I have spoken with great confidence of the beatified state of our departed sister; because I have not a shadow of doubt of it. After an intimacy with her of more than two years, part of which time I spent under her own roof, I never discovered the first blemish in her character. I very much question whether any one else ever did, after she became a member of the Church of Christ. one after another, her strength failing, her grief increasing, and her solitude becoming more dreary with every loss. She must have shared the common lot of all the sons and daughters of Adam-sickness, pain and sorrow, in forms and intensity which he cannot know. From all these things she has escaped. Her last pang is felt, her last tear is shed; her fears quelled, her brightest hopes are realized. Her sighs are changed to songs, and As a daughter, she was affectionate, obediher moans to hallelujaks! From the society ent and kind. As a wife, she was all that a of sinful mortals, she is transferred to the so- pious husband could desire, and all that God ciety of sinless immortals. Abram and Isaac, required her to be. As a mother, she was genand Jacob, and Moses and Aaron, and all the tle but firm-leading on her little ones to patriarchs and prophets of old - Stephen and heaven, more by the restraints of love than Paul, and all the just made perfect, who went authority. She must have been pre-eminently before her, are now her companions, and shall blessed in the native disposition of her chilforever be. And yet her joys are not half dren, or herself a model of parental governtold, and no human tongue can tell them. ment; for they are mostly of that age which Paul, with but a glimpse of them from earth, falls almost exclusively under maternal care, could not describe them. She is an angel of and no mother can boast of a lovelier group. heaven, we know; and wonderful have been As a mistress, she was gentle and kind; attenthe things done by angels on this earth. The tive to the wants and indulgent to the frailties guardian angel she may be of her husband of her servants. As a neighbor, she abounded and his children. She beckons them to her in good offices; always bestowed in the most abode of bliss, and gives it an additional endearing way. As a Christian, she was charm. Can stronger consolations to grief blameless in her walk and conversation. She be conceived of, than these? I heard a voice was peculiarly attached to the house of God from heaven saying unto me Write, blessed and its services, as this congregation well are the deal that die in the Lord from henceforth. | know. I would, says Paul, that women adorn Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedtheir labors, and their works do follow them.ness and sobriety, not with broidered hair, or Now, all these consolations are yours, ye gold, or pearls, or costly array. But (which grief-stricken, loving and loved ones, of our departed sister. These are the consolations of those who knew her, and knew her but to love her. Could the sympathy of friends alleviate your grief, you would hardly know its poignancy. Go, search not the places which she consecrated by her presence, or the things which she hallowed by her touch, to open afresh the fountains of your tears; but look to her in her new abode, the house of many mansions, prepared for her by him who died that she might live. See her, with what she now holds in her hands-palms of victory, that shall never fade. See her, in the chorus of the blessed, singing Hallelujah: Salvation, and glory, and honor, and power, unto the Lord our God. Go, represent her as well as you can, in ministering to those little ones, who are the greatest losers by her death. All tears are wiped away from her eyes: wipe away all tears from yours; at least as soon as you can, and strive not to recall them. becometh a woman professing godliness) with good works. Teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the Word of God be not blasphemed. These are rules which call for constant care and circumspection, and no little firmness in this day and genera-, tion; but our departed sister, as you all know, obeyed them to the letter. I speak confidently of her transit to a brighter world than this. May her mantle fall upon the daughters of Oxford! Sore is her loss to her family, her church, and her neighborhood; but our loss is her gain; and let us submit to the sad dispensation with meekness and humility. It is an inscrutable providence; but it is the Lord's doing, and shall not the Judge of all the Earth do right? Let us redouble our energies to dispensation to the soul's good of all present, meet her in heaven; and may God sanctify the so that we may shout with her the praises of redeeming love in the seraph world. For The Casket." DEATH. BY MRS. AN. Death! There's something dark, mysterious and profound Ah, Death! How truly art thou called the King of Terrors ! Thy conquests are not checked by swelling seas A barrier to human pride, and say To man's ambition-"Thus far shalt thou come;" And bring whole navies captive to thy feet. To thy wide sway, the learned and the rude, A solemn awe always attends thy steps. Even when we see an aged man, whose days We feel that 'tis a serious thing to die. But when thy dart, O Death! pierces the heart And feel the vast realities which give And though Nature shrinks appalled, reluctant, When she surveys the darkness of the tomb: Though we have loved And cherished daintily our prison house, And cannot give it up as food for worms To close our eyes on these, and venture down The grim attendants waiting on his train, Ah! who can realize the solemn scene, Is ushered to the presence of its God? Who cannot look on sin with but abhorrence! I look beyond the darkness of the grave O, love divine! Unutterable grace! Ascending high, and showed our feet the way. LOVE. - Love is the diamond among the jewels of the believer's breastplate. The other graces shine like the precious stones of nature, with their peculiar lustre and various hues, but the diamond is white, uniting all the others. rect interposition of some power above all natural laws. Professor Mitchell said that the motion of the earth on its axis could never have been arrested, and the stability of the universe never sustained, without a direct interposition of the power of the Creator in the suspension of the