only turn and go to sleep again, and so become conviction-proof-can sleep in the midst of a thousand calls. Take heed of putting by conviction; it is bad freezing again, after a thaw. Let not this call be lost after all the rest. What effect it will have I know not, but I have delivered my soul.

HOW TO BEGIN THE NEW YEAR.

LET us begin the year with solemn reflection-and say, with Job, "When a few years are come, I shall go the way whence I shall not return." Let us not only believe this, but think of it, and feel the importance of the sentiment. Yes, in a little time I shall be no more seen. How-where-shall I be disposed of? The seasons will return as before; but the places that now know me will know me no more for ever. Will this be a curse or a blessing? If I die in my sins, I shall return no more to my possessions and enjoyments, to the call of mercy, to the throne of grace, to the house of prayer! If I die in the Lord, I shall, O blessed impossibility! return no more to these thorns and briers, to this vain and wicked world, to this aching head, to this throbbing heart, to these temptations and troubles, and sorrows and sins.

Let us begin the year with self-inspection and say, with the chief butler, "I do remember my faults this day.' We are prone to think of the failings of our fellow-creatures, and often imagine, because we are free from their faults, that we are faultless. But we may have other faults; we may have worse; and while a mote is in our brother's eye, a beam may be in our own. Let us be open to conviction; let us deal faithfully with our own hearts; let us not compare ourselves with others, and especially the more vile of our fellow-creatures, but with our advantages, with our knowledge, with our professions, with the law of God.

Let us begin the year with a determination to abandon whatever appears sinful-and say, with Elihu, "If I have done iniquity, I will do no more." Should the evil course, or the evil passion, solicit, let it plead in vain, while the Saviour-Judge says, "If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell."

Begin the year with pious and per

sonal dedication-and say, with David, "Lord, I am thine, save me." Through him, who is the way, yield yourselves unto God. It is your reasonable service. He has infinite claims to you. You will never be truly your own till you are his.

Begin the year with relative religion; and if the worship of God has never been established in your family, now commence it and say, with Joshua, "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." A family without prayer is like a house without a roof. It is uncovered and exposed and we know who has threatened to pour out his fury upon the families that call not upon his name. Begin the year with a fresh concern to be useful - and ask, with Saul of Tarsus, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" Let me look at my condition, my resources, my opportunities. How can I glorify God, and promote the welfare of my fellow-creatures? Is there not a Bible to spread? Are there not missionaries to support? Are there none perishing for lack of knowledge that I can myself instruct? Have I no irreligious neighbours to reclaim? Are there no poor to relieve? No widows and fatherless to visit?

Begin the year with more arrangement in the conduct of your affairs-and resemble Ezra and his brethren, who "did according to the eustom, as the duty of every day required." God has said, "Let everything be done decently and in order." Much of your comfort will arise from regularity in your meals, in your devotions, in your callings; and your piety will be aided by it.

Have a

place to receive everything, an end to simplify it, a rule to arrange it. Leave nothing for the morrow that ought to be discharged to-day. Sufficient for each period will be its own claims; and your mind ought to be always at liberty to attend to fresh engagements.

Finally. Time-this short, this uncertain, this all-important time-upon every instant of which eternity depends, will not allow of our trifling away any of its moments. Resolve, therefore, to redeem it. Gather up its fragments, that nothing be lost. Especially rescue it from needless sleep; and if you have hitherto accustomed yourself to the shameful indulgence of lying late in bed, begin the new year with the habit of early rising; by which you will promote your health and improvement of every kind, and live much longer than others in the same number of days-and say, with David,

STORMS ON LIFE'S DARK WATERS.

FANCY generally sketches her pictures in light, or at least so disposes the sunshine and shadow, as to form one harmonious blending, which we love to contemplate. The pencillings of truths are more deeply and darkly drawn, too frequently, alas! without any cheering ray, save that which the lone star of hope throws out, as a beacon, amid the surrounding gloom. Thus, again and again, when imagination has been revelling in some scene of repose, on the wide sea of human life, the finishing stroke of stern reality would reveal in the distance a cloud like to a man's hand, or a billow bounding onward, bearing the wreck of joys which just before seemed destined to cloudless skies and placid waters. Such were the musings suggested by that poetically beautiful, but mournfully true sentiment, "There are storms on life's dark waters."

I see Childhood, innocent Childhood, beside a font which bears on its bosom a toy ship gently guided in its movements by the influence of a magnet. As he gazes on that, which he would fain believe to be the effects of his own skill, he dreams not of the wintry day that will congeal those tiny waves, nor of the cloud that, sooner or later, will mantle in darkness the sunny sky reflected there; but truth says, even to laughing Childhood, "There are storms on life's dark waters."

