DEEP TRIAL AND SUPPORTING MERCY.* WHEN health and prosperity shine upon our pathway, how prone we are to forget our mortality; we seem to think all mankind mortal but ourselves. When my dear Elizabeth arrived at the completion of her sixteenth year, she was full of health and spirits. She said to her dear little sister Emma, who was one year old, "when you are fifteen I shall be thirty." Thus she was looking forward to a period of happiness in a world of uncertainty. Not many days elapsed after her birthday, when her brother Thomas was seized with typhoid fever. It pleased the Lord to bless the means used to his recovery; he was just able to sit up, when Elizabeth and her father were both prostrated by the fearful contagion. She had a deep impression she would not recover, and was in great distress concerning her soul; fear and the pit had indeed taken hold upon her. Often would she say, "I am such a sinner, I am too black for Jesus. Satan tells me I am going with him in that dreadful place. Oh! I wish God would create a new heart!" I said, "Do you feel you need a new heart ?" She said, "Oh! yes." I reminded her, Jesus had said He would in no wise cast out any who felt themselves to be sinners and their need of a Saviour, and came to Him. She often said, "Oh! that He would say, 'thy sins, which are many, are all forgiven thee."" She never expressed a wish to recover, but would say, "I should be glad to go this minute, if my sins were forgiven." One night she seemed to have a little hope, and repeated many texts of Scripture, and verses of hymns such as— *We have re-read this, with much sympathy for the writer.-ED. "Helpless, I look to thee for grace; Wash me, Saviour, or I die." She said, with much earnestness, "Can you spend a few moments in prayer for me, dear mother?" But my heart was so full, I could not give utterance to my feelings. I asked her dear father to do so, which he did. She thanked him, and shortly after broke out in prayer herself, in a manner I hope never to forget; it was indeed a time much to be remembered. But the contagion was increasing, and it was apprehended her father would not recover. I could not procure assistance, and the dear child expressed a great wish to be taken to the Fever Hospital, fearing I should sink under the fatigue. I was at last compelled to permit this. She suffered much for some time, but the fever abated, and I entertained great hope of her recovery; but I must leave the hospital, and return to my once cheerful cottage, but now the abode of grief and perplexity. My dear husband lay in an unconscious state; Thomas had a relapse; and Mary Ann, aged fourteen years, next fell under the contagion. She was conveyed to the hospital on the 28th December, 1860; and on the 31st, William, in his nineteenth year, was also taken there. I daily had to leave my invalids at home in charge of Sarah, a child of ten years, with my dear babe, and Edward, a child of two years and a half, while I hastened to the hospital, And now I return to my dear Elizabeth. Erysipelas followed the fever, and all hope of her recovery was in vain. As Í stood over her weeping, a day or two after taking her brother to the hospital, she said to me, "Don't cry, mother dear, it is the Lord, it is the Lord; let Him do what seemeth Him good." She often ex ANSWER TO BIBLE ENIGMA, No. 88. CORNELIUS, a man, devout, sincere, Whose prayer the Lord vouchsafed to hear. Abijah, the son of Jeroboam, Jehovah claimed him for His own. Laban his sister's son pursued, Rahab, the polluted sinner see, Yours is the kingdom of heaven, H. FRANKLAND. WISDOM is that which applieth knowledge to its best use, and fitteth means for the best end. CONSCIENCE is that power, or faculty, by which we judge of our own moral acts, and pass sentence thereon. ETERNITY is duration without beginning, without measure, without end.-Time had its origin, and will have its termination; immortality, its origin only; eternity, neither. PATSY AND THE SQUIRE. ATSY O'BLANE was a poor ragged boy, living on a wild Irish moor. He folded the sheep, stacked the peat, and dug the potatoes, without hat or shoes, for he owned neither. D He also cooked the food, and swept the clay floor, while his father herded the cattle of the squire, who owned all the lands and cottages round them. Theirs was a poor dwelling, with its one only window, and with the thatch falling from the roof; but it was home, and therefore dear to them. Dan O'Blane owned one book, the Bible, which he and little Patsy dearly loved; for it had been the instrument of raising them from the dust to be "kings and priests unto God!" One morning, as Patsy sat at the door, with his pet lamb at his side, and his Bible on his knees, awaiting the return of his father, he heard the loud voice of the blunt, but good-natured squire. "Pat, my boy," he shouted, "leave that great book for priests and bishops to read, and go hunting with O'Rook's boys." "Plase, yer honour," said Patsy, "I'm forbid o'my father to go wid them same at all; for they takes the name o' God in vain." "But you can go hunting without swearing," said the gentleman. "Ah! sir, it's not aisy to go into the fire and not be burned," replied the boy. "Well, my good fellow, what do you find in that great book? With all my learning, I don't understand half of it," said the squire. "And now, yer honour, doesn't yer own word show how thrue this book is ?" asked Pat; "for it says 'He hath hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and revealed them unto babes.' There's ye, sir, as rich as the king, and as wise as a bishop, ye aren't sure that it's God's Word at all; and here's us, as poor as my lamb Billy, and not much wiser, we believes every word o' it, and takes it into our heart, and makes it our mate and our drink. So after all, |