66 A LAMB FOLDED. 66 66 IN going round to leave a few tracts on a marketday, I handed a woman a LITTLE GLEANER in exchange for that lent her the previous week. Her look of deep dejection made me ask whether there was anything the matter. "I should think there was; and good reason. I have lost my only daughter." How old was she?" Six years. What did she die of?" "Something came in her throat, very trifling at first, but she grew worse and worse, and died last Monday. Oh, such a loss! I have three sons living, but never had a daughter but she; and a darling she was-the delight of her father, and us all. Such a little sensible thing! She went to her Sunday-school, and she used to come home and tell us all she had learnt. One day it was all about Moses, another day it would be all about David; and many a halfhour we used to sit at meal-time and listen to the dear child telling us about what she heard. She used to say, 'There, now, I have gone too far forward; I must go back in the story, and tell it all straight;' and she would speak it free, just as if she were reading out of the book. One day she said to me, I hope father won't die before me.' 'Why do you say that, my child?' I said. Because who would take me to the Sunday-school and to the chapel if poor father were to die?' Many times she said to me, 'I love to go, because I love to hear about Jesus.' To her brothers, when they quarrelled and said wrong words, she used to say, Oh, I can't pray for you to-night, you are such wicked boys.' But she would say when bed-time came, Mother, I must pray for Jim and Bob and Bill to-night for God to forgive them, for they have been so wicked to-day.' When she 6 was took ill she said, 'Mother, do get me something to do me good;' but after a day or two she said, 'Now I'm going to Jesus, I shan't get no better.' The parson called to see the dear child, and she said to him when he asked her how she was, 'Sir, I be very bad, indeed; but I know I'm going to heaven.' And how do you know that?" Because, sir, Jesus loves me, and I love Jesus. Afterwards she said to her mother, “Oh, mother, Jesus wore a crown of thorns for poor sinners like me; wasn't it kind ?" "The Almighty knows how good the dear child was;" said the poor, ignorant mother, "but for all that she often said she knew she was wicked." As may be imagined, she was a great pet with the whole family. Her brothers doated upon her, and during the few days of her illness her parents shared the anxieties of watching her, and never let her off their knees. She was small for her age, and they nursed her as an infant. She returned their love with the most tender affection; but from first to last her one cry was, she was going to Jesus who loved her, and her constant reply to all questions put to her was, "I am very bad; but I ain't afraid to die, for I am going to Jesus.” Her parents and all belonging to her, I have reason to believe, are in the grossest ignorance with regard to a living religion, or even the form. The child went to the Sunday-school and chapel because she liked it, and being too young to go by herself, she persuaded her father to take her every Sunday, which induced him to go to the chapel only in order to bring her back. Her great delight was her school, and her home pleasure repeating there what she learnt. The influence it had on her young life must have been very remarkable from the little the poor mother repeated; was and should I hear any more about this interesting child, I will gladly let the readers of the LITTLE GLEANER know it, whereby it may please the God of all grace to make His use of it to the hearts of His own people who are chosen in Christ before the world began; but must be called in time to know themselves as poor lost sinners, and love a precious Christ, who died that they might live, and lives as the pledge that they shall never die. L. [In the above is no distinct account of the successive stages in the great work of conviction, conversion, and preservation; but the very tender age of the dear child must be borne in mind. It must also be remembered that the mother was unacquainted with spiritual things, and therefore would neither be likely to observe the distinct stages of the work, nor to give a very distinct account of those stages. Dear reader, may the solemnities of eternity rest with solemn weight upon your soul in the days of your youth. You must soon die and stand before a holy God; and as certainly as no house in Egypt unsprinkled with paschal blood escaped the entrance of death, so certainly you can never escape the wrath of God unless sheltered beneath the atonement of Jesus. Oh, by the shortness of time, the duration and deep realities of eternity, I ask you the solemn question, Has conviction made you feel your need of Jesus? and have you fled to the shelter of the cross? How safe to the sinner, how honourable to God, this blessed screen! And what a mercy for those who feel their need of this shelter is the free invitation thither, which may God help my anxious young readers to obey. "Love's redeeming work is done, Come, and welcome, sinner, come."-ED.] "I AM GOING AWAY TO JESUS.” A SABBATH Scholar, a girl of sixteen, who has just died, bore testimony during her last illness that the instructions she had received were not in vain. To her sister and other friends she said joyfully, a little before her departure, "I am going away to Jesus. She waited eagerly for her father's return from his work in the country, afraid lest she should be gone before he came. She was the first to hear his footstep in the passage, and was nervously stretching forth her thin white hand towards him before he got in at the door. She could hardly give him time to lay aside his coat, which was dripping wet. It was most affecting to see the rough labourer, weary with his week's toil, embracing the wasted form of his dying girl, and to mark her feeble efforts to comfort him by the sweet assurance that she was going away to Jesus. She was indeed the most composed person in the house. What but the glorious Gospel of the blessed God could enable a weak girl thus to triumph over the king of terrors! THE SONG ABOVE COMMENCED BELOW. 66 My willing soul would stay In such a frame as this, THE following striking account has been sent me of the death of a dear young believer, who died at Melbourne, in Australia, a few months since, showing that she literally sang herself away to everlasting bliss. Dear young friends, there is a deep everlasting reality in the religion of Jesus Christ. True vital religion wrought in the soul by the Holy Ghost, which leads from sin and self-righteousness to the Saviour is most invaluable. It is of immense worth while we live, but when we die it is the only thing of the least value. Dear young friends, do you possess this vital religion? It is not long since a dying one I was accustomed to visit fixed her eyes, with all the solemn expressiveness that dying moments impart, on all around her bed, and said, with awful weight,“ HEAVEN and HELL," by which she doubtless meant there were but these two places for every child of Adam. Oh, which will be yours? I have only just come from the grave of a dear boy of our school carried off by typhus fever. How soon my reader may be in his grave! I beseech you, dear youth, ponder your latter end, and may you have that concern given you about your never-dying soul that will make you never able to rest, until you find rest in Jesus. But I must now place before you a letter written by a dying one to a minister in Melbourne on the very day of her death, so that it is a letter from the brink of Jordan. Its writer might have said— "On Jordan's stormy bank I stand, And cast a wistful eye, To Canaan's fair and happy land, "MY DEAR FRIEND,-I write full of pleasure and joy; for I am almost home. I have nearly finished my journey. I am going to see my Heavenly Father above. But I must tell you that I thought I was safe, and that I was so *Since the above was written, death has removed another dear of the same family and the father of these dear children. father died in the Lord, and has left in great need an afflicted and five dear children.-ED. |