tormented; (of whom the world was not worthy :) they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise: God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect.' (Heb. xi. 1, 2, 33-40.)

Mrs. Mills. When I hear of these holy persons, who suffered in so many various ways for the love they bore their Lord, my heart burns within me, and I am ashamed of my own little faith, who can hardly stand the jests of the women of the regiment, but am sometimes ready, through false shame, to turn my back upon heaven itself.

"Here, then, is an occasion to cry, 'Lord, deliver us from evil,' Mrs. Mills," replied Sergeant Browne: "for bodily pain, loss, grief, reproach, death of friends, all may, with God's blessing, be turned to profit, and work together for our good both here and hereafter; while sin always tends to the ruin both of soul and body in hell."

"What we are speaking of," said Mrs. Browne, "brings to my mind a story which I have often heard you repeat, Sergeant Browne."

"Mrs.

"What, the story of the poor family on Bleakfield Moor, in Yorkshire?" answered the sergeant. Mills has heard me tell it many a time."

"But I have not, godfather," said little Mary: "pray tell it now."

Sergeant Browne.-It is now, child, as much as twoand-twenty years ago, since poor old Sergeant Cooper and I, with a lad, (one Sam Waters,) were ordered to go over the country, from a town in Yorkshire, where we then lay, to Derby: (I forget what was the business.)

Sergeant Brown, Sergeant Cooper, and the lad Sam Waters, seeking refuge on

The first night of our journey we slept at a small inn, or alehouse, just on the borders of a great common, or what the people in this country call a wieraun. The name of this common, as Sam Waters told us, was Bleakfield Moor; and he undertook, the next day, to lead us over it, by a short cut towards Derby. Accordingly, we started the next day, at dawn; but we were scarcely three miles from the house where we had slept, when there came on so heavy a shower of rain, that we began to look about us for a place of shelter: but the country was so wild, and bare of inhabitants, that we were drenched through and through with the rain before we came up to a pretty kind of little cottage, standing in a garden. We had no need to stand knocking at the door; for we had scarcely come up to the garden-gate, when a comely, middle-aged woman opened the housedoor, and invited us in.

I remember her words now. "Come in, my good men," said she, "and dry yourselves by the fire. You are heartily welcome." So she brought us in, and, stirring up the fire, she made us to dry our clothes; setting before us, in the meantime, some bread and cheese, and some good beer. Her house was small; but so clean that, as the saying is, one might have eaten off the floor. She had a son and daughter grown up, two as handsome young creatures as ever I saw in all my travels; only the youth looked somewhat too fair and delicate, methought, for a man.

But the best of all this was, that, as we sat eating our bread and cheese, we found, by the discourse of the good woman, that she was one who lived in the fear of God, and had taught her children to do the same. She told us, that she had been a widow some years: but that her husband had died in faith, and on his account

she was full of joy, being well assured of seeing him again in a blessed world to come.

"God has always been wonderfully kind to me and mine," added she, "in delivering us from all evil, and bringing blessings out of every affliction. My husband was long sick, and unable to work: but sickness, pain, and poverty, brought him, through divine grace, to the knowledge of his Saviour; and, by these means, he was delivered from evil."

"You have well spoken, my good woman," answered Sergeant Cooper.

"I loved my husband more than my God," continued the poor woman; "but when I lost him, I was brought, by sorrow, to seek higher comfort. My idol being taken from me, I was led to look from the creature to the Creator, and I found rest to my soul. So God has always, hitherto, delivered me and mine from evil; and I trust he will continue so to do."

"Evil!" said Sam Waters: "what is it you mean by evil, my good woman? Is not the loss of a husbandare not poverty, sickness, and pain-evils? To my mind, they are great evils."

'My young man," answered the woman, "I have lived some years longer in the world than you have, and have been taught by experience as well as by Scripture, that these light afflictions, which endure but for a moment, cannot be called evil, in the true sense of the word, since they often lead to an exceeding and eternal weight of glory. Nothing can be called evil but sin; and it is in that sense that I have always used the word when I have said in my prayers, night and morning, 'Deliver us from evil.'”

Poor old Sergeant Cooper was much pleased when he heard the woman speak in this manner. I remember