fore me a single-hearted individual, who felt satisfied in the evidence of things hoped for, who had made a substance, as firmly as if she held them in her grasp, of things unseen.

This admirable woman reposed a confidence in me, as one worthy of entering into her fellowship of suffering, and she gave me the little history of herself and family :-Married early in life to Zechariah Armstrong, of her many children, none escaped the diseases of childhood, except Rachel. Zechariah's father had gone in early life to the wars, and he was left to the care of a grandfather, who was the son of one of the Anabaptist chaplains who attended Cromwell's army to Ireland. With him was Zechariah reared, in all the high doctrine and strict demeanour of of that sect; and when he took Hester Sheppard to wife, he was not only the strictest religionist, but the ablest controversialist of his church, and that on points, that have agitated the Christian world from the beginning. Zechariah's delight was to go to S-, and hold converse with kindred souls on the deep things of God; his pleasure lay in controversy, and with surprising ingenuity he contrived to hook in his favourite subject on all occasions. Let what would be the subject started-the weather, the rights of man, or the national debt-he contrived to fasten a bias on all subjects, so that they rolled in to the one point his mind was settled on; and yet with Zechariah and his fellows, though there was so much of this head-work, it was to be deplored that the heart did not seem to be established. Their religion had light, but it was such as the moon sheds; it gave no warmth— it did not promote fertility ;-such men lived among doubtful disputations, which ministered to questions rather than to godly edifying.

Then their preacher he came but occasionally amongst them, and when present, rather excited than controlled these dotages about questions. He was a short-necked, round-headed, fullbodied, apoplectically-inclined, man; he used great exercise, in the pulpit, and on the road, and was inclined to refresh the fatigues of the outward man at all convenient opportunities; he was pleasant in society, had a peculiar knack at obtaining golden opinions from women, and he was usually called by those of his congregation, the SWEET MAN.*

Moreover, besides being luminous in the pulpit, facetious in conversation, and clear-sighted as all thought him in worldly matters, his politics were calculated for the meridian of Belfast, and in the year 1796, of which we are now speaking, he was a zealous republican; and it was a favourite dictum with him, that a new era of regeneration was about to arise, and all old establishments, whether political or religious, were fated to fall to pieces.

Now Zechariah's grandfather, by whom he was reared, a pru

* The reader is anxiously requested not to suppose that it is the author's intention to throw discredit on the ministry of any sect of Christians, by the delineation of this character;-some of his earliest recollections, and earliest friends, call his mind to dwell with affection and admiration, on the ministers and members of the Baptist Church.

dent parsimonious man, had scraped together some 500 guineas ; and as his son was abroad in America, no one could tell where; when dying he bequeathed this sum to Zechariah, with the desire that it should be laid out for the benefit of his family. On this occasion Zechariah consulted his minister, who immediately advised him to lay it out, until the times were more settled, with a man who was safe and prudent-too prudent to commit any overt act of treason, against the existing government; yet whose known ́ principles made him be looked up to, by the democratic party. In such hands, let what sink or what swim, orange or green, his money was safe; and moreover legal interest should be punctually paid him. Zechariah thought the proposal infinitely advantageous; and as the minister was shortly to proceed to Belfast, the 500 guineas were consigned to him, to be laid out in the proposed manner.

It is grievous here to relate, how the SWEET MAN went, but never returned; week, month, and year rolled on, and no account of man or money; and Zechariah had but too good reason to conclude that his false friend had proceeded to America with his trust. Zechariah, who was never under the influence of genuine religion, whose heart was not established by grace, now underwent an awful revulsion of sentiment : his mind, proud, morbidly proud-for pride was at the bottom of all his disputations— now, finding itself deceived, and basely cheated, came to the decision that all the world must be deceived also; because he had found a deceiver in a minister of religion, he adopted the idea that all ministers must be deceivers; and from the deepest profession of religion, from a tenacity to tenets of the highest grade, he flung himself at once from the battlements of Christianity, and plunged into the lowest depths of infidelity-he trusted neither in God nor man. Not so his wife; she had been reared by a God-fearing mother; she had listened from childhood to the pastoral instruction of a pains-taking minister, who, though he never ceased to preach, Christ crucified, as the only foundation of a sinner's hope; yet never neglected to show "that he that is in Christ must be a new creature, old things must pass away, and all things become new." It was his glory to declare that man is alone justified by faith in the Saviour's atonement, yet he loved to draw from this premise, the conclusion, that faith must work by love, and that the pure stream of charity must ever flow from the fountain of living faith.

