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After putting away our own horses, for there was no time for ceremony, we sought refuge for ourselves under the low roof of the itinerant. The old man was lying on a sort of straw pallet, made expressly for him, and located near a small window. At the first salutation, we were all strangers. But the inhabitants of New England are a kind, hospitable, social people. After a few words, all reserve was thrown aside, and we entered into a free conversation. But I will not detain the reader with it. Our business lies with the old gentleman on the straw pallet. His history I will endeavor to give nearly in his own language.

"Thirty-five years ago," said the old veteran, in a voice by much pain and sickness broken, "I entered the traveling connection. For the first twenty of them, I was a strong, healthy man, and could endure, and did endure, all kinds of hardships. I have rode my circuit in all sorts of weather, and have seen as many snow storms, and rain storms, and hail storms, and storms of wind, as perhaps any person in this country. I have slept all night in the woods, when the snow was so deep that my horse refused to travel. Several times, far from my family and fireside, I have been compelled, while traveling among the mountains, to scoop out in some towering snow-bank a snow cabin for myself and animal, to protect us against the piercing blasts of winter. I have preached a year, and received for my services only twenty dollars. I have left my family, and that more than once, when they had not a loaf of bread, nor a pound of meat, nor a piece of fish, to keep them in my absence. A few potatoes, and a little salt was all I had to leave them. Nearly in this manner, and never receiving half of my full allowance, the first twenty years of my life were devoted to the Church I loved, and love, beyond my power to utter.

"Ten years ago these hardships began to show their working upon my vigorous constitution. For five years, I labored on with many interruptions. At length, completely worn out, I retired from active service, but have not been able to earn ten dollars a year, if it had been to save me from perishing, from that day onward. I am now stretched upon this bed of straw, where I have lain for four long years, and have never once been taken from it. My seven children are in a helpless condition. My oldest, a son, has never had health for either books or business. My five young daughters are all here, almost wasting their lives, without the means of mental cultivation. My younger son, now about ten years old, has been confined to his bed by a lingering complaint nearly as long as I have. I have sometimes thought of writing to some one or more of my old circuits, where once I labored. There are many friends of my former years yet living; but they have all forgotten me. How many years I have yet to lie here, God only knows.

But

verses

"I would not live alway: no, welcome the tomb, Since Jesus hath lain there, I dread not its gloom: There sweet be my rest, till he bid me arise, To hail him in triumph descending the skies." As the fine voice of my friend swelled out in giving full musical expression to the last line, "To hail him in triumph," the old saint reached up his hands, as if he had seen Jesus then coming to his rescue. tears started in the eyes of the sweet singer, and in the performance of the concluding verses, there was a natural eloquence of voice and manner which I have never seen equaled:

The

"Who-who would live alway, away from his God,
Away from yon heaven, that blissful abode,
Where the rivers of pleasure flow o'er the bright plains,
And the noontide of glory eternally reigns:
Where the saints of all ages in harmony meet,
Their Savior and brethren transported to greet,
While the anthems of rapture unceasingly roll,

And the smile of the Lord is the feast of the soul!"

I will not attempt to describe the excitement produced in the veteran's heart by these last verses, nor the wonderful expression of his countenance that accompanied, from the most rapturous swell to the concluding cadence, the full rich tones of the singer, till all was finished and closed up by that remarkable period,

"And the smile of the Lord is the feast of the soul!" If the old man had been suddenly presented with the wealth of the Indies, he could not have been more transported.

But by this time the storm had passed over, and we were obliged to pursue our journey. It would be indelicate to say how far we relieved the immediate wants of our old father. As we were taking our leave, I asked him what was his reliance for the future. Never shall I forget his answer. He did not say his former circuits; for they had their current expenses to provide for. Neither did he name any of his former friends; for he had told us before, that they had apparently forgotten him. Nor did he

say that God was his reliance; for he felt assured that we knew him to be a Christian. Nor did he utter a syllable of any kind. But, with the tenderest expression of love and gratitude, he first looked upon his wife, and, the next moment, bursting into tears, clasped her to his bosom. O, faithful woman, man's last, best friend, thou art such a seraph!

Reader, tell me-nay, though thy cheek blush red by telling it-tell me, is this the man of God whom thou didst once call pastor? If not-if neither of these examples portray thy negligence, go, find the true one, wherever he may be met with-bind up his broken spirit ere he takes his departure-lest, in answer to the strict questioning of a faithful Creator, he be compelled to give his testimony against thee, and thus, before thy own coming into heaven, bad reports of thy charity get currency among the angels.

