cate or weaken. I beg to note down a few of the expressions I recollected from her lips, which may serve to show the style of her language, though very faintly, being deprived of the circumstance and the manner which made them peculiarly impressive. When I lamented the pains she was suffering, she stopt me, saying; "O sir, I prayed the Lord for them, and he is now answering my prayers." I wanted to be afflicted that I might be brought to Jesus, I deserve it all for my sins. Jesus is present with me in all my afflictions. He has said to me "I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee; and it is this sir, which enables me to bear all, and ten times as much, if the Lord were pleased to lay it on me. 0 the sweet, the precio promises, what should we do without the promises, what should I do sir? There is nothing like affliction for bringing the sinner to God. I pray that he may afflict my husband, my brother, and all my family, just as

he has me.

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I am comforted in all my light afflictions when I look up into heaven, and see all my tears wiped away, and all my sorrows ended. I see Jesus now sir, but O when I see him as he is without a veil between, and when I shall be like him! O sir, think of me, a poor polluted, sinful body, not worthy of your notice, being like the Lord Jesus!"

I could relate many more expressions, which I have noted down, but I find the effect of reading them so different from the power of expression, that I forbear, and continue the memoir. Alas in coming to this stage of poor Jane's history, I must quite reverse the serene peace and joy which pervaded her mind, to gloom, dejection, and almost despair.

On Thursday the 17th of November, her sufferings of body were so acute, and she became so restless that I could not see her for more

than two minutes; but soon after I had left, her mind was so disturbed by a sense of sin, and she so seriously informed the persons who attended her, that she was too great a sinner to be saved, that they gave credit to her assertions, and were equally alarmed with herself. During the whole of that, and several succeeding days, her mind was agonized with a sense of apparent unpardoned sin. The iniquities of her youth, and of her riper years, with every aggravation, passed in fearful review before her eyes, and she appeared to give herself up as one cast away for ever from the favour of God. In this deplorable state of mind, instead of looking forward to the grave as a rest from her weary pilgrimage, she implored all who saw her to pray that she might continue in the dreadful suffering she endured, rather than die and go to hell.

This extraordinary feeling I cannot conceive to have arisen from any spiritual impression; but, if I may be allowed to judge, I should think it arose from the acute pain she was in, and the last efforts of the great Enemy of Man to harass and disturb the dying moments of one whom he was for ever to lose, and whose eternal happiness he was unable to affect.

When I went down to see her, on Tuesday, I was told she must have some fearful sin upon her mind which she had not divulged, and that she could not die in peace without telling it. It was, moreover, insinuated that the neighbours generally believed that all her former professions were hypocritical, and indeed her own words testified as much.

She was at this time so near death, that it was almost improper for me to disturb her by many ques.. tions; as however I felt a great anxiety for her peace of mind, and also to satisfy all around her, I went up stairs, and never shall I forget the sinking impression which

I felt, upon seeing one, who, a few days before, could almost sing of the peculiar mercy of God, now lying gasping, helpless, dying; and O how my feelings were harrowed up, when she said in a low sepulchral tone of voice, "O sir, why has God forsaken me?" In as few words as possible, I informed her that God had not forsaken her, that she must attribute her overwhelming dejection to the infirmities of her body, the weakness of her mind, and the advantage Satan was taking of her situation, to bewilder and distress her soul. I then besought her to have faith in the Lord Jesus, and assured her of my persuasion that her eternal happiness was secured. I then knelt down, and in a short prayer, implored of God to give her confidence in Him, and to relieve her of the burden under which she was labouring. Our prayers, I have every reason to believe, were answered, for soon after I said,Jane, you appear now, indeed in the valley of the shadow of death." Yes," said she, "and I fear nothing." I again told her my confident hope of her going to glory, and she repeated the last word, glory, with apparent satisfaction several times over to herself. This was enough to satisfy me, and I sat down, expecting shortly to see the last of one, whose progress to glory I had so minutely traced. But that pleasure was denied me. I left the house about five o'clock, and poor Jane took her leave of all the doubts, and fears, sorrows and sufferings of this vale of tears, at half-past ten the same night.

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Now though I would not confine the mercy of God, for I know that it passeth knowledge, or I should not now be in the land of the living, much less under a dispensation of hope, yet I cannot have much confidence in that assurance which is excited from a mere persuasion of the mind, or a dream, which after all may be delusive.

