the flax was kept. It was built strong | permitted to escape from bondage. as a prison, and was frequently used as a place of confinement for the slaves. He drew the break near the open door and commenced his work. Mr. Matson having watched him a few minutes, mounted a horse and rode rapidly away. Samson knew he had gone for help, and would soon return, and attempt to make him a prisoner in that room. Calling a negro boy who chanced to be loitering near, he told him he wanted to go away a few minutes, and hired him with the cakes in his pocket, to stand at the break and keep it going while he should be gone. No matter 'bout de flax, but you mind Sam, and keep it going straight 'long,' he said, showing Sam what he must do. The boy promised, and Samson went out, shutting the door, and throwing himself on the ground, he crept to a small thicket near. He had scarcely reached this hiding place, when his master rode back accompanied by two men. They rode up to the building, and hearing the break still going did not doubt but Samson was there. Matson dismounted, and hastily bolted the door, and closed the heavy shutters to the only window. Mount ing again, the three rode rapidly away They thought they had secured their victim, and prudently resolved to get more help before they ventured to confront him. Samson saw and understood all this. He knew that now or never was his time for escape. He looked at his legs, as he said in relating his story, and told them that his hands bad served him well thus far, and now they must show him what legs were made for. Creeping from his hiding place, he struck for a narrow belt of wood, which skirted a neighbouring creek. Plunging into the water, which was shallow, he walked about two miles, and without being observed, gained the shelter of a negro's cabin. Uncle Ben as he was called, had spent the best years of his life in redeeming himself and his wife from slavery. He was a blacksmith, | and had paid from his hard earnings two thousand dollars for their freedom, thanking heaven that they were thus Age and sickness had enfeebled his frame, and he could no longer work at his trade, but still he supported himself by doing whatever odd jobs fell in his way. If a horse race or any gathering of the kind came off within reasonable distance, he was usually on the ground ready for whatever might turn up. Sometimes he waited on men, who, though too poor to own a slave, liked the appearance of having a servant at such places. Sometimes he sold apples and cakes. But he was always liable, being' nobody's nigger,' to insult and abuse, and Samson had more than once interposed bis strong arm for the old man's protection; and now in this time of sorest need, he sought his cabin as a place of concealment, sure that he might confide in his friendship and fidelity. He knew that immediate search would be made for him, but the water through which he had walked would not betray his footsteps to men or dogs. Uncle Ben showed him his securest hiding place, and there he lay quiet. He believed they could not find him, but the possibility that they might kept his heart beating hard and his hands clenched convulsively on the handle of the axe he had brought from his old home. Slowly and wearily the hours of day. light passed away to the anxious and impatient fugitive. Night came at last and the hour which hushes all peaceful hearts in oblivious sleep; then he crept forth, and with Uncle Ben went out under the cloudless and starry canopy of heaven. Uncle Ben was the possessor of important knowledge-knowledge for which many a slave sighs in vain. He knew the North Star. When a young man, that star had been pointed out to him, and many a night his eye had turned longingly to it, as he thought of the blessed land where the black man was not a slave. But for the kindness of his master, who permitted him to secure legal freedom by his own industry, he would have accepted its friendly guidance, and fled at all risks from the house of bondage. They went out together, and the old man pointed out to his companion, that Poetry-Faith Worketh by Love.' 293 and ef you live or die-God bress you.' seemed an innumerable host, scattered Poetry. LOVE. 