VALEDICTORY.*

BY REV. E. WENTWORTH, A. M.

AND what will be the fate of the mass before me this evening? Every individual of this vast concourse has his little creations in hand: some of them aspire to rival God's in grandeur of conception. Some are feebler in execution than the handiwork of the insect exemplars of industry. Some of you are laying plans for the subjugation of the world to the sway of sovereign self; while others

"Content themselves to be obscurely good." Some will court the glare and bustle of the crowded city; others already heave the sentimental sigh

"O that the desert were my dwelling-place,
With one fair spirit for my minister!"

Some will illustrate the apostrophe

"Ye gods! what havoc does ambition make
Among your works;"

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some of us, Heaven still has work to do; and it is an idea no less beautiful than true, that "every man is immortal till his work is done." And what is to be the lot of the young men before me, whose countenances beam with health, and whose eyes, this evening, radiate the light of hope! I cannot unroll the future; but with the talisman of recollection I can conjure before you a scene or two from the past. On a bright day in the summer of 1832, two young men might have been seen perambulating the streets of one of the most populous villages of western New York. They were engaged in earnest conversation; and, if any one of the flippant keepers of the showy shops with which the streets were lined, had gazed after them as they strolled, he would doubtless have pronounced them "green." And such they were. The one had just entered upon the itinerant life; the other had his academic course before him. With all the unsuspecting confidence of youth, they unfolded to each other their plans and prospects. They parted, and the hour of mutual amusement and interest was forgotten. In a few months, one was scores of leagues away in one direction, and the other as far away upon a different point of the compass. Will they ever meet again?

Six years bear their burden of sorrow and joy to eternity, and those young men are again side by side, fellow-laborers in the pioneer field of education in the Church of their choice. And side by side they stood, burdened with responsibilities, harassed with poverty, and struggling with the pecuniary difficulties and embarrassments incident to the infancy of their institution, and its resuscitation from total destruction by fire. The third year transfers one of them to a new field of labor, and threatens their separation. Providence kindly interposes, and weds more firmly than ever their interests and labors. Since that moment their career has been before you. Of one of them, were I possessed of the vanity of Cicero or Buffon, it would not become me here to

"Let Cæsar have the world, if Marcia is mine." Some may be, like Berkeley, "distinguished for every virtue under heaven," and others, like Bonner, "Damned to everlasting fame."

To learn the future destiny of each, we need not resort to the black art, to the horoscope, to the wreathing smoke of the witches' cauldron, or to the learned incantations of Faust or Dr. Dee. With all its chance and change, the future will be only the reflection of the past. With some of us,

"The visions of our youth are past-
Too bright, too beautiful to last;"

with which God has so liberally endowed him, has elevated himself to an enviable and useful distinction, has centred the wealth and influence of thousands in your institution, and drawn the eyes of many in both hemispheres upon your humble Green Mountain hamlet.

Our more than five years' residence here has identified us, much more intimately than we at first dared to hope, with your seminary, your village, your children, and your persons. As a faculty, we have enjoyed a permanency by no means peculiar to such establishments. Tears watered the first infringement of the circle, when the former teacher of languages, a man endeared to you all by untiring dil

* Conclusion of an address to the Young Men's Lyceum of Troy Conference Academy, on the evening of July 14, 1846.

* Rev. G. B. Cove, A. M., Principal of Providence Conference Academy.

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for the elevated duties which now occupy his attention. Not six months ago, agony too deep for tears wrung our hearts, when it was announced that the failing health of the teacher of mathematics* rendered his retirement absolutely necessary. He will linger in Poultney. And here let him linger; for yonder cemetery enshrines the infant ashes of his fondest earthly hopes. That cemetery may, ere long, become the resting-place of his own labor-exhausted system. Shall we ever meet again?

