"Too much so, "Yes," I said,

fallen into the same practice?" Sir," she answered; "I see it now." "you would not like, I presume, to finish your life, as it seems too probable, that he will do, poor man ?" "No, indeed," she exclaimed earnestly; "God forbid!" "But you were in the high-road to it," I said, "if God had not awakened you by this dreadful spectacle. Did your husband forbid your coming to church? I have never seen you there." "I have no doubt he would, Sir," she answered, "if I had attempted it, as he has lately forbidden his daughter." “God knows,” I said, "how that might have been. Lately perhaps he would have forbidden you; but he did not come all at once, I suppose, to this profane, irreligious state. And if so, Mrs. Marsden, it is not improbable, that, if you yourself had formerly been anxious about public worship, he would have followed your inclination, and would never have come to this state at all."

She was conscience-struck with this observation; and, after a short pause, she began to beg earnestly of me, that upon the first vacancy in the church, I would secure some sittings for her. “It shall be done, certainly," I said; "your daughter wishes to return to the habit of going to church, as when she was at school; and it will be, I have little doubt, a wonderful benefit to yourself, after seeing so strikingly and tremendously the bad fruits of abstaining from all public worship. But this was not the only evil. Your poor husband neither read himself, at least of late, nor suffered your daughter to read the holy Bible. How long has he been living in this ungodly neglect of the precious word of life, the Divine Scriptures?" "For the very same time at least," she answered. "He had a

Bible, when we first came here, but as it was never used by him as it should have been, nor taken any care of whatever, at last it fell to pieces; and, I fear, Sir, he cut it for waste up in the shop." paper "That was a sad token," I said, "of an increasing depravity of mind, Mrs. Marsden; but you, no doubt, have taken the proper care of yours?" At first she was silent when I put this question to her, and cast her eyes upon the ground; which was a sufficient answer for me. At length, however, having bethought herself, she said, that when she had an opportunity she used her daughter's. "Then you have none of your own?" I enquired. No, Sir, I have not," she replied, "just at present. I had his whilst it lasted, and now I have hers." "And do you read it often?" I enquired again. Once more she would rather have been silent, but she summoned up her courage, and answered, "I will tell you the truth, Sir; I never attempted to read it when he was present, and I was afraid he might come in and catch me reading it, if I took it up when he was away."

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"Alas! alas!" I said sorrowfully; "I see too plainly how this matter is. You have both of you contributed in different ways and degrees to the ruin of each other, so far as concerns the neglect of God's Church and word; but he, poor man, has added another crime to these two, which has finished the work of ruin, and completely brutalized him. You, Mrs. Marsden, have been saved from this crime by your sex; you could not practise it at all events, as he practised it; you could not, being a woman, sit in the public houses, amidst the filthy singing, and the blasphemous swearing, and the bloody fighting, and all the other detestable beastliness, which prevail there;

your womanhood, at all events, has preserved you from this, and from all the corruption and depravity which must needs follow it. But I should hope for something better; namely, that your sense of the hideous degradation and ugliness of intoxication, especially in a woman, without taking into the account what is to be the lot of drunkards hereafter, had been a sufficient safeguard to you, so as to preserve you from the least tendency to this vice and from all self-reproach with respect to any encouragement which you might have given to your husband to pursue it, as he did, until it has destroyed his body and his soul too, so far as we can judge. This is a matter for private self-examination. God knows the truth itself; and whatever harm you have done in this way, it will be laid to your charge, whether you were aware of it at the time, or not, unless you disburden your conscience of it by confession and repentance."

During the latter part of this speech Mrs. Marsden trembled exceedingly, and shewed evident signs that she was not guiltless; so being satisfied with having stirred her feelings, and troubled her repose thus far, I added, "It is not my wish to press too hard upon you under your present distress; but the harder you press upon yourself, when you investigate your own actions, the better it will be for you. With respect to your poor husband, you perceive what has been the progress of his calamities. He neglected God, and then God gave him up to drunkenness and to a reprobate mind. What other sins he may have been guilty of, if of any more, I cannot tell, but you probably know, and whether you have contributed to them by your example, or by your concurrence, or by your connivance. I suggest all these things to

you, that at least you may try to work out your own salvation; but you see now, more than you did before perhaps, that you are under a deep obligation to try to work out his too by every method in your power."

Mrs. Marsden's tears were now flowing profusely, and she was only able to say, that she would gladly do whatever I might point out to her as most proper, or most likely to be useful; so I enquired, if the sick man had any friend, or relation, whom it might be advisable to send to, and invite to come to him. "Yes, Sir," she answered; "he has a brother, an only brother, at no great distance; but there is an old quarrel between them, which has kept them asunder for many years."- "O send for him," I cried out eagerly; send for him immediately; the quarrel is an additional and stronger reason for doing it; and who knows, whether the being reconciled to his brother may not cause him to wish to be reconciled to his God? How soon may his brother be here?" "If I send this evening," she replied, "he may be here to-morrow morning.' "Send, then, by all means," I said, "this very evening; nay, this very hour. This circumstance holds out the best hope of any measure which comes into my mind. He may be softened by the interchange of forgiveness with a brother, to a degree of which we have now no idea. What sort of a person is this brother?"" Oh!" she answered, "he is a very pious man indeed!" I feared that she used the epithet, pious, in a sectarian sense; so, to ascertain this point, I asked her, whether she knew to what church or chapel he was in the habit of going for public worship.-" Oh! yes, Sir," she replied; “I

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know very well; it is called the Ebenezer."—“ Ah !” I said; "he is not a churchman, then, and there is no knowing what his religious principles may be; but this does not alter the fitness of my advice to fetch him without delay. A reconciliation should be brought about, if possible, between the two brothers; that will be so far good, and it may lead to something still better."

I was now about to go, but recollecting that I had seen nothing by the bed-side proper for the sick man in his present wretched state, I mentioned it to Mrs. Marsden, and offered her various things which I thought might be comfortable to him, and at the same time soothing to his stomach. "Ah, Sir," she said, "he will take nothing but spirits; he has lost all relish for anything else; he is always crying out for spirits, and if we refuse them, we dare not go near him."- -“Well,” I said, "I will send you some Tentwine, such as we use in the Sacrament; it will act as a cordial to him, and be nourishing, without being destructive. Tell him it comes from me, but do not mention a word about the Sacrament." She thanked me heartily, and I was considering whether there was anything more that I could do under the present circumstances; and indeed two or three things besides came into my head; but I heard a noise in the shop, which led me to suppose that there was an accumulation of customers, and nobody to serve them; Mrs. Marsden herself being engaged with me, and the daughter being upstairs with her father; so I hurried away without further conversation.