Zechariah retreated to the farm of his forefathers; and oh! with what different propensities and prospects did he and his wife go-he with a soured temper, wounded pride, unsettled principles, "without God, and without hope in the world;"-she prepared for all events, feeling it is true, acutely feeling,-for true religion does not destroy passion, it only alters and elevates. She felt for her husband, she struggled with his impracticability, she sent up the secret prayer for his restoration to right views and right feelings, and was unwearied in her domestic occupations; all her relative duties, of wife, mother, and mistress, she fulfilled; and when her husband's father came home, a poor, maimed, querulous old man, the clime-worn remnant of war,

and blasted speculation: it seemed her pleasure to minister to his numerous wants, to procure him every comfort, to smooth his seat and his pillow, and, as far as in her lay, to prepare his fleshly mind for the truths and consolations of vital Christianity. Then, as her only child, Rachel, expanded into womanhood, it was her ceaseless solicitude, it was her unwearied occupation, to teach her to he likeminded with herself; and yet so it was, that Rachel's disposition was not docile, she inherited much of her father's self-sufficiency, she was also fonder of arguing than acting; and though her mother ever showed, in her own beautiful example, that religion's yoke was not burdensome, yet Rachel seemed to consider that as wearisome, which her mother found to be full of joy. Rachel was born and grew up a beauty. If there were not a glass in the world, the placid waters of the lake beneath her cottage, in reflecting her form and face, told her she was lovely; and then her father was no churl of his scepticism, for in his disputatious moods, which were frequent, he gave ample scope to his powers of ridicule and sophistry; and it became the new delight of his mind to pour contempt on religion and its professors-in his eye every clergyman became identified with the SWEET MAN who swindled him; and all religion he denounced as the craft of the few, to frighten the many. All these sophisms coming from a man she believed wise, and was bound to respect, combined with the lust of her own flesh, and the lust of her own eye, and the pride of her young life, were at her age most fatal, when the will is so headstrong and has such power over the understanding. Rachel was found to think, though she might not exactly say so, that her mother was a dear amiable deceived enthusiast, who flung away substances for shadows, and in renouncing the pleasures of this life, gave up certainties for mere possibilities. Just at this period an election took place in the country-let it take place when or where it will, it is the hour and the power of Satan, who, at this juncture, has all his engines at work: nefarious ness was in operation from the peer to the priest, and from him to the peasant. And on this occasion, as Zechariah could in a measure command a few votes, a distant relation of his, a devoted tool of one of the candidates, in order to win the suffrages of the father, invited the daughter to spend some time at his house. Any one who knew the state of Ireland some years ago must recollect what dissipation and lax morality prevailed among many calling themselves gentlemen, who, with a selfish indifference to the ruin and degradation they were inflicting, rioted in the seduction of females of the lower classes. And alas! ladies, too, in those days, were found, who acting under the hope of advantageous settlements, and aggrandizing matrimonial speculations, looked on with complacency, and received attentions from men, whose conduct they knew, when they dared to indulge themselves, was vicious, and heartless, and brutal. Into a society constituted in a great measure of such characters, was Rachel introduced-introduced to gratify her father's pride, but sorely against the better opinion of her mother. Now, for the first time, did Rachel put on fine raiment; now, for the first time, like a garlanded victim, did she pass on before the crowd, as if to

be admired and then sacrificed. Beautiful in feature and graceful in form, if she could not dance scientifically, she could move gracefully; and it was soon found, that with all the freshness of unsophisticated melody, the thrush on the mountain-ash, in her native glen, was not more clear, or the redbreast, in the elder-tree near her cottage-bower, more sweet, than Rachel was, when pouring forth those plaintive airs that Ireland is so proud of. She was indeed a lovely attractive creature.

ease

Henry on a visit at the same house, was heir to a fine fortune, an only son, a spoiled child; born to be indulged rather than restrained. Before he arrived at manhood, the antichristian cord of selfishness was coiled round his heart, and it became e-hardened and reckless of the sufferings of others. Ardent, clever, resolute; handsome in face, fashionable in figure, he possessed much external accomplishment; and had found hitherto that it was scarcely considered a disgrace by the lower classes of the female sex, to submit to his demands. Henry knew that Rachel was but a farmer's daughter; of the better class, it is true; her father a stern, determined, independent man. But what was all this to Henry? The stream tumbling from the mountain-side was not more fearless of the pebbles in its channel, than was this self-indulger, reckless of all possible consequences. She was beautiful, and she must be his;-beneath him, and not his wife, but his-victim.