During the period of my attendance upon your semi-annual exhibitions, more young ladies than have this evening entertained you with their incipient efforts at composition, have gone to the spirit land. Young men, too, have been carried to the place of graves. This year, also, some of your fellows will follow Clark and Dickey to their quiet resting-places. And here we come to-night: once more, and we come not here again. The iron finger of temporal destiny points one to the east, another to the west, another to the grave! We have mingled in your festivities and your scenes of woe-we have joyed in your prosperity and wept by the graves

"Of mother and daughter, father and son;" yet, in the order of Providence, these are not the feet that shall carry us out. Semi-annually, your eyes will be greeted with displays of brilliancy and grace, and your ears saluted with joyous music, sentiment, and taste. These are no more for us. Other heavens will bend to our prayers; other walls will echo to our songs; other flowers will bloom and die at our feet; other countenances will gladden our hearts with smiles; other eyes will weep tears of sadness over our woes. From citizens, from students, from teachers, we have experienced only unmitigated kindness. What shall be our return? If there be any one privilege connected with the minister's office more agreeable than another, it is that of leaving his BENEDICTION With the objects of his love. Upon you, perhaps for the last time, we invoke the blessings of the Holy Trinity. Ten years will have scattered you to the four winds. Over many a loved object it will be ours to wail the monody of Milton over his lost, loved Lycidas

"But, O the heavy change, now thou art goneNow thou art gone, and never must return!" And such will be the lot of life. Yet,

"When the dreams of life are fled,
When its wasted lamps are dead,
When in cold oblivion's shade,
Beauty, wealth, and fame are laid,
Where immortal spirits reign,
There may we all meet again."

LETTER TO MY FRIEND MARY.

BY D. TRUEMAN.

MARY,-Possessed as you are of a strong and apparently natural disposition to read, it must, of course, become the medium of exquisite pleasure, or poignant anguish; and you are doubtless aware that your future happiness, so far, at least, as connected with the indulgence of this laudable inclination, depends mainly on your selection of books, while your expanding faculties are so peculiarly susceptible of impressions. Your taste for reading cannot yet be considered as fully established. The tottering, untutored infant, that grasps, with unrestrained eagerness, whatever is pleasing to the eye, however ruinous to the taste, must, by a long course of training, be taught to distinguish food from poiEven so must the juvenile mind, by a continued course of correct moral discipline, be brought to discard evil, and fondly to relish that which is good.

son.

You are yet in the morning of life. Your unscathed spirit, like the beauteous butterfly, is now reveling amid the poesy of earth, flitting from flower to flower in search of beauty and sweetness. O, it is a brilliant, but a dangerous hour! Much and often as you have been instructed to detest vice, and avoid irreligious publications, you might even yet be induced, by the tempter's syren voice, seconded by surrounding circumstances, not only to play with fiction's vapid flowers, but even to taste her pernicious, soul-ruining fruit, until the result would be a lasting disrelish for solid and profitable reading. If you would avoid this lamentable consequence, read the Bible.

Within the time-honored walls of the seminary, from which you have but recently returned, you were permitted to range the flowery fields of polite literature, scan the labyrinths of science, and become acquainted with those principles, by the application of which even the most unruly elements are rendered subservient to man's happiness. If you would prosecute your scientific researches, and reduce each ennobling principle to practice, you will find the volume of inspiration highly confirmatory of all true science, in every department of nature. Infidelity, in perpetuating a dishonorable warfare against Christianity, has planted her engines high among the stars, and lit her belching magazines deep down in the stratas of our globe, but all in vain. Repulsed at every onset, she stands abashed amidst the brightening rays her puny efforts have elicited from the heaven-girt defenders of the blessed Bible.

If you would feast your spirit with the truly beautiful and sublime, read the Bible. No human com

*Rev. John Newman, A. M.

ostentation, comprehensive without tautology, full of simplicity in all the magnificence of language, glorious in design, correct in sentiment, beautiful in

expression, and complete in all its parts, without diminution or redundancy.

If you would treasure up knowledge, read the Bible. Unlike the Shasters of Brahmin, or the Koran of Mohammed, it not only courts the light, but kindles it, exciting within the breast of the Biblical student an ardent desire to advance in all knowledge and spiritual wisdom. Those holy men of old who wrote the Bible, like mighty artists, thoroughly instructed and fired with celestial genius, seem to have stood on the mount of prophecy, glancing with unvailed vision from creation's birth to the clo of time; and dipping their pencils in the tints of eternity, have sketched on the everlasting canvas the history of our world, beautifully embellished with the moral portraits of its occupants. And now, in holy pantomime, we gaze enraptured on its remote, advanced, and future stages. Kingdoms and empires rise and fall; vast cities are built and buried in their own crumbling ruins; nation after nation makes way for the fire-led sons of Jacob, and, subsequently, for the Babe of Bethlehem; Assyrians, Persians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Medes, and Romans, are swept and scattered; generation follows generation as wave impels wave on the sea-beaten strand.

