"True, my child; yet we need not cherish unholy phantasies. How long shall thy vain thoughts lodge within thee?" asks Jehovah. If the thought of foolishness be sin, we must obey the apostle's injunction to ' pray God that the thought of our heart may be forgiven us.' 'Rejoice O! young man in thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, but remember, that for all these things, God shall bring thee into judgment.' How often did our Lord in his discourses, detect and reprove, the very thoughts of his hearers."

"I would try any thing to ensure right thoughts, if I knew a remedy."

"Would you, my dear?" said grandpapa, in his most persuasive tone; "then try the Psalmist's remedy. 'I hate vain thoughts, but thy law do I love;' store your mind with the precepts and the promises of revelation, and there will soon be no room for evil thoughts."

"If I had been among Jesus Christ's hearers upon earth, I should have been afraid of his scrutiny of my thoughts," said Henry.

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"So should we be afraid now, my boy;" continued grandpapa, were it not for his own blessed assurance, that God's thoughts towards us, are thoughts of peace, and not of evil; they cannot be reckoned up-they are so numerous, and oh! how precious are they to the Christian! We were guilty, and God thought of a ransom for us; we were alienated from him by wicked works, but he first loved us, and sent his Son to die for our justification. We may be poor and needy, yet the Lord thinketh upon us. Who does not admire the child-like faith with which the Hebrew captive during the precarious favor of his heathen master, pleads, 'Think upon me for good, oh, my God!' You would feel highly honored, did our earthly sovereign bestow such thought upon your individual welfare, as does the High and Mighty One who inhabiteth eternity. He remembers us in our low estate; he chooses our inheritance for us; ap

points the bounds of our habitation; comforteth us in all tribulation; strengthens us with strength in our heart; ordereth all our steps; guides us by his counsel; and will eventually bestow upon his faithful followers greater glory than ever it entered into the heart of man to conceive." E. W. P.

PRECEPTIVE BIOGRAPHY.

JOHN BETHUNE! Who ever heard of John Bethune? Who was he, when and where did he live, and what did he ever achieve to earn a Biography iu the pages of the Youths' Magazine?

Born and brought up in obscurity, "working with his own hands," a farm-servant, a forester, a weaver, a breaker of stones upon the road-he was perhaps scarcely "heard of half-a-mile from home;" and yet his life is eminently full of instruction, and his example worthy of imitation.

John Bethune was born in 1812, at a place called The Mount, at Moniemail, Fifeshire, where his father was farm-servant. The year following he was removed to Lochend, where nearly the whole of his remaining life was spent ; and though he died at the early age of twenty-seven, that life was one of the most interesting, remarkable, and triumphant struggles against poverty, sickness, misfortune, and discouragement, to be found even among the annals of Scotland's worthiest names. Trained from his infancy to endure hardness; severely honest, indomitably persevering and industrious, nobly independent, singleminded and disinterested, he rose not only by his own unaided efforts, but in spite of vexation and losses that would have broken the hearts of most men, to a status which many individuals in the higher ranks of life might envy, and left behind him a pleasing testimony that, with all his mental gettiug, he had attained that best of all understanding-the knowledge and love of God, and the habitual practice of a sound and healthy Christianity.

At the age of six years, he was sent to school at Dunbog, primed only with a few questions from the Assembly's Shorter Catechism, and part of a Psalm." The result was most unhappy, for he returned home so much dissatisfied with what

he had seen and heard, that a head-ache was the consequence, and he went back no more. But the severity and caprice of the pedagogue only gave place to the kind and judicious training of the mother.

"From this time onward," says his brother and biographer, "his mother endeavoured, as she had done before, to teach him reading; and the only education which he received besides, was such desultory lessons in writing and arithmetic as the present writer, who was then but very indifferently qualified for the task, could give him. At first he was rather a dull scholar for a long time his penmanship was uncommonly awkward, and in arithmetic he never could be persuaded to proceed beyond multiplication, from the idea, as he said, that he had as much counting as would enable him to count all the money he was ever likely to have.' This was, indeed, true; but he was afterwards convinced of the incorrectness of the opinion by which he was then governed.”