On a lake, where

"The silver light, with quivering glance, Played o'er the waters' still expanse," a skiff is gliding. Thoughtless Youth is there, lulled into forgetfulness by the soft ripplings of the tide, that is bearing his fragile bark onward. Yonder vista is the opening to a deeper channel and more dangerous waves; but he, all absorbed with the present, thinks not of an adverse wind or reflux tide. Shuddering, I turned away, for it needeth not a prophetic eye to discern that, ere long, he will prove that "There are storms on life's dark waters."

Manhood, as thou standest by that gallant prow, why is thy countenance

stern, and thy brow knit with the indications of rebellious thought? Is there no music in the pensive wailings of the wind through the set sails and tightened cordage? Why dost thou tremble at the lightning's flash, and why art thou silent when the thunders roar? Of what are they the harbingers, that thou shouldest long for a hiding place? Oh! he knows that it is the dark spirits of the tempest that are marshalling the elements against him, and soon he is to experience that "There are storms on life's dark waters."

Yonder vessel has cast anchor; Age is reclining there, regardless of the helm that has safely guided his once stately, but now weather-beaten bark, so near its final resting-place. Its "silver cords" are loosening; the sails flap idly to the winds; and but one more mandate will echo through them, that will consign all to oblivion. What do the rent sails and splintered masts tell of? What voice have those creaking beams and sundering planks? What do the dirge-like sounds of the waves closing over them proclaim? All, all, give back one answer, "There are storms on life's dark waters.'

Childhood, Youth, Manhood, Age, venture not on the ocean of life without a heavenly pilot, a sacred compass, an anchor cast within the veil, and a passport to the haven of rest beyond; for "There are storms on life's dark waters."

TWICE DEAD.

"They are spots in your feasts of charity, when they feast with you; feeding themselves without fear; clouds they are without water, carried about of winds; trees whose fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots."JUDE.

WHEN is a church twice dead and plucked up by the roots?

They are once dead when there is no spiritual life in the members; when their services are merely formal; when one attends social or public meetings because another does, or because their pastor or their brethren will notice their absence; where no personal effort is made for the salvation of the impenitent, and no interest is felt in their own sanctification; where their zeal, so far as they have any, is for their own church as their own, rather than as Christ's church; when their interest in a sermon is that it may please men, not that it may please and glorify God. Such a church is dead, and its fruit, if ever it bore any, is withering.

When, in addition to this, its members are not only dead so far as spirituality is

considered, but when they dislike to hear their own condition portrayed, or urged on their attention; when they are restive under appeals to wakeful devotion and self-denying labour; when such truth as Jesus preached in relation to cherished sin-"If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, because it is better to enter into life maimed, than to be cast into hell fire;" when, in order to please them, the sins of life must not be noticed at all, or noticed in such a form that there is a graceful slide to a lower note, this kind of antipathy of heart to plain gospel truth, denotes that they are twice dead.

If a church in such a state does not repent and do its first works, there is danger that the candlestick will be removed out of its place, or that the Spirit will entirely withdraw, and leave the church with the mere selfish and worldly form, instead of the power and purity of the Gospel.

"Brethren, it is high time to wake out of sleep."

THE GULF OF ETERNITY.

We see that our youthful joys were but this morning; we see them withered ere 'tis night-withered, to be green no more. The grass can be turned in one hour to withered hay, but hay can never return to its former freshness. We look back on our early joys, and say, they are a dream when one awaketh." How short was the vision, and whither has it fled! We were just preparing to live, but now we have awoke, and found that we have

as

"In

nothing to do but to prepare to die; for what has happened to the joys of life will shortly happen to life itself. the morning it flourisheth and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth' in the grave. We have already passed the greater part of life's comforts; every hour is carrying us still farther from them. We cannot return; but an irresistible current is bearing us down into the gulf of eternity. There is no return-there is no stop. It will be but a moment, and we must go to our long home, and leave the mourners to go about the streets. We cannot be younger, but shall soon be dead; and on a dying bed we shall feel the truth of our text, and the propriety of its figure more than All our life will seem but a day;

ever.

and having passed the short day of dreams and shadows, we shall disappear. We shall take an eternal leave of earth, and wing our way to the bar of God. The places which now know us, will know us no more. Our lands and houses will go into other hands. Strangers will occupy our substance, and walk over our graves without knowing that we are buried there. Our names will be forgotten on earth. The world will go on as before. The sun will rise and set as usual. Mirth and diversion will be as bright as ever. None will take thought of our pleasures or pains, while we shall be either mounting the regions of life, and soaring high in salvation, or shrieking to the ear of hell, and sinking in the pit that has no bottom.

"It is a wisdom that is pleasing to God, and useful to the world, for a due notice to be taken of rare things, wherein we have incontestible proofs of an invisible world, and of the interest it hath in human affairs."