If you would slake your thirst at the glittering fount of eloquence, read the Bible. It glows and sparkles like diamonds in the cloudless sunshine. It teems with eloquence, from the unaffected simplicity of Peter, to the magnificent flights and unparalleled figures of Israel's evangelical prophet. The pen of Dante seems to have been tipped with terror, Milton's with sublimity, Young's with beauty, Virgil's with pathos, and Shakspeare's with description; but all the uninspired productions of the most gigantic intellects, combined, must yield the palm of superiority to the Bible. Coming as it does, bearing the original tinge of Heaven's own language, unimpaired through the roll of time, and the revolution of empires, we hail the priceless treasure. Its pages are everywhere bedewed with the eloquence of love, and glittering in godlike grandeur.

If you would mount with hope above terrestrial scenes, read the Bible-bend over this hallowed fountain-cheer thy longing spirit with draughts of immortality, and rise up, akin to angels. But for the Bible, how limited must have been our conceptions of an inheritance beyond the present! The widow and the fatherless might have courted the winds for sympathy, and man's most solid foundation for hope of future good would have been a gloomy peradventure. But here thought backward travels, guided by an unbroken chain of cause and effect, to man's native garden, where, amidst seraphic shouts, he was wonderfully and fearfully made-fashioned out of the dust of the earth; and the inspiration of the Almighty gave him understanding. Retracing our steps, we draw near that healing fountain, opened on Mount Calvary, where countless millions have VOL. VI.-38

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been cleansed from moral pollution. Uprising from the crimson flood, we plume our wings for farther flight; and, leaning on God's immutable promises, we plunge into the far-off future, richly anticipating an eternity of bliss.

If you would cultivate an acquaintance with the divine character, read the Bible. Through this sacred avenue we are conducted at once into his presence, who stands forth, self-proclaimed, the GREAT I Aм, absolute, independent, eternal, and self-existent-infinite in all his perfections, illimitable in his immensity, glorious in holiness, and fearful in praises-a being too wise to err, too good to be unjust. How truly sublime are the ideas excited by the Scriptural representation of the true and living God! How strictly in keeping with the human understanding! Here reason plants her foot, and, though awed into deep, reverential silence by the divine majesty, and her own inability to fathom infinity, rests satisfied to find nothing antagonistic to her loftiest conceptions.

If you would acquire a meetness for an inheritance with the saints in light, read the Bible. If we would derive the genuine benefit of reading, we must peruse the lesson with somewhat of the spirit that actuated the Author in penning it. Wherefore, in the prayerful contemplation of that infinite benevolence which originated and consummated the great plan of human redemption, the soul of man catches the hallowed flame that lights him in the footsteps of his immaculate Redeemer. We there learn to "love God because he first loved us, and gave his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." And, in proportion to the intensity of our affection for the Lord Jesus Christ, will be our advancement in the formation of a character meet for heaven. If we love him, we shall be like him, and dwell with him for

ever.

If you would drop your tears of separation on Mercy's feet, read the Bible. The boasting infidel plants his foot on the tomb of his former friend, and, with an acquired misanthropic stoicism that would make a fiend shudder, cries, "Death is an eternal sleep." But the precious Bible wrests from the ashes of the slumbering dead this libelous epitaph, brands its propagator with foul falsehood, points man "through nature up to nature's God," and bids him scan his own eternity. The insatiate grave still yawns, but its dark horrors are all hidden beneath the gorgeous bow of hope, that rests on Calvary's summit, arching in beauty Adam's buried ones. Death's darts are still ruthlessly aimed at our dearest friends, but they are barbless. His victims hail him with a smile, calmly reposing on Immanuel's breast, while the glorious light of the Bible doubly illuminates the path of the bereaved, as it twines garlands of immortality around the unconscious corpse. Our bosoms still throb with anguish, our purest tears embalm the dead; but mercy stills the storm, and

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holy sunshine decks the shower. Still we breathe with trembling lips the last, long, lingering adieu; yet, from the Bible, draw the blest assurance that the separation of virtuous spirits shall be brief, and operate as an incentive to a course of conduct which must ultimate in a happy reunion beyond the gloomy precincts of the tomb, and the withering blasts of sorrow. Go, ask the stricken-hearted, companionless, and fatherless ones, whence they derive consolation. With tear-lit smiles, they will answer, from the Bible. This points the pious mourner to a blissful home, where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary shall for ever rest.

