and then to the deaf and dumb girl,' (who suffered inexpressible agony of mind, sobbed and uttered fearful sounds, and wrung her hands, and followed with eager eyes every look and attitude of those around her), more emphatically, “How could you live in the world without my mother? God knows this.' She faintly uttered, “He always knows best, and, therefore, he takes me first, and perhaps he'll take her next.'

After an inward prayer, she said to her brother, a boy about fourteen years old, •Richard, dear, I am thinking about you; you are too careless; and oh! when temptations come, think of me and my dying prayer. May sin be hateful to you.' Then she looked at Mrs. P-, the lady who was present, • Is he too young, Ma'am,' said she, “ to receive the Sacrament with me? I should so like to receive the Sacrament with him—the first time too! perhaps he would never forget it. If it would not be too great a favour for one so insignificant to ask, I should like to see a clergyman-(alas ! the curate of paid visits to his parishioners of this kind “ few and far between”) and to receive the Sacrament. For awhile she seemed to be repeating sentences of Scripture to herself: "" Here we have no continuing city, but we seek one to come.” “ I know that my Redeemer liveth.”. Yes, I do know this, and it is my only consolation in my troubled condition. Oh! “ there is no soundness in my flesh,” “ make haste to help me, Oh Lord of my salvation !”

Then she tried to turn in her bed, but with great pain and exhaustion. Her mother supported her a little in her arms, then she said, “Thank you, thank you mother ; I am sorry to give you so much trouble :' and then she said to Mrs. P-,I wish my mother would look cheerful; I am so happy, but I wish I could have done more for her and my poor Richard, and these girls! I do not wish to see them in sorrow.” Mrs. P- asked her if she could rest in the Saviour. She said at once, “Oh yes; the thought of Heaven is delightful to me, for Jesus will be there : his grace is sufficient for me, I have no feeling but that of hope and joy;' and she added, ““ My flesh and my heart faileth, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion for

ever.”,

She asked Mrs. P- to take the Church prayer-book and read some of the prayers for the sick. Mrs. P- knelt down, surrounded by this humble but prayerful congregation, and read such parts as were most appropriate. Afterwards Sally whispered to her mother, • Why did you not say Amen to those beautiful prayers ?' but the mother had no power of articulating a response—her voice failed-and the agony of a mother's grief burst forth instead.

This was trying in the extreme to the patient, but she was supported in her struggles. 66. Thanks be to God who giveth me the victory,” said she. I can part with you all-all-when the hour comes; don't cry, it pains me : rejoice that I have such good hope; I know the value of the Saviour of sinners now that I am near death. Stop, stop, dear mother, and all of you, stop weeping, I'm not dying to-day, my bour is pot yet come. She then asked Mrs. P- to repeat one of Watts' hymns, and to say the last verse of the 2d of Corinthians. 'It was just after these occurrences that I entered the house.

Dame Beale's prediction was verified; the next morning her OCTOBER, 1842.

3D

daughter ceased to breathe, and three days after the solemn admonition they received from her dying lips, her companions carried her body to the grave.

I saw the procession winding slowly down the hill; Oh! what a thrilling sight is a country funeral ! the six young girls dressed in white, holding the pall, strewn with flowers, telling of innocence and peace; the string of mourning relatives and friends, following in solemn and quiet decency; all appears to say that every tear shed is one of sincere sorrow and deep feeling. How different from all the pomp and circumstance of pretended woe : the gaudy trappings of fictitious mourning!

They approached the churchyard, and I took up my hat and followed them, anxious to see the remains of poor Sally deposited in their last resting-place. When we reached the grave, my eye instinctively sought the deaf and dumb girl; there she stood, with her hands, her attitude and countenance expressive of mingled sorrow and wonder. She evidently could not exactly understand what was going forward. • What,' I almost audibly ejaculated, ‘can be your notions of a Supreme Being, and of your own destiny? Has the unoffending life and heavenly resignation of her, whom we are now committing “ashes to ashes, and dust to dust,” served as a living book, in which you have read of immortality and future blessedness ? '

She was fond of attending church, and when asked where she was going, would clasp her hands together, and look up to heaven. You might see every colour, every shade of a mind, as artless and as beautiful as that of an infant; her very infirmity seemed to have preserved her from the foibles and failings common to our nature.

The personal knowledge which I had acquired of that imperfectly organized creature, bas excited in me even a stronger conviction than I before entertained of the claims which the deaf and dumb possess to the sympathy and the relief which the friends of humanity have provided for them in those admirable institutions in which the beneficence of Providence has appointed the means of mitigating individual calamities, which otherwise appear to be irremediable.

What a reproach to pine-tenths of the Christian world are the meek and silent suffering, the piety and the active industry of the deaf and dumb girl of the present tale! Shame, shame on those to whom are given “ the adoption and the glory, and the covenants, and the service of God, and the promises ;" to whom is clearly communicated the revelation of God's will, without any defect in the nature of their recipient faculties. Shame on those who, with clear powers of mental perception, turn from the light, because their deeds are evil, and do not even see their reproach in the untaught and ill-organized creature, who yet loves the light, and would come into the full blaze of Christ's meridian glory, if the capability of advancing thither had not been mysteriously withheld from her. They boast perhaps of their light, and all the time are in darkness. She, on the contrary, feels that she is groping in the dark, yet the Lord prevents her from stumbling, and sends into her mind a casual ray of light, which, being heaven-born, cheers and enlivens the dreariness of her path.

