if they are saved from exercising them on subjects injurious to a healthy tone of mind and fatal to religious principles. The talent may not be of a high order, but it is true to nature, and will find a response in many hearts, and touch a chord which metaphysical reasoning would never touch."

Her conscientiousness and wisdom are equally exhibited in the record she makes on October 13th :-"I am sometimes sorely harassed with the reflection that I have sinned when I cannot remember how. Sometimes the circumstance, but not its particulars, comes to my memory, and I torture myself with brooding over what I cannot find out,—at one time fancying the uneasiness I experience to be temptation, at another condemnation. Whatever it may be, I bring it all to the cross, and find my burden grows light while gazing on the face of him who hung there for my transgression." Having had the inestimable privilege of a religious training, Miss S. R— had long been the subject of earnest spiritual aspirations. By a law of our social nature Miss Hessel now felt solicitious she should experience a consummation similar to her own. Apprehending her obstacle to be one common to penitents, she says, October 24th :-" I think I understand your difficulty. You are afraid to come and call God 'Father' in your present state. You think it would be presumption. You think there is nothing in your present state of feeling analagous to that of a child. But you must first trust, and then feel. If you feel ever so much, you will never be one jot more welcome than you are just now."

"I cannot depend upon my frames and feelings," she writes on November 10th, "the life I now live in the flesh must be by the faith of the Son of God. I am tempted to think God requires of me a service which I am not in a state of health to perform. It must be a temptation, for my loving and merciful Father would not do that. He knoweth my frame; he remembereth I am dust. Oh! how

1850]

COMFORT FROM THE ATONEMENT.

55

grateful to my poor heart is this declaration. My prayers seem so feeble, my mind so wandering, that I have great difficulty it fixing it on any subject for many minutes at a time; and when I kneel at the footstool of mercy, I can scarcely express a want, and yet I want everything. Oh! how much of sin and infirmity clings to my holiest offerings. I should indeed despair did I not look up to God, through Christ, and feel that he regarded me in the face of his Son. Sometimes I see and contemplate my own sinfulness, and the vileness of my service, and then for one overwhelming

moment

'I catch the sight of Him

Before whose glance the heavens grow dim.' But Jesus comes between the awful majesty of heaven and the worm of earth, and shows himself as the manifestation of the Father's love to me. Yes! holy, and majestic, and fearful as is the character of God, he loves all the creatures of his care, and more especially those to whom his Son has become the acknowledged and received embodiment of his eternal love. Surely the language of my heart ought to be that of exultation. And yet through bodily suffering and consequent mental depression, my cry too often, is 'O Lord, I am oppressed, undertake thou for me.""

December 25th :-" To-day has been one of no ordinary trial. After a sleepless night-one of intense pain and ceaseless tossings-my nervous debility rendered me doubly unfitted for the severe mental exercises I have been called upon to endure. It seemed but the climax to a long series of chafing annoyances and wearying trial, which the grace of God alone could have enabled me to sustain with anything like composure. My grace is sufficient for thee,' has been to me a bright star in many a dark moment. And never did I feel the fulness of that blessed promise, 'He giveth more grace,' as I have felt it to-day. More grace-ever more, every accumulation of trial only heightens the value

without diminishing the treasury of that grace-ever more. "I have dwelt much to-day on a thought of Elihu Burrit's, the sense of which is, that when the history of hovels and garrets shall be published before an assembled world, at that last grand audit where all must appearwhen private histories, hid from the world in the unnoticed circle of domestic life, shall be brought out and scrutinized, and rewarded by inflexible and unerring justice-many a character, despised and neglected by men, will shine forth. with a glory and brightness, a sublimity of true Christian heroism, before which all that the world esteems noble and heroic will fade away and be as nothing. The meekness and patience, the long suffering, the silent yet ceaseless aspirations after conformity to his likeness who was meek and lowly in heart, which the world heeds not, will then be seen to have an everlasting record, and an everlasting reward. "Some spirits seem formed to cope with great trials, and to overcome them,-to gather strength and flourish when the storm is high and the tempest furious, while the lesser perplexities of life chafe, and blight, and wither them. Such I thought was mine. But when the light of divine truth shone more clearly on my mind, and I was led from my heart to say,—