laws of gravitation and attraction. Now, in theory, this was the same thing; but, in order to do it, he must be possessed of Almighty power. There was no reason in attempting to account for such an occurrence by any known laws; if it took place (and that it did, we have the evidence of this Book), it was the work of the Almighty, done expressly to display a miracle of power to the hosts of the Israelites and their enemies, and not incidentally to be noticed or overlooked, as the attention of man might happen to be directed at the time." We understood the position of Professor Mitchell to be, distinctly, that he regarded this phenomenon as a real miracle, a positive suspension of the ordinary laws of matter by the special interposition of God. He did not speak doubtfully on the subject, nor did he press his convictions upon his hearers as infallible. He had been asked to speak upon that particular point, and he gave such views as had been settled upon his mind as the only solution of the question to which he had come. The conclusions were entirely his own, and to him entirely satisfactory. MUSIC. BY REV. HENRY GILES. You often seek an utterance yet nearer to the in finite; and such they find in music. cannot delineate a feeling—at most, you can by intonation directly give the feeling. Thus related to the unseen soul, music is a voice for faith, which is itself the realization of things not seen. And awaiting as the soul is amidst troubles and toils, looking upward from the earth, and onward out of time, for a better world or a purer life, in its believing and glad expectancy, music is the voice of its hope. In the depression and despondency of conviction; in the struggles of repentance in the worldless calm of internal peace, music answers to the mood, and soothingly breaks the dumbness of the heart. For every charity that can sanctify and bless humanity, music has its sacred measures; and well does goodness merit the richest harmony of sound, that is itself the richest harmony of heaven. Sorrow, also, has its consecrated melody. The wounded spirit and the broken heart are attempered and assuaged by the murmurings of Divine song. A plaintive hymn soothes the departing soul. It mingles with weeping in the house of death. ritual of the grave. The last supper was closed with a hymn; and many a martyr for Him who went from that supper to his agony, made their torture jubilant in songs of praise, It befits the solemn An essay equal to the subject on the vicissitudes and varieties of sacred music, would be one of the most interesting passages in the history of art. In their long wanderings to the land of promise, sacred music was among the hosts of Israel; and in that great temple of nature, and roofed by the sky, they chanted the song of Miriam and of Moses. It was in their Sabbath meeting-it resounded with the gladness of their jubilees. When Solomon built a house to the Lord, it was consecrated with symbols, and psalteries, and harps, with the sounds of trumpets and the swell of voices. As long as the temple stood, music hallowed its services; and that music must have been supremely grand which suited the divine poetry of the inspired and kingly lyrist. Israel was scattered-the temple was no more. Silence and desolation dwelt in the place of the sanctuary. Zion heard no longer the anthems of her Levites. A new word, that was spoken first in Jerusalem, had gone forth among nations, and that, too, had its music. At first it was a whisper among the THE grandest office of music is that in which, no doubt, it originated—that in which, early, it had its first culture; in which, latest, it has its best—I mean its office in religion. In the sanctuary it was born, and in the service of God it arose with a sublimity with which it could never have been inspired in the service of pleasure. More assimilated than any other art to the spiritual nature of man, it affords a medium of expression the most congenial to that of nature. Compared with tones that breathe out from a profound, a spiritually musical soul, how poor is an allegory which painting can present, or that symbol can indicate! The soul is invisible; its 'emotions admit no more than itself of shape or limitation. The religious emotions can not always have even verbal utterance. They dwellings of the poor. Stealthily it after ward was murmured in the place of the Casars. In the dead of night, in the depths of the catacombs, it trembled in subdued melodies, filled with the love of Jesus. Sacred music has power without a ritual. In the rugged hymn which connects itself, not alone with immortality, but also with the memory of brave saints, there is power. There is power in the hymn in which our fathers joined. Grand were those rude psalms which once arose amidst the solitudes of the Alps. Grand were those religious songs, sung in brave devotion by the persecuted Scotch, in the depths of their moors and their glens. The hundredth psalm, rising in the fullness of three thousand voices up into the clear sky, broken among rocks, prolonged and modulated through valleys, softened over the surface of mountain-guarded lake, had a grandeur and a majesty, with which mere art is poverty and meanness. And while thus reflecting on sacred music, we think with wonder on theme that he had been in the Philadelphia PenChristian church- -on its power, and on its compass. Less than nineteen centuries ago, its first hymn was sung in an upper chamber in Jerusalem; and those who sung it were quickly scattered. And now, the Christian hymn is one that never ceases- - one that is heard in every tongue; and the whisper of chamber is now a chorus that fills pair of pistols with him. Inquiring what he was doing with arms, he said he carried them to protect us, as he had heard that robberies had been committed on our road. I said to him- Give me the pistols; I will take care of them. He did so, reluctantly. "In pursuing our journey through a dismal looking forest, a man rushed into the road, caught the horses by the bridle, and demanded my purse. I said to him with as much selfpossession as I could command - Are you not ashamed to rob a woman? I have but little money, and that I want to defray my expenses in visiting prisons and poor-houses, and occasionally in giving to objects of charity. If you have been unfortunate, are in distress, and