'FAITH WORK ETH BY O MOURN not that the days are gone, When Faith's unearthly glory shone When the Apostle's gentlest touch Wrought like a sacred spell, And health came down on every couch The glory is not wholly fled That shone so bright before, Nor is the ancient virtue dead It may not on the crowded ways But still with sacred might it sways Grace still is given to make the faint Grow stronger through distress, And e'en the shadow of the saint -Vision of Prophecy. THE Wayside Gleanings. PRIVILEGE PRAYER. OF How many months? In the vestibule of St. Peter's at Rome is a doorway, which is walled up and marked with a cross. It is opened but four times in a century. On Christmas Eve, once in twenty-five years, the Pope approaches it in princely state, with the retinue of cardinals in attendance, and begins the demolition of the door by striking it three times with a silver hammer. When the passage is opened, the multitude pass into the nave of the cathedral, and up to the altar, by an avenue which the majority of them never entered thus before, and never will enter thus again. Yet, on that great day, amidst an innumerable throng, in a courtly presence, within sight and hearing of stately rites, what could prayer be worth to us? Who would value it in the comparison with those still moments that secret silence of the mind' in which we now can find God,' every day and every where? That day would be more like the day of judgment to us than like the sweet minutes of converse with our Father,' which we may now have every hour. We should appreciate this privilege of hourly prayer if it were once taken from us. Should we not ? O DEATH, WHERE IS THY Το DEATH has a sting. It is a very dread- Imagine that the way to the throne of grace were like the Porta Santa, inaccessible, save once in a quarter of a century, on the 25th December, and then only with august solemnities, conducted by great dignitaries in a holy city. Conceive that it were now ten years since you, or I, or any other sinner, had been permitted to pray; and that fifteen long years must drag themselves away before we could venture again to approach God; and that, at the most, we could not hope to pray more than two or three times in a lifetime! With what solicitude we should wait for the coming of that holy day! We should lay our plans of life, select our homes, build our houses, choose our professions, form our friendships, with reference to a pilgrimage in that twenty-fifth year. We should reckon time by the openings of that sacred door as epochs. No other one thought would engross so much of our lives, or kindle our sensibilities so intensely, as the thought of prayer. It what can be more awful, unless it would be of more significance to us be his case who is the helpless lookerthan the thought of death is now. It on; who watches pangs which he canwould multiply our trepidations at the not assuage, and imploring looks thought of dying. Fear would grow which he cannot interpret; who plies to terror at the idea of dying before cordials at which the King of Terrors that year of Jubilee. No other ques- mocks, and who importunes science for tion would give us such tremors of miracles which it cannot work; who anxiety as these would excite: How in frantic desperation would detain the many years now to the time of prayer? spirit which has already burst its Wayside Gleanings-0, Death! Where is Thy Sting? earthly fetters, and, more frantic still, | refuses to believe that the gulf is al ready crossed, and that the form which he enclasps is no longer a father or a mother, but only senseless clay; who must see these dear familiar features grow so ghastly, and then learn to love them in this new and mournful phasis, only to endure another woe when the coffin-lid is closed, and the funeral pomp sets forth, and from the macerating leaves and plashy turf of the church-yard the surviver comes back to the forsaken dwelling, and upbraids himself that he should sit under the bright lamp, and before the blazing fire, while, beneath the bleak November night, that dear form is left to silence and solitude. Death has a sting. There is often a pang in its very prospect. You are well and happy; but the thought crosses you, I must soon work my last day's work, or play out my last holiday. Soon must take my last look of summer, and spend my last evening with my friends. Soon must I be done with these pleasant books, and put the marker in where it will never again be moved. Soon must I vanish from these dear haunts, and this most beautiful world; and soon must I go down to the house of silence, and say to the worm, "Thou art my sister." And yet, soon as that may be, still sooner may precious ones be taken, and force me to say, "I would not live always." Whether in the actual endurance or in the awful antici. pation, death is very dreadful, and it used to have a sting which not only slew the victim, but extinguished the survivor's hope. Thanks be to God for Jesus Christ. Thanks that there is one tomb which has already lost its tenant, and thanks for the news of how that happened. Thanks that the old penalty is now exhausted in the sinner's Substitute, and that whatever great stone be placed on our sepulchre, there need be no gravestone of guilt on the immortal soul. Thanks, O Father, for thy gift unspeakable; thanks, O Saviour, for thy love unfathomable. Thanks for tasting death for every man. Thanks for thy glorious resurrection and beneficent reign. Thanks for thy gracious promise to destroy the last enemy; and thanks, 295 O Holy Spirit, the Comforter, for those to whom thou hast given such union to Jesus that they feel as if they could never die—uay, that to depart and be with Christ is far better. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who giveth us the victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ,' Considering that we believe in the resurrection of the dead, and the life everlasting,' there is reason to apprehend that our whole feeling in this country regarding our departed friends is too funereal; and on behalf of England we have sometimes envied the brighter hope-the look of Easter morning, which seems to linger still in Luther's land. With its emblems, suggestive of resurrection and heaven, its churchyard is not a Pagan burial-ground, but the place where believers sleep,- & true cemetery, to which friendship can find it pleasant to repair and meditate. At the obsequies of Christian brethren it is not a funeral knell which strikes slowly and sternly; but from the village steeple there sheds a soft and almost cheerful requiem; and though there may be many wet eyes in the procession, there are not many of the artificial insignia of woe, as the whole parish convoys the departed to his bed of peaceful rest.' Once in the Black Forest we accompanied to the place of peace' an old man's funeral, and there still dwells in our ear the quaint and kindly melody which the parishioners sang along the road; and we have sometimes wished that we could hear the like in our own land, with its sombre and silent obsequies. Neighbour, accept our parting song; On bread of mirth and bread of tears His comrades bless him as he goes: -Gone to a realm of sweet repose, Ye village bells, ring, softly ring, And open wide, thou Gate of Peace, Beneath these sods how close ye lie! 'I quickly come,' that Saviour cries; Dr. Hamilton. author and his readers, only be understood of that gracious atonement for all guilt of sin of all mankind, which Christ our Lord and Saviour has com pleted for us, by His sinless sufferings and death; and out of which flows forth to us, as from a fountain, all power to love in return, all love to Him our heavenly pattern, and all hatred of sin, which caused His death. To speak these words of Scripture with the mouth is easy; but he only can say Yea and Amen to them with the heart who, in simple truthfulness of the knowledge of himself, has looked down even to the darkest depths of his ruined state, natural to him, and intensified by innumerable sins of act; and, despairing of all hope in himself, reaches forth his hand after the good ALL GERMAN THEOLOGY NOT tidings of heavenly deliverance.' NEGATIVE. 'WHAT we call "moral amelioration," if not springing out of the living ground of a heart reconciled to God, is mere self-deceit, and only external avoidance of evident transgression; but the purification which Christ brought in would, in the sense of our Ebrard on the Hebrews. On this note Alford says, 'It is truly refreshing in the midst of so much unbelief and misapprehension of the sense of Scripture, in the German commentators, to meet with such a clear and full testimony to the truth and efficacy of the Lord's great sacrifice.—Alford's Test, Vol. IV. p. 11. Correspondence. ON CELEBRATING THE LORD'S To the Editor of the General Baptist a thousand tributary streamlets. This is true, I hope, not only in the philosophical and scientific, but also in the political and religious world. In our little General Baptist world, too, Mr. Editor, as displayed in our recent Hall of Representatives, I think there was an improved tone of Christian feeling, DEAR SIR,-My years are, I hope, which gives hope of still greater adneither too many nor too few to enable vances. This hope will doubtless asme to form, according to my opportuni-sume the shape of prayer throughout ties, a pretty fair estimate of things. I do the body. In this prayerful hope, I not think on the one hand, that in all venture respectfully to suggest the things we are wiser than our fathers;-propriety, if not the duty, at our annual nor on the other, that the former days were in all respects better than the present. On the whole, I am under a comfortable conviction that we have not in vain received the education our fore-elders gave us, but we have made improvements larger and smaller from assembly of celebrating the dying love of our Divine Redeemer, that badge of our discipleship, that bond of our spiritual union. I think it would tend, more than any other means, to inspire all our enterprises, and all our discussions with the mind that was |