6

'Whate'er my Father wills is best ;'

when, by faith, I caught but a momentary glance of the future, and saw heaven opened,' and beheld placed in juxtaposition the light afflictions' and the far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory,' and felt that infinite wisdom arranged every link of the intricate chain, and infinite love watched with unwearying eye the purifying process-then I knew that just the very trials most calculated to benefit me now, and add to my reward hereafter, were such as God, in very faithfulness, had allotted me. pray that I may distil from each one all the salutary influence it is designed to exercise over me. I trust I shall. I do feel to

1851]

DIVINE CULTURE.

57

hang with more of self-abandonment on Christ, as my Saviour, and to look up to my heavenly Father with more child-like dependence."

After some days of suffering, from which she was recovering, she writes to Miss W, of Skipton, January 21st, 1851-"I sometimes think that some of us would never be made meet for heaven at all, if we were not made 'meet through suffering.' How diversified are the modes of cultivation which God employs, and how suited are all his means to our different temperaments. Just as a skilful husbandman employs that species of cultivation which is best adapted to the soil, so our heavenly Father applies such culture, as shall be best suited to cause us to yield fruit which shall redound to his glory, and to our happiness in a future world.

"I have just been reading a very interesting work, called 'Ellen Walsingham, or Growth in Grace.' Should you meet with it, you will do well to read it. I am also reading 'Festus.' It is an extraordinary production, with some splendid passages in it, but its principles or notions are such an heterogeneous mass of error that they destroy much of the pleasure. The drift of the poem is this: all spirit will finally be absorbed in God, and last of all, the devils themselves will be pardoned, and thus absorbed; so that God shall be sole-existent, as he was ere the work of creation began. Fatalism and unalterable decrees are prominent notions in the work.

"I have lately been reading a work called 'Father Darcy,' which exhibits the secret workings of that abominable system of priestcraft, which resulted in the gigantic and horrible scheme of the 'Gunpowder Plot.' How noble minds and lofty intellects-great spirits which not a world could bow -souls capable of angel-deeds of mercy, and mighty acts of heroism when rightly influenced and directed-such as Catesby's and Sir Everard Digby's-how such mighty spirits

were perverted, corrupted, and schooled by Jesuits sent from Rome, who taught obedience to the church as a supreme virtue, until their minds concocted that foul deed and black assassination, which the special providence of God alone averted. Oh! Rome, Rome! faithfully have thy priesthood served the arch-enemy in performing the foulest crimes, in making every holy thing subserve thy interest by the most unhallowed means."

"I am wondering how you get on," she writes on Feb. 3rd, to a young friend-Mr. B- who had recently left the village to occupy a new but important sphere of usefulness, "I hope you are happy in your present lot. An inspired, and therefore unerring, writer affirms that 'godliness with contentment is great gain.' I trust you possess both.these in an eminent degree. How much we often make our happiness dependent on circumstances, when it ought to be wholly independent of them. Oh, had we but correct views of the great end of human existence—were we always careful to fill up the outline marked for us by infinite wisdom, how little of the canker and rust which so often corrode our spirits, should we contract! My own mind has for some time been painfully affected by a sense of having trifled with that precious boon-Time. How little we think of its value ! Oh how sad to sit at twilight time—that season when thought, bidden or unbidden, will come and reflect on hours mis-spent-hours that not a world could buy back-which are chronicled in the archives of heaven, whence no recording angel's pen may be permitted to blot them out. Truly

'Tis a mournful story,

Thus on the ear of pensive eve, to tell

Of morning's firm resolves, the vanished glory;

Hope's honey left to wither in the bell,

And plants of mercy dead, that might have bloomed so well.'

But a yet more mournful story may fall on our ears and