in want of money, I will give you some.' Whilst thus speaking to him, I discovered his countenance changing, and he became deadly pale. My God!' he exclaimed, 'That voice!' and immediately told that upper the world. From the "Greenville (S. C.) Patriot." AN INTERESTING INCIDENT. itentiary, and had heard me lecturing some of the prisoners in an adjoining cell, and that he now recognized my voice. He then desired me to pass on, and expressed deep sorrow at the outrage he had committed. But I drew out my purse, and said to him 'I will give you something to support you until you can get into honest employment.' He declined at first taking anything, until I insisted on his doing so, for fear he might be tempted to rob some one else before he could get into honest employment." Had not Miss Dix taken possession of the pistols, in all probability they would have THE Greenville (S. C.) Patriot relates the been used by her driver, and perhaps both of following incident of Miss Dix: them murdered. "That voice!' was more powerful, in subduing the heart of a robber, than the sight of a brace of pistols. INFLUENCE OF A SMILE.. The other day, in conversation with Miss Dix, the philanthropist, during her visit to Greenville, a lady said to her, “Are you not afraid to travel all over the country alone, and have you not encountered dangers and been in perilous situations?" "I am natuIT is related in the life of a celebrated rally timid," said Miss Dix, "and diffident, mathematician, William Hutton, that a reLike all my sex ; but in order to carry out my spectable-looking country woman called uppurposes, I know that it is necessary to make on him one day, anxious to speak with him. sacrifices and encounter dangers. It is true, She told him, with an air of secrecy, that her I have been, in my travels through the differ- husband behaved unkind to her, and sought ent States, in perilous situations. I will men- other company, frequently passing his evention one which occurred in the State of Mi-ings from home, which made her feel exchigan. I had hired a carriage and driver to convey me some distance through an uninhabited portion of the country. In starting, I discovered that the driver, a young lad, had a tremely unhappy; and knowing Mr. Hutton to be a wise man, she thought he might be able to tell her how she could manage to cure her husband. The case was a common one, and he thought he could prescribe for it without losing his reputation as a conjurer. "The remedy is a simple one," said he, "but I have never known it to fail. Always treat your husband with a smile." The woman expressed her thanks, dropped a courtesy, and went away. A few months afterwards, she waited on Mr. Hutton with a couple of fine fowls, which she begged him to accept. She told him, while a tear of joy and gra'itude glistened in her eye, that she had followed his advice, and her husband was cured. He no longer sought the company of others, but treated her with constant love and kindness. From the "Home Journal." WHAT IS GOD? In the early meeting of one of the committees of the Westminster Assembly, the subject of deliberation was to frame an answer to the question, "What is God?" Each man felt the unapproachable sublimity of the Divine idea suggested by these words; but who could venture to give it expression in human language! All shrunk from the too sacred task in awe-struck, reverential fear. At length it was resolved, as an expression of the committee's deep humility, that the youngest member should make the first attempt. He consented; but begged that the brethren would first unite with him in prayer for Divine enlightenment. Then, in slow, solemn accents, he thus began his prayer:"O God, thou art a spirit, infinite, eternal and unchangeable in thy being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth." When he ceased, the first sentence of his prayer was immediately written down and adopted, as the most perfect answer that could be conceived; as, indeed, in a very sacred sense, God's own answer, descriptive of himself. This individual, it is supposed, was George Gillespie. teachers is a defect of purpose. Their pu pose in teaching, to render it effectual, shou be well defined in their own mind. Second-There is often a deficiency method. For instance, an anecdote told o of place an illustration dwelt upon un the point to be illustrated is lost sight of, a the time lost for the intended application some solemn truth. Third- A deficiency in clearness. Teac ers should study their lessons, and get a cle perception of their duties before engaging them on each successive Sabbath. Langua and phrases should not be used to which t children are unequal. Fourth-A want of interest. Teacher generally do not make the subject of the teaching sufficiently interesting to their ch dren. Carefully avoiding the ridiculous, the should seek to clothe the truth in a for likely to be most attractive to the infa mind. Fifth-Teachers are deficient in applyi their teaching to their pupils. They shou be acquainted with the temptations, duti and employments of their children. Out these they should make their personal app cations, and from them they should dra their lessons of illustration and instructio thus making their teaching applicable to t children's own conduct. - [Sunday-sch. Jou WILLIAM WIRT. b MR. WIRT was of a tall, commanding a pearance, and easy carriage. His featur were classic, resembling in no little degr those of the German poet Goethe. His voi was sweet and melodious; his laugh gay, not boisterous; his conversations highly a tractive; and his manners gentle, unstudie courteous and winning. Fond of society, at one time, during youth, was endangered love of social gayety. He was a lover L.sic and poetry; at the latter he even ma e playful attempts himself. In speakin his gestures were graceful; his orato Smooth, polished, chaste and elegant: it w SPEAKING generally of the errors of charming-- Patrick Henry's by stormi day-school teachers, and in no spirit of in the hearts of the audience. He was not a vidual fault-finding, we may point out several quainted with the Greek, but in knowled matters which experience has shown to be of of the Latin he was unusually proficient. importance. his journeys he was wont to carry with h First-That a prevailing error amongst a pocket edition of Horace for company; |