
Desponding lest no aid he find

To help him to the troubled pool;
Despairing, till in accents kind,

Jesus inquires, "Wilt thou be whole ?"

"Be whole !" what bliss the words conveyed"Be whole!" what transport filled his breast!

He rose! he leaped! and undismayed,

Through the astonished crowd he pressed.
Mothers, rejoice! the Saviour lives!

Go to the pool from day to day;

His Spirit still he freely gives,

Rejoice, fond mothers, watch and pray.

SAG HARBOR, L. L

LETTERS TO YOUNG WOMEN.-NO. II.

BY REV. JOHN S. C. ABBOTT.

A FEW days after the publication of the first Letter to Young Women, I received a note from a young friend, requesting information respecting the martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas, to whom reference was made in that letter. As the information may be interesting to others also, I give a brief account of their sufferings.

Perpetua and Felicitas were two youthful females who suffered martyrdom in the third century, under the reign of the Emperor Geta. The tragic scene, as described by ancient historians, is one of the most affecting recitals on record, of cruel sufferings and tranquil sublimity.

The father of Felicitas was a pagan, a venerable man of grey hairs. He loved his daughter to adoration, and kissing her hands and bathing her neck with tears, implored her to renounce Christ. "O, my daughter!" entreated the unhappy old man, "have compassion on my grey hairs. Have compassion on thy father, if he is worthy of the name of father. Think of thy mother! thy brother! how can we live without thee? O spare us this disgrace. Do not destroy us all." "What the Lord wills," replies the weeping maiden, "will take place. We are not in our own power, but in

that of God."

The procurator then, with the utmost refinement of barbarian cruelty, ordered her father to be scourged before her eyes, hoping, through the agony of her struggling parent, to compel the daughter to deny her Saviour. And as she heard her father's shriek, and saw the lash cutting its crimson gashes through his quivering flesh, God supported her, and she was sustained through the terrible ordeal.

She was then brought into the vast amphitheatre, crowded with its countless multitude to witness her death. She was there divested of all her clothing that the pangs of wounded

modesty might be added to the physical sufferings through which she had to pass. She was suspended, in the centre of the amphitheatre, in a strong cord net, reaching nearly to the ground, and which, by the application of a slight force, would swing freely to and fro in the spacious arena, encircled by innumerable eyes eager for the sacrifice.

The door of a den was then opened, and a furious bull, previously tortured into rage, with uplifted tail and loud bellowing came bounding into the enclosure. Fiercely pawing the dust into the air, and with eyeballs of fire, he glares around upon the spectators elevated above his reach, until the form of the maiden, suspended before him, arrests his view. The sight redoubles his fury. With head prone to the ground, and filling the arena with his bellowings, he plunges upon her, buries his horn in her side, and tosses her high in the air. Whatever shrieks pain and terror may extort from her lips, are drowned in the exulting shouts of the surrounding idolators. As helpless in the net, she is swung to and fro in the arena, through the violence of the blow, the bull again turns upon her, frantic with rage, and with his hard horns mangles her body and crushes her bones. Thus is she torn and lacerated by the infuriated beast, affording merriment to the still more savage men, till a gladiator enters, and passing a sword through her heart, terminates her sufferings. Her torn and dishonored body is then dragged through the sands of the arena and cast away.

Perpetua was compelled to witness these sufferings of her friend Felicitas, as she waited her turn to pass through the same terrible scene of exposure and of torture. She, however, by the grace of God sustained her calmness, her faith, her firmness. She also was enclosed in the net. She was

also suspended in the arena. The horns of the bull, dripping with the blood of her companion, were soon buried in her side, and her mangled, quivering form, was driven hither and thither before his reiterated assaults, until the sword pierced her heart also, and her lifeless body was dragged to its dishonored grave.

Such was the martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas. They are now doubtless in heaven, among the brightest and the happiest of the heavenly throng. Their sorrows were but for a moment their joys will be eternal. But, reader! how will you feel when, in the day of judgment, you stand by the side of these your sisters? You, perhaps, are rejecting Christ, when a Christian father pleads with tears that you should love him; when Christian friends surround you with their encouragement and their prayers, and when not a finger of opposition is raised. If God requires acknowledgment, even among the bloody scenes of a pagan amphitheatre, what excuse can those render who are now rejecting him? This question merits your most serious attention. From the New York Evangelist.

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A BEAUTIFUL THOUGHT.

NOTHING can lay the foundation for permanent happiness in married life unless it be consistent religious principles. Two hearts, sanctified by divine grace, may unite and flow on through life harmoniously together with nothing to disturb their peace. Two kindred streams which unite and flow on together, mingling their waters, and becoming inseparably one, gliding gently and peaceably on toward the ocean, is one of the most beautiful objects in nature. But two hearts, united in genuine affection, and sanctified by the grace of God, flowing on in the same channel of holy affection, and unitedly seeking the same exalted objects-the glory of God, and the happiness of his creatures-is one of the most beautiful things in the universe.