values nothing but luxury and folly. He felt really ashamed as he gazed on the Bible, which lay before him; and he remembered that he had no right to condemn his daughter, for deserting her religion, since he had hardly ever regarded it himself; he felt that he was not competent to judge. "Perhaps, after all, she may be right," his conscience whispered, as he took up the book, and opened it at one of the places which Naomi had marked; it was the twenty-third chapter of Jeremiah-the words, which are written in large letters, "the Lord our righteousness," attracted his attention; he read over the first eight verses, which declare so clearly the coming of the Messiah; he turned to many other places, which Naomi had also marked: the apparently contradictory accounts (in Isaiah and the Psalms, particularly) of the different circumstances attending the life and death of Jesus Christ, when on earth: lastly, he opened the New Testament. That day he went away hesitating, but, early the next morning, he hastened to read again: he was turning over the leaves of the New Testament, and feeling nearly convinced as he read, when, in the first chapter of Saint John, he came to the verse, "Philip findeth Nathaniel, and saith unto him, 'we ly. Every day he went to the apartment of his child; there alone could he find peace. The conduct of his mistress was daily more shameless, and the health of Mr. Montero became daily worse; but the light of hope and joy seemed to have sprung up in his soul, and the gloom which had long prevailed there was gradually dispersing: he had commanded his mistress to leave him, but she positively refused to go; he was, alas ! too weak and ill to oppose her then. At last, Mr. Montero sent for his daughter: he would not have invited her to the house, where his mistress still resided; but he was dying, and Naomi alone loved him. "Ah!" said Naomi, as she rose from her prayers, the morning after her father's funeral, "is not this to be 'as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.*""> * 2 Cor. vi. 10. 166 Verily, thou art a God that hidest thyself. O, God of Israel, the Saviour." Isaiah, ch. xlv. v. 15. James, I. "Let patience have her perfect work." A MERCHANT'S WIFE. Lucy was the youngest of three sisters: she had passed all her life at her father's parsonage, in Cornwall, till her marriage with a young merchant, who was visiting a distant relation, near Mount's Bay; at her father's house he first saw her, and in her father's church she became his wife he was an orphan, and his only sister had been long married to a clergyman in North Wales. A few weeks after her marriage, Lucy set off with her husband to London; on the morning of her departure, she visited every room in the small parsonage, and sighed over objects, which association had long endeared to her; she had never sighed over them till then. She ran weeping round the garden, and patted the head of her father's old gray horse, |