PRAISE FOR AFFLICTIONS.

CAROLINE FRY.

For what shall I praise Thee, my God and my King?

For what blessings the tribute of gratitude bring? Shall I praise Thee for pleasure, for health, or for ease?

For the spring of delight and the sunshine of peace?

Shall I praise Thee for flowers that bloomed on my breast?

For joys in perspective, and pleasures possessed? For the spirits that brightened my days of delight? And the slumbers that sat on my pillow by night?

For this I should praise Thee: but only for this,
I should leave half untold the donation of bliss;
I thank Thee for sickness, for sorrow,
for care,
For the thorns 1 have gathered, the anguish I bear.

For nights of anxiety, watchings and tears,
A present of pain, a perspective of fears;

1 praise Thee, I bless Thee, my King and my God, For the good and the evil thy hand hath bestowed

The flowers were sweet, but their fragrance is flown,
They yielded no fruit, they are withered and gone!
The thorn, it was poignant, but precious to me—
'Twas the message of mercy, it led me to Thee!

SUBMISSION TO AFFLICTIONS.

SWAINE.

There is a secret in the ways of God

With his own children, which none others know,
That sweetens all he does; and if such peace,
While under his afflicting hand, we find,
What will it be to see him as he is,

And past the reach of all that now disturbs
The tranquil soul's repose? To contemplate,
In retrospect unclouded, all the means

By which His wisdom has prepar’d his saints
For the vast weight of glory which remains!
Come, then, Affliction, if my Father bids,
And be my frowning friend: A friend that frowns
Is better than a smiling enemy.

SKETCHES OF MISSIONARY LIFE.

No. XII.-DEATH AMONG STRANGERS.

EDITOR.

"When languid nature, in deep fever burning,
Feels all her vital springs are parched and dry,
From side to side, still restless, ever turning,
And scared by phantoms of delirium by;
How sweet, but for a moment's space, to ponder
Surrounded by those bitter, burning things,
Where fresh cool life and gushing health flow yonder,
From pure, celestial, and immortal springs."

Edmeston.

IT was in the month of October, 1826, that the Christian heroine, so lately escaped from the horrors of Oung-pen-lay, lay on her couch of suffering, in a newly-built house, at Amherst, a town then in the process of erection, as the place of government for the territory lately ceded by the Burmans to the British.

The burning brow of the sufferer, as she rolled from side to side, in her anguish, told of the raging fever that was consuming within. Dark-browed daughters of Burmah were noiselessly moving to and fro; but no mother or

sister, or other white female, was there, to soothe the anguish of the lovely sufferer, or in her native tongue to whisper words of tenderness and love. Even the beloved husband was not present, to watch over that ministering angel who had so tenderly watched over him. He had listened to a summons of duty, and was now hundreds of miles away.

Yet pitying hearts were there, and eyes that wept at the anguish of the dying missionary, and voices that whispered accents of love, though in a foreign tongue, yet not unwelcome or unknown, to her whom they strove to comfort and to soothe. One earthly relative alone was there, to weep with that dying mother. It was that little Maria, who most needed her maternal care, too young to understand the cause of the sadness and sympathy that was stamped on every countenance in that house of sorrow. The delirium of the raging fever caused the mind of the sufferer occasionally to wander; yet, even then, her broken expressions afforded an index to judge of the wanderings of her fevered mind. The weeping Burman attendant approaches to moisten the parched lips, and to cool the burning brow of the sufferer, as she gives utterance to her broken thoughts: "O, the teacher is long in coming. The new missionaries are long

in coming.

little one. most violent.

I must die alone, and leave my Tell the teacher, the disease was Tell him I could not write.

- Tell him how I suffered and died. - Tell And again she sinks into the lethargy of approaching death.

him all you see."

At length she lies apparently insensible to all external objects; little Maria is asleep in her cradle; no sound is heard, except the quick and shortened breathing of the sufferer, and the suppressed sobs of the Burman Christian sisters, who watch at the bed-side of the dying teacher. But hark! an infant cry breaks the stillness of the apartment. It is the little mourner in the cradle, weeping to be taken to its mother's arms. Alas! those arms shall infold it no more.

་

Yet

the feeble cry vibrates upon that maternal heart, whose throbbings had well-nigh ceased. The eyes of the sufferer once more open, her parched lips again unclose, consciousness has again returned. Hark! a gentle whisper from the bed of death

Maria

comes home

"Nurse, be kind to my darling indulge it in everything till its father -precious, precious baby!"

* "She made a sign

To bring her babe-'twas brought, and by her placed. She looked upon its face, * * and laid

Her hand upon its little breast, and sought