of her Lord has occasioned our assembling this evening.

As we are commanded to be followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises, we should have their example before us, that we may learn to imbibe their spirit, to imi-. tate their graces, and be ready for their reward. With this view permit me to lay before you some brief recollections of our deceased friend.

It is not my intention to relate the history of her life. That will be a proper task for biography. I design merely to state a few leading facts, and to sketch such outlines of character, as may show to those who knew her not, what manner of person she was in all holy conversation and godliness. Those who knew her best require no such remembrancer; and will be able, from their own observation, to supply its defects.

ISABELLA MARSHALL, known to us as MRS. GRAHAM, received from nature, qualities which in circumstances favorable to their development, do not allow their possessor to pass through life unnoticed and inefficient.

An intellect strong, prompt, and inquisitivea temper open, generous, cheerful, ardent—a heart replete with tenderness, and alive to every social affection, and every benevolent impulsea spirit at once enterprising and persevering. The whole crowned with that rare and inesti

mable endowment, good sense, were materials which required only skillful management to fit her for adorning and dignifying any female station. With that sort of cultivation which the world most admires, and those opportunities which attend upon rank and fortune, she might have shone in the circles of the great, without forfeiting the esteem of the good. Or had her lot fallen among the literary unbelievers of the continent, she might have figured in the sphere of the Voltaires, the Deffands, and the other esprits forts of Paris. She might have been as gay in public, as dismal in private, and as wretched in her end, as any the most distinguished among them for their wit and their wo. But God had destined her for other scenes and services-scenes from which greatness turns away appalled; and services which all the cohorts of infidel wit are unable to perform. She was to be prepared by poverty, bereavement, and grief, to pity and to succor the poor, the bereaved, and the grieving. The sorrows of widowhood were to teach her. the heart of the widow-her babes, deprived of their father, to open the springs of her compassion to the fatherless and orphan-and the consolations of God, her refuge and strength, her very present help in trouble, to make her a daughter of consolation to them who were walking in the valley of the shadow of death.

L

To train her betimes for the future dispensations of his providence, the Lord touched the heart of this chosen vessel in her early youth. The spirit of prayer sanctified her infant lips; and taught her, as far back as her memory could go, to pour out her heart before God. She had not reached her eleventh year, when she selected a bush in the retirement of the field, and there devoted herself to her God by faith in the Redeemer. The incidents of her education, thoughtless companions, the love of dress, and the dancing-school, as she has herself recorded, chilled for a while the warmth of her piety, and robbed her bosom of its peace. But her gracious Lord revisited her with his mercy, and bound her to himself in an everlasting covenant which she sealed at his own table about the 17th year of her age. Having married, a few years after, Dr. John Graham, surgeon to the 60th British regiment, she accompanied him first to Montreal, and shortly after to Fort Niagara. Here, during four years of temporal prosperity, she had no opportunity, even for once, of entering the habitation of God's house, or hearing the sound of his gospel. Secluded from the waters of the sanctuary, and all the public means of growth in grace, her religion began to languish, and its leaf to droop. But the root was perennial-it was of the seed of God which liveth and

abideth forever. The sabbath was still to her the sign of his covenant. On that day of rest, with her Bible in her hand, she used to wander through the woods, renew her self-dedication, and pour out her prayer for the salvation of her husband and her children. He who dwelleth not in temples made with hands, heard her cry from the wilds of Niagara, and strengthened her with strength in her soul.

By one of those vicissitudes which checker military life, the regiment was ordered to the island of Antigua in the West Indies. Here she met with that exquisite enjoyment to which she had been long a stranger-the communion of kindred spirits in the love of Christ and soon did she need all the soothing and support which it is fitted to administer. For in a very short time the husband of her youth, the object of her most devoted affection, her sole earthly stay, was taken from her by death. The stroke was, indeed, mitigated by the sweet assurance that he slept in Jesus. But a heart like hers, convulsed by a review of the past and anticipation of the future, would have burst with agony, had she not known how to pour out its sorrows into the bosom of her heavenly Father. Trials which beat sense and reason to the ground, raise up the faith of the Christian, and draw her closer to her God. O how divine to have Him as the rock of our

rest when every earthly reliance is a broken reed!

Bowing to his mysterious dispensation, and committing herself to his protection as the Father of the fatherless, and the Husband of the widow, she returns with her charge to her native land, to contract alliance with penury, and to live by faith for her daily bread. That same grace under whose teaching she knew how to abound, taught her also how to suffer need. With a dignity which belongs only to them who have treasure in heaven, she descended to her humble cot, employment, and fare. But her humility, according to the scripture, was the forerunner of her advancement. The light of her virtues shone brightest in her obscurity, and pointed her way to the confidential trust of forming the minds and manners of young females of different ranks in the metropolis of Scotland. Here, respected by the great and beloved by the good; in sacred intimacy with devout and honorable women, and the friendship of men who were in truth servants of the most high God, she continued in the successful discharge of her duties till Providence conducted her to our shores. She long had a predilection for America, as a land in which, according to her favorite opinion, the church of Christ is signally to flourish. Here she wished to end her days and leave her chil