jecting the fastidiousness of rank and the blandishments of pleasure, visit the school, and the hospital, and the hovel, and the prison, become conversant with misery in all her forms, and are neither repelled nor disgusted by the most frightful? Again the answer is-Women. Who are those that are ready to every good word and work? Who protect every weakness, and palliate every suffering, from the cry of the infant orphan to the wailing of dotage and decrepitude? Who furnish instruction for the ignorant, refuge for the unprotected, and an asylum even for repentant vice? Who are those who in our great cities, and in our metropolis, where so many streets, and allies, and courts, and cellars, and garrets, are putrid with vice and wretchedness, have opened a thousand doors of mercy, and hover, like presiding angels, over those institutions which they have consecrated by their benevolence? They Let us look from social to domestic life. Such is the felicity of the female character formed of the elements of religion that the closer it is inspected the more advantageously it appears, like some fine piece of Mosaic, whose minutest part is also its most exquisite. In domestic life it is woman on whom we are dependent for the first years of existence, and for all its future felicity; it is she who tends us in sickness, who soothes us in care, who consoles us in calamity-to whom the heart instinctively turns in the hour of suffering, and never turns in vain. It is she who, alienated neither are women. by misfortune nor even vice, follows us to prison, adjusts the straw bed, earns the spare morsel she refuses to partake, but hides the tear that moistens it, lest it should seem to reproach the author of her sufferings. But what a theme is before us! We must pause. But there is one scene of feminine Christian heroism upon which we must linger for an instant it is the last hour of the suffering Jesus-the despised and rejected Man of Sorrows. One companion betrays him, another denies him; of the rest, "all forsook him and fled;" but woman was last at the cross, and woman was first at the sepulchre. Yes! here behold the female character at its highest elevation, an elevation to which it was raised by the light and power of religion. If there be any thing in the modern history of Christian women analogous to this, and which seems to approach it in moral sublimity, it is the self-devotement of the female missionary. Her life is a martyrdom, of which death is only the last voluntary crowning act. Voluntary! No: willingly would she remain a living martyr still, to labour and suffer for Christ and the souls of the perishing heathen. She dies because she must, because her Lord has determined that the moment has arrived when the cross must give place to the crown. MATERNAL AFFECTION. WHAT a multitude of interesting associations crowd upon the mind in contemplating the maternal relationship! How many chords vibrate in melody through the heart at the endearing appellation of mother! Where on earth but in the maternal bosom can we look for the union of all that is tender and ardent in affection with a fortitude that endures all things and a self-denial that sacrifices all things? Human beings are brought forth into the world in a state of helplessness unknown to the brute creation. But there is implanted in the mother's bosom a deep and constant feeling which furnishes in all ordinary cases—even in this selfish and polluted world—a security from dangers which must otherwise soon exterminate the species. Hence, when the blessed God would convey to the afflicted remnant of his people an assurance of his regard which should dissipate their fears, and excite implicit confidence in his love, he fixes on a mother's affection as the strongest and most appropriate simile which earth could furnish:-" Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb?" The supposition is most improbable. The mother, thus divested of tenderness, would be universally regarded as unnatural-as a monster. In some isolated cases, where depravity has risen to its climax, maternal love may have been overpowered or suppressed; but such exceptions, from the horror with which they are regarded, establish rather than overturn the general rule. Affection! seek her in a mother's heart; There dwells she shrined, from worldly guile apart; Falling, like dew, when all beside is sleeping, The exercise of this strong and permanent affection is, however, a blessing to children only in proportion as it is regulated by the principles of true wisdom. In the absence of these principles, it often proves in the last degree ruinous to the objects of solicitude. Its very strength--calculated as it is to give to the mother an influence over her offspring which, rightly exerted, might make them a blessing to themselves, to society, and to the world-renders it, when misdirected, an element of the greater mischief. The fondness which shrinks from inflicting a temporary pain by wholesome and necessary restraints, or which is exclusively directed to efforts for promoting the temporal comfort of children, irrespective of their immortal destiny, inevitably defeats its own object, and becomes the instrument of sowing those seeds of vanity, fretfulness, and rebellion, which not unfrequently produce a harvest of wretchedness to them, while the gray hairs of the mother herself are brought down with sorrow to the grave. Mothers, do you love your little ones? Do you desire to see them happy and respected? Would you have them preserved from the paths of vice and destruction? Remember that on you it rests, under God, to train them to such habits as may render them all that you desire. If you are living in the neglect of God, in the indulgence of a worldly or a vicious spirit, they will, in all probability, follow your footsteps, only becoming bolder and more reckless in crime. If you live without prayer, with what propriety can you expect the blessing of Heaven upon your them? Or if, while trusting in the Saviour for selves, and seeking mercy through his blood, you are unfaithful to your trust, and either labour not at all or labour without any fixed plan or any consistent perseverance to train them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, your affection is a curse to your offspring more terrible than all the external calamities of life. Early habits, and early impressions, have always a powerful influence over the whole of life, and often give the fixed and permanent stamp to a character; while no impressions are more strong and durable than those which are associated with recollections of a mother's love. 66 AN ANGEL VISIT. FROM THE SPIRIT AND MANNERS OF THE AGE." ON the evening of the 31st of December I had been cherishing the humiliating and solemn reflections which are peculiarly suitable to the close of the year, and endeavouring to bring my mind to that view of the past best calculated to influence the future. I had attempted to recal the prominent incidents of the twelve months which had elapsed, and, in the endeavour, I was led frequently to regret how little my memory could retain even of that most important to be remembered. I could not avoid, at such a period, looking forwards as well as backwards, and anticipating that fearful tribunal at which no occurrence shall be forgotten; while my imagination penetrated into the distant destinies which shall be dependent on its decisions. At my usual hour I retired to rest, but the train of meditation I had pursued was so important and appropriate that imagination continued, and, after sense had |