Page images
PDF
EPUB

EDWARD DEERING.-"As for my death, I bless God I feel and find so much inward joy and comfort to my soul, that if I were put to my choice, whether I would die or live, I would a thousand times rather choose death than life, if it may stand with the holy will of God.”

REV. W. DAY.-"The Bible is nothing to me, but as it reveals to my soul a covenant Jehovah, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. There I sce perfection. When I look at man, when I look at myself, I see nothing but vileness; a rent here, a chasm there. It would drive me to despair. Oh, when," (he wept profusely ;) "when shall I behold Christ as he is, and cast myself at his feet! He has offered me a pledge of this beyond all your imagination can conceive. I have seen him rising before me in all the majesty of the Godhead. The world has shewn me its favors, and has taken them away again. I have enjoyed many tokens of the loving kindness of my God, and I have at other times been stripped of what I most valued; but O my God, my Redeemer, thou hast never failed me !"

REV. THOMAS SCOTT.-"This is heaven begun; I have done with darkness for ever, for ever! Satan is vanquished, and nothing now remains, but salvation with eternal glory—eternal glory!"

PHILLIP J. JENKS.-Just before he expired, one said to him, "How hard it is to die." He replied, "Oh, no, no! easy dying! blessed dying! glorious dying!" Looking up at the clock, he said, "I have experienced more happiness in dying two hours this day, than in my whole life. It is worth a whole life to have such an end as this. I have long desired that I might glorify God in my death; but oh! I never thought that such a poor worm as I could come to such a glorious death."

MR. JOHN HOLLAND-"Now, farewell, world; welcome heaven! The day-star from on high hath visited my heart; oh, speak it when I am gone, and preach it at my funeral! God dwelleth familiarly with man. I feel his mercy; I see his majesty; whether in the body, or out of the body, I cannot tell, God knoweth ; but I see things that are unutterable.”

DR. PAYSON.-Dr. Payson, when dying, said, “My God is in this room-I see him: and oh, how lovely is the sight; how glorious does he appear; worthy of ten thousand hearts, if I

had so many to give." At another time, when his body was racked by terrible suffering, and his cheeks pale, and sunken with disease, he exclaimed, like a warrior returning from the field of triumph-"The battle's fought! the battle's fought! and the victory is won! the victory is won for ever! I am going to bathe in an ocean of purity, and benevolence, and happiness, to all eternity!" At another time, he exclaimed, "The celestial city is fully in view-its glories beam upon me-its breezes fan me-its odours are wafted to me-its music strikes upon my ear, and its spirit breathes into my heart; nothing separates me from it, but the river of death, which now appears as a narrow rill, which may be crossed at a single step, whenever God shall give permission. The Sun of righteousness has been gradually drawing nearer and nearer, appearing larger and larger as he approached; and now he fills the whole hemisphere; pouring forth a flood of glory, in which I seem to float like an insect in the beams of the sun; exulting, yet almost trembling, while I gaze on the excessive brightness, and wondering with unutterable wonder, why God should deign thus to shine upon a sinful worm."-The Last Enemy-by W. Leask.

KILLING WITH KINDNESS.

A young woman in Vermont, married a poor but worthy man against her father's wish. He drove them from his house, and closed his door and heart against them. They came down near Boston, went to work and prospered.

After many years the father had occasion to come to Boston. He concluded to go and see his daughter, expecting a cold reception. His daughter and her husband received him most kindly and lovingly. After staying with them awhile he went to Vermont.

One of his neighbours, hearing where he had been, asked him how his daughter and her husband had treated him?

"I never was so treated in my life before,” said he, weeping. "They have broken my heart-they have killed me; I don't feel as if I could live under it."

"What did they do to you?" asked the neighbour.

66

They loved me to death, and killed me with kindness," said he; "I can never forgive myself for treating so cruelly my own darling child, who loved me so dearly. I feel as if I should die, to think how I grieved her when I spurned her from my door. Heaven bless them, and forgive me my cruelty and injustice to them!"

THE TENDER MERCIES OF POPERY.

ON the 1st. of April 1849, the Palace of the Inquisition was opened to the public. People crowded to see that horrible place, where so many good Christians have been tormented, under the pretext of being heretics. There were then seen the horrid dungeons, where the victims of the Papacy have been incarcerated. There were to be seen in the lower dungeons, which are the worst, the ragged remains of the dresses, not only of men, but of women and children, On the walls are to be read expressions of grief, written with charcoal, and some with blood. A trap-door was to be seen, and a burial-place with human bones. But a subterranean cave occasioned especial horror, covered with remains of bones and earth mixed, including human skulls and skeletons of different forms and sizes, indicating persons of different ages and sexes. The only things which have not been found, with the exception of some things which might have been used for that purpose, are the instruments of torture, which were used to make the guilty confess. All who have seen those remains of clothing and bones, feel justly indignant at the inhumanity of those assassins, who, under the cloak of religious zeal, permitted every kind of cruelty. Would that those who wish to excuse that hellish tribunal, and who do not believe what others say to be truth, would come and see with their own eyes. I wish that the friends and defenders of Popery in England would come and touch these things with their own hands, and then tell me what Papal ministers may not be capable of, when they have the heart to perpetrate such barbarities!-Dr. Achilli.

POETRY.

NEW YEAR'S WISHES.

IF any wrong or sadness
Rankle within thy breast,
May this New Year bring gladness,
And hush wild thoughts to rest!
If looks, once kind and tender,
Have dimmed their wonted ray,
May Mercy's angel-splendour
Rekindle them to-day.

If the choir of household voices
Have ceased its gentle word,
And thine ear no more rejoices,
Smit by the jarring chord.
Oh! may this blessed even
Awake the sleeping strain,
And the love and peace of heaven
Make glad thy hearth again.
Oh! for each sweet note, broken
By passion's stormy tone;
For every cold word spoken
Unto a loving one.-

-For sunny brows o'er clouded

By scorn's unanswering face;

For feelings darkly shrouded,

Where they should find no place.—

-This new year is anointed

Divinely to atone;

Seize, seize the hour appointed,

To bind all hearts in one!

Wherefore is space thus given,

At

But that the weary breast,
peace with earth and heaven,
May find its home and rest.

MARY S.

CAIN.

On through the drear

And formless void, he wanders. Pile on pile

Heaped hideous; amongst rock-shapes of fear
He moves-but halts awhile

Amidst that vast

And rolling chaos, as if Vulcan-might

Had up from Earth's dark entrails cast
The giant brood of Night.

As were some ocean

-Lashed to fierce fury by the Typhoon's breath-
Congealed, when in its maddest motion
Into a granite death.
After a while

He gains a summit-(pcering through the maze
Of sea-like rocks, as a safe isle)—
And thence he strains his gaze.

And lo! his view

Far to the south, the Hill of Eden bounds,
'Thwart the horizon, with its blue
And distance-looming mounds.

No entrance there;

The glory of the ever-whirling sword
Recals the day of wild despair

And the Lord's banning word.

Where shall he dwell?

A murderer's soul is guilty Terror's throne:
Breaks he the solitary spell?

He cannot dwell alone.

The haunts of men?

The thick-thronged city, and the busy strife?
Not so-The curse of blood-heaven's band-
Wat heth his crime-stained life.

Where then? The mark

Of heaven is on him-In the day see how

'Tis swart and mystic, while glares in the dark

The fire-sign on his brow!

S. X.

« PreviousContinue »