"OUR MOTHER WAS A REMARKABLE WOMAN." THE BY REV. L. D. BARROWS. HESE words fell from the lips of a strong, middle-aged man, as he, with a younger brother, sat alone, late at night, in mournful thoughtfulness, drawn around the dying embers of the paternal hearth-stone. This remark called up a thousand tender reminiscences of their youth and their recently-departed and lamented mother. The conversation now turned on events and scenes of other days. Long and touching was that conversation, and I need hardly say that "mother" was the theme-she who had been the center of attractions in that home for forty years, had but just fallen asleep in Jesus, leaving vacant the old arm-chair and her place at table. The younger of these two sons had just traveled three hundred miles to see the place where they had laid her. These pensive sons talked on till midnight stole insensibly upon them. In the course of this chastened interview there was one great thought which developed and deeply impressed itself upon their minds; namely, the results, unforeseen and unanticipated, which follow a humble but unwavering course of duty. How all this is shown and illustrated in the character and history of this mother we will now inform the thoughtful and duty-loving wife and mother, as well as all other readers. Early in her married life she became a Christian. She was modestly but firmly and perseveringly attached to the religion of Christ and all its duties. The husband and father, though intelligent, moral, and kind, was unconverted, somewhat skeptical, and thoroughly self-right eous. About this time the family removed into a new and remote town on the eastern slope of the Green Mountains, in Vermont, quite distant from all religious privileges and almost wholly out of reach of those of her own chosen Church. Here, in worldly circumstances made only comfortable by excessive toil and hardship, she lived for many years, doing more than her full part to support and educate-limitedly-a family of six children-three sons and three daughters. The amount of physical labor and exposure which she endured for many years in this way, would shock most of you whose tiny fingers turn these pages, since it is your good fortune to live, unlike her, when fire and water turn the spindles and work the looms of our mothers. During these long years also she was comparatively without the "ordinary means of grace." Yet such was her desire for and delight in divine worship, she often rode on horseback ten and fifteen miles for that purpose, happy only in her Savior and her rising family. Firmly did she cleave to Christ, faithful in her closet duties, and every other means of grace which her limited opportunities furnished. Her responsibilities she deeply felt-religiously felt and the more so, as she was the solitary representative of Christ in that family. Often and fervently did she cry to God for the salvation of the husband and children. She fasted and she prayed; by precept and example enforc Pause, gentle reader, one moment in this brief narrative and contemplate this hopeful and glorious thought. Our good Father in heaven has marked for us a path of duty, and sometimes it appears difficult and rugged, while the reasons for it are all out of human sight; yea, these very duties may seem to conflict with reason! Yet there stands the command. What shall be done? Assume that we are better judges than the Author of our being and all our mercies? This will show a lack of faith and fidelity which will sunder us as cast-off branches of the living Vine, and banished us from the household of faith. God will be trusted and not argued with. Then and thus, walking by faith and not by sight, we shall obey all his commands and leave the resulting religion on all the household. The holy wholly with him. But are you continually predisposed to ask, "What good will this or that act of duty do?" We reply, God only knows or can know, and your question indicates a wicked lack of confidence-"without faith it is impossible to please God." The results of duty can never be disastrous in the end, when every thing is considered. No matter what these duties are, whether public or private, great or small, observed or unobserved, God will bring about good and only good results when sincerely performed. Rely upon it. There is safety no where else. There is divine favor and usefulness no where else. Sabbath was sacredly observed; the word of God was carefully and religiously read; at the earliest possible opportunity every child was placed in Sabbath school, and many long and weary miles did they walk for that purpose while yet very young. Carefully did she train them all to value their time, their labor, their money, and the few good and only good books placed within their reach. Few amusements, and none dissipating, were provided or allowed. The children sometimes complained that their training was too rigid and Puritanic; but the mother knew better, and was firm enough the right to pursue, for which they have since a thousand times given thanks to God, loving and revering her memory more and more. Time rolled on. ter