Shame-I repeat the opprobrium, on those who neglect or abuse the noble faculties with which God has endowed them fully, as so many talents for the application of which they are responsible. Are they careless of the gifts they have received, senses entire, reason, health, Jimbs, property? Are they indifferent to the privations under which others labour ? have they no sympathy with those who, like the deaf and dumb, are deprived of the blessings I have enumerated-defects which, if they cannot remedy, they may, at least, relieve and miti. gate? Are they of this cold, heartless, untbankful, and apparently irresponsible class of worldlings ? Surely, then, it is no breach of charity to infer that they are undeserving of the blessings they enjoy, and that affliction and sickness may be the most merciful dispensations which the Physician of souls will use to bring them to a sense of their ingratitude for the privileges and mercies they are yet permitted to enjoy.

THE SCRIPTURE.

“For the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God.”—Rev, xx. 4.

ON BAPTISMAL REGENERATION.

Extracted from

Christ our Law," " In his regenerating Spirit.”

It is no wonder, considering the nature and importance of the change described in Scripture, that the anxious aching heart cannot be satisfied with uncertainty ; perhaps it is no wonder men have looked out for some external sign, more sensible if not more detinite, more open to observation, if not to consciousness, being subjected to sense instead of faith, by which to separate the regenerate from the unregenerate, and fix the seal of adoption on the brow. So doing, it seems the natural and nearest error, to seize upon things which God has appointed to exhibit, and show forth the heavenly birth, and to say that it is, not the sign of something it resembles—not the seal of something done already—not the pledge or promise of something that may contingently be done hereafter, but the very thing itself. Let us only believe we are regenerate by baptism, by descent from goodly parents, by adoption into some external community, or by any process of acceptance into the church on earth ; it is easy to see how secure, how satisfied our minds may remain in our supposed condition. Alas ! and how secure and satisfied our great enemy may be, so long as he can keep us there at ease. But it is a wonder, a marvellous example of the difference between credulity and faith, that minds which cannot rest upon the plain promises of God exhibited in the Sacraments, can rest in the Sacraments themselves, without any promise at all; and that they who cannot find in their own experience of faith and repentance, sufficient evidence of a change of heart, can believe the change in themselves and others, in defiance of all evidence to the contrary. Yet is it not at this time true, that some, who for years have been resting in faith and bearing fruit worthy of repentance, are now betaking themselves to their baptism for a proof of regene. ration, and insisting that their children were regenerate therein, in spite of the most manifest evidence that their hearts remain unchanged ?

To the large number of professing Christians who think, and with them may be ranked the ignorant and careless who think not at all, that regeneration is only a change of position, and not a change of nature, giving to all mankind a capacity, or rather an opportunity, without any new capacity, to procure their own salvation ; and even their own reward of gain or loss ; to all these we willingly give up the controversy, as to when and how the new birth transpires : only maintaining that no such change is spoken of at all in Scripture under that name. The transaction does not answer any description given in the Bible of the renewed life and character ; for it implies, in fact, no new life or character at all; the carnal being still carnal, and the seed of the corruptible being still corruptible ; and although the work of Christ may be admitted in a small measure as having procured this change of position, all the essential doctrines of the Gospel are put aside, the work of the Spirit is made void, and the new birth not so much mistaken as denied. If this is intended, I cannot say why regeneration may not be Baptism, as well as anything else. If fallen man requires no change of heart, but only remission for his forefather's sin, with the opportunity to repent and forsake his own, to receive salvation from the hands of man, and recompense here. after from the hand of God, according to his merits and his works ; let it be so : let baptism be the first-born of the parent, it matters not; let it be the whitening or the whitener of the sepulchre, it matters not, we are not careful which; our holy and beautiful house is burnt up—the place where our fathers prayed and praised is gone; let them that take away the corner-stone, take the foundation-stone as well; all they could leave would be but ruin and confusion. It is not this we complain of; it is not this that tires our faith and breaks our hearts, and sends us mourning to our closets day by day, to ask if we, we only are to be left; or if they shall succeed to take away our life also. Our grief is to see the hands we do see put forth to help the ruin : pulling at the very ground-work of their own hope and confidence; removing the first stone the master-builder lays ; as ignorant and thoughtless children at their play, will sometimes bring the loosened cliff upon their heads. It is child's play, it is idle to talk of baptismal regeneration, and assert it, and dispute for it; and end with showing that by regeneration we mean something else; or it may be nothing ; but certainly do not mean that vital change of heart, and new birth of the Spirit, by which we become new creatures ; and are passed from death unto life, -begotten anew in Christ; that vital, and saving change, by which, that which is carnal becomes spiritual, that which was earthy becomes heavenly; and that which died, and was condemned in Adam, is made alive and justified in Christ. But are we to be children? Are we to prate idly, and ignorantly, and thoughtlessly about things in which our own and our fellow-creatures' everlasting welfare is concerned ? If Christians mean, as I am persuaded many do, when they contend for baptismal regeneration, just no more than that the Church which has baptized the child has received it into its maternal bosom; has prayed for it, has blessed it, has devoted it to God, and promised to rear it in the knowledge of His ways; trusting his promises not made to Baptism, for there are none,-- but to prayer, to devotion, to persevering labour and instruction ;- let them say they mean this, and we shall agree with them—in all but the word. Words are free ; and if in secular things men choose, as whimsical disputants are often known to do, that a word shall not mean what it always has meant, but something that serves their purpose better ; if they can get the world's consent, we cannot say why it may not. But does it become us, disciples of Jesus sitting lowly at his feet, to take his word that He has chosen to designate an event the most important, the most mysterious, the most blessed that can transpire on earth, or man experience, or angels witness, and say it shall mean sometbing else ? Methinks the master in Israel should have asked how many times a man could enter into his mother's womb and be born anew. Born first of the flesh, our children are flesh: born again, as is assumed, in baptism, what are they ? Not spiritual, that the pious parent dare not say, while not one evidence of spiritual life appears ! Not a blossom, not a bud perhaps, that gives promise of a heart transformed : we are sure no really pious person will venture to assume the gracious state of any