It is not my purpose to write the story of a base, false, treacherous, infernal seduction-of her flight from her cousin's house, under promise of inmediate marriage-of her ruin, despair, desertion, destitution-of her dragging herself, a poor, degraded, diseased thing, home to her father's door-of her reception. What a laceration it was of every ligament of the parental heart to see her thus return; her, who was all that this earth owned of hope, and pride, and honour, come back the basest of cast-aways, trodden under foot of men. Gracious God! none but those unto whom there has been given a parent's pride and a parent's solicitude can read aright the agony that was reserved for Rachel's parents in that hour.

I repeat it, I cannot, I must not describe, at large, how the unfortunate father met this blow. He had no shield of faith, and could not ward it off; he had no helmet of salvation, and the wound went into his brain-it deprived him of his senses; howling, he rushed a maniac into the mountains. At length, forced back by his pitying neighbours, for weeks and months the sufferer lived under the restraint of keepers, and when reason was restored, it returned but to exercise itself in the production of augmented wretchedness. In his shipwreck, he had no life-boat of religion within signal, to call to his aid, and land him on those shores where the weary find rest. The miserable man was without God, and therefore was without hope in the world. He permitted his daughter to reside under his roof, but never allowed her to approach his person; and it was only when he roamed abroad, bending like a heron over the lonely lake, or wandering like a wounded deer along the topmost ranges of the mountains, that Rachel was seen to leave her little apartment, and partake of her dear mo

ther's company; and then it was that the anxious, all hoping, all believing mother, in the sweet gentleness of her spirit, would proffer to her wretched child the asylum of the cross. She, in her subdued faithfulness, brought out all the comforts and balmy promises that the blessed Bible is fraught with. She poured all its consolations before this child of sin and suffering. But no, it would not do a boiling current was bubbling up, and nothing peaceful would settle there; no alleviation of religion, no oil of gladness could rest a moment on a surface, while an earthly and turbid scum was still ascending from beneath. Yet with fond fancy she clung to the hope, that her seducer would return to claim her as his own, and restore her to his love, and the world's honour.

Such was the state of the family when I first visited them, and no change in its circumstances or character occurred until the approach of winter, when old Jonas Armstrong, the grandfather, died off in his chair, without previous warning; and I buried him beneath the old belfry; and then I saw the family but seldom : until, one morning after Christmas, a little mountain boy came breathless to my door, to deliver a note from Hester Armstrong, informing me that Rachel was dying, and beseeching me by the love I bore for souls, and by the desire I had of seeing a sinner saved, to hasten to the cottage. I need not say that I lost no time; but indeed the difficulties in my way were very great. A long frost followed by a heavy fall of snow, had been succeeded by a rapid thaw, accompanied with tempest and rain from the southwest. The hardened snow on the road, was still slippery as glass; the ice in the ditches was still strong, but honeycombed, and covered with rain water; the rain that had fallen over night, combined with the melting snow, now came down sweeping and roaring in a thousand cataracts from the mountains; and as they rushed along in their forcible magnificence, they tumbled over the wild tracery and gorgeous architecture of icework that clothed the chasms in the watercourses, and the dripping ledges of rock in the ravines and gorges of the hills. Though the fury of the storm was in a great measure abated, through a fog that covered the ocean, its tremendous swell was heard, and the moaning of the awful element sounded on the ear like warnings that its anger was unappeased, that it growled still for more victims. Slowly as I wound my dangerous way along the shore, now slipping, now fording my way through sweeping torrents-often falling, often hurt-I imagined I heard signal guns of distress at sea; and then I shuddered, as methought there came around me wailings of agony reverberating from the mountains; and while I almost fancied that

"The spirit of the mountain shriek'd,”

I resigned myself to strange forebodings, that my own death was at hand, and was tempted to sit down and abide patiently my perishing. But thanks be to God, my spirit did not long quail under these desertions of firmness; and I looked up to Him who ruleth the raging of the sea, and who was about my way and my path; and went on rejoicing in the presence of Him who loved me and gave himself for me. The shadows of night were ga