From these rough and unpromising materials, however, a noble character was to be hewn out. The stern stuff of which our young friend, in common with so many of his countrymen, was made, soon met with proof. He had gone with a companion somewhat older than himself to herd cows. Insensible to fear, his less courageous companion had urged him to turn back an animal which had strayed beyond its proper bounds.

Though the animal was known to be dangerous, he obeyed; but the moment he came before her, she attacked him. He defended himself with a switch, till it was broken in pieces, and then endeavoured to fly; but stumbling over a large stone, he fell in turning, and before he could rise again, the enraged animal took him upon her horns, and then, with a shake of her head, threw him down among the stones. She was on the point of repeating the same operation, while he, stunned and stupified by the fall, could offer no resistance, and it is probable his life might have been terminated here, had not another cow come running forward, at a most critical moment, and attacking his assailant, drove her off."

Severely wounded and covered with blood, our hero, of tender years, consented at the request of his companion to

remain afield till night; and, even on his return home, maintained a dignified reserve upon the point.

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With the thorough independence of his countrymen he was hard at work before his thirteenth year. 'During the winter of 1823-4, to assist in supporting himself, he broke stones on the road between Lindores and Newburgh, along with his biographer. He was then under thirteen years of age; and when, from the intense cold which occasionally prevailed, and the lack of motion to which his employment subjected him, his legs and feet were almost frozen; instead of complaining, and making this an excuse for running home, as a number of boys would have done, I was frequently amused in no ordinary degree by the droll observations which he made, and the wild gambols to which he sometimes had recourse to restore the natural warmth to his benumbed extremities."

"Breaking stones, however," continues his brother, " was found to be the reverse of a comfortable way of earning his subsistence. The weaving business-particularly

that branch of it which embraces the cotton trade-was then in a prosperous condition. A boy, with whom he was intimately acquainted, had gone to learn that occupation in the previous autumn, and to it my brother's attention was now directed. An industrious weaver was then said to earn 2s. a-day; the most which ordinary men could make by breaking stones was 1s. 3d.; and after making an allowance for two years of an apprenticeship, during which he might have the half of his earnings, and victual himself, if he chose, he, as well as his friends, believed that it would be for his advantage to learn that craft. The necessary arrangements were accordingly made, and on the 4th of March, 1824, he went as an apprentice to a weaver then residing in the village of Collessie, which was distant nearly three miles from his home."

Stimulated by a praiseworthy desire to render his father, who had now lost his situation, more comfortable, our young adventurer conceived the idea of commencing business on his own account. "By the most desperate economy, about £10. had been previously saved to purchase looms, and other articles appropriate to weaving; and at Martimas, 1825, he commenced that

business on his own account, with the writer of this sketch as an apprentice. The £10. was fairly expended in procuring a proper supply of utensils. The future, however, was still bright, and his hopes of independence were high-but a sad disappointment was before him.”

A re-action took place in trade, and extensive failures followed; the business was given up, and our young friend was glad to find employment at a shilling a day. Nothing is too high for the Scottish mind-nothing too low, but dependence or dishonesty, and he went to work cheerfully, till a new and glorious field opened before him.

"As there is almost always some predisposing cause in those instances where the mind takes a decided turn, it may not be altogether out of place to notice here some circumstances which tended to draw his attention to literature. In the summer of 1825, a student from the College of St. Andrew's, who was then struggling hard for his education, tried to teach a small school in one of the houses at Lochend. He was an excellent reciter of poetry, and had stored his memory with a number of the best pieces of Scott, Byron, Moore, Campbell, and others. With these he frequently amused and delighted his acquaintances during his leisure hours, a considerable part of which were passed with us. Our young friend had an opportunity of hearing him on the Saturday evenings, and also during the harvest season, when he was at home. From hearing these pieces recited, he soon learned to recite them himself, and then it was but another step on the road to try to imitate them.”

We can scarcely suppress a smile at the self complacency of this step. A child of fourteen, illiterate and without a moment's leisure from the most wearying manual employ, resolving to become an author! But impossibility is a word unknown to the vocabulary of such men. Scarcely able to write at all, and no greater proficient in orthography, he had in him, even at this early period, the clements of a thoughtful and original author. But he was far too wise to look on these indications as a call to renounce the severe and continuous labors of the workshop or the field. In the winter of 1827, he accepted employment in clearing out a watercourse, and two years afterwards was engaged by the overseer on the estate of Inchrye "to work as