became pious. At length the eldest daughNow she found a companion in prayer and began to rejoice in some fruit of her long and patient waiting for the harvest. Soon after this the two eldest sons sought and found Christ. Nearly the same time some other young men in the neighborhood became converted. Then religious meetings for prayer and religions conversation were established in the place and a general revival followed, Mainly through the exertions of these two converted sons a Sabbath school was established in the district school-house-small but efficient in its beginning, and continues, we think, to this very day. The eldest son was appointed superintendent. Another revival soon occurred, commencing in this Sabbath school. In this revival the youngest of the three sons was converted, with most of the young and many middle-aged people of the neighborhood. Ministers of the Gospel were invited to visit and preach here, and regular religious worship was established and a branch of the Christian Church organized. Soon following was the conversion of the two youngest daughters-all that remained unconverted of the children. Thus this faithful mother saw her six children, one by one, coming with her and drinking at the fountain of the waters of life and giving their hearts to God. O happy day for that mother! Happy day for those children! Now there were seven instead of one to pray for the father, who all this time stood like an ungleaned stock in the harvest-field. Often and earnestly did this round number of seven souls plead with God, as they saw this-now-aged father halting to the tomb without having been known ever to have confessed his need of Christ or to shed one tear over his sins of near threescore years. The sons, as they became men, entered into argument, expostulation, and exhortation, pleading with him as they did with God for him. But not one hopeful sign encouraged them, either in his concessions or appearances. He was calm, candid, but unfeeling and indifferent. Nothing but the naked promises of God and the Spirit had they to encourage them to hope he would ever take shelter in the Gospel from the wrath to come. But God is good: "his ways are not as our ways." "And shall he not avenge his own elect, who cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them?" When sixty long, weary, and sinful years of his life were beginning to be finished up, and when all human means had proved their insufficiency, and when all hope of friends was about to expire, and all this household were beginning to dread the day when they must say "farewell" world without end to husband and to father, 0, all praise to God, by his great grace, this moral iceberg melted, as under the focus rays of seven confederate suns, and cried out, "What must I do to be saved!" He who turns none empty away, who sincerely and penitently apply, suffered him to enter in and be saved. O what a God of goodness and power is ours! What a day was that when, for the first time, the husband and father kneeled in prayer around an altar bedewed with others' tears for thirty years! There was joy in heaven and joy on earth that day. To hear that voice in prayer and praise seemed like a vision of some long lookedfor object almost on the borders of Paradise-a vision which had come of a whirling brain and throbbing heart, lashed into a tempest by long years of agony-a vision too glorious to be true, and sure to be proved unreal in the next breath. But, thanks to God! it was a great fact, which remained fixed with him till the lamp of life went quietly out, and the morning of immortality opened to his view. Before death swept away either of these parents the whole family became members of the same Christian Church; both of the elder sons were official members, two of the daughters had become the wives of evangelical ministers, and the youngest son had been sixteen years a preacher of the Gospel in the same Church. The second son died peacefully in full manhood, and all the other children are still living, and, so far as is known to the writer, honoring the God of their fathers. Now, kind reader, trembling and desponding, it may be, "under your trials and duties," thinking all you are doing amounts to nothing, look at this "mother," whose history and character we have thus briefly and imperfectly sketched, and ask yourself what were the means and duties so abundantly blessed of the Lord, required of, and so faithfully used by this humble woman, resulting in so much earthly, spiritual, and eternal good to that large family, and through them to hundreds and thousands more. and attainments she was not remarkable. But her enlightened piety was carried into all her social life, shrinking at no obstacles, yielding under no trials or privations, patiently awaiting the consummation of all earthly things for the fruit of her care and toil, as well as her reward. She did not labor in vain. Neither will you, humble reader, however obscure and unknown you are, if, in the place where you are, with what means you have, you go and do likewise-being faithful over the few things, you will be put in charge