took up the tongs, thrust them into the fire, grasped the powder-horn, now crackling from the heat, and its wooden bottom one red charred mass, and taking it the whole length of the kitchen, loosened her hold, and calmly allowed it to sink into the tub of water, where it hissed for a short while, and all danger was over. But for this extraordinary promptitude of mind, we should all probably have been dreadfully injured, if not destroyed.

"My parents in the next room knew nothing of what had happened till some time afterwards. Nor did we ourselves then fully understand the greatness of our deliverance. Our dear sister to whom we owed so much, became herself the mother of an interesting family, but died, regretted by the whole community, at the age of thirty-five years. She fell asleep in Jesus. My youngest sister is well and comfortably settled in Scotland, but never, since she arrived at an understanding age, was the protecting care of our God in this matter forgotten or unacknowledged."

Light in Darkness.

"The entrance of thy word giveth light; it giveth understanding unto the simple."-Ps. cxix. 130.

THE living power of the Bible, and its wonderful adaptation to the human heart, is a truth almost universally acknowledged. Yet how many who admit the fact, have but the faintest experience of its reality! Those indeed who have been familiar from childhood with the contents of the Sacred Volume, can scarcely estimate the mighty effect of its simple but sublime disclosures on the minds of persons previously utterly ignorant and unawakened. The astonishing facts, the moving scenes, and remarkable personages of

the Old and New Testament, strike them with all the vividness of a first impression; seizing the imagination and affecting the heart so powerfully as sometimes to engross the whole powers of the soul. How many dark and neglected minds, fast locked in the chains of ignorance and sin, have been thus secretly opened by this Divine key, and insensibly peopled by objects of fresh and undying interest. The mysterious capacities of the human spirit for communion with the unseen world being awakened from their death-like slumber, new desires, affections, hopes, and joys spring up within the soul. It is then that the consummate wisdom of the Book of God is seen in its perfect suitableness to meet these wants, and to nourish them with appropriate supplies. Those of whom we speak have little power to enter into the abstractions of truth, or the mysteries of Christian doctrine, and may be incapable of appreciating the force of reason and argument in its favour; but they can understand the histories of men and women of like passions with themselves, and enter into an experience that is similar to their own. Above all, they can see Jesus, the Friend of sinners and the Saviour of the lost, as the very Friend and Saviour they need, and to him, when Divinely taught, they yield the unquestioning love and trust of little children. "Blessed be ye poor; for yours is the kingdom of God!"

Instances might be multiplied of those who, though like the subject of the following narrative, they may have no place in the visible Church of Christ, will yet assuredly, at the day of his appearing, be found among the Lord's chosen ones, to swell the chorus of his praise: "And they shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels."

Many years ago I visited an aged woman in the city of

Bristol, at the request of her son, who was in decent circumstances. He told me that his mother had been a constant attendant on my ministry, but was now very aged and infirm, and at the point of death. It was the afternoon of the day when I reached her house, which was at some distance from my own. Following my guide, I ascended to the topmost room, and found it meanly furnished, and so far from cleanly as to render it unpleasant for me to remain. I saw lying on a bed before me, an aged female, with her grey hair matted about her head, her eyes dim with age and disease, and her whole appearance most painful and repulsive. "Mother," said her son, "I have brought a gentleman to see you.”—“Who is it?” she mumbled, “I don't know anybody, and can hardly see at all." "I thought," said I, turning to the son, "that she would not know me." At the sound of my voice, she started, and aroused herself, saying, "Oh yes, but I do. Ah! you are the gem'man that I ha' walked so many a listen to, and after my walk on my old legs, I had always to stand in the aisles, as you call 'em, for want of room; but I didn't mind. Oh, often's the time when I waited to pull you by the sleeve as you came down from the pulpit and passed me, that I might tell you how I loved you for talking so much about my old friends and acquaintances!" "Your old friends and acquaintances ?" I inquired, " whom do you mean? You and your friends are quite strangers to me." "Why, I mean," said she, "Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and them like. Dear me, didn't you often tell me how that good old man walked with God, when he went out not knowing where he was going to? And how poor old Jacob lost his son-dear Joseph? They bound him. fast in the prison, and the iron entered into his soul; and," she, as if talking to herself, "I've got a Joseph.

weary mile to

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He's far away from me, and I shall see him no more, but I shall leave him this book (a large folio Bible, which had been purchased in separate parts, and which was lying before her), "I bought it for him a long while ago. I have got no other book, only "The Holy War,' them be all I ever had; but him (directing her attention to the Bible), I'll give him; he'll find it wetted in many places with his old mother's tears. Ah! don't you remember," she continued, that poor dear creature who went into the house after him, and stood at his feet, and wash'd 'em with her tears, and wiped 'em with her hair? I got no hair to wipe 'em, but I could wash 'em with tears too, and they'd not be tears of grief-no, but of love, like hers was, for he said to her-oh! did not his dear lips say to her-Your many sins be all forgiven you; and has not he forgiven mine, quite as many as hers? and don't I love him ?” Then the big tears rolled down her furrowed cheeks, and her strong emotions almost choked her utterance, while her hands were clasped together and lifted up, as if she would have embraced something which she alone could see. So graphic were her descriptions, and so animated was her manner, that I stood beside her listening, as it were entranced, and unmindful of all around me that had seemed unsightly and unpleasant.

The son had quitted the chamber and left us alone; but she, as if heedless of the presence of any one, and occupied with her own musings, went on, and once or twice spoke as if she saw before her the very individuals about whom she was conversing. "Yes," she exclaimed, "the ill-natured Pharisee-(ah! them be always ill-natured to poor folks and sinners like me)-huffed her, and said, if the Master knew her, he wouldn't ha' let her come so near him,-wouldn't he? Ah! he didn't know him, bless his dear lips and his tender, loving heart. No, says he, she has much forgiven

her; and didn't he look into her heart, and tell her to go in peace? Why, they put him between two thieves! they thought to disgrace him; but he took one on 'em to heaven with him! didn't he make a jewel of him? Ah, and he can make me one of his jewels! But la, sir," said she, just then recognising my presence, "how I ha' been talking, and you here, who I've so wanted to hear talk again. Oh, do tell me more about my friends and acquaintances (meaning the Old Testament saints), for I think about them all day and night, and I go about with them and hear all their tales, and see how they wept and how they prayed; and I see the angels, too, coming and talking to them, and then I talk to them, and they to me. And I thinks it'll not be long before I do talk to them really." So she went on till, having to attend an evening service, I reluctantly left the room, promising to see her the next day. My mind was so full of the images and personages she had conjured up before me, that they formed the whole matter of my address that evening; and at the close I told the friends who composed my audience what I had seen and heard. Some pious females requested the address of the aged saint, and repaired early the next morning to her humble abode.

'Ladies," said the person whom they saw, "she scarcely spoke after the gentleman left her, but folded her hands. upon her breast, and died in the night."

She was not, for God took her. In her lowly path she had walked with God, conversed with the angels, and held intercourse with the spirits of just men made perfect, for whose holy society she was, as far as man can judge, prepared far above many of her superiors in gifts and privileges.

May we not be incited by such instances as the foregoing to seek out more diligently and habitually these hidden ones