THOSE of our readers conversant with the history of New England, are familiar with the name of Dr. Cotton Mather, which has become a household word amongst that great and wonderful people. This excellent man was destined to occupy a place of great prominence and usefulness; in and amidst the many things he wrote and the things he achieved for the public good, notwithstanding a most efficient discharge of a heavy pastorship, the greatest was his "Church History of New England," a work of much labour, and on which he seems to have staked his reputation. Happily for accuracy of

information, he began in time, whilst everything of importance which had occurred could either be opposed by documentary evidence or by living witnesses. And hence we find the venerable John Higginson testifying, that while he himself had been sixty years in the ministry, and was consequently conversant with almost every thing which had taken place in the colony, having read much of the history of the empire, he could certify its entire accuracy, as to "substance, end, and scope." This remarkable history comprises a number of very interesting facts, many of them at which, perhaps, the wisdom of this world, and even the worldly wisdom of some portions of the living church, will be disposed to laugh. Be it so: the facts are

worthy of record; they were most of them believed by large numbers of the best of men, and all of them attested, as far, we conceive, as anything can be attested, by human evidence.

EXTRAORDINARY APPARITION OF A BROTHER.

Strange premonitions of death approaching, are matters of such a frequent occurrence in history, that one is ready now to look upon them as no more than matters of common course. The learned know that Suetonius hardly lets one of his twelve Cæsars die without them; and the vulgar talk of them as things happening every day amongst their smaller neighbours.

Even within a fortnight of my writing this, there was a physician who sojourned within a furlong of my own house; this physician, for three nights together, was miserably distressed with dreams of his being drowned. On the third of these nights his dreams were so troublesome, that he was cast into extreme sweats, by struggling under the imaginary water. With the sweats yet upon him he came down from his chamber, telling the people of the family what it was that so discomposed him. Immediately there came in two friends, that asked him to go a little way with them in a boat upon the water; he was at first afraid of gratifying the desire of his friends, because of his late presages; but it being a very calm time, he recollected himself, "Why should I mind my dreams, or mistrust the Divine Providence?" He went with them, and before night, by a thunderstorm suddenly coming up, they were all three of them drowned.

I have just now enquired into the truth of what I have thus related; and I can assert it.

But apparitions after death are things which, when they occur, have more strangeness in them. And yet they have been often seen in this land particularly persons that have died abroad at sea, have, within a day after their death, been seen by their friends in their houses at home. The sights have occasioned much notice and much discourse at the very time of them, and records have been kept of the time (reader, I write but what hath fallen within my own personal observation), and it hath been afterwards found that they died near that very time when they thus appeared.

I will, from several instances which I have known of this thing, single out one, that shall have in it much of demonstration, as well as of particularity.

It was on the 2nd of May, in the year 1687, that a most ingenious, accomplished, and welldisposed young gentleman, Mr. Joseph Beacon by name, about five o'clock in the morning, as he lay, whether sleeping or waking he could not say (but judged the latter of them), had a view of his brother, then at London, although he was now himself at our Boston, distanced from him a thousand leagues. This, his brother, appeared to him in the morning (I say), about five o'clock, at Boston, having on him a Bengal gown, which he usually wore, with a napkin tied about his head; his countenance was very pale, ghastly, deadly, and he had a bloody wound on one side of his forehead. "Brother!" says the affrighted Joseph. "Brother!" answered the apparition. Said Joseph, "What's the matter, brother? How

came you here?" The apparition replied, "Brother! I have been most barbarously and inhumanly murdered by a debauched fellow, to whom I never did any wrong in my life." Whereupon he gave a particular description of the murderer, adding, "Brother, this fellow, changing his name, is attempting to come over to New England, in Foy or Wild: I would pray you, on the first arrival of either of these, to get an order from the governor to seize the person whom I have now described; and then do you indict him for the murder of me, your brother: I'll stand by you, and prove the indictment." And so he vanished. Mr. Beacon was extremely astonished at what he had seen and heard; and the people of the family not only observed an extraordinary alteration upon him for the week following, but have given me, under their hands, a full testimony that he then gave them an account of this apparition. All this while, Mr. Beacon had no advice of anything amiss attending his brother, then in England; but about the the latter end of June following, he understood, by the common ways of communication, that the April before, his brother, going in haste by night to call a coach for a lady, met a fellow, then in drink, with his doxy in his hand. Some way or other the fellow thought himself affronted in the hasty passage of this Beacon, and immediately ran in to the fire-side of a neighbouring tavern, from whence he fetched out a fire-fork, wherewith he wounded Beacon on the skull, even in that very part where the apparition showed his wound. Of this wound he languished until he died, on the 2nd of May, about five of the clock in the morning, at London. The murderer, it seems, was endeavouring an escape, as the apparition affirmed: but the friends of the deceased Beacon seized him, and prosecuting him at law, he found the help of such friends as brought him off without the loss of his life; since which there has no more been heard of the business.