of many. "I BONAPARTE'S OPINION OF CHRIST. KNOW men," said Napoleon, “and I tell you that Jesus was not a man. The religion of Christ is a mystery which subsists by its own force, and proceeds from a mind which is not a human mind. We find it a marked individuality, which originated in actions unknown before. Jesus borrowed nothing from our knowledge. He exhibited in himself a perfect precept of his examples. Jesus is not a philosopher, for his proofs are miracles, and from the first his disciples adored him. In fact, learning and philosophy are of no use for salvation; and Jesus came into the world to reveal the mysteries of heaven, "Alexander, Cæsar, Charlemagne, and myself founded empires, but upon what foundation did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon FORCE. Jesus Christ alone founded his empire upon LOVE, and at this hour millions of men would die for him. It was not a day, nor a battle that achieved the triumph of the Christian religion in this world. No, it was a long war; a contest for three centuries, begun by the apostles, then continued by the flood of Christian generations. In this war, if all the kings of the earth, and potentates, were on one side-on the other, I see no army but a mysterious force, some men scattered here and there, all over the world, and who have no other rallying point than a common faith in the mysteries of the cross. "I die before my time, and my body will be given back to the worms. Such is the fate of him who has been called the Great Napoleon. What an abyss between my great misery and the eternal kingdom of Christ, which is proclaimed, loved, and adored, and which is extending all over the world! Call you this dying? Is it not living, rather? The death of Christ is the death of God!" Napoleon stopped at the last words, but General Bertrand making no reply, the Emperor added: "If you do not perceive that Jesus Christ is God, I do wrong to appoint you a general." REMINISCENCE OF THE POET CAMPBELL. SME five and twenty years ago I went to dine at a friend's house. On entering the drawingroom, I found that the object of attraction was an album, which had been presented that morning to the young lady of the house. Her name was Florine, and the lines were as follows: "TO FLORINE. "Could I recall lost youth again, And be what I have been, But mine's the chilling age that chides, And Love-that conquers all besides As far as night from noon, And I depart so soon!" T. C. Dinner was announced; and ere it was half over, a loud knock was heard at the door, and Mr. Campbell came into the dining-room somewhat excited, and making many apologies for intruding. He was asked to join the party, but he declined; and merely begged to see the album, as there was an error in the verses which he wished to correct, The album was brought; and taking from his waistcoat pocket a small penknife, he proceeded to erase the word “parted " in the first line of the stanza, and substituted for it "severed;" which, from the occurrence of the word "depart" in the last line, of course improved the verses: the repetition having evidently haunted his poetic ear. The correction made, Mr. Campbell took a hasty leave; he had another engagement, and could not stay. THE BEST RECREATION. THE celebrated Haydn was in company with Tson distinguished pen was, in company with turned on the best means of restoring their mental energies when exhausted. One said he had recourse, in such cases, to a bottle of wine; another, that he went in company. Hadyn said he retired to his closet and engaged in prayer-that nothing exerted on his mind a more happy and efficacious influence than prayer. There is a great deal of truth in this remark, God is the strength of his people. Luther used to say that to pray well was to study well. Thẹ celebrated Eliot left us the striking sentiment, "that prayer and painstaking were able to accomplish all things." I doubt not that a leading defect of many, very many Christians, lies in their not praying as they ought. THE GUARDIAN ANGEL. BY M. LOUISA CHITWOOD. THEY said he was alone; The thin, frail hand that gently held his own Came not to their dim sight. They often wondered what sweet spell he kept, As though his eyes were looking toward the light. There was no brightness all his life way thro'; No slightest shreds of love But O, not so, not so! He heard a music they could never know, As the soft mist of summer's morning bright, As though a pair of white, invisible wings He felt the claspings of a gentle hand, With sweet heart-sheltered prayers to words unwed. This quiet footfall ever by his side Life's bitterest woes were small. Though smiles and loving words were not for him, Escaped the lips of this poor pilgrim saint, They did not know that, blest and sin-forgiven, Once when his golden locks Straightened with dew the while he watched his flocks, And Night put on her crown, He sat alone, his heart within him stirred To a sweet music until then unheard, As though some seraph's harp sent echoes down. And to his fading eyes There seem'd an angel walking down the skies His pale face glowed with a celestial fire; The