For this reason, therefore, I cannot but fear that poor Mary B's conversion was not genuine. Thoughtless and giddy in her youth, she lived, like most other young people, enjoying the present moment, and imagining sickness and death at an indescribable distance from her; till a slow and flattering disease secretly stole upon her and scarcely alarmed her fears before she was hurried to the tomb. Though she was guilty of no flagrant sins, thoughshe lived a decent and sober life, yet, it was evident that poor Mary's affections were not set on things above, it was evident she had lived without hope, and without God in the world, and, if

my fears are true, O where is now her unhappy soul? How bitterly is she lanting her hardness and insensibility of heart, her stubbornness and indolence of temper, which induced her to despise all the warnings of God's providence, and all the exhortations of her pious friends! She is now deeply bewailing herself in that forlorn region of everlasting despair, where hope never comes, and where even God has forgotten to be gracious, O 66 how have I hated instruction and my heart despised reproof."

But with what pleasure do I refer the reader to the sincere re

pentance of Jane P—. She gave indisputable evidence of a radical change in heart and life, for more than twelve months before death. She utterly renounced all dependance upon self, or self-righteousness, and knew that if she were ever saved it must be by the free mercy of God in Christ Jesus. She condemned herself for, and bitterly repented over all her transgressions, and by slow degrees felt the burden and weight of sin diminishing from her conscience, and the force of indwelling corruption, and the temptations of Satan, yielding to the power of the new principles implanted in her; till, at length, she was able to rejoice in the Lord, as

her God, in Jesus, as her Saviour, and in the Holy Ghost, as her Comforter.

And, even her very doubts and alarms before death, were evidences of the sincerity of her desires after repentance, if indeed they are to be accounted of at all.

Thus poor Jane departed, and is now, I doubt not enjoying the presence and smiles of that Saviour, on whom she relied, and proving that the light afflictions of this present time, are not worthy to be compared with the glory which is now revealed in her.

Reader, would you join the spirit of the blessed, or lie down in everlasting burnings. The question is useless, you are saying,

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Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like hers." Yes, you hope that when you die you may be numbered among the company of those just persons made perfect, who are for

ever enjoying the security of God's house, and the blessedness of his family. But, O remember that there is a meetness for the heavenly inheritance, which we must all possess before we can be admitted there; and if you have hitherto neglected the means of acquiring that meetness, under the persuasion that the future will be a more convenient season, for this important work; let the character of poor unhappy Mary deter you from persisting any longer in this dreadful delusion. May you, this very day, adopt the determination of Jane, by a complete surrender of yourself to the Lord Jesus, and may your future upright walk in holíness, afford you, and all around you, a well grounded testimony, that you have chosen "the good part which shall not be taken from you!"

A CONSTANT READER.

THOUGH dull and painful be the way

To our eternal rest,
Though clouded every passing day,
Its brightest hours unblest:
Still let us to the end endure,
An heritage of bliss is sure.

Though sin in every bosom springs,

And spreads and almost reigns,
And e'en our holiest thoughts and things,
Dims with unhallowed stains:
Yet let us to the end endure,
The offered remedy* is sure.

What foes of mortal might and rage,
And of immortal too,

Fierce wars of open hatred wage,
Our weary journey through!

But let us to the end endure,
The victory though delayed is sure-

*The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin.-1 JOHN i. 7.

WE are often compelled to lament that our narrow limits preclude any adequate notice of many publications which we might justly be expected to review, or which we most earnestly desire to recommend. The insertion of short characters of books which has sometimes been advised without the addition of extracts by which our own ideas may be supported, would seldom satisfy either the author or our readers. And yet without adopting some plan of this nature, many of those works which are forwarded to us, must still remain unreviewed. At the same time, we ought in justice to ourselves, and our publisher, to remark, that inquiries are often made by authors after works which have never been transmitted to us.

The two volumes now before us have been for some time reluctantly postponed. Each of them is deserving of high commendation. Each highly calculated for usefulness, though they will be found very considerably to differ in various respects, which are at once characteristic of their authors, and may well suggest useful remarks, to which however we can now only imperfectly advert.

Mr. McNeile's Sermons are a series of warm, vivid, eloquent harangues, calculated to produce high excitement, and sudden rather than either deep or abiding impression. They are the production of

a warm, zealous, affectionate, and deeply impressed mind;-throwni off, we suspect, with considerable rapidity, on plans not very accurately arranged, and consequently not very easy to remember; with language flowing, impassioned, not always very clear, but supported by numerous quotations of Scripture, some of which are exceedingly long and not always strictly appropriate.

