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the dear lady still employed in works of kindness; for it would have required an effort (as she herself remarked) to break through all her long established plans for doing good. But it was evident, that languor and disgust were creeping fast upon her; and what was worse, almost a state of doubt as it regarded the promises of God as she had hitherto understood them; for the principle on which she had acted in all her works of benevolence, had been this-that the ministry of man is, through divine assistance, efficient in producing the spiritual good of the individual on whom it is brought to bear: hence, that where it is in operation, good must necessarily follow, as necessarily as where that ministry is used in natural things; in consequence of which it must regularly ensue, that good instruction will nourish the soul of a child in the same degree, and in as uniform a manner as proper food strengthens and invigorates the body. The end being as certain a consequence of the means in one case as in the other-in both cases depending upon the divine blessing, of course; but the end in each case being equally consequent upon the means. But although Mrs. Lascelles had, by encountering many failures been brought to see that she had been entirely mistaken in what she had built upon this principle, and that although she had succeeded in many instances of improving the temporal condition of her dependants, she could boast of few evidences of their advancement in spiritual good ; yet when I became an inmate for a few days of her house, she was as totally unsuspicious of the error of her principle, as when she had first adopted it; and when I endeavoured to explain to her my assurance that, as far as concerns the spiritual welfare of the

human race, the ministry of man is as powerless as were the efforts of the priests of Baal to bring down the fire of heaven to mingle with their sacrifices, it was for a time, as if I spoke an unknown tongue to her; and I had left her for some weeks, and returned with Alice to the White Ladies, before the conviction of the truth was vouchsafed to her.

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As soon as it was so, she came to me, and in one moment I saw that her heart was relieved of some heavy burthen. She ran up to me and grasping my hand, Dear Mrs. Latifear, she exclaimed, I am the happiest of human beings; I am relieved from a load too heavy for me to bear. I thought that I had a task to perform, and which I must perform, and which I could not do without performing, and which I had no power to perform; and now I suddenly find that it has been done for me, and is complete in Christ our Lord, to be made manifest in due time; and this task is the regeneration and the sanctification of such of the children of Adam as are under my influence. Fool that I was, presumptuous fool, to think that I could even assist in giving new life to a single human creature dead in sin; and to be offended too because I could not command the lightnings of heaven with my feeble voice. Had the Almighty permitted his regenerating grace, in the case only of my little Alice, to have fallen in with my poor instructions, I tremble to think how my presumptuous folly might have led me to have imputed the divine work to myself. It is good for me; it is very good for me, that I have been allowed to see my own failures. I tremble yet to think of what might have been my state of mind, had but a seeming success accompanied my efforts to spiritualize my people

before the conviction had been vouchsafed me, that spiritual life proceedeth from God alone; and that, although it may often fall in, as it regards time and season with the ministry of man, it is wholly independent thereof.'

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'Might I be permitted to ask, dear madam,' I said, 'how this new conviction operated on Mrs. Lascelles.' 'I had various opportunities of proving this, my friend,' continued the aged lady, as I paid her an annual visit of a few days every summer from that period till her death, which happened about twenty years ago; by this new and living principle, peace was restored to her mind, and consistency to her walk in life. She became calm in her manner, and ceased to expect to gather what she could not strew. She was willing to wait the pleasure of the Almighty to shed the dew on the fleece in his good time; and though she worked on perhaps more vigorously (because more regularly and consistently than formerly,) yet it was with so much less bustle and effort, and as it were, so much more as a sort of matter of course, and according to the new nature which she had received, that her good works, by which I mean her works of benevolence, were duly appreciated, through divine grace, by herself, as altogether nought and as less than dust when weighed in the balance of the sanctuary.'

In this place of the discourse, the venerable mother was admonished by a feeling of weakness in the chest to which she is much accustomed, that she had already spoken more than enough, We accordingly withdrew, and although she did not accompany us as usual to her door, she stood up in order that she might add another courtesy before we left the room.

[NOTE.-Lest any of our younger readers might possibly misconstrue some of the venerable mother's foregoing remarks into a discouragement against working, as instruments, in the gracious purposes of God towards their fellow-creatures-more especially those placed under their immediate influence and control, we will venture to subjoin a few texts, bearing immediately upon the important subject.

Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it. Prov. xxii. 6.

Let us not be weary in well-doing; for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not. Gal. vi. 9.

For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment; that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him. Gen. xviii. 19.

The rod and reproof give wisdom: but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame. Prov. xxix. 15.

Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them; for in doing this, thou shalt both save thyself and them that hear thee. 1 Tim. iv. 16.

Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord. 1 Cor. xv. 58.

We are far, very far, from exalting human works, or dreaming of human merit: but in these things there is a Charybdis as well as a Scylla.-EDITOR.]

ALICE.

[Extracted from the Eighteenth Report of the National Institution for the Deaf and Dumb of Ireland.]

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ALICE COGSWELL was an exceedingly interesting girl of high intellectual endowments, deprived of the power of hearing and speech by sickness during infancy. She was the daughter of a celebrated physician in Hartford, Connecticut State, America, to whose patriotic exertions the Deaf and Dumb Asylum in that city principally owes its existence. Her attachment to her father was remarkably ardent. Immediately after his death, she said, in her own strong language of gesture, her heart had so grown to his that they could not be separated.' In a few days she was suddenly called to follow him, and with the kind sympathy of a feeling friend, and in the hope of alleviating in some degree, the double affliction of the family, Mrs. Sigourney, of Hartford, addressed to them the following beautiful lines. The idea is that Alice having arrived at the mansions of bliss, and found her father, addresses those fond objects of her affection whom she left on earth.'

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