azure eyes, whose brightness scarce was hid, "The Chaldean shepherds watched their flocks by night, ment. Rising in palm-like altitude tower nereocysti, upward of seventy feet. A modern writer thus describes them: "They begin in a coral THE SEA IS FULL OF LIFE. BY REV. T. M. EDDY, A. M. OW often, as we realized the extent of ocean shaped root and grow up with a thin, thread-like How often, as wooy days, did we wonder that trunk, which, however, gradually thickens till its so vast a portion of earth was devoid of life-so we deemed it! We forgot, when we talked of the dreary expanse of ocean, that land, too, had its deserts, wide, terrible, and gloomy, where perished almost every living thing; that their tornadoes were terrible as those of ocean, and waves of sand were fatal as waves of brine. And we did not know that ocean was one great garden, where unchecked, uncultivated vegetation grew in luxuriant profusion, and that within it lived and died untold varieties of animal life. The mariner little dreams, while sailing over the unfathomable deep, that beneath his vessel, many fathoms down, wave unbroken forests in their majesty, and in peerless beauty bloom the "Fadeless hues of countless flowers." Once when brown October, that most delightful of the months, autumn's peerless queen, had softly and with some touch of sadness tinted vegetation, I galloped out on the Grand Prairie, in Illinois. Before me spread out ocean's second self, like ocean, seemingly boundless, the dipping sky the only visible boundary; and then, as if to make the illusion more perfect, there was the long swell, the ocean-like roll mimicking the crest of the main. But O what profusion of flowers-many-hued flowers-not sickly exotics, but free and lively in their native vigor! But could man descend the deep caves, move among the mountains, and cross the wide plains of ocean, what wonders he would rehearse! What themes for poet and painter! Alas! this may not be! Those who thus descend come not back. There is mystery as well as "sorrow on the sea." It can not be expected that much can be said of ocean life, therefore, and less is known of vegetable than its animal productions. Even what is known can not be condensed into the limits of a Repository article. In one region of the sea grow the laminaræ, rising like tall trees, flaunting their endless ribbons, true ocean pennons; these wave over the broad-leaved water-lettuce, which rests in turn upon a rich-hued woof of small aquatic plants, red confervæ and brown-rooted mosses. Here also flourish the gigantic-leaved irides, of scarlet and pink. Alaria raise their long, naked stems, terminating in a hideous leaf seventeen yards in length. These are not the ocean vedars, waving, in kingly pride, over pearls, and gold, and grinning skulls, ocean's tesselated pave club-shaped form grows into an enormous bladder, from the top of which, like a crest on a gigantic helmet, there waves proudly a large bunch of delicate but immense leaves." Of these are said to be large forests which develop in a few months, wither and decay in still shorter time, to be reproduced in richer profusion. There are many varieties of algae and fuci of all conceivable shapes and sizes. In the northern and southern arctic oceans they grow to the enormous length of fifteen hundred feet. These are they which come to the surface and form those meadows so terrible to the sailor. To early navigators they were peculiarly disheartening and difficult. The Caravals of Columbus were three weeks plowing their tortuous way through the Sargossa Sea, lying between the Antilles and Azores-the sea-weed meadows covered some twenty-five degrees of latitude. Of every variety. In the northern sea grows the sugar fucas, with broad leaves, from which is made the marma sugar. These leaves are broad and exceedingly thin, yet grow miles in length. Off the Falkland Isles is a species resembling the apple-tree, with trunk, branches, and abundance of fruit. Near the Irish coast is gathered the Carraghen Moss, with beautiful curled leaves, used as a remedy in pulmonic affections. In short, waving, and creeping, and climbing grows the dark, dripping vegetation of the sea. Twining around moldy guns, winding about slimy spars, making a curious net-work for coffers and caskets, keeps that varied vegetation solitary guard over the treasures of the deep. What oozing death sobs have struggled through its branches in vain effort to reach some kindly ear! Turn we now to animal life. We now have wonder rising upon wonder. We have moving mountains of bone and muscle, and again heart, and eye, and sinew in a mere atomic speck, scarce the size of the mustard seed. The whole moves in sluggish and unwieldy majesty through the waters. Research has clearly shown that the home of the right whale is in the north. To him the tropical regions of the ocean are as a sea of molten lead. He can not cross the equator nor sail "around the Horn." The sperm whale, on the other hand, delights in the "peculiar institutions" of the south, and remains in "hot water." He never doubles Good Hope, but does double Cape Horn. |