In general we have felt his discourses rather deficient in application, yet few of them are destitute of some close appeals to the heart and conscience, some home strokes well calculated to alarm the careless and excite the torpid. Occasionally expressions appear which are, if not strictly speaking unguarded, yet liable to be misunderstood; but the grand object of the writer is to humble the sinner, exalt the Saviour, and promote holiness. The volume is perhaps more calculated to excite the believer than to convert the sinner, and will be more esteemed by religious professors in the higher walks of life, than by those in the middling and lower classes of society. Yet no one can peruse these discourses, and consider the station and connexions of the author without feelings of thankfulness for what God hath wrought in him and by him, and without the most pleasing anticipations of his extensive usefulness. May God give him increasing diligence in study, humility of spirit, deadness to the world, and lively compassion for perishing sinners.

In speaking of man as a sinner, Mr. McNeile remarks,

Another and perhaps a more deceitful reason why the scriptural statements of the universal guilt of man are evaded by so many, arises from the very comprehensive language of scripture upon the subject, describing a variety of characters in a single sentence, and thereby expressing more than any one individual. can take to himself. Observe then the

effect of this. When a man reads one of these comprehensive sentences, selflove directs his attention to those parts of it which do not apply to himself; and his conscience not condemning him therein, he passes over the whole sentence as if no part of it applied to himself. Take, for example, this sentence: "Men shall be lovers of their own selves, &c. 2 Timothy iii. 2-5. I am not without natural affection, whispers the desperately deceitful heart of the reader, I am not a truce-breaker, I am not a false accuser, I am not therefore one of those persons of whom the Apostle writes. Stay! the conclusion is false, the Apostle does write of you: one clause is sufficient to convict. You are not without natural affection? Granted: but are you not unthankful? You are not truce-breakers? Well; but are you not proud, are you not boasters, are you not covetous? You are not false accusers? Be it so: but are you not lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God? and having a form of godliness, are you not denying the power thereof? We repeat, one clause is sufficient to convict; and even if you could prove complete exemption from every clause but one; yet still, under that one, you incur complete condemnation. That sentence of death be passed upon a man, it is not necessary to prove him guilty of murder, and robbery, and forgery; one crime, one clause, is sufficient to convict.-Pp. 18, 19.

Is he touched in his body, weighed down under a lingering and painful disease, day after day cut off from the endearing intercourse of friends, or only forced to feel how unavailing are all their sympathetic efforts to relieve him; night after night deprived of refreshing sleep, the secret sting of pain again and again rousing exhausted nature from the rest she craves? Ah, dearly beloved brethren, none but they who have personally felt it, can form any adequate conception of what it is thus permanently to suffer. Most awful (when considered in the light of eternity) are the inventions usually resorted to, under such circumstances, to while away the worldling's time, and make him forget, if possible, his pain and danger. Change of scene, change of company, false hopes of recovery disingenuously held out, the morbid stimulating interest arising from the perusal of some highwrought work of fiction, or from the slander of the neighbourhood ingeniously retailed:—and truly deplorable is the

too frequent success of such inventions. A deceitful peace is purchased at a frightful price to beguile the body into temporary ease, the eternal interests of both body and soul are studiously kept out of sight; and the hand of mistaken kindness is stretched out to blindfold the immortal spirit, at the most momentous crisis of its existence. O! ye parents and friends, and physicians, who are adopting this short-sighted mode of treatment; consider the ETERNITY which must be spent by the sufferers, and invite them (at any apparent risk of increasing their complaints) I beseech you by the mercies of God, to invite them to seek peace only in the light of the countenance of the Lord Jesus, to derive an antidote to their sufferings only from the joyful sound of the everlasting gospel of the grace of God. There it is, that the Christian sufferer finds peace, not by turning away his contemplations from eternity, but by anticipating its brightest joys, &c.—Pp. 120

-122.

The following ideas on the scriptural use of the Moral Law, are deserving of notice.

This truth, however, is not easily admitted; nay, this conviction is usually most violently resisted, and then the law proves the occasion of irritating the corruptions of men. It stirs up the gall and venom of that inherent pride, which had lain as a thick sediment on the heart; but which now rises and works, and foams over in all the bitterness of the old leaven of a fallen nature. This the apostle Paul describes as having been his own experience. Sin (his sinful nature) taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence.

Like a way

ward child, that takes occasion, from any prohibition whatever, to feel aud manifest a decided preference for the thing prohibited-like a fiery horse, that takes occasion, from the galling check of the bridle, to writhe and rear, and fret himself to a fury-like a running stream, which takes occasion, from a barrier laid across its course, to rise and swell over its banks, and finally to burst the barrier, rushing headlong into its ancient channel: so the nature of man, galled, thwarted, prohibited, from its sinful indulgence by the restrictions of the law of God, rises in stubborn rebellion, and frets with ten-fold violence. "The carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of