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warning not to forget the unseen jewel. His voice, his eyes, his hair, his love, his merriment, his intelligence, had so charmed her that she thought not of his soul. While

he was yet a boy she loved to be with him, and she foretold the joy she should have in being with him when he became a man-in seeing him doing his work so nobly and well, and crowned with honour and esteem; but she thought not of being with him eternally-of seeing him doing heavenly work, and crowned with the honours and approbation of the eternal God. In this her blind, shortsighted joy, God had taken mercy on her. He opened the eyes of her spirit that she might see the spirit of her child, and find a joy eternal and not temporal. Before, she had only an earthly child, but now she had a heavenly one; she used to listen to a dying infant's prattle, but now she listened to an immortal spirit chanting praises to the great God; then she loved to gaze into eyes that were sometimes dimmed with tears and that would one day be darkened in death, but now she gazed into eyes beaming with a joy that no tears could dim and with a glory that death could never darken. Truly Jesus had said to her, "Weep not," and had "delivered to her her son." So had she kinship with Abraham and the widow of Nain in their joy as well as in their sorrow; and therefore she loved, beyond all other reading, to read their histories.

Abraham having offered up Isaac, received him back again from the dead; to the widow of Nain, Jesus, the Son of God, delivered back alive her son who was dead; and also to this widow was given back again her son whom she had laid in the silent grave. Each of them could say with Job, "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away;" and seeing that the Lord had so richly restored what he took away, making their " latter end better than their beginning," giving back to Job his " seven sons and three daughters," and to them also their sons, they could add, not blinded with the tears of bereavement but with the joy of life from the dead-"Blessed be the name of the Lord."

Truly, if God takes away it is that he may restore with tenfold richness. We yield to him an earthly dying joy, and he gives it back transformed into a heavenly and immortal one. With trembling and tears we present to him a fading flower, and lo, he gives us it again an unfading amaranth!

THE DEATH OF THE RIGHTEOUS.

A FEW weeks ago a lady whose contributions to the pages of the "Tract Magazine" have been greatly blessed to many of its readers was lying in the immediate prospect of death. Very shortly before she was "absent from the body, present with the Lord," she dictated the following lines to a beloved relative who stood by her death-bed.

"Oh Saviour! I have nought to plead,

In earth beneath, or heaven above,
But just my own exceeding need,
And thy exceeding love!

“The need will soon be past and gone;
Exceeding great! but quickly o'er;
The love unbought is all thy own,
And lasts for evermore !"

COME UNTO ME, ALL YE THAT LABOUR AND ARE HEAVY LADEN, AND I WILL GIVE YOU REST.

Oн, I have toil'd full long! By many a care,

By sickness, grief, and anxious thoughts oppress'd,
My burden, Lord, is more than I can bear:
Yes, I am weary. Saviour, give me rest.

Humbly, dear Lord, before thy cross I kneel;
Fain would I hide my sorrows on thy breast.
Oh, let thy gracious words my pardon seal;
Oh, do thou comfort me, and give me rest.

Lord, thou hast promised, else I had not dared,
Sinful and sorrowing, to come to thee.
All-thou invitest all! Thou hast declared
Not one alone-but all shall welcome be.

Mourning for misspent-hours beyond recall,
Trembling, and heavy-laden, sore distress'd;
Still I will venture at thy feet to fall,
Trusting thy word. Dear Saviour, give me rest.

T. S. C.

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"AND see, my Rose of the world, what besides I have brought home for you," said a young husband, holding up a book in sombre binding. "Guess first what it is,' he added, as the smiling wife held out her hand for the gift.

"How should I know, Auguste? There are so many books in Paris."

"Still guess, my love," said Auguste, keeping back the

volume.

MARCH, 1864.

D

"The newest of all new stories by that most charming author, D-," said Rosamonde, at a venture.

Her husband laughed gaily. "Had you said the oldest of all old stories you would have been near the truth, my Rose. See!" and he placed the book in Rosamonde's hand.

Auguste R- was a Frenchman, and had not long been married. He was a gentleman of independent property; and his home was in a beautiful village in the south of France. He loved his wife very dearly; and on his return from Paris, after a first absence, he came loaded with presents for his "Rose of the world"-his Rosamonde. The table of the pretty drawing room in their old-fashioned country house was bestrewn with these gifts-rich silks and satins for dresses; laces and jewellery; delicate perfumery; exquisitely bound books; and I know not what besides. Among these gay souvenirs, and apparently out of place in their company, was the dark-looking volume which, last of all, he had produced, and now presented to his wife.

"How droll!" and Rosamonde broke into a pleasant, silvery laugh as she said this. She had opened the book, and found it to be-a Bible. "Why did you buy this?"

she asked.

"The fancy took me. I saw it in the book shop when I was making my purchases, and I put it aside with them." "How very droll!" said Rosamonde again. "The oldfashioned book that no one now reads! hardly even the priests."

"True," said Auguste; "the priests believe in it no more than we do: it is said to be a strange story altogether." “And so triste, so sad, so dull," added the young wife.

"True also, my Rose; and therefore we need not trouble ourselves with it at all. But the bookseller said that a library would not be complete without it; so I bought it as a piece of antiquity."

So as a piece of antiquity the Bible was bought; and as a piece of antiquity it was laid aside, to be exhibited sometimes as a relic of the ages which were past and gone: but, alas, not to be read!

Like very many of their countrymen and countrywomen, Monsieur R- and his wife were infidels, and gloried in their freedom from the trammels of what they called superstition. Witnessing only an imposing ritual of forms and ceremonies, which stood in the place of heart religion,

and knowing perfectly well that the priests themselves, who served at the altar, were, many of them, men of no faith in the creed they professed, and of indifferent character, it is not greatly to be wondered at that the R

and such as they, turned away with contempt from what they considered to be solemn mockeries, esteeming those observances which they despised as probably useful in restraining" the lower orders," but as having no claim upon persons of intellect and education.

The Bible might have undeceived them, both as to the character of the religion which they disregarded, and as to the claims of God upon themselves; but the Bible was a sealed book. The study of its contents was discouraged by the priests who professed to teach its doctrines: and, strange and almost incredible as it may seem to our readers, well read as the young Frenchman and his wife were in the deistical and atheistical writings with which the literature of France is cursed, they had never before possessed, if they had even seen, a copy of the Holy Scriptures; and knew nothing of those blessed truths which are able to make wise unto salvation, and are the support and stay of every one who believes in the Saviour they proclaim.

And now that the Bible was in their hands, it was to be put quietly on the shelf, as a piece of antiquity.

Many months passed away, and Auguste R- sat alone in his small library, full of sorrow and dismal apprehension. Death had entered his dwelling-the death of his first-born. Blooming for a few weeks, only to fade away, the child had sobbed its last breath in its father's arms; and the tiny coffin which held the little lifeless body was buried out of sight. Wreaths of immortelle decked the infant's grave. a meaningless emblem, surely, to a father who had no sympathy with a hope full of immortality, and to whom the death of his child conveyed no idea but that of everlasting extinction.

The sorrowing man had on his heart a yet deeper gloom than that caused by the death of his little one: his young wife was grievously ill, and he despaired of her restoration. The time which had elapsed since their marriage had not diminished his fond affection towards his "Rose of the world;" and the bare anticipation of being called upon soon to part from her was almost more than he could bear. That day, his physician had endeavoured to prepare the

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