assure me that we should never die, but always live as we are now living, or even as kings and queens now live, I should be inclined to cry indeed; but I cannot cry in thinking of death. What does the hymn say?

'Death is the path that must be trod,

If man would ever pass to God;'

and St. Paul has these words-'We are confident, I say, and willing, rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.'-2 Cor., v., 8.

"Do you not understand," continued she, "that the death of the body is the last grand work of Providence, to set man at liberty from the effects of sin? The doctrine of the ever-blessed Trinity is well known to you, my children, or I have indeed lost my labour in teaching you, and you also ought to know how and in what way each of the divine persons of the sacred Trinity is engaged for the salvation of those who have obtained an inheritance in Christ, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will.'-Eph., i., 11. You understand how the Father, having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, sent his Son to die for our salvation, and how the Son procured our justification by his death upon the cross, and how the soul is regenerated and sanctified by the Holy Ghost. At least you have been instructed in these things from infancy-with 'line upon line, precept upon precepthere a little and there a little;' yet perhaps you may be still unacquainted with this truth, viz., that these our sinful bodies must be dissolved and reduced to dust before they can be rendered fit for glory, and for that everlasting reunion with Christ our Lord which we are taught to hope for: therefore, my little Sally, we ought to look upon death as a blessing to those who love their Saviour, as those who have died in faith from the beginning of time (if they were permitted to speak to us) would all unite in assuring us: and I could explain this farther to you, my children, if you would look again at the mouldering walls which surround us. Supposing I were exceedingly rich, and that these ruins belonged to me, and that I wished to restore this place to what it was in its most glorious days; it would be impossible for me to patch up the ruined walls, or to build up new apartments on the old foundations; I must needs take VOL. XIII.-H 15

them all down together, and reduce them to a heap, and begin a new work with the old materials. And so it is with our sinful bodies-they must be dissolved in death, and we must trust to the divine promises for their restoration in a more glorious form than that in which they were in this state of frailty and sin.

"But," continued our grandmother, "I have been talking a long time, and have not much more to add; for I remember little more of that night, only that I was not in bed much before six o'clock, and that we left the castle the next morning. And soon after this my lady went abroad and travelled some years in foreign parts, where I had the advantage of seeing many things; and when I returned to this neighbourhood I married, but was left a widow very soon, with one little son, your father, and then my good lady settled me in a small house in Dudley, where I maintained myself by a small school, and so reared your father, and put him in a way of maintaining himself; and a dutiful son he has been. And it was when I was settled in Dudley that the accident happened which I shall tell you of.

"It seems that the ball to which I attended my lady at the castle was one of the last which ever was given in that place the old servants who had always resided there dropped off one by one; what was of any value in the way of moveables was carried away, and the place was abandoned, which I always thought was a thing to be lamented; and then it seems that certain coiners took possession of the dungeons and vaults under the castle, of which there are many, and there carried on their wicked trade of making base money. But this was not suspected, and no one knew any thing of it, till by some chance they set the old building on fire, and we in the town were suddenly alarmed by seeing the flames bursting forth from the windows, and forming wreaths of smoke around the time-honoured towers.

"It was a glorious sight, such as I shall never forget; but it made my heart bleed, for I loved the very stones of the castle; and the whole summit of the hill seemed a mass of fire, while the crackling of the flames, the falling of stones and burning beams, the crash of disparting towers, and the thick volumes of smoke pouring through every arrow-slit or aperture of the wall, rendered it impossible to use any means to stop the fire. At length, but it was not till after many hours, the fire

smouldered away, and left the building as it now appears, a huge disfigured ruin, blackened with smoke, and, as it were, the grim and ghastly spectre of what it so lately was. The rains, and damp and purifying winds, have since, in some degree, restored the colour of the stone; and ivy and other creepers, with wallflowers and sassafras, have also added their wild coverings to conceal some of the ravages of the fire; but yet it may be said of it that its glory is departed, and whereas formerly it was the chief seat of the rulers of the land, it is now but the habitation of birds of the night, and the harbour of unclean reptiles."

"And when were those words first seen, grandmamma," I said 'Water goes round it to guard it from the fire, but fire shall burn it?" "

"They were seen after the conflagration," she answered; "but who engraved them, and when they were engraved, no one can tell."

Our grandmother then drawing us to her, one after another, kissed us, and said, "My little ones, I may never again be spared to visit this place with you; but may God grant that what I have taught you in this place may sink deep into your hearts, and into yours especially, Jane, in which I have seen, even this day, more pride and ambition, envy and discontent, than ought to be in a child who has been brought up as you have been. Let the perishing nature of all earthly things be ever present with you; may the Almighty give you grace to seize hold of that anchor of faith by which alone you can be preserved, when the world, like this once magnificent castle, is reduced to ashes; for, as St. Peter tells us, 'The heavens and the earth which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment, and perdition of ungodly men.'"

Our dear grandmother then repeated to us the following hymn, to commit to memory in recollection of that happy day :

Jesus, thy blood and righteousness
My beauty are, my glorious dress;
Midst flaming worlds, in these arrayed,
With joy shall I lift up my head.

When from the dust of death I rise
To take my mansion in the skies,
E'en then shall this be all my plea,
"Jesus hath lived and died for me."

Bold shall I stand in that great day;
For who aught to my charge shall lay?
Fully through thee absolved I am
From sin and fear, from guilt and shame.

Thus Abraham, the friend of God,
Thus all the armies bought with blood,
Saviour of sinners thee proclaim,
Sinners of whom the chief I am.

This spotless robe the same appears
When ruined nature sinks in years;
No age can change its glorious hue,
The robe of Christ is ever new.

And when the dead shall hear thy voice,
Thy banished children shall rejoice;
Their beauty this, their glorious dress,
Jesus the Lord our righteousness.

THE HAPPY GRANDMOTHER.

DAME TRUEMAN lived in a very pleasant little village in England. The cottage which she hired of her richer neighbour was small and humble; she had four orphan grandchildren to support; and she was obliged to labour hard for her daily bread. Yet Dame Trueman was a very happy woman. From her earliest childhood she had always been in the habit of preferring the comfort of others to her own; and as she grew older, it was her chief desire to be useful, and to do good in the world. When her neighbours complained of the hardships of the poor, Dame Trueman replied, "The poor man may enjoy the sight of the blue sky, and glittering stars, and the green fields, as well as the rich; the primrose springs up in the path of the cottager, and the wild thyme gives its fragrance to him as freely as to the king. The great pictures up at the hall are pretty things to look at; but to my mind the works of God have a more marvellous beauty; and they belong to us all."

When her friends condoled with her because she had lost her darling daughter, she smiled meekly through her tears, and said, "Blessed be God! her four little orphans are left to cheer my old age and truly it is wonderful what a comfort there is in little children." And when they asked her how she would get bread for so many mouths, she looked upward reverently and answered, "God will provide. Little Meg can already earn a trifle by spinning; and John gets a penny now and then for doing errands; and James tends the squire's sheep. As for William, he is greatly given to book-learning. If he had the wherewith, like some of the gentry's sons, he would do something out of the common way. But then if he had the wherewith perhaps he might not have the will. The will is a mighty worker-if mountains are in its way, it will cut right through with tools of its own making. I sometimes wish I could do better for William; but this is foolish. The Lord will show him his work, and prepare the way.”

Some of the neighbours said it would not be remark