If you would be released from the grim monster's dread bondage, read the Bible. It assures us that He who spread forth the heavens as a curtain, and bespangled them with stars innumerable, voluntarily assumed the scanty, fading garment of our miserable humanity, to deliver us from the fear of death, and turn our eyes undaunted on the tomb. He was pierced himself, that, with his own soft hand, from our rankling wounds he might "extract the barbed envenomed dart," and cheer us through the sable shade, as we pass from earth to heaven.

If you would moisten your lips with prelibations of the saint's future blessedness, read the Bible. { Here sounds seraphic ring upon our ears, and the dazzling effulgence of the unvailed Godhead, ever reflected from the gates of pearl, glitter before us. Far away in boundless prospect spread the fields of light and glory. Life's fair tree, whose branches bend to kiss, in speechless praise, the crystal stream that bursts from beneath the eternal throne, breaks forth to view; and groups of kindred spirits, with crowns and harps, throng the battlements of heavento welcome us home. "There friends shall meet who have loved." Well may the Bible be styled the Book of books, as it connects earth with heaven, yea, an eternity that is past with an eternity that is

to come.

Mary, whatever else you may read, O, do not neglect the Bible. Read it morning, noon, and night. Read it at home and abroad. Read it carefully and prayerfully. Read it constantly, in sickness and in health, in adversity and in prosperity. Bind it about thy neck. When thou goest, let it lead thee; when thou liest down, let it keep thee. Make it the subject of thy meditations, engrave its life-giving principles and holy precepts on thy heart, and practice them in all thy actions. Then, like the angels on Jacob's ladder, thou shalt ascend on this heaven-wrought platform, from the regions of sorrow and sin to the home of the blest, and, with God shut in, enjoy for ever the plenitude of his infinite perfections. May this be your happy portion!

A PERSON full of prayer is generally full of faith. Let faith, then, have her perfect work.

a

A DAY IN THE MINISTRY.

BY REV. R. SAPP.

IN traveling a circuit, in the outskirts of the newly formed settlements, in the state of Michigan, my ride, in visiting one of the very remote appointments, where, under the blessing of God, we had witnessed an interesting revival, and had formed a little society to whom we administered the bread of life, brought us into the neighborhood of a small band of Indians, mnant of the great Chippewa stock, who, in the days of their pride and strength, spread themselves in great numbers around the shores of our vast inland seas, and their numerous tributaries. Having listened with interest to a number of incidents, related by the white settlers, of these remaining symbols of a great people, our sympathies were awakened in their behalf, and we conceived the idea of carrying to them the Gospel of Christ, hoping it might become to them the means of life in their forlorn and dying state. Accordingly, having made, through a friend, the necessary preliminaries, we set out early in the morning of the day appointed, to make them a visit, and arrived at their lodges at an early hour of the day. They were located in a wild, romantic place.

Happily begirt with shadowy woods and hills, And the wild sounds of melancholy rills." The whites, from the adjoining neighborhood, had already commenced assembling to witness the novel scene of preaching to the Indians, and of joining in our devotions. We found a number of the little band covered with the melancholy badges of mourning, for children deceased, and yet uninterred. With faces blackened-with sad countenances, and silent as midnight, the reader may be assured, that they did not fail to engage our sympathies. If ever we felt like mourning with those that mourn, and of weeping with those that weep, it was on this occasion. We pitied the poor heathen mothers, who sighed without knowledge or hope for their lost little ones.

The chief was a well-disposed man, possessed of good sense, quick of apprehension, and capable of speaking our language fluently. He was of easy access, willing to communicate any intelligence about himself and people we wished, and ready to convey, by interpretation, our message to his people. The usual preliminaries of reading the word of life, which, to them, was a sealed mystery, and singing, by the whites, which was living, breathing melody in the wild woods, having been finished, I proceeded to give them a talk upon some of the great truths of the Christian revelation. The talk, or discourse, was without metes and bounds, embracing and appropriating every thing in the compass of theology which was deemed of interest or importance to them at the time. I spoke in general terms of the creation of the sun, earth, water, woods, and all things,