This history I received of Mr. Joseph Beacon himself, who a little before his own pious and hopeful death, which followed not long after, gave me the story, written and signed with his own hand, and attested with the circumstances I have already mentioned.

THE MYSTIC SHIP.

Reverend and dear Sir,-In compliance with your desires, I now give you the relation of that apparition of a ship in the air, which I have received from the most credible, judicious, and curious surviving observers of it.

In the year 1647, besides much other lading, a far more rich treasure of passengers (five or six of which were persons of chief note and worth in New Haven), put themselves on board a new ship, built at Rhode Island, of about 150 tons, but so walty, that the master (Lamberton) often said she would prove their grave. In the month of January, cutting their way through much ice, on which they were accompanied with the Rev. Mr. Davenport, besides many other friends, with many fears, as well as prayers and tears, they set sail. Mr. Davenport, in prayer, with an observable emphasis, used these words, "Lord, if it be thy pleasure to bury these our friends in the bottom of the sea, they are thine; save them!" The spring following, no tidings of these friends arrived with the ships from England; New Haven's heart began to fail her. This put the godly people on much prayer, both public and private, that the Lord would (if it was his pleasure) let them hear what he had done with their dear friends, and prepare them with a suitable submission to his holy will. In June next ensuing, a great thunder-storm arose out of the north-west; after which (the hemisphere being serene), about an hour before sun-set, a ship of like dimensions with the aforesaid, with her canvas and colours abroad (though the wind northerly), appeared in the air, coming up from our harbour's mouth, which lies southward from the

town, seemingly with her sails filled under a fresh gale, holding her course north, and continuing under observation, sailing against the wind, for the space of half an hour. Many were drawn to behold this great work of God; yea, the very children cried out, "There's a brave ship!" At length, crowding up as far as there is usually water sufficient for such a vessel, and so near some of the spectators, as that they imagined a man might hurl a stone on board her, her maintop seemed to be blown off, but left hanging in the shrouds, then her mizen-top, then all her masting seemed blown away by the board; quickly after the hulk brought unto a careen, she overset, and so vanished into a smoky cloud, which in some time dissipated, leaving, as everywhere else, a clear air. The admiring spectators could distinguish the several colours of each part, the principal rigging, and such proportions as caused not only the generality of persons to say, this was the mould of their ship, and thus was her tragic end; but Mr. Davenport also, in public, declared to this effect: "That God had condescended, for the quieting of their afflicted spirits, this extraordinary account of his sovereign disposal of those for whom so many fervent prayers were made continually. Thus,

I am, Sir,

Your humble Servant, JAMES PIERPONT. Render (says Cotton Mather), there being yet living so many credible gentlemen, that were eye-witnesses of this wonderful thing, I venture to publish it for a thing as undoubted as it is wonderful.-Book I., pages 25, 26.

IN nations or localities to which the Gospel is introduced for the first time, from the nature of the case, sudden conversions are far more common than afterwards,-when the Gospel becomes common, when people are taught from childhood, and when conversions spring up in the heart of godly families. In such cases, therefore, the necessity and the reality of the great change are in proportion far more apparent, more striking to the observer, more adapted to convince the world, and indeed, in a measure more satisfactory to the individuals themselves converted. In other cases the form and the power go together; whereas in the subsequent run of things the form precedes the power-the understanding is first assailed, religious habits are superinduced, and in process of time the form becomes animated by the power. Here the religion is not less real, and that whence it springs, conversion, is equally true, but it is less palpable. The following narrative furnishes an illustration :

"An actress in one of the English provincial or country theatres, was one day passing through the streets of the town in which she then resided, when her attention was attracted by the sound of voices, which she heard in a poor cottage before her. Curiosity prompted her to look in at an open door, when she saw a few poor people sitting together, one of whom, at the moment of her observation, was giving

out the following hymn, which the others joined in singing:

'Depth of mercy! can there be
Mercy still reserved for me?'

"The tune was sweet and simple, but she heeded it not. The words had riveted her attention, and she stood motionless, until she was invited to enter by the woman of the house, who had observed her standing at the door. She complied, and remained during a prayer which was offered up by one of the little company; and uncouth as the expressions might seem in her ears, they carried with them a conviction of sincerity on the part of the person thus employed. She quitted the cottage, but the words of the hymn followed her; she could not banish them from her mind, and at last she resolved to procure the book which contained the hymn. The more she read it, the more decided her serious impressions became. She attended the ministry of the Gospel, read her hitherto neglected and despised Bible, and bowed herself in humility and contrition of heart before Him whose mercy she felt she needed, whose sacrifices are those of a broken heart and a contrite spirit, and who has declared that therewith he is well pleased.

"Her profession she determined at once, and for ever, to renounce; and for some little time excused herself from appearing on the stage, without, however disclosing her change of sen